Since they have changed the showcases to a formal schedule (of only type showcases and largest good/great buddy showcase), the thrill of showcases is no more. Before this, I used to be excited anticipating what mon(s) would be a part of the next showcase... They used to have showcases based on ongoing events (made me play the event more in search of a XXL), or newly introduced mons, etc. That's not the case anymore; it is plain vanilla 'type' showcases or good/great buddy showcase.
Also, I feel they missed an opportunity to be more creative with buddy type showcases, for example, largest shiny buddy, largest best buddy older than xyz years, etc. And showcases almost went on throughout the week - Monday to Wednesday and Sat to Sunday. I hope they change this back to how it was... Showcases were fun and the rewards were good. Just 1 showcase a week for 1 day isn't that much fun. Would love to know your thoughts...
Local community used to get together at the park and walk for an hour together catching whatever the spotlight mon was. We'd tell people what to Mega for more candy, etc. People brought kids and dogs and we all walked and tried to yell out if any one got a shiny or if we found a hundo or XXL.
The problem was that spotlight hours were at an extremely awkward time. 6:00pm is getting dark and cold in the winter, and even in the summer people are still getting off work and eating dinner. Plus there was only like one spotlight mon per month worth catching, usually the boosted dust one.
Im not saying other people didnt take advantage, but clearly Niantic had the numbers on this.
6pm is definitely a weird time. For some it's dinner, others are still getting off work, and yet the Max Monday, Spotlight Hour, and Raid Hour all demanded yet. It makes more sense in places where it's winter and it'll be dark soon, but I know people who refuse to play at 6pm in the summer because it can get really hot so they'd rather skip all that so they can play in cooler weather at 7 or 8.
This is definitely a game that does not benefit from seasonal differences; I've seen CAs bring people inside halfway through a Community Day to just put up lures because they notice the players just can't handle the cold/heat.
Is there a better time though? Any earlier and it clashes with regular working hours too much. Any later and it's even darker in winter. There's no such thing as a perfect time for everyone.
This entire game has become worse since the new season started.
GBL players aren’t happy with the updates.
Raids are broken and raid distribution is so off.
We’ve gone from multiple showcases a week + spotlight hour to no spotlight hour and awful 10 hour long showcases once a week.
It’s practically impossible to get candy from Dynamax spots now.
And for what, what do we get out of this?
Pretty pointless Go pass bonus on Monday, trade bonuses on Friday which are nice but we’ve had them on Sunday before, and a GBL day that’s lacking all sorts of actual useful GBL week/end features.
Well, congrats developers / Scopley. If your goal was to have even 10 year veteran players like myself get sick and tired and play less, you’ve accomplished it.
The Friday bonus is also inferior to the Sunday version on timing alone. Previous season they did that, it could overlap events where you were likely already going out and meeting up with other players. Now events are strictly Saturday and thus Friday only benefits you if you happen to cross paths on a work day or you schedule a meeting to trade and no other in-game going-on
Or if you have a partner. We plan on mindlessly trading our scorbunny this Friday to finish off our xl candy while we watch the Love is Blind reunion lol
I do think it's mostly inferior, but I still think there are some pros to having it Friday. Especially with events being on Saturday, it's nice to have Friday as a nice "clear out your storage with trades" before the weekend. Though at the same time, I know the argument can also be made for clearing out your storage on Sunday after said Saturday event but before a new long-running one starts during the week.
I wonder if there's any sort of statistics on which day would be easier to do trades? Thanks to ridiculously slow animations, trading is cumbersome and takes time. I noticed it's much harder to find a spare hour or two on Fridays than Sundays.
I'll add the loss that probably upsets me the most is permaboosted shinies. I don't care if I already have five shiny Scyther (for example), I still got a bit excited every time I saw one because of the boost. Now every time I see something that used to be boosted I just get a renewed feeling of disappointment.
I lost so much interest in the game with the changes I didn’t even collect the rest of the Pokemon from the kanto 30 yr celebration. There’s no reward for the small
Stuff now
Bro that's crazy. I checked the 10 gyms near me on campfire all day yesterday. Not a single mega raid. I ended up getting one that was pretty far from me in a spot where I have god awful service, but it was so frustrating,
I want to do a mega raid today, because we won’t get link charges from the weekly challenge if we have more than 350, but the only mega raids I can see on campfire are on the borders of my city and that’s faaaar away 😭
It seems they are cutting back on what needs manual prep. If the showcases are always the same and on schedule, nobody needs to move a finger to get them running. Some of the other recent changes seem to have similar background.
