Gigantamax Raid Day

Pokemon Go's been a fixture in my life for years. While I don't care to participate in PvP and by and large don't care to invest enough time in to minmaxing for PvE content, the game's kept me walking and engaging and frankly seeing lil' guys and numbers that go up has kept me doing the bare minimum of staying active through some bleak times.

So I had nothing else going on and there was a meetup about ten minutes away so I joined in on Gigantamax raid day.

Dynamax and Gigantamax are new to Pokemon Go, implemented by adding in new points scattered around the map with Dynamax raids. A thing I really like about this is that when you complete a raid, you can station one of your Pokemon there to provide an attack boost to everyone coming after you. And you get candies for the Pokemon you stationed there, which is good for the long-term investment that is buffing up your Dynamax and Gigantamax Pokemon. And it's cool that with enough people doing a challenging Dynamax raid and providing enough of an attack boost, I was finally able to successfully solo one.

It's a neutral observation that this is a bespoke, parallel improvement track along the main game. You can only use Dynamax Pokemon in Dynamax raids. That buffed up Charizard you've had forever does you no good in this arena. And on top of the candy costs to evolve a Pokemon, the candy costs to unlock and improve Dynamax moves is also quite steep. This really is a long-term process. Not to mention that you also need the Max Particles gathered from Dynamax spots and gained by walking... But you can only get 800 Max Particles per day, and once you go over 1000 you can't gather any more. Even if you theoretically had thousands of candies to spend on a Dynamax Pokemon, it will still take you days to unlock and improve their moves.

Oh and Max Particles are also what you spend on doing these raids in the first place! 800 out of your 1000 to do a Gigantamax raid!

So leading into the Gigantamax raid day we have this long-term investment into new Pokemon for this parallel PvE content. Oh also they add in the Galarian starters and then added in their Dynamax raids so evolving that Sobble just starts you off in a hole for having a Dynamax Inteleon ready to go.

Then there's the fact that outside of one-star raids, Dynamax battles are hard. I'm a long-playing but not min-maxing player, and if I'm careful of what I'm doing I can clear a normal three-star raid solo. May take almost the whole timer, but I can do most of them. A three-star Dynamax raid (Falinks) was almost impossible for me until I A) remembered that they added a new Pokemon I can use for a tank and B) saw a raid near to me with six stationed Pokemon providing a boost, and then I could barely get a Falinks.

Niantic “recommended” a minimum of ten people for the six-star Gigantamax raids and early reports were that even 20 wasn't enough. You'd need 30 or 40 players to do them reliably.

Is it because players just did not have the ability to prepare? Quite possibly. I have a lot of spare time on my hands and I'm even barely able to work on improving my Dynamax Pokemon.

Oh and remember the Max Particle limit? Yeah if you went to an official meetup sponsored by a community organizer you could get an extra 800 that didn't apply to the daily cap, but the idea of doing a raid day is you can do multiple raids. Here you are absolutely pressured into getting Max Particles from the in-game store if you want to keep participating. Which, fine, whatever. What the hell is the in-game currency for anyway. But the wholly artificial and incredibly constraining limit still chafes.

I had a great time because we had a large group and there wasn't a concern about if we could clear them and people who hadn't been able to evolve their Dynamax Pokemon could still participate and get stuff. And we also had people staying who were doing some extra raids for the people who hadn't caught the Gigantamax Pokemon because of fucking course the fact that you schlepped yourself out to this thing you can only do in-person does not show enough of a commitment to just get something, we have to create the possibility that someone could do all of these and not catch a Gigantamax Pokemon and get nothing for their day.

But I'm also keenly aware that I had a good time because I was in a large and motivated group and I pray that the people in the meetup chat who were planning to show up in the afternoon were successful and that all the Pokemon stationed made it easier for smaller groups to win. But they just as well could not have reached critical mass and honestly this whole “You don't have time to prepare, here's a mega challenge” thing kinda stinks a bit.

Oh also an Origin Forme Giratina popped up in the middle of our loop doing these Gigantamax raids and hahahahahaha 30 people just trampled that poor thing. Unprepared for the crushing it received.