The Change To Remote Passes Is Still Stupid
Back in March 2023, Niantic nerfed remote raid passes. They made remote raid passes a lot worse, nerfing them hugely while also making them more expensive. Now, a few months later, I can confirm that remote raid passes are still nerfed to heck. And I still think these nerfs are stupid.
The biggest problem is the price.
Simply put, Niantic nearly doubled the cost of raid passes. They used to cost the same as premium raid passes, and also had a bundle that cost 250 coins. Now remote raid passes cost 195 coins and the bundle of three costs 525 coins. Normal raid passes in comparison cost 100 coins and the bundle of three costs 250 coins. That means it takes four days to earn enough coins to buy one remote raid pass, compared to just two days to get a normal premium pass. And buying a bundle of three remote passes takes ELEVEN days, compared to five for a bundle of premium passes. The price really hampers not just free-to-play players but regular purchases of coins as well.
And to make matters worse, you can still only have 5 remote passes total. Which means you can’t buy a bundle if you already have three remote raid passes already. This was already the case before the remote raid passes were nerfed, but it’s still a tad annoying. Meanwhile we can have as many premium raid passes as we like.
No remote Shadow Raids
Another nerf to remote raid passes is that you can’t invite people remotely to shadow raids. Sure, you don’t need help to do a level 1 shadow raid, but legendary shadow raids are much more difficult to do, even if they have a double weakness like Articuno. Not everyone has a large community where they can easily beat the majority of raid bosses without having to recruit people. And no, having Campfire doesn’t really work, because most communities are already deeply entrenched in Facebook or Discord groups. Having Campfire too can split up player bases and communities as players struggle to decide what app they want to use.
Why is there a limit?
What I really don’t get though is why we have a limit on how many remote raids we can do in a day. Why can we only do five raids? I’ve seen the limit increased to 10 for a raid event, but even then, that’s a small number. Okay, granted, it stops whales from being whales, but it also stops Niantic from making money. People want to do raids, people are willing to spend money to do raids. But Niantic doesn’t seem to want that money. Instead, they want the money to come from purchasing premium raid passes, by forcing more and more raid events to be in-person only. They really want our location data and they really want to see crowds of players again, and are willing to lose money to make that happen.
Really, the only people who benefit from the nerfing of remote passes are spoofers. Because spoofers can just teleport to wherever a raid is and just use premium passes, saving themselves some money and completely ignoring the “only five remote raids a day” limit. Meanwhile the rest of us have to follow the rules.