We now know that we will be voting for September and October Community Days. This time there is a clear winner and I am voting for second place. Since December is normally a year end celebration of all the Community Days through the year, November will likely be given to us. I have my preferences.

September’s will likely be Porygon. In a recent poll Porygon was the runaway winner. At least with Porygon, we have a traditional double evolution never before shiny Pokemon. It also helps that this has gotten very little play in my time except for a bit of a run when Poryvon first was a Shadow. The only issue would be distributing the Upgrades and Sinnoh Stones. We do need both to get both evolutions done. Hopefully no PvP will be necessary.

October’s Community Day Pokemon is what I am voting for. None of these are overly attractive choices again really. I am voting for Grimer. I would be OK with Charmander even though it had a turn. I will be disappointed once again with Caterpie. Caterpie is useless and we have had our fair share of useless Pokemon for Community Day lately. I’m looking at the both of you, Weedle and Magikarp. At least Alolan Muk is useful for gym defense, which is what I am interested in the most. Hopefully if the votes continue into 2021, we will get better Pokemon to vote for.

Turning to November, I would hope that Niantic looks back to February’s candidates and gives us one, Machop. Frankly, I was disappointed that the double evolution Pokemon was broken by Orange, Floppy, and Useless. Yes, the way I will vote for October would break the pattern as well, but it does not matter anymore really. There are a bunch of reasons why Machop is a great fit for Community Day.

First, we can really involve the idea of community in Community Day and not just have everyone play together to get the same Pokemon. Remember, one of the two ways to evolve Machoke into Machamp is via trade. To encourage trading, there should be greater lucky trade odds when both trainers are trading a Machop/Machoke for Machop/Machoke to evolve into Machamp. The game should know that we are trading two Machops for each other to satisfy the research and to give us better lucky odds. That would be a fair trade off for the 0 km/1 candy trades that would be dominant. I would also make a trade a part of the $1.00 ticket research storyline researches. After all, there will be plenty of people out there on Community Day.

Also of note is that we have not had a fighting Pokemon as the focus of Community Day. This is one of the last remaining types of Pokemon not to be featured. There are no other fighting types that would even qualify for Community Day in the traditional sense as a wild catchable as it stands right now. Granted, Timburr is a pure fighting type with two evolutions, but at this time, Timburr is only available in Raids. I hope that Timburr stays as a raid only Pokemon for a while longer. It is neat to have a couple of 1* raid only Pokemon (Klink) since all the others are either found in the wild or evolutions of something found in the wild (save Alolan Marowak).

I selfishly admit, that I want a shiny and a better Machamp (not necessarily the same Pokemon, but a really good shiny, even a “Shundo” would be appreciated). The shiny the Incredible Hulk, which I have mentioned a few times on the blog. I believe it is one of the coolest looking ones out there. I’ve tried and tried and remember that where I normally play was a Machop nest. I played 5 days during those two weeks there (it is a bit of a trip for me) and came up completely empty. I think I have about gotten the total number of Machops where I should have seen a shiny by now. I also tried my best during Fighting Hours during Go Fest and was shut out then as well. At least Community Day would give me one. I also would like a chance at a stronger one. My best is a 87% IV, so a 90+% would be nice as well.

Let’s see what happens over the next three months. What do you want for the next three months?

As we know, since Go Fest Day had major problems during the first friendship hour, there were three make-up hours on Sunday. The idea was to give us a chance to cash in on what should have been during Go Fest during friendship hour along with a third chance at some of the Pokemon we may have missed out on. For me at least, there was little make-up and lots more disappointment.

I was not the only one who thought that it would be unlimited gifts during the three hours among the people I saw (limited due to some rain in my area… I planned on getting tons of gifts to distribute to fellow Go Fest players and that is at a park). I opened gifts fast early expecting unlimited gifts. Being limited to the normal 20 gifts was a major disappointment. Yes, the Rare Candies were coming fast and furious, I will give Niantic that, but I was hoping to clear my gift board. I have a lot of good friends who give on a regular basis, so I wanted to start fresh again after Sunday. I even tried during friendship hour and was disappointed. That and I was hoping for a whole lot more rare candies.

The three hours were also the 2nd (fire), 4th (water), and last (friendship) hours of Pokemon in my rankings. I am still disappointed that I did not get another chance at The Incredible Hulk Machamp which is the number 1 shiny I want. At least I had a theoretical chance at number 2, Ponyta, which was a fail once again.

