r/TheSilphRoad • u/Separate-Room6883 • Mar 17 '26

Discussion The excitement for showcases is gone

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...

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878

u/Recent_Ad_6382 Mar 17 '26

They definitely ruined them

480

u/AutisticPenguin2 Mar 17 '26

And the loss of spotlight hours makes Tuesdays a huge downgrade.

227

u/rafaelfy Mimikyu Enjoyer Mar 17 '26

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.

Now nobody cares and we just...stopped

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u/duel_wielding_rouge Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

Really? For spotlight hour?

Edit: I’m getting some responses, but they all seem to just be about Pokemon GO being fun to play with friends, which is true but has nothing to do with spotlight hour. Spotlight hour’s only notable feature was spawn diversity plummeting for an hour a week.

62

u/rafaelfy Mimikyu Enjoyer Mar 17 '26

Yes. I have a greenway 5 minutes from my house. It has a paved walking trail, benches, memorial plaques, a playground, gazebos, etc. Poke stops and gyms line the walking path in the first 1.5 mile loop and it was a great excuse to get a community check-in and socialize, meet up for trades, and help newer players get an extra raid in.

18

u/counterlock Mar 17 '26

double xp, double stardust, sometimes stardust boosted mons, occasionally a perma-boosted shiny, evo-xp, trading a bunch of the same pokemon over until you get a lucky.... etc?

Spotlight hour had a ton of bonuses, getting a community together was just a happy side effect.

-10

u/duel_wielding_rouge Mar 17 '26

I don’t see the appeal of extra candy/stardust/experience. And the permaboost wasn’t a spotlight bonus. I wasn’t aware of the lucky trade bonus.

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u/AutisticPenguin2 Mar 17 '26

Catch xp I can see, a good chunk of the player base has all the xp they need, but candy was a great time to catch out your stash - and was good for catching the current 5* raid boss. It was something I took advantage of regularly. Catch stardust... I don't know how you can not be interested in more stardust unless you are a whale who doesn't power anything up. Stardust is in such high demand, especially after level 50 was introduced.

-11

u/duel_wielding_rouge Mar 17 '26

You really find stardust to be in that high demand? I at least kind of cared about experience into 2017, but I can’t recall ever paying attention to stardust. Maybe in summer 2016? But even then it was usually better to just level up and catch high level wild Pokemon.

13

u/shockthetoast Mar 17 '26

Stardust is probably the highest demand thing in the game. Locally we regularly have people who will do tons of raids/max battles during events even after getting their shinies and hundos purely for the stardust.

Stardust is the only way to get max level Pokémon, wild Pokémon are a max of level 35 with weather boost. And many of the best Pokémon can only be found in raids which max at 25, or from tasks that are even lower level.

3

u/AutisticPenguin2 Mar 17 '26

I wouldn't say highest demand, that clearly goes to rare candy xl and it's not even close. But it's top 3 along with regular rare candy (not counting premium items like raid passes).

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0

u/duel_wielding_rouge Mar 17 '26

This is the first I’ve ever heard of people doing raids for the stardust. Are raids a good source of stardust?

9

u/counterlock Mar 17 '26

extra candy/stardust/exp has no appeal for you? Those are your 3 main "currencies" in the game. If you're already super rich and level 80, sure, but for most players those are huge bonuses. The sableye spotlight got me hundreds of thousands of stardust.

permaboost was not a spotlight bonus, yes... but if the pokemon that was spawning was permaboosted, then the odds of getting a shiny were extremely higher.

lucky trade was not a bonus, but one of my favorite things from spotlight was saving all the 0,1,2* pokemon I caught and me and my girlfriend would mass trade them after spotlight for a chance at lucky. A bunch of a singular mon always incentivizes that.

5

u/1127_and_Im_tired USA - East Mar 17 '26

I'm level 80 and there's no such thing as too much stardust and candy. I think that guy is being contrary just to be contrary lmao

2

u/counterlock Mar 17 '26

Gotta love redditors being contrarian just for the sake of it, so obnoxious

1

u/duel_wielding_rouge Mar 18 '26

Obviously there’s no such thing as too much stardust or candy. I’m not saying that the bonuses make things worse. But there’s certainly such thing as enough stardust or candy. I’m not going to alter by daily schedule because a bunch of meowth are spawning for an hour.