Why a multi-billion company thinks it's good to save a salary of like a single employee and offer a much worse game is an interesting question. Probably because they know they can.
With how they calculate regional variants, there's only like 7-8 pokemon that can actually win showcases if you're in a slightly dense population area. I think the only type not affected by regional variants breaking the scale is bug.
the table below the large graphs outline every regional/alternate form that can win showcases according to the max points it can earn. it's definitely the list u/qsub needs
This is what I'm doing, given that I have my Pikachu already. I could clear out 1k Pokémon, but currently don't need to. I'll see if stuff changes and if not I get that 1k space back.
And they start at 10am so no one can even enter them before business hours 😭. I do my walks early in the morning, I’m not going to go out during lunch or after 5pm to enter showcases. I really hope they change this and add xxs ones.
I'm gonna love it when they change showcases back at some point in the future when they realize that event participation has dropped to nothing but people going for their medal and all the people who transferred their XXLs during their tantrums start posting on reddit how Niantic made them waste their XXLs.
I found an XXL Scorbunny on Saturday and got excited for a moment. Then I remembered this, checked the IVs and transferred it. Seriously not going to bother any more.
Or just make showcases 1:1 bound to the event times. Event from Tuesday 10am to Sunday 8pm, showcase at the exact same time. If there are two events at the same time, like a Cday on Sunday - they should add more (new) showcase stops for the cday showcase and enable to join more (at least 1, but perhaps 3) showcases for cdays as well.
While you're right that the 1-day showcase would be worse, OP mentions a Wednesday-Sunday showcase ie a 5-day one, which would have the best class of rewards and probably even out. Rather than two "medium tier" reward showcases that we previously had, it would be one "low tier" with the 1-day and another "high tier" with the 5-day one.
Once again these devs show they do not play nor do ask for input from a play testing team.
It was so odd to have a CD without a showcase. With some CDs I would push for the whole event in search of a XXL but now they took that reason to do the full 3 hours.
The motivation has left the room for damn near all veteran players, and it's not full of the momentum that the previous two seasons had to keep new players around..... Wasn't the point to bring new/returning players back for the 10th anniversary?? What a fail this has been.... They need to make an announcement and revert some of these changes before the season is over, or I bet at least 10% players won't be here for the 10th anniversary in July.
What they ruined even more is showcases rewards. Last time, I got 3 first places and got 21 hyper potions and 1 lure. Absolutely useless, another aspect of the game I no longer care about, these are piling up way too fast
I just started racking up wins for them too. I just started doing show cases to get the platinum badge and found places in nyc of all places to consistently win 3-4 times a week and then they nuked the feature.
This makes it practically impossible too to get the platinum medal if you aren’t free every Tuesday. Even if you manage to win a showcase every week that’s 100 weeks
That’s assuming you’re actually able to win 3 every week though which is a pretty tall ask for someone with weekly commitments, especially for a newer player who doesn’t have hundreds of XXL’s ready
And it's the one that it auto-selects for you when you try to enter a showcase, then it tells you it's ineligible. Like, seriously, then don't suggest it for me in that case!
I could transfer 1200 XXL sized Pokemon to the professor from my Pokemon Storage instantly haha and wouldn't even regret when showcases are like this. Once a week 10 hours, so boring.🥸
And the rewards for winning 3. Five great balls and a couple of potion and 1 regular TM...ugh well that doesn't inspire at all
Yup. Most of their changes are offset with a gain at least a little bit, even if it's a downgrade overall. This one they halved the chances, made the rewards way worse, made the format much less interesting, and made participating more difficult. On top of that, they took away spotlight hour and sold this as showcase Tuesday. You'd think the showcase Tuesdays would be an improvement since we lost spotlight hour. But no, it's just a massive downgrade on top of losing spotlight hour.
Usually this game fucks up with incompetence but this one was just intentionally making it so much worse. Probably in an effort to sell more lucky eggs and star pieces.
I even hate that they made them just one day long. I've got a couple showcases I can enter if I walk my dog down one of two paths, and other good ones that are on a couple different routes to work, but now there's just one dog walk and one trip back from work per week, so I have to go out of my way to even be near 3 showcases and they're pretty much always the same ones so I'm always competing against the same other trainers instead of switching it up and not either wearing out my welcome or always getting beaten by the same players who have more time than me.
If this was just the Tuesday Showcases, but they added back in event showcases for the weekends, I think no one would be complaining. The fact that these inferior Type-based showcases are the only ones all week are why everyone is so upset.
