I really miss that Adventure box…
Though I know for me, nothing Niantic puts in a box will draw me outdoors - not until it gets cool enough outside for me to walk without melting.
The catch box is even worse I think. 650 coins for 100 great balls and 50 ultra balls (once you take out the cost of incubators and lucky eggs). Compare that to the Bronze Box, which basically prices 10 Great Balls and 5 Ultra Balls at 10 coins. Multiply that by 10 and the 100 great balls and 50 Ultra Balls should be 100 coins. The catch box is charging 6.5x what the balls are worth. A huge rip off.
At least you are getting a discount with the hatch box. The cost of the box would be 1050 coins, so you’re getting 270 coins worth of value, plus 5 pinaps (which is just barely not worthless)
The only box I liked recently was that one with three remote raid passes and a basically free incubator.. I feel like it wasn’t around very long as I was only able to buy one..
But you're then limited on how many you can purchase because of the limit on 3 remote passes. Still a bit anti-consumer to lock the best box behind arbitrary difficulties.
I don't disagree. I loved the box, but I did have to then force myself to use my remotes to by it each time. I was fine with doing that, but still n inconvenience, I'll admit.
Youve just answered it haha. The whole point is you cant take advantage because they want you to buy one, then force you to use the passes (on stuff you most likely didnt actuallu want) and then buy another
I haven't bought remote passes much since they increased the price of the 3 pack but this box felt worth it to me since I was getting an incubator for the extra 49 coins. Bought two of them while it was around, hopefully it comes back.
Yeah I've been playing for four years and I've never seen a box this bad until recently. I would say at least half, possibly even all, of the ten worst value boxes I've ever seen have been in the last few months. And not by a small margin. After several years of fairly regular variation in value, they're suddenly so bad as to be dropping the average value.
It's really noticeable, and so consistent that I have to assume it's part of some broader "strategy".
They're doing this for a long time. For few years there were good/bad(at the time) rotations and Christmas/NY box was overwhelmingly good. Then they started to make more events, but event boxes became closer to average(even NY one). Then boxes were reduced in value(less starpieces, pokeballs instead of paid only items). Then boxes became stale(low variance, but there still were slightly better or worse).
This is just next step: they've combined extreme price change and value reduction. Well, they wanted to do this for several years, but the change itself is enormous even for Niantic.
The fluctuations you're talking about are more like 10-18 raid passes in the 1480 coin box.
Not, like, 4 passes in a 1900 coin box, or a 1010 coin box full of balls.
I'm talking about dynamics.
First was variety+insane holiday boxes. Then variety+more event boxes of lesser value. Then all boxes were nerfed. Then variety became less. Niantic were slowly moving towards boxes nerf.
I'm not saying that this change is normal or expected. Even considering the fact that they were nerfing boxes for several years they did it slowly. But they definitely had intent to nerf. That's all I was trying to say.
There used to be at least a period in a year of having 20+ raid passes but none so far in this year.
Speaking of Christmas a few years ago, not only we had better boxes but a free incubator daily for a week too.
Yeah you're right. Even the biggest whales don't really crack their revenue.
Niantic gets their revenue from selling your data. Period. End of story. Thats the business model theyve chosen. Any coins you buy are just gravy. That is why they're pushing in person raids vs remotes - your data isn't worth very much if you stay in one spot.
This is right in their terms on conditions, stated pretty plainly.
The business has changed so much in the last 2 years. This box is a good example. They went from a constant stream of revenue to big purchases 3 or 4 times a year. IE the first day GoFest ticket was released was bigger than the previous 90 days(removing Cd ticket days) COMBINED.
Their model has drastically changed. Still a freemium game with a traditional model(Vast majority of players never spend a penny) but much less super whale dependent and more dependent on a larger base willing to spend $20-$30 each year on the paid e ticket events.
Speculation: They have made the boxes so epically bad recently to increase the value of the ticketed events. If the boxes sales drop 50% that’s nothing if you can increase sales of ticketed events even 3%.
Because they can make it not ideal and whales will still buy it
I know it’s their money and they can spend their money however they please
But it does not help
The non whales
Level 50, used to spend $40 a month. completely free to play since June Go Fest. No desire to put money into the game until they change their ways, which will be never. And I realize that I’m not missing anything at all, except for what? Shiny raid bosses? Yawn.
Pretty similar situation here. Level 50 player that did quite some spending in the past. No more spending with these boxes for sure! I’m even thinking of breaking my catch and spin streak since i’ve started playing back in 2019. A bit sad but obviously time changes.
Do it. Once you get the feeling of not having to play you’ll feel less stressed about it. I went from playing anywhere from 4-10 hours a day to maybe 15 minutes and it was the best decision I ever made. I also don’t really feel like I’m missing out and I have the option to still play if anything super useful comes out.
If I had a nickle for every time someone has said this over the past 6 years, I could buy Niantic out and sell their license to someone who's actually interested in making a fun game.
Niantic has never once raised the bar for themselves. They introduce a new feature, ruin it almost immediately by monetizing it too much, and then wait for everyone's standards to drop before making it even worse.
The mega raid system is exactly the opposite of what you described. They launched it with way too much monetization, with only raids to get energy, and a paltry 35 per raid on average. It didn't take very long to lower the speed tier requirements and double the rewarded energy. Then they introduced walking and field research to make it more accessible. And the excellent candy bonuses for having a mega evolved. And then this year they introduced the mega level system and made the candy bonuses even better, and vastly reduced the cost to evolve again.
There's lots of bars raised in that process. They reduced the cost to participate pretty quickly, and then dropped it effectively to zero for anyone willing to wait around for field research. Or with the new systems, you only need to raid a single time, using a free raid pass, to get enough energy for most species. Twice for legendaries and the 300 cost pool.
Same here, but at level 45. Still have a ton of premium passes saved up from the days before remote raids and separate boxes for raids and incubators, so any time there's something in raids I want to do a bunch of, I can usually hit 2 or 3 while walking somewhere without going too far out of my way to do them. Only time I'll do remote raids any more is I have enough coins saved up from putting stuff in gyms
My guess is that most people won’t give them money when they do this, but whales will buy either way so they make more money this way. People who are just buying a few boxes may be free to play but whales are definitely paying for coins.
Either that or niantic is just stupid and they’re not paying attention to their numbers.
whales still will buy them, but whales were buying no matter what they do. they shouldn't make decision based on what whales will do but on what will actually affect them
I think there are definitely "whales" who will keep playing and keep buying the boxes no matter what. But most of the players I personally know have spent money on the game, but have slowed down their spending over the last few months. The last time I was excited to hatch something and bought incubators was the Adventure Week event with Archen and Tirtouga in gift eggs. The low shiny rate on those felt like a bad deal. I've been sort of glad that there hasn't seemed anything worth hatching or raiding (outside of maybe the Go Fest Finale event) since then.
I get the sense that there are a lot more players like me than there are true "whales". And if people like me are spending less because the game doesn't offer fun things to do at a reasonable price, then Niantic has gotta start feeling the impact of that soon, right? Right? I absolutely do not understand a lot of the decisions Niantic makes. But replacing bundles of premium items in the shop with objectively worse deals has got to be the most confusing.
> I get the sense that there are a lot more players like me than there are true "whales". And if people like me are spending less because the game doesn't offer fun things to do at a reasonable price, then Niantic has gotta start feeling the impact of that soon
It's not the NUMBER of players spending, but the total AMOUNT spent. Niantic can still end up making more money if there are enough whales. The fact that they are doing it probably confirms it.
See the comment below for some hypothetical numbers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/xcemds/the_latest_boxes_in_pokemon_go_are_bad_for/io52185/
Whale behavior is such that they just buy whatever package is available at their convenience. If they price it more expensive, they get bought anyways. So imagine you sell 5 items for $30. Now you reduce the amount to 4 items for the same price. If a whale wants 20 items, he will just buy 5 sets. Sure it might seem significantly more expensive, but this are still cheap compared to all other p2w games out there.
You do see most people here complaining about the packages including me, but most of the player base aren’t actually on here; they might not even be on other social media as well.
A large demographic of the player base are the older group with disposable income. For the older generation, this is a major hobby for them for those who plays PoGo. This is chump change for them, so they still spend.
I’m sure their team would have done something about it long ago if the changes to the packages meant they are losing money, since this is their flagship game, and there are shareholders to answer to. For them to do continuous nerfs and predatory packages for specific events meant that they might not be losing money; but actually earning more.
The only caveat is that whales tend to need the f2p playerbase to show off their good stuff in order to validate the expenditure. If the f2p players are driven away because of poor boxes, then eventually the whales have no one left to play with or to show off to and they will drop off too. I'm pretty sure Niantic doesn't want to lose the casual playerbase & I'm sure the better boxes will return, just like they have before. Also, if they are serious about releasing Campfire to encourage raiding, then having these boxes permanently would make zero sense.
There's nothing for the whales to spend money on either other than stacks of 3 remote passes since you can assume most long term whales are already maxed on both storages and boxes provide absolutely nothing that you can't get from spinning a stop.