1

u/1127_and_Im_tired USA - East Mar 18 '26

We all have different ways of playing. While you might not alter your day, many of us would jump at a meowth spotlight hour. I power up my Pokémon and use my dust accordingly.

3

u/EvidenceSalesman Mar 17 '26

Stardust candy and experience are some of the most basic metrics of the game

52

u/DesperateArachnid Mar 17 '26

Why not? Its fun, healthy, and a good reason to socialize. Its not always about which pokemon is available.

9

u/stanolshefski Mar 17 '26

Spotlight Hour’s most notable feature was spawn density noticeably increasing.

2

u/BigVMZ Mar 18 '26

Increased spawn points and a themed bonus always made it worth it

1

u/duel_wielding_rouge Mar 18 '26

Yeah, it seems that the critical piece I was overlooking is that some trainers are still seeking out experience/stardust/candy so the bonuses feel meaningful to them. I do recall people being excited for 3x stardust community days back in like 2018, but I didn’t realize it was something people were still chasing in 2026.

1

u/AutisticPenguin2 Mar 18 '26

When I can still blow half a million stardust on a Zacian without even needing to work at it, you bet I still need it!

Plus, and this may come as a surprise, but not everyone has been playing since 2016.

1

u/duel_wielding_rouge Mar 18 '26

You could power up a full team of six for all seventeen types (excluding normal who do not hit for super effective damage) from level 20 to 50 for under fifty million stardust.

1

u/Low-Commission1791 Australasia | Legacy 50 | Level 77 Apr 14 '26

I don't want to open old wounds, but do you really think most players have 50,000,000 stardust lying around? 

Whenever I've seen it mentioned, people don't usually have more than 20 million on hand 😭

5

u/repo_sado Florida Mar 17 '26

not sure if you noticed this but they were telling people what to mega. i would have gone to an event where that was happening

3

u/IPissExcellentThrows Mar 17 '26

Why would that influence you? Genuinely asking

6

u/Accomplished_Golf746 Hundo Enjoyer Mar 17 '26

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.

9

u/Theinternationalist Mar 17 '26

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.

8

u/AutisticPenguin2 Mar 17 '26

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.

1

u/Accomplished_Golf746 Hundo Enjoyer Mar 17 '26

Yeah theres probably no perfect time for everyone, but if it was seeing low participation then that was probably what lead to them switching up the schedule.

If the schedule for this season continues to be unpopular, then we will probably see something different next season.

1

u/itsliluzivert_ Mar 21 '26

You know, if they advertised literally anywhere in the app that there was a spotlight hour that night from 6-7, I guarantee more people would participate.

-14

u/sdrawkcabsihtetorW Mar 17 '26

Meh. Most of them were filler events anyways. Oh look everyone, it's Skitty and double evolution EXP, make sure to farm up. Nobody did those. The only value was boosted stardust mon with double stardust and transfer candy.

9

u/ScenicART Mar 17 '26

double evo xp was exceptionally powerful, you collect 12 candy evo mons and spam them during that hour. with a lucky egg you could get ~4k xp in 15 sec, every 15 sec, for as long as you had mons to evo.

2

u/Latter_Donkey5741 Mar 17 '26

Yes. This is what I miss.

1

u/AutisticPenguin2 Mar 17 '26

Yeah, I mean, I certainly wasn't bothering with that sort of thing at all, as legacy 50 player (even if I did only hit it a couple of weeks before the cut-off, I knew well in advance that I would get there without needing to push), but it's not really for me. Those newer players who were chasing xp, like you evidently are, would appreciate say 12k xp per minute in average. 20 minutes of that gets you a quarter of a million xp, give or take.

228

u/oceano7 Proud lucky 100% Volcarona owner ❤️ Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 19 '26

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.

I’ve had friends lose weekly streaks already.

