The Problem With Dragon Events in Pokemon GO

So coming up this week is a Lunar New Year event in Pokemon GO. This year, 2024, is the year of the dragon. And, like every year, Pokemon GO has set up an event where the zodiac animal of choice is the one that’s spawning. Except, well, this year, we’re getting a lot of, well, not dragons.

Actually, that being said, there are at least three dragons spawning in this event. Dratini ALWAYS seems to spawn in dragon events, but we’re also getting Noibat and Jangmo-o. The other Pokemon though, which will almost certainly be more common, are Magikarp, Shuckle, Fennekin and Skrelp, none of which are dragon types, and only one of which evolves into a dragon type, Dragalgae. While it’s nice to finally be able to hunt for a shiny Skrelp outside of 12km eggs (the worst way to shiny hunt), the rest of these Pokemon are very obviously out of place. Okay, sure, Magikarp is a Lunar New Year staple, what with it being a lucky red fish, but Shuckle and Fennekin don’t make much sense. Fennekin isn’t even red, we could have had Charmander in its place, even if Charizard isn’t a dragon type either.

To be fair, there are more dragons in this event, but they’re all locked behind raids and research. The new release, Drampa, is locked behind 3-star raids, although it is being released with its shiny straight away. Druddigon and Turtonator, two fellow dragon types, are also locked behind raids, and Goomy and Deino will be appearing alongside Dratini in 1-star raids. So at least there are some dragons to be had, if you’re willing to spend money on passes.

However, with every dragon event, we get the same thing. It’s in fact really rare to get a dragon event where dragons are the most common spawn. Nine times out of ten, we get Dratini, then a bunch of fake dragons like Swablu and Trapinch, Pokemon that evolve into dragon types, and MAYBE we’ll get something nice like Bagon. The good Pokemon are almost always locked behind some sort of paywall, or you have to jump through hoops to get them. With the release of Noibat, it has become the second common dragon type that gets thrown out in events as a common prize, while making other dragon types rarer.

I kinda understood this during earlier events. Before we had the majority of generations in Pokemon GO, there kinda weren’t that many dragon types. After ice and fairy types, it IS one of the rarer types, and early generations only ever had a handful to play with. So of course we’d mostly just get Dratini and the fake dragons. These days though, we have a lot, lot more dragon types available to us, so why can’t we see more of them? Alright a lot of dragon types are also pseudo-legendaries, Pokemon with super high stats, but, well, Dragonite is a pseud0-legendary too, that no longer works as an excuse. And even if you exclude Bagon, Gible and Deino, the actually good dragon Pokemon, we still have the likes of Axew, Goomy, Jangmo-o, Tyrunt, Frigibax and the aforementioned Noibat, on top of the non-evolving dragon types that are always just stuck in raids.

Really, I’m kinda just tired of Dratini. It could do with a break. Even if I am rather annoyed that I failed to get a shiny shadow one, despite doing way too many Team Rocket battles. But seriously though, so many dragon events are like this. It’s just Dratini and a bunch of not-dragons. We have the numbers now, we have more dragon types available, why aren’t we using them?

Because Niantic wants to make more money, most likely. Which means that these events just become boring and repetitive, because they don’t want us getting cool stuff too easily…