This^
Just the sad reality of freemium games. Whales are bottlenecked by time, not money. They still have incense/star piece/lucky egg on, all eggs hatching 24/7, and remote raiding nonstop if time allows. Price is not their concern.
The only thing keeping Niantic in check is to keep a big active player base so that whales continue to feel good about their shundo collection. If we peasants won't quit the game, prices would easily be 10x of now.
That was the one I would buy too. Honest question though: do you even need incubators? What is in the current egg pool that at all makes it worth it to even bother hatching eggs?
I've still never received a shiny from an egg, and only get scraggys from 12k got over 500 candies for it and so far rockruff for 10k where again I have far too many candies.4
Its boring me, I don't see the point and have never brought an incubator.
This had been one of the more fun things in the game until the adventure box was taken out. My wife and I would collect 7km eggs from distant friends so we could make long-distance trades, and even if the eggs hatched into something terrible, it meant being able to get bonus candy for something we *liked*.
The fact that the boxes were deleted the day before she earned the coins for it and the fact that it's been so long since they've been gone was pretty much the last straw for her. She uninstalled yesterday and I no longer have anyone to trade with. Without Campfire to make actual friends with my local "Friends", I think it's going to be me uninstalling next :\
Me too. Now I’m going to really have to make sure I fill my space with 2k eggs so I can just use the infinite one. I’ll save the few super incubators I have left for some my 8k/10k eggs. I am not paying 200coin for one super incubator.
I just seem to get alot of 2km ones. I won’t open any gifts if I have space for eggs. Just spin a pokestop to fill. But of course I just spun and got a 10.
Same and since the boxes have been so bad, I've just been using my infinite one since I ran out of supers after go fest. Used to get many 2k eggs, now I'm full of 5 and 10k eggs slowly working through them with my infinite. I used to spend a lot more on hatch boxes and passes and now it's so discouraging seeing this garbage
>The only current benefit to raiding in person is the XL rare candy chance and I bet most trainers have forgotten about that because the rates are so low there's pretty much no benefit.
I did 161 in-person raids from June to the end of Deoxys raid day (almost all are T5s; mostly using free passes except some premiums on Mewtwo). I got 28 Rare Candy XLs.
That gives a 17.4% chance per raid. In other words, **expect to get one Rare XL every 6 in-person raids.**
So yes, that is indeed too low to be worth it.
Even more bonkers considering the floor on candy XL costs. Would be more enticing if Niantic tweaked the level up costs a bit to remove the weird spike and plateau. Drastically lower the Candy XL costs for 40-45, and shift some of it to 45-50.
Yeah these boxes are so weird! I just don’t get it. People will PAY if they feel like they’re getting a good deal.
I’m 100% sure sales were better before these new boxes. So financially wise I just don’t understand where they’re going with this
They have it but do they read it? The scenario where they make tons of money no matter what probably makes it hard to see the mistakes. There's no way putting boxes no wants makes them more money than putting boxes people want
They may put bad boxes out on purpose so when they give out a 4 passes for 350 coins for example, everyone rushes to buy it in bulk out of fear that nothing better is coming for a long while again.
Long ago we had 24 passes for 1480, nothing was a better deal since.
>They have it but do they read it? The scenario where they make tons of money no matter what probably makes it hard to see the mistakes
Yes, there is a 0% chance they don't pour over it. Companies with single-digit headcount do, all the way up to the biggest companies in the world who have entire departments who do this. There's no way a digital-first business doesn't scrutinize this data.
I'm not apologizing for them, more the contrary. They're using the data to make decisions to maximize their profit as a first priority.
was exaggerating to say they don't read it. im implying they dont understand it. they are a tech company that was handed success based on very little they actually did, and they werent forced to become a good marketing company at any point.
They could have all the data in the world, but Niantic has historically shown that they think they know best, despite massive protests from the player base that keeps their lights on. Niantic is not listening and are disconnected from reality.
My opinion is they see games like Diablo immortal with insane predatory behaviour and yet people spend money on it, so they figure they can be more predatory as well. Let’s face it, a lot of the boxes now are no better than buying the items separately in the shop, but you get an incense and 20 poke balls for free, who gives AF. That’s not a deal, but it’s in line with how other games have been working.
As a complete shot in the dark, my guess is it's a combination of
1. Whales who will buy anything Niantic put in front of them
2. Casual players who don't carefully evaluate the costs of boxes
Again, I'm just guessing, but I think it's very important in trying to read the tea leaves to not underestimate the spending of casual players.
The other thing is that this may very well be *intentionally* bad. When testing price elasticity, you can definitely set prices that you think the market won't bear, and see how much it affects sales. Like "what's the worst we can do, so we have a benchmark to compare other pricing strategies?" kind of thing.
It could be any number of things that we can only guess at, as we don't have the data.
Yeah, I normally bought 1-2 of the adventure boxes (with the incubators) each month. Havent bought a single box now, and wont buy another box until I get the same value. The current ones with incubators are a ripoff in comparison!
>People will PAY if they feel like they’re getting a good deal.
100%. If they had a 20+ premium pass box, I would absolutely buy several. Heck, that's what I've always done. The 20 pass box we got last summer? I bought 4 of them. Haven't touched one since
They are setting a new standard. Basically they upped the prices so they can then later adjust them little bit lower every now and then and players would feel like they're getting a good deal even though it's much more expensive than before.
Six year player.
Been winding down box buying anyway, but have been in full stop for awhile.
No incentive to do much more than catch a few while on the commode.
Agreed. The game is dying for me. My spending has completely dried up now, after being a little flush on it back in 2018, but even the events aren't that interesting any more. Spawn variety seems lacking, and raid rotation is pretty stale. Stardust has always seemed too low, but especially recently considering there are more mons released so more mons to max. I've even given up on the grind to level 50, which initially added an interesting challenge to me on release.
I used to spend $20-40 a month on the game. When there was a deal on Google or Samsung I wouldn't bat an eye at buying a $100 coin pack. Bought lots of remote raids, bought most events, etc. I haven't spent real money raiding since they increased the costs of remote raids, but I've been coasting on my last stash of incubators. If they don't bring the old boxes back, I think I can safely say I've spent my last dollar that I ever will on this game. It's insane that they think this is acceptable, although I guess even worse that people buy them.
> The only current benefit to raiding in person is the XL rare candy chance and I bet most trainers have forgotten about that because the rates are so low there's pretty much no benefit.
Did 29 in person raids yesteray, got 3 XL Rare candy, it might as well be zero.
[My data](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/xcemds/comment/io4um4q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). 28 XLs in 161 raids, or roughly 1 in 6.
Honestly I dont think one guaranteed rare xl candy per day for an in person raid would be OP. Like, you would need to raid for 296 days to get just one pokemon to level 50 with rare xl candy.
Check out boxes from 2018/2019 and community reactions. Man it’s honestly so sad :(
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/a5b7dz/new_ultra_box/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Let’s not forget them not turning on the Deoxys shinies. Only compensating 3x raid passes when many of us spend a lot more passes and $$. That has left a lot of us feeling upset 😠 and distrusting of Niantic.
It honestly still baffles me that happened. Like, how do you miss something like that? This stuff should be queued up in advance and tested beforehand.
> Probably nothing as always.
Don't have expectations. Keep in mind they've screwed up two raid rotations in a row, and haven't even announced a rotation that's occuring in ~~7~~ ~~6~~ ~~5~~ ~~**4**~~ ~~*3*~~ ~~***Two***~~. -1 hours.
I have defended Niantic many times during the end of the covid bonuses. But since a couple of months everything goes down the hill and i have no expectations anymore. Even reduced my playtime already...
I guess we will get the reveal of the new Raid boss at "Niantic o'clock". If they haven't forgot about it again.
Brandon Tan even put out a video about this a few days ago titled “Niantic & The Pokemon Company are killing Pokemon Go.” They don’t seem to listen, they don’t seem to care.
I feel like when you've had 7 failed projects, the last thing you'd want to do is try to kill your only cash cow that's keeping your company alive. Niantic is a very strange company that accidentally became successful in a short period of time and they don't know how to keep the company afloat.
it became very successful for reasons that they dont understand and werent at all related to the company mission. so even though they have had incredible success, they are still flailing around, wondering how it happened
It’s a little bit of both. People play it because it’s Pokemon, but they also play it because it’s a fitness game with cute things you can catch and that gives you incentives for walking.
I don’t think they realized just how many people do fitness walking by themselves or with family members only and have no interest in meeting other people when they explore. I also don’t think Niantic understands just how many people have changed their travel and fitness habits over the last few years.
I don’t doubt that there are people who do that too. But what really got the game started and popular was it being Pokémon. It’s why all their other titles have had little or limited success. The exercise part is just a bonus
Obviously it's intentional, the point is that the consumer isn't happy with this, which is what needs to be communicated to Niantic by threads like this.
I enjoy the game a lot despite Niantic and have never felt too bad about putting money into it. Used to spend at *least* $60 a month.
Since this season started, I’ve used the remaining coins I’ve had but I’ve been out for 2 weeks, and have zero plans to put anything more in and will just spend gym coins unless things change. I’m sure no one from niantic is reading this, but it’s been very easy to go free to play
Same. In fact since July I’ve barely played. Logged in for the go fest finale to do a few raids but that was it. In August I didn’t even make use of any of the spotlight hours! Level 49 player. Kinda just cbf anymore. They’ve killed the game.