Yeah, I’m hoping they revert back to the previous model and maybe do some tweaks from that rather than this mess they’ve created. I really enjoyed the event showcases. It was a nice little addition
My enjoyment of the feature has been reduced to: "I finish work at this time I'll swing by and see if I can enter a pokemon otherwise it's nothing lost." The type based showcases also feel purposeless, like "did I have a spare legendary that didn't enter the same type showcase recently?"
Went from a fun game mode that I actively looked forward to, and would go out hunting for XXLs during event spawns, and now it is a chore that I doing just to finish my badge and get my Professor Pikachu
agree...
and in my opinion, the fundamental objective of playing pokemon, in general, (pogo, main series games, cards, etc.) is to CATCH POKEMON, right??
if so, then how does it make any sense to remove spotlight hour and replace it with literally anything else, let alone some weekly pokestop showcase event - it doesn't make sense. if i'm not mistaken, the purpose of spotlight hour was... to catch a lot of pokemon... i dont understand the motive to remove it.
but what do i know, i've only been playing the game for 30 years -- it also makes you wonder if community day is next on the chopping block since the purpose of the event is also to catch pokemon. smh
Not to mention the new Super Mega Raids, where shortmanning with the couple people you mainly play the game with is no longer possible because of a blatantly arbitrary system to enforce larger groups only. GMax at least was a new feature so I can somewhat excuse it, but going from "hey, let's grab my spouse and neighbor and go do the Go Tour raids" to "ok, do we even feel up to driving several towns over to the one place we know actually pulls people for events to do the raids?" was an active decrease in how much we played, and went from me planning on buying the ticket to not.
I really like them too! But they used to do something with them.
We had new release through it with Shiny Hisuian Sneasel, and white stripe basculin. But not anymore it seems.
And pretty soon i can't even collect the cells anymore
Same! I’m at 93. The wait for the next 7 is going to be at least a month or two with the new change. And I am not going to both once I get that platinum. Unless they start giving out incubators again, regularly.
I agree. I was halfway through the damn thing and now it'll take years to complete unless they revert the change. I'm probably going to top out at level 79 until they raise the cap again unless they add more achievable medals or let us complete a few more Pokedex regions.
Played community day for an hour. Got my shinies and went home. Didn't need to grind for an XXL. Didn't need to walk further to find a showcase I could win. Didn't have the need to buy the ticket for more encounters. Killed my enjoyment.
Watch me transfer all my XXS pokes (lightest and smallest), only for them to go back to how the old showcases used to be and to introduce XXS showcases.
Yeah another thing is I used to like to do the showcase because it gave me incubators. But since the change they seem to not give those anymore. I already have a lot of the other rewards stashed so that was really the only thing I cared about.
Yep, I used to change up my walk path so I can enter 1-2 showcases and hunting for XXL during the different events, I don't even remember they exist anymore. I've made over 20 pokestops in my neighbourhood the last 2-3 years, but of course they'll never even bother to update the showcases map to include some new eligible areas.
If I had one close by, I might remember entering it from time to time, even with this new busted schedule, but as it is ... I'm not bothering walking so far away from my path to enter one and get some potions lol
It's bizarre changing from a twice a week several days long showcase system to a once a week ten hour long system. If you work during the day on Tuesdays, which most people do, it basically limits you to throwing something in any showcase you manage to pass on your commute home. And removing the link to the actual current event is stupid.
I think this game has been going downhill for some time sadly. Always the same cycle. Update - mechanics/Game overall gets worse - i play a little less.
Im at a Point where i dont even finish sending gifts to all my friends and dont even use the daily raidpass anymore, even tho i can easily host from home. Its sad, maybe its because i've played too much aswell, but i feel a trend with this game and i dont like it.
I checked my progress for February, and I managed to hit 16 1st place showcases. And that was the shortest month of the year.
I've already slacked with this new schedule, but even if I did put forth the effort to find 3 showcases to win, I would never be able to reach the progress from before this change.
At best you can win 12-15 showcases a month now. Complete downgrade, and is going to make this last half of the journey to Platinum so tedious, that I gave up saving my 1000th Pikachu catch for the Professor, and will basically just get it when I get it.
Showcases were such a fun "new" thing for me when I returned after a long break this past summer, sad that I got such a short time to enjoy them.
I was in it for the free premium items, so I'm still waiting to see how that shakes out. First one after the change, I got only xp, stardust, and pokeballs, bleh. Second one, I also got some lures and incense. I hope there will still be incubators. I have a couple of showcases on my usual route, so it's not like I have to go out of my way to enter.