Speaking on shinies, I got the same number of shinies in the make-up hours as I did during the regular hours of Go Fest. Genesect and Clamperl saved the day (though I would have done the Genesect even if it wasn’t Go Fest). I did also score a hundo Blastoise and Chinchou which are nice consolation prizes. I got no other specials the rest of the day. Getting 8 specials over 3 days is a good haul over 3 normal days. However for Go Fest, that is UNACCEPTABLE, considering some people got 30+ without the bonus time. I should have gotten Community Day shiny rates at least.

Especially during the last hour, I would have preferred having the regular lineup that we had out in the wild. We just had a whole bunch of the friendship ones now for the 3rd week in recent memory. That and most of them are not ones I want.

All in all, the Make-up Hour was not a make-up for me at all, just more mediocrity at it’s finest. (Though I did get to spend time with my Fiancee, which is something independent of Make-up Hour, so it wasn’t all bad.)

I got my 8th Best Buddy today converting my 4* (100 IV) Rhyperior after some long work with it. Working a few others now hoping to get them to #9.

By now, most Pokemon Go players have heard that there will eventually be a Level 50. Some have seen the video that you can find on YouTube, I have not. I truly hope that this will not just be an XP grind out. The first 40 levels can be obtained by people who buy lots of Lucky Eggs, have a full compliment of Best Friends (and get 200,000 XP every time), and basically grind the XP out. Between that and (for some) sitting and catching Pokemon without needing an incense for hours on end, the grind can be done. I do not know most the various ideas that have been floated around to supplement Levels 41-50, but these are some ideas I have heard and some I will float on my own.

I have heard that certain medals may be involved since Level 50 was first floated as an idea. I finally got my Dragon Gold Medal on 7/26, so I have all the types medals. Fairy is my next least caught at 652 as of 7/31, for perspective. I would be fine with a “simulation” of the medals (example: catch 200 Fairy Types when you hit a certain level), if that catching was a part of the leveling. That would be fun, and the Go Fest requirements show that the game can count thousands and millions of occurrences. The research bar could move by 10s to show progress on a regular basis, but not be so micro each time to be barely noticeable. Losing the catch benefits would be unfair to those of us who have earned them.

The only other medals I can think of that currently exist that may be a fair gauge would be like the Ultra Hero Gold medal, which players need to defeat Giovanni 20 times. That would be a later level, as Giovanni is only found once a month. Other medals are either too random (Fisher), too easy (Scientist – besides my disdain for “evolve a Pokemon” tasks), too difficult a grind (the Raid based medals – Champion and Battle Legend at gold 1000 each Legendary and non-legendary) to be effective. A silver medal for the raids at one point would be fair. At least it’s a part of the game that is social and most people enjoy that is a good grind, but is not prohibitive.

Sticking to raids, now with the equalizer of true Remote Raid Passes, a raid based hurdle would be appropriate for levels. I would like 10-25 Legendary and 10-25 non-Legendary raids to be a hurdle. Wednesday night would take care of the Legendary raids, as well as some of the other days. Non-Legendary raids would be 4* and below, which I see about once a day from my own house. I am also a part of some cooperative agreements where we regularly send invites to each other for various raids (as long as we are on the game), so that helps. If any of my readers would like or need some help in this regard, please let me know. I know that there are players out there more rural than I am and those players can use all the help they can get, especially if this idea is implemented.

I believe that make a new Best Buddy from scratch from the day you get the next level is a fair and fun hurdle. The game shows the last time you spent time with a particular Pokemon, so the game knows you cannot use those Pokemon to clear the hurdle. This challenge is uniform for all players since everyone starts with 0 buddy hearts. This also helps to clear the Best Buddy badge series. I believe a lot of players are interested in making Best Buddies, I have a few going myself down the path at the same time. This checks all the boxes for me to be a fun level up quest.