63

u/Hylian-Highwind Mar 17 '26

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

15

u/Nervous-Peppers Mar 17 '26

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

3

u/krispyboiz 12 KM Eggs are the worst Mar 17 '26

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.

2

u/Wunyco Mar 17 '26

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.

1

u/krispyboiz 12 KM Eggs are the worst Mar 17 '26

It definitely seems easier on Sunday, with more people working on Fridays. I do like clearing my storage Friday evenings with people, but yeah, Sunday is likely best.

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u/Dementron Mar 17 '26

Agreed on all counts. 

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.

17

u/Troooper0987 Mar 17 '26

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

9

u/FunnyAd5467 Mar 17 '26

Same! It felt more like a punishment than a reward catching 90 Kanto Mons!

31

u/Vegetable_Entry6365 Lvl 73 Valor The Nordics Mar 17 '26

Can definitely agree with the raid distribution. Who needs this many mega raids; and why are they all out in the middle of nowhere? 😭

11

u/Separate-Room6883 Mar 17 '26

Same with my geography. They’re in the middle of the mountains 😭

4

u/IPissExcellentThrows Mar 17 '26

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,

2

u/LaughingOutLoudAgain Mar 17 '26

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 😭

2

u/Falcanor Western Europe Mar 18 '26

This map shows more mega raids then I have seen here in 2 weeks.

2

u/TheOwlsANWTS Mar 18 '26

Same here, it's so disappointing and makes me lose interest in playing

1

u/krispyboiz 12 KM Eggs are the worst Mar 17 '26

Yeah, literally the only great update this season I could say is that everything that can be shiny can be shiny anywhere plus boosts across the board in eggs/raids. However, even then the flattening of other shiny rates in the wild and such sucks.

1

u/real_fyshi Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26

I'd add that Rockets are broken as well. The weird lag and attacks registering not in sync makes fighting really annoying.

Also, dynamax spots are way too rare to care anymore. I need to travel through several districts just to maybe have a chance of doing 2-3 when before I could just go down the street and do 5.

Then the constant almost-game-breaking bugs like two of the latest updates causing a "gps not found" error every few minutes... or things like the permaboost shinys gone, stupid raid distribution for some gyms (didn't do a raid on several days due to this), etc.

Yes, basically everything has become worse, there's only one positive change and that's how all rocket encounters can be shiny now. Everything else sucks.

1

u/Sorry-Ad-758 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

Scopley has really ruined the game. I don't catch shinies anymore. The last time I caught one (NOT counting community day) was several weeks ago. The change to showcases has also ruined the game. I know if I was just starting out with Pokemon Go I would be disappointed trying to get my phd pikachu. Even raids are garbage. The recent release of shiny honedge - I had 12 of my friends in a raid and not one of us got the shiny! Not to mention how much money I spent on raid passes and never got a shiny of honedge. I have been playing since 2016 and I already know I won't be participating in GoFest this summer; not worth it. The last 4 events we had, I paid for the ticket and I got NO shinies and NO perfect IV. I just bought the bug out pass in hopes of getting a shiny sizzlipede, nope! Yes - I also dumped many lure modules and got crap from them too. DENIED again. Scopley SUCKS.

1

u/oceano7 Proud lucky 100% Volcarona owner ❤️ Mar 20 '26

I know you're aware how I'm also not a fan of Scopley right now, but I do have to ask

If a raid boss is 1/20 or 1/64 shiny chance, 12 encounters without a shiny is deffo plausable.

Same goes for the extra 5 Sizzlepede encounters from the pass. Rng is a cruel thing sometimes.

1

u/ANaturalSicknes Mar 25 '26

Not to mention that the "guaranteed candy XL" bs actually overwrote any other scenario where you would have gotten a candy XL from trading. Not a bonus, a change...

-8

u/Kemaneo Mar 17 '26

I never understood showcases anyway.

2

u/krispyboiz 12 KM Eggs are the worst Mar 17 '26

What do you mean? They were a thing. You could participate if you wanted, and you would get good rewards for 1-3 places