The Shadow Mewtwo Event Should Have Been A Proper Raid Event

On June 27th and 28th 2023, we had an event featuring Shadow Mewtwo in 5-star raids. The event was alright, but it could have been so much better. Here’s how I would have done the event. But first, let’s quickly discuss the actual event.

Just a normal day

There were no special boosts or anything for the weekend. It was part of the Team Rocket takeover event that introduced shadow raids in general. This would have been fine, but the raid pool was filled with not just Mewtwo, but the 1-star and 3-star shadow raids as well. At least, that was the case on the Saturday. On the Sunday, we didn’t just have shadow raids, but we had normal raids as well. Regigigas was appearing in non-shadow raids for some reason. This meant that finding a Mewtwo raid was actually quite tricky.

It wasn’t very good for my group. We did have plenty of gyms, but the Mewtwo raids were very sporadic. Our best bet was to drive around, and we couldn’t even use Campfire because the button had disappeared for all of us. We had to drive to find the raids, because our central hub of gyms showed absolutely no Mewtwo raids at all.

Basically, there were not enough raids

However, if this had been a proper raid day, with every gym being a Mewtwo raid, this event would have been the best one this year. Normally, in a raid day, pretty much every single gym has a raid on it, meaning you can do way, way more raids. Even if Shadow Mewtwo’s day didn’t come with the standard 5 free raid passes, people still would have done the raids, and they would have probably spent more money on raid passes in general.

More importantly, we would have been able to meet up and do more raids as a bigger group. Big groups of players is exactly what Niantic is looking for, so it would be a win for everyone. Us players get easier Mewtwos from working together and Niantic gets the community spirit and walking data they crave.

Also, we would have been able to walk to each raid. Which is far, far better than having to drive back and forth between raids in weird places. It’s not Pokemon Drive for a reason, but that’s what we had to do if we wanted to do raids.

Most of the Mewtwos we caught were shit though.

Another downside of the Mewtwo raids was that the lowest IVs were 6/6/6. Normal raids have 10/10/10 as their lowest possible stats, but most of our Mewtwos didn’t even reach 3-star status, let alone 4-star. I can understand Niantic not wanting easy purified hundos, but I think a compromise of 8/8/8 would have been nicer. Especially since these raids required more coordination than the standard Team Rocket special research.

At the end of the event though, we all got tired of driving around and decided to call it a day. We didn’t do as many raids as I wanted on the Saturday, and on the Sunday, we barely played at all, doing 2 raids and then giving up because no other Mewtwos spawned nearby. If this had been a proper raid day, we would have done way more raids and bought more raid passes.

Oh well.