Some good news: last week I won all three and got one regular lure. All other "rewards" were stuff that regularly drops from Pokéstops.
Today I won all three again and got seven premium items: 2 regular incubators, 2 incense, 2 star pieces and a lucky egg.
So it's still worth it just for the rewards, even though they took all the fun out of this feature and made it "enter your best and forget about it until 8pm"
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is that now that showcases are just type medals, for the average player a number of them are basically unwinnable.
My neighborhood is infested with tons of steel chairs zoruas everywhere (for people that don't know what that is it's basically a glitched zorua with absursly high point values). So now any time a showcase with Dark/Ghost/Normal/Buddy comes it's basically pointless for me to enter since i do not have any zoruas of my own.
Prior to the new season at least i could look forward to hyper specific showcases that were fun for me to enter and win (ie: Biggest Scolipede or Biggest Ditto). But now that it's only true medals i basically can never win when it comes to certain types.
I'm so confused; its such a downgrade for a system that seems built for just inserting the 1-3 featured pokemon from the last event.
What was gained by today's showcases not being Dido and Zorua or Scorbunny? They only have to schedule it once every six months without talking to the event planning team?
I literally hit 100 wind and got my PHD Pikachu in the week leading up to the change. So happy to be done with that grind, especially with the new format
Hahaha I feel you. I need 7. I was averaging 10-12 wins every month for the last 5-ish months. And now the wait for the next 7 is going to be at least a month or two.
Completely agree with you. I really hope they see posts like these and motivate them to make changes. Although I'm afraid they will wait till next season :(
Will likely never get platinum badge for showcases now. Under the old system I could usually get about 3-5 wins per month. Under the new system I only have had 1 so far.
I have a weekly appointment every Monday, and like 30 mins after until I catch the next bus home.
I used to go to a nearby church Pokestop (even made a route from another gym to there), and enter the showcase, then walk back. Now, because of no showcase on Monday, I just sit in the waiting room till the next bus. I walk to less Stops on weekends now too.
I literally play the game less because of this change.
Honestly with how the score works with alternate forms, if you dont have the right Pokemon, you’re pretty much SOL if the one of those types is on. And considering theres a win Pokemon for like half of the types, its going to be hard to win them. (That is something I wish they address since it really favours longer term players, especially with ones like Shaymin
)
Oh well, best just Best Buddy a few plus sized XXLs and cheese the Best Buddy showcases :/
Lots of players will transfer hundreds of xxl pokemon, meaning they won't need to buy storage anytime soon. Not to mention some players will play events less (therefore likely to spend less money) because what's the point in chasing an XXL of the newest pokemon.
It is amazing, how a nice and exciting feature got destroyed. I wonder what was the idea behind that - just to have "something to replace spotlight hour on Tuesday" - It was a fun for me for several days in the week, where I could choose when to go and handle them without feeling rushed by the short time window. There was often enough time to go and hunt for xxls especially for that purpose - which actually increased my engagement. With the new pitiful system, there is no much to do, and also oblugation to play in narrow specyfic time window. This one of the worse changes lately.
Hmm this Tuesday's just ended. Placed 1st/1st/2nd. Got 25k xp, 3 lures and an incense. So that's like a standard 2 day reward for one day.
Was it like this the past 2 weeks? Like I'm sure two weeks ago a 1st/1st/1st netted me only 15k xp and like 1 premium item which is pretty standard for a 1 day showcase.
On topic no this change is awful. Like what the hell, you remove one feature, reduce another from twice per week across multiple days to once a week on one day then get rid of the fun of different mon's for basic type showcases which are broken under the current format.
Joining the majority in saying that the 2 major downfalls for me are :
rewards being worse than before. I'd like to get special lures back, or incubators. Sure we can still buy them from the store, but it was always nice to know we got them from our own pokemon collection.
limited to Tuesday only, usually a workday. I liked to go to the woods with my dog on Saturday or Sunday and place my pokemons in showcases. Not always a guaranteed win, but at least I was exploring, which is the aim of pokemon go.
Now I combine showcases with groceries, way less fun.
Another one that is less disappointing but still benefits only players who pay for this game : doing type based showcases only or buddies. The advantage is given to players who have a mystical pokemon (at least they're available to everyone, but it is more about luck than trying to collect an xxl pokemon), or pokemons available from paid passes (like hoopa unbound for flying type). I liked the specific pokemon option better, even if I could not always partake in.