Remember Evolve a Magikarp quest? How about one with Wailmer? Full disclosure, Wailmer is my favorite Pokemon, so I am a bit biased. I can always use another Wailord. However, this is not just my personal love for one of the largest Pokemon that leads me to this. First, I rarely see Wailmer in my travels. Maybe my inland area does not help me, I am not sure. Still, I play a lot by a lake and Wailmer is still relatively rare there too. I would like to see more Wailmers in my game travels. Second, Wailmer is one of the few true grind out evolution Pokemon, which will make this a true hurdle. The only other 400 candy evolution are Swablu and Meltan. More on those two later. Third, Wailmer has gotten absolutely no love from Niantic. No, being on the start screen is not love really, that is not game play. Major difference. Orange, Floppy, and Useless (or OFU, as I call Magikarp) was just was announced for August Community Day, which I know has annoyed a lot of players including me. The love for Orange, Floppy, and Useless is mind-boggling, especially in light of a recent Tweet from the Official Pokemon Go App Twitter Account which called Magikarp “virtually worthless in terms of both power and speed” (Frankly, I would have stopped after the word worthless, but that’s my opinion… if you disagree, feel free to comment as to why not.). During the recent Go Fest, OFU was a co-featured Pokemon during the Water Habitat time and I remember it being a nest at the lake area I play by in the last few months. I have not heard of a Wailmer nest (please let me know if you have). OFU has had too much spotlight. As to the others, I see Swablu at least somewhat regularly. Swablu is therefore a bit less of a true grind it out Pokemon. Also, Swablu will get some more love with the Ultra Unlock Week One: Dragon Week event and was a co-featured Pokemon during the Battle Habitat during Go Fest. Wailmer was conspicuous by its absence during the Water Habitat! As for Meltan, it has its own full storyline research quest already to get one! Yes, Melmetal cosst 400 candy, but unless you have Pokemon Let’s Go or know someone who has the game, you cannot get another one at this time (unless Niantic decides to give us a new one for those of us who spent the rare candies and/or ground out 20km/candy for Melmetal like I did), which makes this grind unreasonable for every player. At least Wailmer is available for all players without any special requirements and if you evolved a Wailord, you can easily evolve a second (or more).

Among the likely more controversial thoughts, would be an XP reset of some sort to get the higher levels as well. You keep the XP after 20 Million overall as a part of your activity, but it does not count toward Level 41-50. So if the XP goal to Level 41 is 7,500,000, everyone would need an additional 7,500,000 XP after the release of the ability to get to Level 41. I would imagine that a lot of Level 40 players would probably agree: had we known that there would be levels above 40, we would have played the XP game differently. I know I would have thrown more Lucky Eggs, I would have participated in the XP bonus days/hours more, I would have paid more attention to XP after Level 40, etc… Level 40 has been the ultimate goal since the beginning of the game, who would have ever thought that this would change.. I slowed down with the XP chase since I got to Level 40 since there was never any serious talk about higher levels. I understand that some people have always been interested in 100 Million XP and have pushed ahead in spite of no real benefit other than bragging rights and personal pride. I can understand the argument that those people who did play through should get the credit for the XP earned. After all, there should be other hurdles to cross when we get Level 41 and above. Also, the continuity would be that certain XP amounts equal certain levels, which does make a lot of sense. I believe that as long as there are other hurdles to clear besides, keeping a constant total XP scheme makes sense. It also gives players time to re-imagine their growth strategies if the Pokemon are allowed to power up to Level 50 along with the trainer. I know I have a bunch of Level 40 that I would want to figure out how to get powered up, as well as making decisions on certain Pokemon that are close to or at the various League Levels.

I admit I am excited for levels above 40 and look forward to seeing what the various requirements are besides straight XP and hope that some things mentioned here are possibly used, as well as other hurdles I never thought of that would contribute to the fun that is Pokemon Go!

I bought the Go Fest ticket and had certain reasonable expectations of what should happen. Day 1 had some good things and some not so good.

Saturday was up and down depending on the hour. Being East Coast USA, I started with Battle Hour, which is one I was looking forward to. I like fighting mons and the lineup was really good. Gible , Dratini, Machop (hoping for a shiny), Zangoose (new), Swablu (a favorite), Durant (Rare), Slakoth (working Slaking), and Grimer (I like Grimer!) were the highlights of a highly rated by me lineup. I did get a good number of them while trying to figure out the day in the first hour I was in. I was hoping it would have been later for me though. The first hour of any event is usually trying to figure out what the goals are for the day… especially since the dreaded “make a new friend” was one of the 8 goals of the day. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… make a new friend should never be a goal beyond the newbie quests. I did find a couple of new people early which eliminated this, but still, if I didn’t run into them it might have been an uphill climb to get that goal finished. Having to concentrate on other goals (especially one that is disagreeable) during the first hour other than going out and catching mons was not something that I was thrilled with. I know there has to be goals during the events, but there could have been something else less bothersome like Catch 20 Fighting Types and Catch 20 Friendship Hour mons instead. After all,THAT is what I was there for… to catch Pokemon. 3 of the other 4 hours had catch 20.

I also have to say, the 200 Great Balls for 1 Incense really busted my item count really good. I am normally around 3000 items at all times, and well… I was over early and I couldn’t spin (for presents and berries), so it was quite annoying losing other items for a good reward.