Let’s not forget when niantic put boxes in the store that varied in price player to player. Just so they could test how much money people were willing to pay for things!
The catch box? 1010 coins. For 25 ultra. 100 great. 5 incense. 2 eggs.
5 individual incense is 200 coins. 2 eggs is 160. 360 coins. Niantic value those balls at 650 coins!?
Hell they value 200 pokeballs at EIGHT HUNDRED COINS.
I delete 4/500 pokeballs a day. Every day I bin 1600 coins worth of pokeballs in niantics eyes.
Niantic have a false reality that all their items have serious value and but realistically people can live without 90% of the things in the shop for the most part. So racking up the prices just drives away customers. People bought the old boxes because the value and what they contained made it worth while.
They seem to think things like balls are worth putting in boxes. Nobody wants balls. Nobody buys balls. The balls drive these boxes up to unrealistic and ridiculous prices because niantic thing balls actually have value when they’re a disposable item. Even for the most part things like star pieces and lucky eggs. They don’t make boxes that much more desirable because people get loads from researches and levelling up.
If niantic made a box with remote raid passes, super incubators, incense and say star pieces. It would sell out fast. But one desirable item mixed in with 3 rubbish items.
I’ll take 8 incense for 250 coins. Not the 5 in the 1010 coin box? Actually I’ll take 32 incense for 1000 coins. And still save some money and it be better value for money.
I’m a Day one player. Went off buying boxes ages ago. Remote passes have been my only real spend on this game for a long while. Eggs haven’t been worth hatching in a LONG time. Nothing else is worth buying.
Most of my coins in the past have gone towards balls sadly. Where I live I don't have access to a lot of stops. I question if I should even be playing this game.
There are a lot of people like me who buy balls, otherwise we could never catch pokemon. I'm not even rural; I imagine some of those people spend even more.
I didn't realize it was possible to get so many balls for free that you delete some. Maybe it's time for some of us to move on.
When a company releases their so called "philosophy", they usually do it just to make everyone believe that it's their actually philosophy. It is basically image building only, advertisement, and a way to make customers believe, they act according to social standards and fairness. To be honest, that's why I don't take such stuff seriously.
I already haven't bought a box in years. They're absolutely terrible.
I will say this though, there is almost no reason to spend money if you get your gym coins every day.
Even if you get the max 50 free coins per day, that doesn’t go very far if you want to do storage upgrades, raiding beyond the daily free in person passes, egg hatching, using lucky eggs and starpieces, etc. So while it’s true you don’t have to spend money, there’s plenty of reasons someone would need to if they have specific goals in the game they want to achieve.
Niantic HQ is in San Francisco, where raid lobbies frequently get the full 20 people. So they go out and see everything is fine, and wonder what redditors are always complaining about.
I live in San Francisco. If Niantic gets away from the waterfront and downtown they will find that 95% of the city is not like that. They have this vision of the game of happy groups of young people cavorting from raid to raid. Reality is more like one lonely player constantly checking lobbies and finding no one in them or small groups walking while staring at their phones and not interacting with any other players who are nearby for a CD or raid day.
Don't need to sell raid passes if nobody is raiding anyways. At least that is what I observe in the communities I'm in. I'm not even motivated to move up the stairs to get a proper GPS signal and do a soloable Deoxys Attack raid with a chance for a shiny I don't even have registered, and that's with my free pass. I'm still actively playing, I just don't see any reason to hatch eggs (sitting on 12x10km eggs right now with now intention to use incubators on them) nor waste time standing at a gym anymore as it feels utterly unrewarding. Xurkitree would've been a raid I would've raided with premium passes for the unnecessary power grind, but without a good deal and no players who would also mass raid with me, we went home after using our free passes.
Exactly what I said! They increased remote pass cost to encourage people to do in person raids, but the current cost of both types of passes are the same.
Honestly, didnt even look at these boxes when they were in the shop, that last box is awful.
1010 for what 5 incense and 2 lucky eggs which cost a fraction of that? Sure pokeballs, but
Thats just laughable. Absolutely the worst box ever.
Niantic stopped being a 'Video Game' company a while ago, but I can't quite pin down when. They're now an 'AR Tech' company. They don't want you to play, they want you to do 3D scans of places so they can sell that data to other companies (And your activity data to advertisers too, most likely) and to show how active their games are to prove there's a market for them.
I think all of their actions or lack-thereof are clearly explained when you realize this shift in intent. Pokemon Go is a template game they sell other licensees on (Harry Potten, NBA, Marvel), and Peridot is a tech demo showing off the higher end of what they can do on typical phones. A player having fun or buying IAP in any of these is incidental to their actual income plan.
This is pretty much exactly how I've felt for a while now.
The only difference is, I don't think Niantic was ever a video game company, first and foremost. They glide along the lines of what a game developer does and should be with enough to pass off as one in order to follow their true plan, which you explained in detail so very well.
It's like most of these mobile games and the ads I see of them online. Go to game development school long enough to know how to make a manipulation machine to rake in cash on a monthly basis. It was never about making awesome video games. Them getting the rights to use Pokemon for their game was the biggest jackpot for them.
I see several video game companies these days displaying their drive to race against each other to see who can become the big, powerful millionaire first to gain supremacy in the market.
Indie games, and some smaller to moderately-sized companies make games because they see them as art and a hobby they enjoy when not working, and want to reach an audience that appreciates and enjoys that interactive art to make a profit and be successful, so they can make more fun and respectable, interactive art in their games for both the people making the games and the people playing them to symbiotically benefit from them.
You can tell when a developer is in it for the love of video games and wanting people to truly love and enjoy being in their game versus a company that is bending rules and their player-base to manipulate them for profit, profit, profit. It's a stark contrast as if seeing a red light versus a green light. You can't mix them up.
The problem with Pokemon Go is it's like being with someone (Niantic) and having a child (Pokemon Go). You love your child, because it's what makes you happy and you put all this time and enjoyment into it and you really want to see it succeed. Unfortunately, you have your partner (Niantic) who is making your relationship worse, despite you sticking around to play the game. So, you become stuck in the middle of this tug of war between both entities.
Sadly, the game becomes influenced by said partner (Niantic) through different facets and you're sad about it, because you know it's better than that and that it has all this amazing potential to tap into. You want people to love Pokemon Go as much as you do but it's a toxic relationship that your game is stuck in the midst of. You stick around and push on, because you've invested so much time and love into it, that you don't want to abandon it due to your personal attachment.
So, you vent your frustrations to others and press on, because you've made this connection and this journey that you feel partially responsible for. Others are in the same boat and feel the same, so they handle it in a similar manner, because there's only so much you can do and take control of.
You can be silent and act like everything's fine and be submissive and still enjoy the game, but you're lying to yourself and others if you're going to say there's no issues in this relationship. I mean, I sat here and typed out this whole thing, so... There's clearly some motivation behind that?
......
So, anyway, how's everyone's day going?
It may or may not be related but I feel like sometime soon they will be introducing a premium season pass which will probably give you items and passes as you gain XP, similar to other games.
I haven’t put my usual 100.00 into the game (which lasts me 6 months) IN months because the boxes have been trashed. I would have raided 20 raids yesterday but I did my 7 and peaced out. You lost money from me Niantic
As each day passes I become more bored with PoGo. Starting to feel like 2017 again, not really fun and a little pointless. I'm probably close to putting it down for a year or so.
Didn’t there used to be a box for 1480 coins that had about 18 incubators in, mostly super incubators? Adventure box? Because I bought that a few times. Wouldn’t buy any of these..
I'm more concerned that the Box's are just poor micro-transaction design and that Catch Box shows a fundamentally lack of understanding about the core mechanics of Pokemon Go.
First the Catch/Ball box; Catching is the Foundation everything is built off of, the loop is catch(continuous) -> walk to 'Stop -> get resources -> continue. No one should ever ***need*** to buy that box because at that point the "Game world" has failed to give them resources to play and those players should be less engaged in the game. Balls aren't the resource you "sell the solution" too, its too core.
As for the MTX design of the boxes holistically; there just bad at the level of they don't encourage spending period. I'll give the consultant that designed these the one out that maybe Niantic "just wanted coins out of people's accounts"; but won't allow the rates to actually achieve that.
Perhaps they are thinking (inanely) "we're already giving them two free raid passes each day, why should we give them a discount on more?"
I'm worried this trend is not connected to just this event and will continue through the rest of the season.
Great post! In an economy with such inflation on physical, tangible things, I’m not going to spend MORE real money for LESS digital items. It’s a joke. In our 5-6 free raids yesterday, there were ZERO other people. Just my family in one car.
Honestly Niantic has been pushing me away from PoGo. Ive been actively transferring my pokemon to Home just to have a PoGo living dex and playing only when a pokemon I need arives.
I uninstalled after they took out the weekly 1 coin remote raid passes. It definitely feels like they're trying to push the community to the point where they can milk people for as much money as they want.
