Why 6-Hour Community Days are Better in Almost Every Way

For reasons unknown, Niantic is trying to make everything in Pokemon GO back to pre-covid conditions. While smaller things like green research tasks and a daily Pokemon are cute and helpful, they’ve been taking away plenty of stuff. Players rallied together to keep the 80m diameter on interactions with Gyms and Pokestops, and Incense has been nuked from orbit. And now Niantic has focused on a new feature that they want to ruin: Community Days.

Originally Community Days were okay

Before all the Covid stuff, Community Days were mostly the same. Three hours, catching anything that isn’t nailed down, and evolve to get a special move. We’d also get a special side bonus, like double star dust or bonus experience. All this was fine and dandy, but Community Days were best experienced by walking around in populous areas. If you were in the middle of nowhere with no Pokestops or spawns, your only hope was to use an Incense, which, back then, only spawned 5-10 Pokemon. But you’d have to be walking around for the incense to trigger.

Covid Community Days could be played from home

When Covid popped up, Niantic were actually kinda quick to create anti-coronavirus features. The very first thing they did was to give everyone 30 free Incense, then buff it’s spawn rates. This meant you could get about 50-60 Pokemon from one single Incense. Most importantly though the buffed Incense meant people could play Pokemon GO at home. And with 50ish spawns, getting a shiny on a Community Day was much more likely. Sure, we couldn’t go outside and everything was locked down, but we could still have some fun.

Problem is, players have absolutely loved these new, longer Community Days. Even with Community Days with less excitable Pokemon, the fact that people had more time to play meant they were engaging more. Six hours is just more relaxing, allowing you to play at your own pace.

Time and space for way more players

The biggest thing about a 6 hour Community day is that you can better schedule your day. A during-Covid Community Day would last from 11am to 5pm. That’s plenty of time to schedule your day. A six hour event gives players options on how they want to spend their day. Of course, some people will try to do all six hours. But some people might only have time for an hour, whether it be at noon or towards the end of the day. This is especially important because the whole point of Community Days is to get people to go out and about, and a 6-hour event makes a chance of a meetup much easier.

“But what about hardcore players?”

If you’re worried that some players may overdo it, playing all 6 hours in one go, well, people are gonna play hardcore. And there are people right now still trying to complete that weird free GBL ticket that gives stardust for exponential wins. There are always hardcore players, but they don’t represent the majority of players at all.

Plus, it’s called a Community DAY. Not a Community three-hours-and-that’s-it. At least a 6 hour event means that you’re actually taking up a quarter of the day, rather than an eighth of a day.