

It also gives new ways to earn XL Candy (even if they may be counter-intuitive when concerning raid benefits), which has been a major issue since the bigger candy came out (as I feel the pain whenever Master League is in the PvP rotation), plus the bonus xp’s at least something. The leveling system does give some incentive to mix things up. Having some access to energy-free Megas is nice. And XL Candy… well, I have gotten up to three XLs from a single unevolved pokemon. Pokemon drop two additional normal candies, not stacking with pinaps, meaning you can get eight candy per non-evolved pokemon outside of events. The final bonus ups the XP bonus to 100, effectively doubling the average catch XP. One friend who actively played two accounts hasn’t bothered logging in, and the newer players often seem disappointed that they can’t get Energy for pokemon they’re interested in.Īnd that’s only for the first bonus. They’re not bad, but visually, people see that they lack candy, they have to walk a pokemon they may not care about, and they have to pay a tax to activate six out of seven days of the week until they get the pokemon to the next level. The problem is that these are numbers few people look at. However, it also means those who aren’t will be left in the dust, especially as Niantic recently dumped Classic Master League this PvP season.Īt bonus two out of three for a pokemon’s Mega Levels, the straight 50xp addition for sharing of types isn’t a ton, but it’s still half the XP from catching a base form with my Go+. Getting about a third or two-thirds of the way to maxing out a pokemon from a single one-hour event with casual play is quite good for those who are paying attention and investing in the Mega Levels mechanic. Bidoof is typically a common pokemon and has even gotten its own five-day event before, before the new Mega Levels came out. A year and a half prior to the new system’s launch, I had 414 Bidoof XL candy total. To put that in perspective: Most pokemon need 296 XL candy to max out. This was without fast catching, which often nets me around 250 XL candy. I then tried this with the Pikipek’s spotlight hour and the final Mega Level XL candy bonus and that number shot up to 185 with similar conditions.

People seemed to ignore this for the first month or so, but I matched the spotlight hour pokemon with a Mega of the same type that had the first XL Candy bonus and ended up with about 85 XL Candy after transfers, with no hand-catching involved (I’m very well off on Numel XL candy).

With high-spawning pokemon and the most common types, I do notice a bit of a boost from the extra XL Candy generation, but I’m also specifically looking for it. Yes, the new Mega system is giving us some really nice bonuses in theory. Not one of my friends has seemed excited for the change, and as someone who’s always shown them the advantages of it, I feel sad to see that Niantic still hasn’t made it work. The announcement of Mega Kangaskhan excited them only because it made a foreign regional available to us. Mega Evolution was something they struggled to “get” but had little to no motivation to engage with. My gamer friends who still do POGO may not be in the core Reddit communities, but they still Google for articles (I don’t like to self-promote to people I know IRL, but they’ve at least seen some of our guides’ images, sometimes as a test group). Maybe this is my bias, but I expect mobile games to be less cognitively heavy than PC/console games in terms of mechanics. The new explanation video, along with in-game diagrams, makes it potentially easier to understand, but it still complicates what’s far easier to understand in the main games. Niantic can and should do better for the majority of the users, not just me.įirst, I have to admit that even though I understand the system, I’ve seen firsthand how it’s more confusing than before. I am happy with the changes, but I am also a minority player who had invested in the old system and came into the new one with low expectations. But do not mistake criticism for dissatisfaction. Yes, there are design flaws systems are overburdened, and early mistakes have carried over into the new system. Moreover, the old system had issues that still cut some people out of the new system, which we’ll get into later.Īs someone who came on board during the second iteration and thought it was as good as it’d get, I need to be clear that the new changes are better than the old ones. However, what we didn’t want to do is immediately discuss the new system, as Niantic included a new Mega Leveling system. It’s been a while now since Pokemon GOgot its third Mega Evolution system, which was one of the big reasons we took a hard look at which pokemon you should invest in.