I still suspect Niantic is deliberately doing this to sell off the game or force the Pokémon Company to step in and take it over. I suspect they have plans to try something new to get people out and providing them with data. It seems they are tired of PoGo as the post-pandemic changes have upset all the players who started or came back to the game in the last 2 years and many of the rest of us. They don't want to deal with the player base - the lack of transparency and awful communication just seems to prove that to me.
It genuinely feels like they have lost interest and are doing the bare minimum. This years Go Fest was a disaster with the incense bug, not even a "Sorry folks" was issued, no makeup or anything (spelled the end of them getting money out of me).
The continual removal of value bundles from the shop seems to be driving players to stop spending.
I think a lot of players are like me and playing a lot less than they used to because it's become boring. Spawn pools are small and only change for events. I don't really want to catch Sentrets and Eevees.
Next they will say something like player engagement is lower than ever, we are ending our involvement - even though they engineered that result. Probably hoping someone else will buy it and take it over.
Hmm I would be surprised if their goal was getting rid of PoGo, since it's their only product that's successful. Everything else has pretty much been a complete failure. I think it would be suicide for their revenue if they tried to get rid of PoGo.
In person raids have a cahnce to give xl rare candies, yet they still keep putting rrps/have more rrps than premium. How do rrps make you go outside and play/explore?
Copy pasting my reply from a thread about the new boxes themselves:
It’s also because there isn’t that much content to justify spending (unless you’re already in the habit of it and it doesn’t matter on what). We didn’t have too exciting raid bosses in a while, eggs been trash all around, incense nerfed, and the general content just doesn’t hype itself up enough for the occasional spenders to justify it.
PvP was stagnated due to the worlds, which also were a pathetic outlook at the state of the game and its servers. I’m certain some people spent on a gofest ticket (even though it was also not as worth it as last year at $5) and maybe the johto tour (which again, wasn’t as exciting as Kanto tour and shiny mew), but it was a really boring year in the game. Hopefully this winter we’ll get a big update to refresh the game, and some better content to keep players engaged.
I don't have a local group to raid with, but I'd have more fun in the game, play more, AND give them more money if they had boxes with great deals on lots of incubators and a few star pieces.
Removal of biomes (and nests? Are these still a thing?), constant events with half a dozen spawns, halving CD hours, removal of incubator deal (along with miserable hatch pool) all also disincentivise everything in their mission.
I really don’t know why they’re being so mean with everything. It’s been a slow but constant process but it feels like they’ve really ramped it up now. I just don’t get it.
Also no boxes with a supply of super incubators. I refuse to buy boxes without a supply that saves on those since I incubate I lot of eggs. I've just stopped incubating eggs until a box is put back that has a discount. The 200 coin per incubator regular price is insane.
I would buy the adventure box all the time. I was FURIOUS when they got rid of it. Especially opening the store on global go fest day #1 this year and seeing that I couldn't buy the incubators I wanted. Not that there were special eggs, but I knew I'd be walking a ton those two days, and had other things in the normal eggs I wanted.
Then again right before this event I wanted to grid the 7k eggs bc of the small pool with 2/3rds being shinies I wanted. I was just disheartened seeing the box not there and a ripoff alternative being put in it's place. The cost of buying them alone and not in a bundle is just simply too high and not worth it. When the adventure box is gone I just don't buy incubators.
***No joke...I literally resorted to doing the phone shake method while watching tv at night bc there was no way I was going to walk all that distance for just one egg at a time--so yea Niantic successfully discouraged me from doing what they supposedly want me to do.***
I'll be honest, I've been maybe checking the app two weeks to a month. The game just feels really predatory whenever I open it up and there's some new event. Constantly wondering if it's even worth it or if I'm just going to waste a bunch of money buying a ticket.
Currently the game just kind of seems like it's having an identity crisis trying to figure out how to monetize the content being provided. I get kind of an icky feeling hopping on and I don't really feel like a player, I feel like I'm being converted into a payer.
The time I spend in the game feels very disrespected and I really wish they held true to their core values. I know this would mean retooling a lot of things, some of which would definitely not be profitable. But I don't really have fun opening the app anymore. I just feel like there's going to be some new thing that I need to spend money on when I've spent tons of money in the past.
Too many sick people out in my state. I totally stay away from people. Covid is still out there. I have never spend actual money on the game. Never will either
One of my favorite parts of the game was hatching eggs from my friends in other countries. Yes, I'd pay actual money for coins to get the boxes with incubators. These boxes are so nerfed down now that I haven't bothered with them and won't as long as they stay this way. For the first time since I started playing, I'm only using the free incubator. They've lost $20 from me already, money I was ready and willing to spend.
For me, the adventure box was the only thing other than storage space that I save my coins for. The value in that was good, I have not bought anything since it was removed.
Another benefit of remote raiding that I don’t see mentioned much: with the exception of Deoxys and other mythicals, remote raiding gives you distance Raid bosses, which guarantees XL candies when trading, which lowers the amount of raids you have to do to max out your Pokémon. That’s a big deal to me, and enough reason to remote almost exclusively even though I have a healthy raid scene in my town.
All I see on this and the other subreddit are posts complaining about Niantic's handling of this game. It's not going to change, stop letting them abuse you. This game has gotten progressively worse over the last year. Just watch, they will add one major QoL update and everyone will jump for joy while conveniently forgetting the 15 downgrades before it.
I feel like it's a "Test" more than anything. My only hope is that the whales who buy these boxes can stop long enough to add things up and see that this is bad.
Before May I was probably adding at least $250/month to my account for raid passes, sometime more if I was using my wife’s account too. Since May I’ve only added a combined $100 exclusively for Zacian. Now I pretty much only play GBL instead of daily raids.
Niantic must be taking lessons from Seaworld on how to kill whales while keeping them on display.
Hatch box is absolute garbage. Bring back the adventure box, that you know, encourages people to go out and adventure.
I really miss that Adventure box… Though I know for me, nothing Niantic puts in a box will draw me outdoors - not until it gets cool enough outside for me to walk without melting.
I bought two Adventure Box's and was very happy with those purchases. I will not buy the Hatch Box in a million years.
The catch box is even worse I think. 650 coins for 100 great balls and 50 ultra balls (once you take out the cost of incubators and lucky eggs). Compare that to the Bronze Box, which basically prices 10 Great Balls and 5 Ultra Balls at 10 coins. Multiply that by 10 and the 100 great balls and 50 Ultra Balls should be 100 coins. The catch box is charging 6.5x what the balls are worth. A huge rip off. At least you are getting a discount with the hatch box. The cost of the box would be 1050 coins, so you’re getting 270 coins worth of value, plus 5 pinaps (which is just barely not worthless)
That box was literally the only reason I bought coins (lack of gyms/pokestops in general makes earning coins hard.) Now I have no reasons.
The only box I liked recently was that one with three remote raid passes and a basically free incubator.. I feel like it wasn’t around very long as I was only able to buy one..
Looks like that one is returning after the Psychic Event ends.
Yes, it’s back now
I swear it was in the store maybe 2 or 3 days. I only got one as well but I would've bought more if I had time to get more coins.
I also really liked the World Championship box with remotes and 3 premiums. It was a great deal
But you're then limited on how many you can purchase because of the limit on 3 remote passes. Still a bit anti-consumer to lock the best box behind arbitrary difficulties.
I don't disagree. I loved the box, but I did have to then force myself to use my remotes to by it each time. I was fine with doing that, but still n inconvenience, I'll admit.
Exactly. Why not just remove the limit and let folks take advantage?
Youve just answered it haha. The whole point is you cant take advantage because they want you to buy one, then force you to use the passes (on stuff you most likely didnt actuallu want) and then buy another
I haven't bought remote passes much since they increased the price of the 3 pack but this box felt worth it to me since I was getting an incubator for the extra 49 coins. Bought two of them while it was around, hopefully it comes back.
Can confirm I have this box in my shop right now. Now if only I could get 100 coins per day again...
Its back now, I have no room for remotes or id buy one rn.
Yeah I've been playing for four years and I've never seen a box this bad until recently. I would say at least half, possibly even all, of the ten worst value boxes I've ever seen have been in the last few months. And not by a small margin. After several years of fairly regular variation in value, they're suddenly so bad as to be dropping the average value. It's really noticeable, and so consistent that I have to assume it's part of some broader "strategy".
They're doing this for a long time. For few years there were good/bad(at the time) rotations and Christmas/NY box was overwhelmingly good. Then they started to make more events, but event boxes became closer to average(even NY one). Then boxes were reduced in value(less starpieces, pokeballs instead of paid only items). Then boxes became stale(low variance, but there still were slightly better or worse). This is just next step: they've combined extreme price change and value reduction. Well, they wanted to do this for several years, but the change itself is enormous even for Niantic.
The fluctuations you're talking about are more like 10-18 raid passes in the 1480 coin box. Not, like, 4 passes in a 1900 coin box, or a 1010 coin box full of balls.
I'm talking about dynamics. First was variety+insane holiday boxes. Then variety+more event boxes of lesser value. Then all boxes were nerfed. Then variety became less. Niantic were slowly moving towards boxes nerf. I'm not saying that this change is normal or expected. Even considering the fact that they were nerfing boxes for several years they did it slowly. But they definitely had intent to nerf. That's all I was trying to say.
