Remote Raid Passes are the Future Now
Back when people actually cared about COVID and remained indoors, Niantic, the makers of Pokemon GO, released Remote Raid Passes. These passes allowed you to fight in raids at a distance, rather than having to be within 40m of a gym. As the majority of people couldn’t go outside, a big chunk of Pokemon GO was now inaccessible. Remote Raid Passes made gyms accessible again. As an added bonus, you could get 3 passes for 250 coins, saving yourself 50 coins for other things.
Basically, pretty much everyone liked Remote Raid Passes. Not only did they mean you can play safely at home, but for rural players, this was finally a chance to catch Legendaries, by being invited to raids from across the world.
That being said, the release wasn’t exactly perfect. As with most new things in video games, there were bugs. Not many, but enough for people to go to support and ask for their raid passes back. Wasn’t nearly as bad as PvP, which was introduced not long afterwards, but it was still annoying. Most of the bugs though are gone, and remote raids generally go down without a hitch.
However, Niantic didn’t seem too pleased about how successful Remote Raid Passes have been. There have been several major pushes to try and get people into doing raids in person again. The first being raising the price of Remote Raid Passes. The three-pack now costs 300 coins, and you don’t save any money at all. At first, Niantic wanted to nerf Remote Raid Passes, but they soon changed their minds when they realized how popular remote raiding is. Well, they didn’t change their minds, but they still raked in plenty of money.
Bribing us to be there in person.
Since then, Niantic has had to try some new tactics. One of the first things they tried were after Community Days, having 4-star raids that can only be done in person. The reward for beating them would be a bunch of Community Day Pokemon, with the same chances of shinies. This tactic was only partially successful, because most people are already done after three hours, and the first few Community Days they tried this on had a myriad of bugs, like not spawning any Pokemon at all.
The new Elite Raids, extra hard raids with a 24 hour countdown timer, are another attempt at luring people into doing raids in person. Just like the CD raids, these Elite Raids can only be done in person, and are slightly tougher than normal. If you beat the raid, then all the spawns around the gym have a chance to spawn rare Pokemon, including Legendary Birds. We’ve only had one of these events so far, but the reactions are rather mixed.
Faded Away
Thing is, I know what Niantic want. They want to go back to the early days where people gathered in big groups and do stuff together. Giant social gatherings, with people filling gyms with ease and everyone getting to know each other. But those days are gone. We are still living in a pandemic, even if everyone else seems to have forgotten. Big social meetups are going to be rare in these COVID-laced times.
And no matter what, people will always prefer Remote Raid Passes. After all, it makes life so much easier, and opens up so many more raids for the average player. They are simply too convenient, and there’s no way that people will completely return to normal raid passes. Even if Niantic keeps on throwing more benefits to raiding in person, even if they enable the “remote players do less damage” bollocks, there’s no way that they can beat the pure convenience of a Remote Raid Pass.