Deino Community Day: High Hopes, Lousy Execution

The June 2022 Community Day was highly anticipated. Considering that last year, we got Gible after a shiny release where it was frustratingly difficult to get throughout June 2020-May 2021. This was a T1 staple and was something that Trainers were going nuts for. Then in June 2021, we got our Community Day. Highly rated Gibles were found throughout the day and shinies came like a normal Community Day. It was great… the day was fun. Gible was everywhere. I had high hopes for Deino after it was announced as June 2022 Community Day. I should have checked those hopes at the door.

Shiny count: 5. Not my worst CD, but below expectations. Everyone else in my party had similar results. Some random kid said he was near 20 for the day, so the ability to get shinies were out there. I consider 10 to be a good day and with all the hype around shiny Deino, I was expecting a lot more. This was one of the more sought after ones, so the lack of shinies was disappointing. None of them were anything to write home about either.

The biggest disappointment had to be the after hours Zweilous Raids. First off, the minimum 30 minute delay between the end of the spawns and the beginning of the Zweilous Raids was insane. I was expecting eggs to be lined up right away at virtually every gym in sight and there be a 5 minute counter at most. The long delay definitely turned me off… and the fact that only 1 of 10 gyms immediately had the correct egg was not helping matters. I sincerely doubt that many other Trainers were waiting around for 30 minutes in one spot for the raids to load. Then as the other gyms loaded with eggs, there were Mewtwo, Mega, and T1 Raids filling in the gyms, not only Zweilous. No excuse for that if there was supposed to be one featured raid. I was expecting 99% Zweilous. Very poor planning. The weather did not help either where I was either (I know, not Niantic’s fault, but it is a factor). It was mid-high 80s with little relief from the sun throughout the 3 hours. For the northeastern USA, that is very warm as Summer starts. Considering it was much more comfortable the rest of the week prior, it felt much worse. If there were immediate raids and/or some extra Deinos running around, it would have helped. I believe that these reasons did not help a park which usually has dozens of trainers around during Community Day had only a few to be seen. I had 3 other 40+ Trainers with me, and we only won the raid with 54 seconds to go. From what I heard, it was supposed to be a community thing, but that is borderline crazy. Who knows what would have happened if I was in a more rural area. We won, I expected Deinos being everywhere. Nope, barely a trickle. I cannot comment on the shiny rates, since I only played 1 Raid. The whole experience turned me way off from the rest of the hours with the Zweilous Raids. Also with the Deinos being only in a 300 meter circle seemed to be against the spirit of the Pokemon “GO” Season. It was more like… Pokemon “Stay within 300 meters of a spot even though COVID is still around”. I also felt like this was a horrible substitute for the 6 hour Community Day where I could go off to eat lunch somewhere and come back to the park after a break (or continue playing and walking around the park or go other places and try my luck). Tack on that you had to do them live, no Remotes, this was absolutely an exercise in dumb. I did go to another place afterwards and did not see others that I could recognize as Trainers and did not see any stray Deinos. This part of CD gets a big fat F.

Then there were the Zweilous that were a part of the “rewards” for having a large number of Pokemon caught at a certain stop. It sounds good… higher stardust and more candies, but it comes at a cost of catching shinies. Not a good situation for me who wants to get extra candy, but would much rather get the shinies. Both are highly desirable, but taking one means that you get no shot at the other. There is no really wrong choice… but there is no truly right choice either.

Also of concern was the lack of good Deinos to be found. I can only remember like a few non-research Deinos that were 3*. Even the 3* I did get were mediocre in the 3*range. I like to make a really good one or two to use for the evolution challenges on the ticket. I ended up doing two of my shinies since I like to have a complete set at the end of the day and figured I would get my usual end of the day shiny power. So none of the new Deinos and evolutions were that good. Disappointing is more the word of the day for this.

This being a 3 hour Community Day was also suboptimal at best. I will continue to make this point until the 6 hour Community Day is brought back. There are plenty of reasons for this, which I have outlined previously. No need to go over this.

There are some positives. This is a dragon, which is always desirable. This also saved Day 1 of December Community Day. The 5 others would not have made me want to go out for Day 1. Granted, I would have tried for another Cheeto-dude and would hope for that still elusive Shundo as Alolan Geodude is pretty relevant. July’s doesn’t do anything for me either though. Deino is also a fun one and was new for me… so I will take it. However, this was very poorly executed. Hopefully by June 2023 for Axew Community Day things will be cleaned up. Remember, you heard that here first if it comes true – after all June 2021 was Gible after it was highly sought after as a shiny for a year… so was Deino this past year. Axew will be the same I predict.