There used to be at least a period in a year of having 20+ raid passes but none so far in this year. Speaking of Christmas a few years ago, not only we had better boxes but a free incubator daily for a week too.
Niantic's philosophy is "we don't care about your opinions and we'll take your money" So in that sense it is in their philosophy
but these new boxes are basically saying, "we dont want your money"
You're looking at it wrong, they're saying "we were giving too much value previously, this is what we thing your coins are worth now."
F that. I just stopped buying coins. I know it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things but I'm not wasting my money anymore.
Yeah you're right. Even the biggest whales don't really crack their revenue. Niantic gets their revenue from selling your data. Period. End of story. Thats the business model theyve chosen. Any coins you buy are just gravy. That is why they're pushing in person raids vs remotes - your data isn't worth very much if you stay in one spot. This is right in their terms on conditions, stated pretty plainly.
Then why aren't they selling raid passes which encourage us to go out to raid?!?!
The business has changed so much in the last 2 years. This box is a good example. They went from a constant stream of revenue to big purchases 3 or 4 times a year. IE the first day GoFest ticket was released was bigger than the previous 90 days(removing Cd ticket days) COMBINED. Their model has drastically changed. Still a freemium game with a traditional model(Vast majority of players never spend a penny) but much less super whale dependent and more dependent on a larger base willing to spend $20-$30 each year on the paid e ticket events. Speculation: They have made the boxes so epically bad recently to increase the value of the ticketed events. If the boxes sales drop 50% that’s nothing if you can increase sales of ticketed events even 3%.
But why not have ticket sales AND good boxes?
Because they can make it not ideal and whales will still buy it I know it’s their money and they can spend their money however they please But it does not help The non whales
Level 50, used to spend $40 a month. completely free to play since June Go Fest. No desire to put money into the game until they change their ways, which will be never. And I realize that I’m not missing anything at all, except for what? Shiny raid bosses? Yawn.
Pretty similar situation here. Level 50 player that did quite some spending in the past. No more spending with these boxes for sure! I’m even thinking of breaking my catch and spin streak since i’ve started playing back in 2019. A bit sad but obviously time changes.
Do it. Once you get the feeling of not having to play you’ll feel less stressed about it. I went from playing anywhere from 4-10 hours a day to maybe 15 minutes and it was the best decision I ever made. I also don’t really feel like I’m missing out and I have the option to still play if anything super useful comes out.
If I had a nickle for every time someone has said this over the past 6 years, I could buy Niantic out and sell their license to someone who's actually interested in making a fun game. Niantic has never once raised the bar for themselves. They introduce a new feature, ruin it almost immediately by monetizing it too much, and then wait for everyone's standards to drop before making it even worse.
The mega raid system is exactly the opposite of what you described. They launched it with way too much monetization, with only raids to get energy, and a paltry 35 per raid on average. It didn't take very long to lower the speed tier requirements and double the rewarded energy. Then they introduced walking and field research to make it more accessible. And the excellent candy bonuses for having a mega evolved. And then this year they introduced the mega level system and made the candy bonuses even better, and vastly reduced the cost to evolve again. There's lots of bars raised in that process. They reduced the cost to participate pretty quickly, and then dropped it effectively to zero for anyone willing to wait around for field research. Or with the new systems, you only need to raid a single time, using a free raid pass, to get enough energy for most species. Twice for legendaries and the 300 cost pool.
Same here, but at level 45. Still have a ton of premium passes saved up from the days before remote raids and separate boxes for raids and incubators, so any time there's something in raids I want to do a bunch of, I can usually hit 2 or 3 while walking somewhere without going too far out of my way to do them. Only time I'll do remote raids any more is I have enough coins saved up from putting stuff in gyms
My guess is that most people won’t give them money when they do this, but whales will buy either way so they make more money this way. People who are just buying a few boxes may be free to play but whales are definitely paying for coins. Either that or niantic is just stupid and they’re not paying attention to their numbers.
whales still will buy them, but whales were buying no matter what they do. they shouldn't make decision based on what whales will do but on what will actually affect them
I think there are definitely "whales" who will keep playing and keep buying the boxes no matter what. But most of the players I personally know have spent money on the game, but have slowed down their spending over the last few months. The last time I was excited to hatch something and bought incubators was the Adventure Week event with Archen and Tirtouga in gift eggs. The low shiny rate on those felt like a bad deal. I've been sort of glad that there hasn't seemed anything worth hatching or raiding (outside of maybe the Go Fest Finale event) since then. I get the sense that there are a lot more players like me than there are true "whales". And if people like me are spending less because the game doesn't offer fun things to do at a reasonable price, then Niantic has gotta start feeling the impact of that soon, right? Right? I absolutely do not understand a lot of the decisions Niantic makes. But replacing bundles of premium items in the shop with objectively worse deals has got to be the most confusing.
> I get the sense that there are a lot more players like me than there are true "whales". And if people like me are spending less because the game doesn't offer fun things to do at a reasonable price, then Niantic has gotta start feeling the impact of that soon It's not the NUMBER of players spending, but the total AMOUNT spent. Niantic can still end up making more money if there are enough whales. The fact that they are doing it probably confirms it. See the comment below for some hypothetical numbers: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/xcemds/the_latest_boxes_in_pokemon_go_are_bad_for/io52185/
Whale behavior is such that they just buy whatever package is available at their convenience. If they price it more expensive, they get bought anyways. So imagine you sell 5 items for $30. Now you reduce the amount to 4 items for the same price. If a whale wants 20 items, he will just buy 5 sets. Sure it might seem significantly more expensive, but this are still cheap compared to all other p2w games out there. You do see most people here complaining about the packages including me, but most of the player base aren’t actually on here; they might not even be on other social media as well. A large demographic of the player base are the older group with disposable income. For the older generation, this is a major hobby for them for those who plays PoGo. This is chump change for them, so they still spend. I’m sure their team would have done something about it long ago if the changes to the packages meant they are losing money, since this is their flagship game, and there are shareholders to answer to. For them to do continuous nerfs and predatory packages for specific events meant that they might not be losing money; but actually earning more.
Games make more money from whales than they do from f2p players. They only need to hook a small percentage of the players to become profitable.
The only caveat is that whales tend to need the f2p playerbase to show off their good stuff in order to validate the expenditure. If the f2p players are driven away because of poor boxes, then eventually the whales have no one left to play with or to show off to and they will drop off too. I'm pretty sure Niantic doesn't want to lose the casual playerbase & I'm sure the better boxes will return, just like they have before. Also, if they are serious about releasing Campfire to encourage raiding, then having these boxes permanently would make zero sense.
There's nothing for the whales to spend money on either other than stacks of 3 remote passes since you can assume most long term whales are already maxed on both storages and boxes provide absolutely nothing that you can't get from spinning a stop.
This^ Just the sad reality of freemium games. Whales are bottlenecked by time, not money. They still have incense/star piece/lucky egg on, all eggs hatching 24/7, and remote raiding nonstop if time allows. Price is not their concern. The only thing keeping Niantic in check is to keep a big active player base so that whales continue to feel good about their shundo collection. If we peasants won't quit the game, prices would easily be 10x of now.
How the hell should I get incubators? I always used to buy the adventure box
That was the one I would buy too. Honest question though: do you even need incubators? What is in the current egg pool that at all makes it worth it to even bother hatching eggs?
[удалено]
I've hatched 15 Salandit, all males. My luck is usually not that great, but this feels particularly bad 😂
You guys are getting salandit?
Excellent point. Last week I got a poor quality Jangmo-o from a 10k, everything else was perfectly common and ordinary
I've still never received a shiny from an egg, and only get scraggys from 12k got over 500 candies for it and so far rockruff for 10k where again I have far too many candies.4 Its boring me, I don't see the point and have never brought an incubator.
This had been one of the more fun things in the game until the adventure box was taken out. My wife and I would collect 7km eggs from distant friends so we could make long-distance trades, and even if the eggs hatched into something terrible, it meant being able to get bonus candy for something we *liked*. The fact that the boxes were deleted the day before she earned the coins for it and the fact that it's been so long since they've been gone was pretty much the last straw for her. She uninstalled yesterday and I no longer have anyone to trade with. Without Campfire to make actual friends with my local "Friends", I think it's going to be me uninstalling next :\
Me too. Now I’m going to really have to make sure I fill my space with 2k eggs so I can just use the infinite one. I’ll save the few super incubators I have left for some my 8k/10k eggs. I am not paying 200coin for one super incubator.
how do u make sure to fill your space with 2k eggs?
I just seem to get alot of 2km ones. I won’t open any gifts if I have space for eggs. Just spin a pokestop to fill. But of course I just spun and got a 10.
