Being Too Harsh On The Pokemon We Catch

I did a raid the other day and caught a Mewtwo. In any other Pokemon game, that would be an amazing achievement. Heck, if I had done that with a small group of players, it also would have been an achievement. Really, catching a Mewtwo in general in Pokemon Go is an achievement because that bastard will jump up and down and bitchslap your Pokeballs away like nobody’s business. Yet when I checked the stats of my freshly caught Mewtwo, I was disappointed. It was another Mewtwo with somewhat mediocre stats. Another mediocre Mewtwo to throw on the pile.

I shouldn’t have been like that though. I should have been happy, really. I got a Mewtwo! A Pokemon everyone likes! And I just threw it on the pile with all the other Mewtwos I have. It’s not just me, everyone I play with is the same unless it’s a shiny or a new entry into the Pokedex. If it’s not got amazing stats, it’s an “angouri”, a cucumber, considered trash and/or useless. I don’t know how many people will instantly delete Pokemon they don’t want but I’m sure it’s a lot of people. I tend to keep my duplicate legendaries so I can trade them with my brother in the hopes of extra candy or them becoming lucky – just the other day we got lucky Mewtwos and his came out at 100% – but I don’t think many people have reliable trade partners to do this with.

And this happens to pretty much every Pokemon. I’ve noticed, from the people I play with, unless it’s got 85% in IVs or more, it’s considered useless. And that’s assuming the Pokemon we’re all looking at has any real use. The hundreds of Numels that seem to roam across here, most of them get caught and instantly deleted, without even checking the stats of them. Or worse, if it’s a Pokemon like Zigzagoon that is common but has a shiny available, people will only ever check to see if they’re shiny. The only exception to this is whenever there’s a stardust event, and people will just catch and delete everything en masse.

The harsh judging of every Pokemon you catch and hatch gets to the point where players assume that, unless a Pokemon is nearly perfect or is a shiny, it’s not worth having. And even shinies are somewhat pushing it because I know people will delete shinies if they have to and need the space, because they’re often too expensive to trade or give to other people.

It feels bad. These Pokemon are just being massacred and they don’t even get a moment of love. Love is basically why Mewtwo stopped being a megalomaniac and an evil genius and ended up being a morally decent person, so maybe we shouldn’t be so harsh.

But you HAVE to be harsh! Pokemon Go itself wants you to be harsh with everything you catch and to delete crappy Pokemon. There’s only so much backpack space available to you. Heck, with Generation 5 coming out, the starter 300 slots aren’t nearly enough to be able to get everything you want or even have a “living” Pokedex with one of each evolution stage. Even if you’re someone like me, who is pretty lenient on Pokemon I keep and delete (after all, I have so, so many Houndours and refuse to delete Lucky Pokemon and Shinies), you have no real choice. You HAVE to cull the herd on a regular basis just to be able to keep on catching things.

Well, it’s that or spend $88 to max out your Pokemon Storage to 2500, but no one wants to do that.