Next was Friendship hour, which was a complete waste. We just had a friendship based week leading into Go Fest, which turned me off from catching the second hour. There was no bonus for the hour, which lessened my desire to catch even more. We just saw many of these mons during the past week. The only ones I was interested in were Snorlax and Togetic really. On top of that there is no incentive to catch them. Then, there was a promise that if we got to a number of gifts given, we would get a bonus. I couldn’t send but a handful of gifts out, as that portion of the game was broken. That and when we as a world finally got the bonus, there was a whole 5 minutes of the bonus… where we couldn’t access the friendship screen! At least a bunch of them were water and between that and some Kyogre got me to a bunch of water since I was starting to think a bit about lunch. I will say though, I was disappointed that this wasn’t lunch a better hour for lunch though as I was completely underwhelmed by Friendship hour. Plus the very limited time to get the bonus, which was bug plagued left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Fire was good, I at least finished the Litwick to a Chandelure, which was bothering me for a while since I was not able to finish one during the Halloween event. I also saw at least one or two Charizards, which was a help to my collection and I like Ponyta (one of my most wanted shinies that I don’t have). At least first hour there was the 20 fire catches for the challenge.

Water didn’t do much for me, as Blastoise and Mudkip were the only ones I was interested in and I have been catching a lot of shadow Mudkip lately for candies. I quickly caught a handful of water types to get my 20 and went to lunch during the first tour. I was hoping grass was next (I didn’t know the order going in).

Grass was better than Fire… I could have used a good Leafeon, a shiny Tangela, I like Offish, I could use a good Ferroseed, I like Sunkern, and Alolan Exeggutor is a Dragon type, as I only had a silver Dragon badge coming into the weekend.

Second hour I went through one more Fighting… didn’t do so hot there either. I was disappointed, so I decided to go home during Friendship Hour 2. After all, the social part was broken during the first hour and the Pokemon lineup was poor. Just before I left, I did one last Alolan Exeggutor raid and somehow got a shiny. First shiny of the day.

I then played the rest of the day doing home spawns. I did get a shiny Hondour at home. My only wild spawned shiny for the entire day. Now, I expected Community Day Shiny Odds. On a decent Community Day, I get about 2-4 an hour… so I played at least 7-8 hours Saturday, so 20 or so shiny spawned Pokemon during the day would have been a decent haul. I heard about people getting 30 shinies day one. So to only get 1 wild spawn shiny is quite unacceptable. Especially since I paid a decent amount of money for this event. I was hoping for a better Day 2 shiny wise and getting some more of the Pokemon that I wanted and seeing less of the ones that I was not interested in.

Day 2 was pretty much more of the same. I do enjoy fighting the various Rockets, but there was just WAY too much going on at the same time. There were 4 really good top level raids going on. 3 of which were new for me, I only had Altered Giratina going in. Plus there were only three land based Bosses (Arlo, Cliff, Sierra) which was a bit concerning. I was expecting them to be a bit more plentiful without the need to use the balloons. Fortunately, there were the Bosses in balloons, and they were generally easier than normal. That was nice to at least get through those Bosses with very little trouble. I found Giovanni to be full strength, but at least I won that and got the shadow birds and Mewtwo. I did also get the missing 3 Drgaons during the day, though it took 4 or 5 Palkias to get my first, which was the worst I’ve ever done. I did some decent catching. I did get a 98% Giratina Original Form, which partially makes up for the 1 shiny wild (Qwillfish) during the day and 1 shiny raid (Timburr, which is great… but still). To have only 2 wild shinies and 2 raid shinies for a premium event when I played 14 hours the entire weekend. That is just unacceptable for a premium event like this. I would agree that it was nice seeing friends and it was good getting outside, but the overall day was mediocre for the pay. Hopefully the three weeks that were unlocked will make up for the low shiny count.

This week was too easy versus the others. To be honest, the only difficult part (for some) would have been earn a candy walking your buddy. If you used Wailmer (PUCKY TO THE RESCUE) or a similar 1k/candy Pokemon at that point, all you needed was to walk the 1 km. Maybe you had a buddy lined up for less than 1k of walking or you could have thrown a Poffin at your buddy if you were more than 1/2 way to a candy. I walked my Reshiram 1.2 km (or so) to get the candy since I was still working it for Best Buddy (which I did earlier this week).

The Elite Challenge was more time consuming than difficult. 30 gifts took 2 days since I don’t have a lot of stops at home. 30 berries was more of a pain to remember to use them than anything. 30 hearts was easy enough, just berry and time consuming.

At least there were no evolve or power up tasks!