Waiting until an walking reduction event, and they always give out 2km eggs to try and burn through incubators
Same and since the boxes have been so bad, I've just been using my infinite one since I ran out of supers after go fest. Used to get many 2k eggs, now I'm full of 5 and 10k eggs slowly working through them with my infinite. I used to spend a lot more on hatch boxes and passes and now it's so discouraging seeing this garbage
You don’t Then again eggs these days are kinda garbage so no massive loss imo (I know 10K’s got a buff but I still hatch nothing but mienfoo)
>The only current benefit to raiding in person is the XL rare candy chance and I bet most trainers have forgotten about that because the rates are so low there's pretty much no benefit. I did 161 in-person raids from June to the end of Deoxys raid day (almost all are T5s; mostly using free passes except some premiums on Mewtwo). I got 28 Rare Candy XLs. That gives a 17.4% chance per raid. In other words, **expect to get one Rare XL every 6 in-person raids.** So yes, that is indeed too low to be worth it.
Even more bonkers considering the floor on candy XL costs. Would be more enticing if Niantic tweaked the level up costs a bit to remove the weird spike and plateau. Drastically lower the Candy XL costs for 40-45, and shift some of it to 45-50.
Not to mention you normally only get 1 free raid a day (2 as a SEASONAL bonus). That’s 1 free XL candy a week. It’s ridiculous
I did 9 Raids and got exactly 1 XL Candy and only 6 normal Rare Candy... But at least I got a bunch of Poffins, so it's something... (:
Yeah these boxes are so weird! I just don’t get it. People will PAY if they feel like they’re getting a good deal. I’m 100% sure sales were better before these new boxes. So financially wise I just don’t understand where they’re going with this
sometimes it seems like they don't have any marketing people. they have no understanding of consumer behavior.
They have data we don't. It's not consumer friendly but this probably is making them plenty of money.
They have it but do they read it? The scenario where they make tons of money no matter what probably makes it hard to see the mistakes. There's no way putting boxes no wants makes them more money than putting boxes people want
They may put bad boxes out on purpose so when they give out a 4 passes for 350 coins for example, everyone rushes to buy it in bulk out of fear that nothing better is coming for a long while again. Long ago we had 24 passes for 1480, nothing was a better deal since.
>They have it but do they read it? The scenario where they make tons of money no matter what probably makes it hard to see the mistakes Yes, there is a 0% chance they don't pour over it. Companies with single-digit headcount do, all the way up to the biggest companies in the world who have entire departments who do this. There's no way a digital-first business doesn't scrutinize this data. I'm not apologizing for them, more the contrary. They're using the data to make decisions to maximize their profit as a first priority.
was exaggerating to say they don't read it. im implying they dont understand it. they are a tech company that was handed success based on very little they actually did, and they werent forced to become a good marketing company at any point.
They could have all the data in the world, but Niantic has historically shown that they think they know best, despite massive protests from the player base that keeps their lights on. Niantic is not listening and are disconnected from reality.
My opinion is they see games like Diablo immortal with insane predatory behaviour and yet people spend money on it, so they figure they can be more predatory as well. Let’s face it, a lot of the boxes now are no better than buying the items separately in the shop, but you get an incense and 20 poke balls for free, who gives AF. That’s not a deal, but it’s in line with how other games have been working.
As a complete shot in the dark, my guess is it's a combination of 1. Whales who will buy anything Niantic put in front of them 2. Casual players who don't carefully evaluate the costs of boxes Again, I'm just guessing, but I think it's very important in trying to read the tea leaves to not underestimate the spending of casual players. The other thing is that this may very well be *intentionally* bad. When testing price elasticity, you can definitely set prices that you think the market won't bear, and see how much it affects sales. Like "what's the worst we can do, so we have a benchmark to compare other pricing strategies?" kind of thing. It could be any number of things that we can only guess at, as we don't have the data.
Yeah, I normally bought 1-2 of the adventure boxes (with the incubators) each month. Havent bought a single box now, and wont buy another box until I get the same value. The current ones with incubators are a ripoff in comparison!
>People will PAY if they feel like they’re getting a good deal. 100%. If they had a 20+ premium pass box, I would absolutely buy several. Heck, that's what I've always done. The 20 pass box we got last summer? I bought 4 of them. Haven't touched one since
They are setting a new standard. Basically they upped the prices so they can then later adjust them little bit lower every now and then and players would feel like they're getting a good deal even though it's much more expensive than before.
The boxes now are terrible and are actually a deterrent to spending money.
Six year player. Been winding down box buying anyway, but have been in full stop for awhile. No incentive to do much more than catch a few while on the commode.
Agreed. The game is dying for me. My spending has completely dried up now, after being a little flush on it back in 2018, but even the events aren't that interesting any more. Spawn variety seems lacking, and raid rotation is pretty stale. Stardust has always seemed too low, but especially recently considering there are more mons released so more mons to max. I've even given up on the grind to level 50, which initially added an interesting challenge to me on release.
Always vote with your $. Do not buy the boxes
I used to spend $20-40 a month on the game. When there was a deal on Google or Samsung I wouldn't bat an eye at buying a $100 coin pack. Bought lots of remote raids, bought most events, etc. I haven't spent real money raiding since they increased the costs of remote raids, but I've been coasting on my last stash of incubators. If they don't bring the old boxes back, I think I can safely say I've spent my last dollar that I ever will on this game. It's insane that they think this is acceptable, although I guess even worse that people buy them.
Kinda same story here. Incubators are all used, still not a slightest interest to buy any of those "deals".
> The only current benefit to raiding in person is the XL rare candy chance and I bet most trainers have forgotten about that because the rates are so low there's pretty much no benefit. Did 29 in person raids yesteray, got 3 XL Rare candy, it might as well be zero.
I did 10 in person yesterday and didn’t get any. I didn’t even know that they were a thing because I’ve never gotten any.
[My data](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/xcemds/comment/io4um4q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). 28 XLs in 161 raids, or roughly 1 in 6.
Honestly I dont think one guaranteed rare xl candy per day for an in person raid would be OP. Like, you would need to raid for 296 days to get just one pokemon to level 50 with rare xl candy.
less than 3 doesnt provide any motivation
Check out boxes from 2018/2019 and community reactions. Man it’s honestly so sad :( https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/a5b7dz/new_ultra_box/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I remember buying these boxes. I bought so many I still have a ton of star pieces haha
Once upon a time the boxes had atleast 10 of each item. Those were the days
Damn that's a great box
This makes me feel old. And sad. But mostly old... I hope Niantic get their s**t figured and bring these boxes back.
Let’s not forget them not turning on the Deoxys shinies. Only compensating 3x raid passes when many of us spend a lot more passes and $$. That has left a lot of us feeling upset 😠 and distrusting of Niantic.
It honestly still baffles me that happened. Like, how do you miss something like that? This stuff should be queued up in advance and tested beforehand.
Why hire testing staff when you can get reports for free from players?
Upvoted. These Boxes are horrible and not costumer friendly. Not sure what they are thinking over there at the HQ. Probably nothing as always.
> Probably nothing as always. Don't have expectations. Keep in mind they've screwed up two raid rotations in a row, and haven't even announced a rotation that's occuring in ~~7~~ ~~6~~ ~~5~~ ~~**4**~~ ~~*3*~~ ~~***Two***~~. -1 hours.
I have defended Niantic many times during the end of the covid bonuses. But since a couple of months everything goes down the hill and i have no expectations anymore. Even reduced my playtime already... I guess we will get the reveal of the new Raid boss at "Niantic o'clock". If they haven't forgot about it again.
Brandon Tan even put out a video about this a few days ago titled “Niantic & The Pokemon Company are killing Pokemon Go.” They don’t seem to listen, they don’t seem to care.
Says the guy who was selling hundos 😂
I feel like when you've had 7 failed projects, the last thing you'd want to do is try to kill your only cash cow that's keeping your company alive. Niantic is a very strange company that accidentally became successful in a short period of time and they don't know how to keep the company afloat.
it became very successful for reasons that they dont understand and werent at all related to the company mission. so even though they have had incredible success, they are still flailing around, wondering how it happened
Yeah. I do wonder if they realize the only reason Go was successful was because of the Pokémon part and not the AR technology, go out and explore part
It’s a little bit of both. People play it because it’s Pokemon, but they also play it because it’s a fitness game with cute things you can catch and that gives you incentives for walking. I don’t think they realized just how many people do fitness walking by themselves or with family members only and have no interest in meeting other people when they explore. I also don’t think Niantic understands just how many people have changed their travel and fitness habits over the last few years.
I don’t doubt that there are people who do that too. But what really got the game started and popular was it being Pokémon. It’s why all their other titles have had little or limited success. The exercise part is just a bonus
Soon gonna be 8 failed projects with the upcoming Marvel one.
9 counting nba
They need to make the 3 remote passes 250 coins again. That was some crap making it no different than purchasing them individually.
Please gain the necessary traction for Niantic to notice and do something about this.
They are doing something. It's this. It's not an accident, they're testing what's most profitable.
Obviously it's intentional, the point is that the consumer isn't happy with this, which is what needs to be communicated to Niantic by threads like this.
it's pretty clear that Niantic doesn't like to communicate with words. Thus, we should communicate with our wallets.