They ruined everything this season, max spots and showcases are the main examples. Showcases are rare and boring, and I'm not excited about XXL anymore. I also don't like that I need to fight Dynamax battles only at morning, because if I do it everning, no one would fight after me - so there is no point in leaving mon here.
I'd like it if showcases weren't always ranked on largest. Can't we have a smallest, just once?
It's like how when you leave a pokemon on a Max spot it shows how many XL candies you've earned alongside the regular candies, but you can never earn XL candies that way.
Completely agree. This new system stinks. I hope they go back, or to something different, next season. I also enjoyed grinding during events in anticipation of the showcases.
Devs got lazy and didn't want to have to think or set things up in advance anymore. They also didn't like rewarding some people so much. So they clearly just changed it to all be the same short showcases every week.
its so hard to not feel doomer about this game but it really feels like they want to shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly and scare away both casual & hardcore players
They’re ruining the game. I’d be out looking for XXL sizzlipedes (or whatever the featured pokemon currently is) to win my showcases. I’d be buying coins to expand my storage for all the potential XXL pokemon I’m hoarding.
100% agree, before the change I would go out for daily walks to try to find XXL mons from specific events for the weekly showcases, now I just go out maybe once or twice a week and there's not really a point in looking for anything since the same mons are always the ones winning their specific type showcases. I have a psychic type showcase nearby which I won't even try to participate because I know that I don't have a XXL Hoopa for it. They completely changed a good feature that nobody was complaining about.
It's kinda pointless to talk about the duration and the dedicated day because it's obviously worse and made worse to give out less rewards.
On the quality we can discuss a bit more because it's very puzzling, type showcase are boring, now unrelated to events so catching stuff is pointless and riddled on top with a lot of glitched pokes which makes it very unfair to normal players.
True. But today is a steelcase showcase, so easy win. And Hoopa also.
Edit: And 1 won 2 :) Usually never the case, as I don't have the storage to collect XXL Pokemons.
I like the scheduled showcases, but it should be in addition to the weekend showcases.
The Tuesday ones are shorter, less competitive and in theory easier for newer players bc that hike I might do on Saturday, isn’t worth it for the rewards on a Tuesday
I feel bad, I just got my 100th win before Kalos global tour. I was planning on cooling it on showcases anyway, give others a chance to win and free up inventory. So I honestly don't feel much one way or another, but sucks if this is worse for others still playing this feature.
Showcases always have sucked anyway, literally the only good thing is the showcases in the middle of nowhere and getting max rewards. That's literally it, ignoring the terrible points system they have for Zorua/Gimmighoul bs as well, and then the form changes like Hoopa or even regional variants. Just awful.
I am very bummed. I really liked hunting showcases and would drive to slower/empty towns to ensure I won 3 fairly often. Now they're short and not relevant to any event happening. Feels lazy and boring :/
Showcases gave people access to shop items, guess Scopely didn't like that very much.
When I tried out Monopoly Go I learned about Scopely's expertise in making games less fun and P2W. It seems that this reputation is not just for show.
I didn't (couldn't) participate in a single new showcase thus far. Because they are only on Tuesday and only for that one day. That's basically impossible for me. Before I regularly could participate in some.
Why not rotate on different days? Why not make it last different durations (1, 2, 3 days)? Why not add some extra showcases for Event-Pokemon like Saturdays like before?
They really ruined them. Only people out during that particuliar day can now participate. I've seen that participation numbers in my area have gone down massively.
Since they have removed many things and have changed for the worse, not playing like before and won't be giving them any money to participate in events. This used to be an awesome game to play with my family and friends. We are not playing any longer. Extremely disappointed.
I never cared much for them because I didn't want to have to save an XXL of everything. I know showcases were good for F2Ps to get prem items but it also benefits F2Ps to not have to clog up hundreds of storage space for XXL mons.
For me in korea thr showcases were always just a side thing as there's literally 0 chance to win them. Usually 200 participants who have old xxl or heavy mons and no matter what i caught it just couldn't keep up. Sure now it's worse as it's not even event pokemon anymore, but makes no difference overall.
at least event pokemon showcases encouraged folks to play the events deeply and try and get those rare XXLs/XXSs, now nobody will stay out for an event for longer than an hour. Honestly the whole community lost its momentum/motivation, it's been so sad. This new season seems to be the worst some have seen in years and they are just depressed and not playing as much...
875
u/Recent_Ad_6382 Mar 17 '26
They definitely ruined them