Some Fans Are Upset About Pokemon Go Changing Raid Rewards

Yesterday, Pokemon Go made what many felt was a much needed tweak to the Raid rewards system. [...]

By Christian Hoffer

Yesterday, Pokemon Go made what many felt was a much needed tweak to the Raid rewards system. After beating Raid Bosses, players now earned Potions, Super Potions, Hyper Potions, and Max Potions in addition to the Revives, TMs, Rare Candies and Golden Razz Berries.

For many players who raided multiple times a day, Potions were a scarcity due to the number of Pokemon injured or knocked out during Raids. When players lose between 5-10 Pokemon in a single Legendary Raid, bringing them back to full strength can use up a lot of potions. So, by adding Potions to the Raid Rewards, Pokemon Go was in essence encouraging players to keep raiding by restocking their healing supplies in an efficient manner.

But not everyone is happy with the changes. A growing number of Pokemon Go players are now complaining about the tweaks, claiming that Potions made some of the other and more sought after Raid Rewards even harder to get.

Why Potions Aren't Necessarily a Good Raid Reward

The heart of the complaint comes from players who use Raids to get Golden Razz Berries and Rare Candies, both of which are some of the hardest to obtain items in the game. Both Golden Razz Berries and Rare Candies are seen as equalizers in their own way. Golden Razz Berries can help players of smaller teams (like Team Instinct) hold on to a gym for a longer period of time by completely replenishing Gym defenders' motivation meters with one berry.

Rare Candies, meanwhile, are the most efficient way of powering up Legendary Pokemon and evolving otherwise hard to obtain Pokemon. It's a lot easier to collect 40 or 50 Rare Candies as Raid Rewards than it is finding Mareep or Larvitar in some areas of the game.

While there's no hard evidence, some players claim that Potions are replacing Rare Candies and Golden Razz Berries as Raid Rewards, making those items harder to get and making the game arbitrarily harder for some players. If you hop onto Reddit, you'll see multiple threads about players complaining that they received up to 25 Potions, but not a single Rare Candy or Golden Razz Berry.

Research has shown that items from PokeStops and Gyms have a somewhat even distribution, but Raid Rewards seem to be much more random. We know that players get more items for beating harder Raids, but there's no clear indication that there's a set percentage about how Razz Berries or Rare Candies are distributed. The belief is, right now, that Pokemon Go uses RNG (random number generation) to determine Raid Rewards, which is why they differ so wildly from Raid to Raid.

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Is This a Problem That Needs Fixed?

So should Pokemon Go remove Potions as a Raid Reward? Absolutely not. For the majority of players, Potions are a good thing but that doesn't mean that some additional tweaks shouldn't be made to how items are given out after Raids.

Like PokeStops, Pokemon Go should set distribution ratios for various Raid Reward items to prevent players from getting flooded by one item. While it's great to get 20 Rare Candies after one Raid, it can be equally frustrating to get no Rare Candies and 30 Revives for multiple Raids in a row. By distributing items evenly, it removes some of the frustration and also gives players a base level of expectations for what they get after raids.

While Potions are a great addition to Raid Rewards, Pokemon Go needs to keep listening to its userbase and come up with a solution that makes everyone happy (or at least minimizes potential complaints.)

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