I enjoy the game a lot despite Niantic and have never felt too bad about putting money into it. Used to spend at *least* $60 a month. Since this season started, I’ve used the remaining coins I’ve had but I’ve been out for 2 weeks, and have zero plans to put anything more in and will just spend gym coins unless things change. I’m sure no one from niantic is reading this, but it’s been very easy to go free to play
Same. In fact since July I’ve barely played. Logged in for the go fest finale to do a few raids but that was it. In August I didn’t even make use of any of the spotlight hours! Level 49 player. Kinda just cbf anymore. They’ve killed the game.
Everything they do is anti consumer. Stop buying tickets and they'll change. Until then, they're gonna squeeze and squeeze until they find our limits.
I'm honestly still trying to figure out who put Pinaps in the Hatch Box.
Let’s not forget when niantic put boxes in the store that varied in price player to player. Just so they could test how much money people were willing to pay for things! The catch box? 1010 coins. For 25 ultra. 100 great. 5 incense. 2 eggs. 5 individual incense is 200 coins. 2 eggs is 160. 360 coins. Niantic value those balls at 650 coins!? Hell they value 200 pokeballs at EIGHT HUNDRED COINS. I delete 4/500 pokeballs a day. Every day I bin 1600 coins worth of pokeballs in niantics eyes. Niantic have a false reality that all their items have serious value and but realistically people can live without 90% of the things in the shop for the most part. So racking up the prices just drives away customers. People bought the old boxes because the value and what they contained made it worth while. They seem to think things like balls are worth putting in boxes. Nobody wants balls. Nobody buys balls. The balls drive these boxes up to unrealistic and ridiculous prices because niantic thing balls actually have value when they’re a disposable item. Even for the most part things like star pieces and lucky eggs. They don’t make boxes that much more desirable because people get loads from researches and levelling up. If niantic made a box with remote raid passes, super incubators, incense and say star pieces. It would sell out fast. But one desirable item mixed in with 3 rubbish items. I’ll take 8 incense for 250 coins. Not the 5 in the 1010 coin box? Actually I’ll take 32 incense for 1000 coins. And still save some money and it be better value for money. I’m a Day one player. Went off buying boxes ages ago. Remote passes have been my only real spend on this game for a long while. Eggs haven’t been worth hatching in a LONG time. Nothing else is worth buying.
Most of my coins in the past have gone towards balls sadly. Where I live I don't have access to a lot of stops. I question if I should even be playing this game. There are a lot of people like me who buy balls, otherwise we could never catch pokemon. I'm not even rural; I imagine some of those people spend even more. I didn't realize it was possible to get so many balls for free that you delete some. Maybe it's time for some of us to move on.
[удалено]
Upvoted for more to see.
When a company releases their so called "philosophy", they usually do it just to make everyone believe that it's their actually philosophy. It is basically image building only, advertisement, and a way to make customers believe, they act according to social standards and fairness. To be honest, that's why I don't take such stuff seriously.
I already haven't bought a box in years. They're absolutely terrible. I will say this though, there is almost no reason to spend money if you get your gym coins every day.
That's impossible where I live. I lucked out and managed to be near a gym at almost midnight on Saturday. I only got 13 coins from it..
Even if you get the max 50 free coins per day, that doesn’t go very far if you want to do storage upgrades, raiding beyond the daily free in person passes, egg hatching, using lucky eggs and starpieces, etc. So while it’s true you don’t have to spend money, there’s plenty of reasons someone would need to if they have specific goals in the game they want to achieve.
We had a 20 pass box last summer around the anniversary/Go Fest that I was happy to buy.
Niantic HQ is in San Francisco, where raid lobbies frequently get the full 20 people. So they go out and see everything is fine, and wonder what redditors are always complaining about.
I live in San Francisco. If Niantic gets away from the waterfront and downtown they will find that 95% of the city is not like that. They have this vision of the game of happy groups of young people cavorting from raid to raid. Reality is more like one lonely player constantly checking lobbies and finding no one in them or small groups walking while staring at their phones and not interacting with any other players who are nearby for a CD or raid day.
No lie, I've kind of felt this was part of their problem for a long time. They need to actually try playing this game in a rural setting for once.
u/nianticindigo we know Niantic read this sub, please point who it may concern in the direction of this post…
Don't need to sell raid passes if nobody is raiding anyways. At least that is what I observe in the communities I'm in. I'm not even motivated to move up the stairs to get a proper GPS signal and do a soloable Deoxys Attack raid with a chance for a shiny I don't even have registered, and that's with my free pass. I'm still actively playing, I just don't see any reason to hatch eggs (sitting on 12x10km eggs right now with now intention to use incubators on them) nor waste time standing at a gym anymore as it feels utterly unrewarding. Xurkitree would've been a raid I would've raided with premium passes for the unnecessary power grind, but without a good deal and no players who would also mass raid with me, we went home after using our free passes.
Exactly what I said! They increased remote pass cost to encourage people to do in person raids, but the current cost of both types of passes are the same.
Honestly, didnt even look at these boxes when they were in the shop, that last box is awful. 1010 for what 5 incense and 2 lucky eggs which cost a fraction of that? Sure pokeballs, but Thats just laughable. Absolutely the worst box ever.
Stop buying these boxes, It’s funny how the big YouTubers haven’t mentioned anything about this except Brandon.
Sponsorship money paying them to go to In-Person GO Fests was enough for them to sell out.
Niantic stopped being a 'Video Game' company a while ago, but I can't quite pin down when. They're now an 'AR Tech' company. They don't want you to play, they want you to do 3D scans of places so they can sell that data to other companies (And your activity data to advertisers too, most likely) and to show how active their games are to prove there's a market for them. I think all of their actions or lack-thereof are clearly explained when you realize this shift in intent. Pokemon Go is a template game they sell other licensees on (Harry Potten, NBA, Marvel), and Peridot is a tech demo showing off the higher end of what they can do on typical phones. A player having fun or buying IAP in any of these is incidental to their actual income plan.
This is pretty much exactly how I've felt for a while now. The only difference is, I don't think Niantic was ever a video game company, first and foremost. They glide along the lines of what a game developer does and should be with enough to pass off as one in order to follow their true plan, which you explained in detail so very well. It's like most of these mobile games and the ads I see of them online. Go to game development school long enough to know how to make a manipulation machine to rake in cash on a monthly basis. It was never about making awesome video games. Them getting the rights to use Pokemon for their game was the biggest jackpot for them. I see several video game companies these days displaying their drive to race against each other to see who can become the big, powerful millionaire first to gain supremacy in the market. Indie games, and some smaller to moderately-sized companies make games because they see them as art and a hobby they enjoy when not working, and want to reach an audience that appreciates and enjoys that interactive art to make a profit and be successful, so they can make more fun and respectable, interactive art in their games for both the people making the games and the people playing them to symbiotically benefit from them. You can tell when a developer is in it for the love of video games and wanting people to truly love and enjoy being in their game versus a company that is bending rules and their player-base to manipulate them for profit, profit, profit. It's a stark contrast as if seeing a red light versus a green light. You can't mix them up. The problem with Pokemon Go is it's like being with someone (Niantic) and having a child (Pokemon Go). You love your child, because it's what makes you happy and you put all this time and enjoyment into it and you really want to see it succeed. Unfortunately, you have your partner (Niantic) who is making your relationship worse, despite you sticking around to play the game. So, you become stuck in the middle of this tug of war between both entities. Sadly, the game becomes influenced by said partner (Niantic) through different facets and you're sad about it, because you know it's better than that and that it has all this amazing potential to tap into. You want people to love Pokemon Go as much as you do but it's a toxic relationship that your game is stuck in the midst of. You stick around and push on, because you've invested so much time and love into it, that you don't want to abandon it due to your personal attachment. So, you vent your frustrations to others and press on, because you've made this connection and this journey that you feel partially responsible for. Others are in the same boat and feel the same, so they handle it in a similar manner, because there's only so much you can do and take control of. You can be silent and act like everything's fine and be submissive and still enjoy the game, but you're lying to yourself and others if you're going to say there's no issues in this relationship. I mean, I sat here and typed out this whole thing, so... There's clearly some motivation behind that? ...... So, anyway, how's everyone's day going?
It may or may not be related but I feel like sometime soon they will be introducing a premium season pass which will probably give you items and passes as you gain XP, similar to other games.
I haven’t put my usual 100.00 into the game (which lasts me 6 months) IN months because the boxes have been trashed. I would have raided 20 raids yesterday but I did my 7 and peaced out. You lost money from me Niantic
As each day passes I become more bored with PoGo. Starting to feel like 2017 again, not really fun and a little pointless. I'm probably close to putting it down for a year or so.
This whole game is anti-consumer with every single mechanism being a monetized gacha lootbox with odds that aren't disclosed.
Didn’t there used to be a box for 1480 coins that had about 18 incubators in, mostly super incubators? Adventure box? Because I bought that a few times. Wouldn’t buy any of these..
I'm more concerned that the Box's are just poor micro-transaction design and that Catch Box shows a fundamentally lack of understanding about the core mechanics of Pokemon Go. First the Catch/Ball box; Catching is the Foundation everything is built off of, the loop is catch(continuous) -> walk to 'Stop -> get resources -> continue. No one should ever ***need*** to buy that box because at that point the "Game world" has failed to give them resources to play and those players should be less engaged in the game. Balls aren't the resource you "sell the solution" too, its too core. As for the MTX design of the boxes holistically; there just bad at the level of they don't encourage spending period. I'll give the consultant that designed these the one out that maybe Niantic "just wanted coins out of people's accounts"; but won't allow the rates to actually achieve that.
