5 major Pokemon GO changes players were unhappy with

Pokemon GO has evolved and developed throughout its many years on the market. Much like every other online game, Niantic has made various changes and updates to the title's mechanics that a majority of the player base was not too fond of.

With many fans being vocal about their complaints on platforms like X and Reddit, a considerable amount of problematic changes to the game have been thoroughly documented. The following are five of the biggest adjustments to the game that many players find troublesome when enjoying Pokemon GO.

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Players hated these changes to Pokemon GO

1) Elite Raids

Elite Raids were changes made to the game's raid pools, excluding some creatures to special times and dates (Image via Niantic)

Elite Raids are a huge inconvenience that has taken away from the game's raid system, making high-value monsters locked behind a battle with artificially increased difficulty and an incredibly strict schedule. Elite Raids only appear during scheduled times, usually once a month.

These events feature creatures or Mega Evolutions, each with respective raid tiers normally. However, what sets these fights apart from Five-Star or Mega Raids is that they require players to be present at the location where the raid is taking place. It cannot be done remotely. These raids also only go live in one-hour bursts a few times during the day they are scheduled for, rather than consistently being live for a few hours.

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2) Avatar appearance changes

Niantic's Monster Hunter Now game has become comparably popular to the modern state of Pokemon GO, so Niantic changed the game's avatars to closely resemble that of the newer game (Image via Niantic)

Announced in the spring of 2024, Niantic showcased an overhaul in the player avatar customization settings that has been a staple of the title since its launch. While many players were initially hopeful about the changes that updates would bring, there was a noticeable downgrade in visual quality for the base models of the updated characters.

While these models are heavily customizable, they look drastically different from the anime-styled avatars the game used to have. This upset many players who spent a lot of their hard-earned Pokecoins on cosmetics for their characters. This move was most likely done to save money on making cosmetics for Pokemon GO and Monster Hunter Now, another Niantic title, making GO's avatars appear closer to those in Now.

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3) Community Day time limit

Community Days received an increase to its duration time during the 2020 Pandemic (Image via Niantic)

The 2020 Pandemic limited everyone's ability to travel, which greatly impacted location-focused geocaching games like Pokemon GO. To adapt to this, Niantic added many accessibility features that would help many players enjoy more of what the game has to offer from the comfort of their homes.

One of these features introduced was doubling the time limit of the monthly Community Days. These events feature an increase in spawn rates for some of the game's rarer monsters along with other benefits. However, this extended time limit would be short-lived, being revoked in April 2022.

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4) Shop price changes

Apple's increase in microtransaction prices led to Niantic opening their web store, as well as increasing the prices of Pokecoins in Pokemon GO (Image via The Pokemon Company)

Around the Fall of 2022, Apple announced that the company would be increasing the cost of microtransactions for games on its app store. This started a chain of events leading to prices for Pokecoins being increased on every platform Pokemon GO could be accessed. Later, Niantac launched its web store to make things easy for players.

Having to pay more for the same amount of in-game currency is likely to annoy the player base. Moreover, the new web store has also created a bit of confusion among the community because the web store is an external site, not integrated into the game itself. This makes it a rather cumbersome process for many.

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5) Remote Raid Nerfs

Various changes were made to the remote raiding feature following the lessened restrictions towards the end of the pandemic (Image via Niantic)

Remote Raiding is another feature introduced during the pandemic to allow players to still enjoy the game indoors. This feature allowed players to challenge raids from anywhere as long as they had a Remote Raid Pass and an invite to the battle from another player on their friend list.

However, following its rapid popularity, Niantic found itself with fewer location data to sell, flattening profits. This led to the feature getting nerfed, as well as the Elite and Shadow Raids requiring in-person attendance to participate. Players can now only take on three Remote Raids per day. The passes cost almost twice as much in the Pokemon GO store.