"Tedious and unfriendly game design": Pokemon GO players believe the game is becoming more exclusionary over time

Pokemon GO has received strong criticism from its playerbase following changes made to seemingly make the game less accessible. In addition to increasing the cost of Remote Raid Passes, Niantic also limited the amount of remote raids that can be done per day, as well as releasing exclusive raids that can only be done in person.

User Foulmouth232 on the Pokemon GO subreddit has started a discussion among members of the community in response to Niantic's Gigantamax Lapras Raid Day, calling it "tedious and unfriendly game design." Debuting one of the hardest challenges in the game's history, they make the following post:

The difficulty doesn't come from the actual gameplay or mechanics, but from the tedious and unfriendly game design byu/Foulmouth232 inpokemongo

Pokemon GO's Gigantamax Max Battles have been a strong point of criticism due to their inflated difficulty, warranting a massive lobby capacity of 40. As player numbers dwindle in many locations in the West, these raids are borderline impossible for a large percentage of the community.

Comment byu/Foulmouth232 from discussion inpokemongo

Users like One_Subject1333 share their experiences with raiding in their areas. Many smaller towns across the globe have very few people who actively play Pokemon GO, which can make it hard to coordinate many of these large-scale raids.

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G-Max Battles are the worst examples of this issue, as many users are left out of catching these rare event Pokemon entirely. Since Max Battles are not technically raid Battles in Pokemon GO, they cannot be done with Remote Raid Passes, meaning there would be no easy way for Niantic to quickly add remote access for these encounters.

Many players express disinterest in the event as a whole thanks to its unrealistic lobby requirements (Image via Reddit)

Given the drastic difficulty of these raids, many players in smaller communities are avoiding these facets of content altogether due to them requiring raiding parties of many other trainers. Of course, this has led to even less engagement surrounding these types of raiding events.

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With such low engagement and a lack of enthusiasm for these creatures from a large part of the online playerbase, some users may be wondering why Niantic has such strict requirements and a high difficulty for these types of raids in the first place.

This is due to Niantic making a sizable portion of its profits off of collecting and selling location data. This is also a strong motive for many of the game's other changes, like the Remote Raid Pass and Incense nerfs. Shadow and Elite Raids also have this in-person requirement.

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Will Niantic fix Pokemon GO's Gigantamax Max Battles?

It is unlikely Niantic reworks the G-Max Battles unless engagement is at a minimum (Image via Niantic)

As of writing, there is no intention from Niantic on fixing the many problems that plague Gigantamax Battles in the mobile game. Given their reluctance to listen to the community on social media and messaging forums, there is only one course of action left to take.

If players are unhappy about the current state of Pokemon GO's Gigantamax Max Battles, the best thing they can do is to avoid participating in them. If enough players avoid participating in these fights, Niantic will undoubtedly notice the decrease in engagement and hopefully make the necessary fixes, rather than just making them more rare to capitalize on the fear of missing out.

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For more information on the game, check out the articles below:

• Ditto disguises
• Sierra counters
• Cliff counters
• Arlo counters
• Giovanni counters
• Team GO Rocket Grunts