All I am going to say is that this is Pokemon of the Day.

I hope your day went well!

This is a bit early, as the challenge is still ongoing as of the publishing of this post, but I finished everything Sunday during the Rocket Takeover. I found a few positive surprises during this event and am happy for them.

First and foremost, I was elated to find out that “Battle” meant Team Rocket and NOT PvP. With the huge push of PvP leading into this event, I was thinking that Niantic would force us to participate in the Battle League and PvP. As I have said before, I am a reluctant casual PvPer. I would have finished the battles to get us all one Mystic Trainer closer to Alolan Grimer in Go Fest, but I would not have enjoyed doing it. When the Rocket Balloon coincidentally came out just before this, which was a giant win for rural players, I was cautiously hopeful of this being a Rocket Battle event. At least this way everyone could have a very good chance of contributing their one in a million towards their team’s goal without the barely palatable (to me at least) PvP.

Secondly, I enjoyed seeking out the various Rocket Stops on Sunday afternoon. I liked playing the battles and fighting and training versus the various Team Rocket Grunts. (I call them Regular Rockets while playing and will use that moniker interchangeably.) I liked the addition of Jessi and James as a double trouble fight. I am able to play at a park and was able to find plenty of Regular Rockets to make Rocket Radars to complete the Bragging Rites Challenge. I enjoyed catching the various shadow Pokemons and even found a Dratini one at the end thanks to friends I was able to play with later in the three hour block.

Third, I was glad to get a Suicine. I didn’t get one of them the last time they were released to the general Pokemon public, so I am happy for that. I hope to get some more Pokedex holes filled soon.

Of course, I will have to be critical of some of the event. I will repeat this ad nauseam until this goes away or I stop playing Pokemon Go: I cannot stand the “Power up a Pokemon” and “Evolve a Pokemon” quests. I do these things on my time… and I don’t like being hurried into doing these things. Four of the nine mainline quests were one of these quests. Let me refine and make my characters stronger on my own pace! I also thought the Rocket Takeover was too short. 3 hours was not enough for me. I would have liked extra time since there were still lots of Regular Rockets left out in search for the Leaders so I could get more Radars. I enjoyed the hunt for Rockets.

I also noticed that Arlo is the new Sierra in terms of easy to defeat Rocket Leaders (at least for me). Used to be the other way around that Arlo had a difficult lineup and Sierra’s was the one to hunt for, besides wanting the Beldums. Cliff has always been difficult for me at least.

Let me know your thoughts.

I finished my Skill Challenge and put in towards Alomomola. My thoughts on this challenge as I saw it..

The main line skills were easy enough for most players to get through all 9 basic challenges. The 100 (or more depending on how quickly you got through the Nice and Great throws) Pokemon was easy enough with minimal efforts. The 15 different species in the final challenge was also fun since it made me think about the game and look for the different characters. Nice and even Great Throws are not too difficult for a player with some seasoning, though the flying dominant week did make it a bit more difficult. Use 5 Berries to help catch Pokemon is more of a pain to remember to use them since I don’t use berries often anymore outside of 5* Raids. One Excellent Throw was a good challenge and at least made completion somewhat difficult. I was determined to get this and did it… especially since I do not normally go for excellent throws.

Elite Challenge was very poorly rewarded. I know it’s for “bragging rights”, but to have lesser rewards for the Elite Challenge than the Mainline Challenges was poor. 100 Pokemon on the mainline for 1600 Stardust versus 5 red Poke Balls in the Elite Challenge is telling. 15 different species was worth 20 Great Balls on the main line versus 25 different species for only 5 Great Balls in the Elite Challenge? Even worse… 1 Excellent Throw for 10 Ultra Balls versus 50 Excellent Throws for only 5 Ultra Balls? At least make the Elite Challenge rewards progressive enough that it’s worth the effort. I did it for personal challenge, as I never concentrated on the Excellent Throws and was able to do it and surprised myself. The in game rewards were not enough of an incentive.

I hope that Team Valor (Red) got 1,000,000 through the Team Research Goal… Chansey is the only one I was interested in seeing from this round – it’s evolvable and it’s something I want to get a better one of. Chimecho is nice, but it’s not a favored one… and Alomomola is just… I didn’t finish my program for this character. Hopefully Niantic will give out the official results soon.

I’ve said it before on my own, I will say it here… the new Go Rocket Balloon is a WIN for the Rural Player. It’s a win for everyone as well. I am so glad for this and look forward to more positive developments that will help the all players, especially those in the more rural and rural/suburban areas. Thank you, Niantic for this. Keep up the good work.