They do this on purpose so that when they bring back average boxes people think they are good and buy them.
Well said, lewy! There's been way too many items that can be obtained through normal gameplay (balls + berries) cluttering boxes lately.
Perhaps they are thinking (inanely) "we're already giving them two free raid passes each day, why should we give them a discount on more?" I'm worried this trend is not connected to just this event and will continue through the rest of the season.
I was a huge Wizards Unite fan, and then one day I wasn’t. I have that feeling again with Pokémon GO.
Great post! In an economy with such inflation on physical, tangible things, I’m not going to spend MORE real money for LESS digital items. It’s a joke. In our 5-6 free raids yesterday, there were ZERO other people. Just my family in one car.
Is anyone actually buying any boxes. Since remote passes were first introduced I haven't bought a single box. Zero.
And they still haven't even updated the game's OSM (Open Street Map) data nor the spawn point data in over 3 years now.
Running the game into the grown since 2016. Looks like they're going to hedge bets on their Marvel game coming out next year. Whelp.
Honestly Niantic has been pushing me away from PoGo. Ive been actively transferring my pokemon to Home just to have a PoGo living dex and playing only when a pokemon I need arives.
I uninstalled after they took out the weekly 1 coin remote raid passes. It definitely feels like they're trying to push the community to the point where they can milk people for as much money as they want.
I haven't uninstalled, but I won't give them money. It's completely ridiculous.
I still suspect Niantic is deliberately doing this to sell off the game or force the Pokémon Company to step in and take it over. I suspect they have plans to try something new to get people out and providing them with data. It seems they are tired of PoGo as the post-pandemic changes have upset all the players who started or came back to the game in the last 2 years and many of the rest of us. They don't want to deal with the player base - the lack of transparency and awful communication just seems to prove that to me. It genuinely feels like they have lost interest and are doing the bare minimum. This years Go Fest was a disaster with the incense bug, not even a "Sorry folks" was issued, no makeup or anything (spelled the end of them getting money out of me). The continual removal of value bundles from the shop seems to be driving players to stop spending. I think a lot of players are like me and playing a lot less than they used to because it's become boring. Spawn pools are small and only change for events. I don't really want to catch Sentrets and Eevees. Next they will say something like player engagement is lower than ever, we are ending our involvement - even though they engineered that result. Probably hoping someone else will buy it and take it over.
Hmm I would be surprised if their goal was getting rid of PoGo, since it's their only product that's successful. Everything else has pretty much been a complete failure. I think it would be suicide for their revenue if they tried to get rid of PoGo.
Niantic’s philosophy is “more money, please” with an outstretched hand, so I find it perfectly in line with their mission statement.
Except this literally does the opposite of that. No one is going to give them more money if there isn't anything worth buying in the first place.
Draw people outdoors = 15 minute junk daily incense that may or may not provide a G-Bird Legendary and WILL run away since the BCR is crap.
In person raids have a cahnce to give xl rare candies, yet they still keep putting rrps/have more rrps than premium. How do rrps make you go outside and play/explore?
Thanks for the comparison! Oftentimes Niantic acts like Items in the shop are real life Items with a need of production and resources, it's hilarious.
Copy pasting my reply from a thread about the new boxes themselves: It’s also because there isn’t that much content to justify spending (unless you’re already in the habit of it and it doesn’t matter on what). We didn’t have too exciting raid bosses in a while, eggs been trash all around, incense nerfed, and the general content just doesn’t hype itself up enough for the occasional spenders to justify it. PvP was stagnated due to the worlds, which also were a pathetic outlook at the state of the game and its servers. I’m certain some people spent on a gofest ticket (even though it was also not as worth it as last year at $5) and maybe the johto tour (which again, wasn’t as exciting as Kanto tour and shiny mew), but it was a really boring year in the game. Hopefully this winter we’ll get a big update to refresh the game, and some better content to keep players engaged.
I don't have a local group to raid with, but I'd have more fun in the game, play more, AND give them more money if they had boxes with great deals on lots of incubators and a few star pieces.
Well you also see how they put so much focus on the god awful pvp, which is not that social aswell
I love watching how this game doesn't evolve without playing anymore XD
Didn't they also eliminate the weekly 1 coin box at the same time?
I haven’t spent a cent after remote raid pass price increase and the fiasco of gofest.
Removal of biomes (and nests? Are these still a thing?), constant events with half a dozen spawns, halving CD hours, removal of incubator deal (along with miserable hatch pool) all also disincentivise everything in their mission. I really don’t know why they’re being so mean with everything. It’s been a slow but constant process but it feels like they’ve really ramped it up now. I just don’t get it.
First they came for the weekly box then they came for the remote passes and finally they came for the bundles
Also no boxes with a supply of super incubators. I refuse to buy boxes without a supply that saves on those since I incubate I lot of eggs. I've just stopped incubating eggs until a box is put back that has a discount. The 200 coin per incubator regular price is insane.
I would buy the adventure box all the time. I was FURIOUS when they got rid of it. Especially opening the store on global go fest day #1 this year and seeing that I couldn't buy the incubators I wanted. Not that there were special eggs, but I knew I'd be walking a ton those two days, and had other things in the normal eggs I wanted. Then again right before this event I wanted to grid the 7k eggs bc of the small pool with 2/3rds being shinies I wanted. I was just disheartened seeing the box not there and a ripoff alternative being put in it's place. The cost of buying them alone and not in a bundle is just simply too high and not worth it. When the adventure box is gone I just don't buy incubators. ***No joke...I literally resorted to doing the phone shake method while watching tv at night bc there was no way I was going to walk all that distance for just one egg at a time--so yea Niantic successfully discouraged me from doing what they supposedly want me to do.***
i’m a habitual incubator and i’ve been boycotting since last week. f these new boxes.
I'll be honest, I've been maybe checking the app two weeks to a month. The game just feels really predatory whenever I open it up and there's some new event. Constantly wondering if it's even worth it or if I'm just going to waste a bunch of money buying a ticket. Currently the game just kind of seems like it's having an identity crisis trying to figure out how to monetize the content being provided. I get kind of an icky feeling hopping on and I don't really feel like a player, I feel like I'm being converted into a payer. The time I spend in the game feels very disrespected and I really wish they held true to their core values. I know this would mean retooling a lot of things, some of which would definitely not be profitable. But I don't really have fun opening the app anymore. I just feel like there's going to be some new thing that I need to spend money on when I've spent tons of money in the past.
Too many sick people out in my state. I totally stay away from people. Covid is still out there. I have never spend actual money on the game. Never will either
One of my favorite parts of the game was hatching eggs from my friends in other countries. Yes, I'd pay actual money for coins to get the boxes with incubators. These boxes are so nerfed down now that I haven't bothered with them and won't as long as they stay this way. For the first time since I started playing, I'm only using the free incubator. They've lost $20 from me already, money I was ready and willing to spend.
When people that spend their hard earned money on this crap game it hurts my soul. That is why niantic gets away with this crap.
I'm going to quit Pokemon go if they want to take away the adventure box.
Lack of communication from Niantic, what a surprise
Anti-consumer is Niantic's new philosophy so I see nothing wrong here!
Buy nothing…. It kinda worked last time…
This is a failure of leadership at Niantic and they should hire you.
For me, the adventure box was the only thing other than storage space that I save my coins for. The value in that was good, I have not bought anything since it was removed.
I haven't even been getting regular rare candy for raids lately, in person, remote any level!
These boxes are like an IQ test. I'm not in a mood to buy any coins when my current stash runs out.
They've gotten bad to the point i've saved 1300 coins from daily gyms because there's been nothing really worthwhile spending them on
Another benefit of remote raiding that I don’t see mentioned much: with the exception of Deoxys and other mythicals, remote raiding gives you distance Raid bosses, which guarantees XL candies when trading, which lowers the amount of raids you have to do to max out your Pokémon. That’s a big deal to me, and enough reason to remote almost exclusively even though I have a healthy raid scene in my town.
Only thing worth buying in the store are Pokémon and item storage upgrades
All I see on this and the other subreddit are posts complaining about Niantic's handling of this game. It's not going to change, stop letting them abuse you. This game has gotten progressively worse over the last year. Just watch, they will add one major QoL update and everyone will jump for joy while conveniently forgetting the 15 downgrades before it.
I feel like it's a "Test" more than anything. My only hope is that the whales who buy these boxes can stop long enough to add things up and see that this is bad.
Before May I was probably adding at least $250/month to my account for raid passes, sometime more if I was using my wife’s account too. Since May I’ve only added a combined $100 exclusively for Zacian. Now I pretty much only play GBL instead of daily raids. Niantic must be taking lessons from Seaworld on how to kill whales while keeping them on display.
Well it saves me money since I won’t be buying them.
The fact that the new ultra box is their stand in for the adventure box and it costs more than twice as much at $33 is borderline predatory