Rivals Week – Incomplete for Content

I’m giving Rivals Week an I (Incomplete) for the Content. There were lots of good, but the negatives were glaring.

Good: The focus on Fighting Pokemon was a definite positive. At least in my experience, fighting Pokemon do not get the spotlight for a long time like this very often. I enjoy them in general, especially the more obvious fighters (Machop, Makuhita, the Hitmons).

Good: It wasn’t just Fighting Pokemon that was in the spotlight. There were both Nidorans, Zangoose/Seviper (depending on your region which one was a limited release), Patrat, and Litleo were also co-featured. The different Pokemon made it feel like it just was not a “Focus on Fighting Week”. Seeing the different species made the week feel more complete and that a lot of thought was put into the week to not just make it dominated by one type. I hope for more of this type of week in the future… where one lesser promoted type gets the spotlight overall, but some other Pokemon of various types share the spotlight as well.

Good: Skrelp & Clauncher. Always nice to see more new Pokemon in the game. The hook is that they are “rivals”. I also like that these are part of the Kalos region and we get another 4 on the road towards the complete Pokedex.

VERY Bad: The elephant in the room. More Team Rocket encounters were promised during this week and there has been a failure to launch. Trainers on two levels have been directly impacted (44 to 45 and 49 to 50) as well as three levels’ challenges (43, 45, and 48). I am in the 44 to 45 category, which makes this double bad. Players trying to fight for 1000 or 2000 victories over Team Rocket have been indirectly affected as well (both Gold and Platinum for the various levels for Levels 41, 43, 47, and 49). Granted, they are less affected since there are many other badges to get, but a Trainer may have been close to finishing the badge level and looked forward to finishing the requirement for the badges (or add one more towards the requirement) with the Hero Badge. Who knows how much longer we will be without Team Rocket Encounters! Once we get the Rocket Battles back, the only right thing would be to give us a make-up week with the same bonuses that we should have gotten.

Inexcusable: The proliferation of PvP based Field Research for 20 Mega Lopunny Candies. I saw a lot of them over the weekend as I was playing a lot. This is NOT an acceptable substitute for the lack of Rocket Battles by any means. (In case it needs repeating, I HATE PvP.) Double worse that it was for something that is pretty useless – sorry, but Mega Lopunny is not a Mega that will be used very much in the future. I already mega evolved it once, no need to do it any more. This to me was a major slap in the face. I did none of these on moral grounds. I like doing Field Researches… but not ones for things I would not normally do. Especially for a lousy return on investment. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it if there were Rockets… and maybe this would have been fight a Rocket Grunt if there were Rockets out.

The lack of Rocket Battles nets the Incomplete Grade… I was really looking forward to that part of this event as well as the focus on some of the Fighting Pokemon. I may revisit this if and when we get the Rocket Bonus Week we were promised.