Research Breakthroughs Completely Suck

Today, as I do every week, I completed my seven days of research and was given a Research Breakthroughy. Breakthroughs are a reward for playing regularly and doing research tasks. You get some supplies, some experience and an encounter with a Pokemon, which normally changes with every new month.

However, the quality of these rewards varies greatly. To the point of pointlessness.

The old days were best

Back in 2019, when research breakthroughs became a thing, the rewards from research breakthroughs were genuinely awesome. They’d mostly be a Legendary of some sort. And not just the Kanto legendary Birbs either (although they did appear a lot). We occasionally got the Legendary Beasts, the three legendary Regis, Ho-Oh and Lugia, even Kyogre and Groudon as potential rewards. They’d cycle on a weekly basis, as they do now, but damn, getting any Legendary was awesome.

Okay, sure, it was mostly just legendary Birbs and Doggos, but getting a Legendary every week by playing regularly was amazing.

Until they just… kinda stopped giving out Legendary Pokemon. We;’d still get cool stuff, but weekly Legendaries are no longer a thing, unless you get lucky in the GBL.

Some Pokemon are fine as breakthrough rewards

In 2020, after the Legendaries, we started to get nice Pokemon, particularly pseudo-legendary Pokemon. Gible is a great example of this – it’s a pseudo-legendary that spawns only rarely, and has a chance to be shiny. There were a few research breakthroughs like this, such as Larvitar and Deino, although we did also have some not-so-good Pokemon too. Flower Crown Eevee for example stuck around for way for too long.

We also had some odd choices, like Woobat in February 2020, which could be shiny.

But most of the time, the research breakthroughs were fine. Not amazing but also definitely not bad. Because nothing really beats a legendary Pokemon with a chance of being shiny. A shiny Deino however (long before its recent Community Day), was always a good thing.

Today’s research tasks genuinely suck

Ever since the Pandemic hit, research breakthroughs became worse and worse as time went on. We’d still get the odd pseudo-legendary, but the Pokemon chosen definitely got worse as time went on. Onix as a research breakthrough is okay, I guess, but it is a very common shiny Pokemon. But Medicham in September 2022 and Shedinja (again) in October 2022 are both not at all interesting. While this was the debut of shiny Shedinja, the shiny is so bad you can’t see it. Like Garchomp but about a mile worse.

Thing is, I wouldn’t mind some of these lesser picks, IF they had the chance to be shiny. Staryu as a breakthrough encounter is still pretty shit, but it would miles better than the Starmie that we got here in November 2022. Starmie has almost no use and can’t be shiny, while Staryu can. it seems weird to give out Starmie. Sure, they’re star-themed to go alongside the Cosmog quest, but a Staryu with a shiny chance is miles better than a Starmie with no shiny chance. And with probably bad stats for GBL, not even useful for that.

I’m not saying that all research breakthroughs are bad. But there have been some pretty poor ones in 2022, compared to previous years. Sure, they are trying to bolster research breakthroughs with free extra items (the odd incense or star piece) but you wouldn’t need to bolster the breakthroughs if they just had better rewards.

At the very least, make sure the breakthrough research gives you a chance to catch a shiny Pokemon…