CONCEPT - Potential Solution to Pokemon GO's Biggest Problem (Adding onto the lost Shiny Groudon post from earlier today)
Tell me if this sounds familiar to you:
"My game crashed and my Shiny Galar Bird ran away 😢" or more recently "A server outage caused my Shiny Groudon encounter to be gone"
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/1vqt2q5/support_admitted_server_crash_stole_my_shiny/
Some people might get a chuckle out of those posts, some find them actively annoying. Some may even say "It's just a game, suck it up bro" or "Posts like these aren't going to do anything."
In regards to both the above post & my own, no, it probably won't. But I'd like to put this idea out there, because not only do we know for a fact someone at Niantic/Scopely has an eye on this sub-reddit, but... I find making concepts like these fun. Even if they go ignored, it's fun to think up, plan & make it.
I've divided it up into sections to make it easier to read through, cuz I do love a good ramble.
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THE PROBLEM
Some of you may sympathise with those who have lost rare Pokemon to bugs or server issues though. It's kind of a gut punch to lose out on something you've been actively hunting for on your walk or day out. And to lose it something other than a skill issue, something totally beyond your control, makes you simply feel like you've been robbed.
It's a very prevalent issue with this game that seems to have no planned solution in sight, and that's kind of baffling. Rare Pokemon are THE main draw to the game for many players, so for it to be this easy to lose them due to game or server issues just boggles the mind. You'd think they'd have something for it in place.
But I'm rambling, so I'll just explain my concept.
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THE SOLUTION
Just add a button to re-encounter them.
The idea is this: Upon running away from, or exiting out of the app, or even during some sort of server issue, the game would as a backup save ONLY your **MOST RECENT "**Special Encounter" as I'm calling them. This would include your latest Shiny, Legendary/Mythical or 4* Pokemon from either Wild, Raid or Max Encounters. For example, the Shiny Groudon from the post I linked, or a wild Galarian Zapdos you've found.
I could end the post there, but some may point out the holes in this idea, but I feel like they're all fairly easy points to argue against
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COMBATTING ISSUES WITH THIS IDEA
"This is easily exploitable. I could just save all my Shiny & Legendary encounters I find for later events & get more Candies"
Firstly, my idea is for this to work similarly to how both Party Play & Weekly Challenges work, where it saves your most recent encounter, warns you when you're about to run away from it, and overwrites it if you encounter a new Pokemon via them.
Secondly to combat the "save for later events" thing, I'd think Nia/Sco could easily just disable any event bonuses (or Mega Evolution bonuses if they felt like it) for this to work with no way for players to "game the system" (even though they kind of already can do this with Research encounters)
"This isn't possible, Nia/Sco wouldn't be able to add something like this"
They very easily could. I'm not saying as someone who knows the internals of the game but like... this ALREADY exists in Pokemon GO in a number of ways. Field Research & GO Pass encounters are saved, and as said previously both Party Play & Weekly Challenges are also saved. The biggest issue I can think is they'd have to implement a system that keeps track of how many Premier Balls the player had last time they encountered a Raid/Max Pokemon which... seems like a non-issue honestly.
"This can't be done because of TPC mandates or lore reasons"
This one I don't know for sure, it's just speculation on my part. But if it really is an issue, that sounds like a problem with TPC's mindset. Obviously not something we can do anything about, but worth just throwing it out there. As for lore reasons, knowing we can all get various Mythicals or Legendary encounters, then run away & re-encounter them as many times as we wish, does rule out lore issues (if anyone even considered that an issue)
"Nia/Sco don't owe you your Raid encounter back, it's a Bonus Challenge. The real reward is the Raid items"
This one's just a personal gripe I have, particularly with the big dogs themselves. Yes, this is true that the Raid items are essentially outlined in the TOS as the main reward of Raids.
But players do not see it this way. I'm pretty sure they understand this, and have elected to do nothing about it for some bizarre reason. And I just cannot figure out why, other than "because they can."
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WHY SHOULD THEY CARE?
I'll keep this part short, there's really no reason they need to. Game will do well regardless for the foreseeable future.
Regardless, this is this a REALLY embarrassing issue to have with your game about catching Pokemon: that you can't catch the Pokemon due to an error. It defeats a major point of the game entirely, takes the fun out of the game and leaves affected players feeling somewhat deflated. No, it's not the end of the world, but it's still just embarrassing.
Adding a function like this would not only restore AN ABSOLUTE TON, LIKE JUST TONS of good faith, something this company is in desperate need of (when multiple people of all ages & walks of life, in real life, talk about the game the same way people do on here you know there's a problem) but would make this game just feel a little more polished & authentic.
And, bonus, it'd stop those posts about people reporting losing rare mons, or at least make redirecting them to this "Special Encounter" screen easier and save them the stress. It's just a win on all fronts, positivity all around.
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IN CLOSING
Thank you for reading this big bunch of nothing that I took too long to write up. Felt it needed to be said, and not enough people are suggesting this.
For those curious what I used to make this, I threw it together using screenshots & and a copy of Affinity Designer my friend nicked off our college computers somehow. Don't ask how it still works, I'm just glad it does.
Yea, I know it's not the toughest concept ever to make, literally some shape, gradient & text tools. And yes, I know they wouldn't have it say "RE-ENCOUNTER REWARD" in big text, instead probably just the usual "CLAIM REWARD", I just wanted to do it like that.
If you do see any further holes in my idea, or if I've overlooked anything, feel free to let me know... in a nice way please ❤️
