On Skipping GOFest

GOFest is Pokemon GO’s biggest event of the year. It’s full of activities and new things. And for the last two years, GOFest has been available to everyone. Well, not completely. It’s a ticketed event, and buying a pass for GOFest unlocks new features. In 2021, I bought a ticket and had a great time. This year though, I just can’t be bothered. Why? Because there is too much to do.

Frankly, I am a tad tired of these events. Sure, GOFest is the biggest event of the year, but it’s also an event you need to really focus on. There is always so much to do, and it gets tiring. Between incense spawns and catching Pokemon, there’s also catch tasks, battles to do and generally some sort of research for a new Mythical Pokemon.

The thing is though, you can always get everything later on. GOFest is more of an early access pass in some ways. This GOFest, the new Mythical is Shaymin, the cute little green bush Pokemon. However, at some point, everyone gets given the quest to do. Buying a GOFest ticket just means getting Shaymin early. Sure, the GOFest research generally has better rewards and is easier, but, well, it’s just one Pokemon that will be available for all later on.

In fact, GOFest ticket holders don’t get that much stuff. It’s mostly rare spawns, a special research and a bunch of items, like free raid passes. However a lot of GOFest is available to free players as well. Sure, we miss out on the free raid passes, but we can still do raids, and we still get access to most of the pokemon in the event.

However, GOFest comes with a cost. To buy a ticket, it costs me €17. Funnily enough, the same as a ticket for Tennocon. It feels a  bit too expensive for me, even if it does come with a second event pass in August. Last year’s GOFest on the other hand only cost €5, and had pretty much the same amount of content. Spending more than triple the price for the same amount of content seems pretty silly to me. Sure, the ticket has a high chance at new shinies, but, well, that’s all just luck. I’m missing out on shiny Axew but that’s kinda it.

On top of all that, there is also a ton of stuff outside of GOFest. After GOFest, we have Ultra Unlocks, more events that are available to everyone. And, most likely, after the Ultra events, we also get a fossil event and probably another event with a Pikachu hat. If we were playing in 2020, all these events would be really nice. But 2021 and 2022 have been full of events. This makes GOFest not particularly special.

My final reason is that, well, I’ve been tricked before. I purchased the Johto pass at the start of the year and the research I got from it was kinda crap. My Apex legendaries were the worst, and the rewards were only okay, considering it was a paid-for ticketed event. I’m not falling for that trick again.

There are better things I can spend my time and money on.