Mediocre Research Rewards, Still…
Alongside the Team Rocket Takeover event, we got a timed research quest with two stages. The first stage was pretty simple but also a tad long, and involved nothing but catching 25 dark types, with a reward for every 5 dark types you caught. All you got was some XP and a Vullaby encounter but since the majority of spawns during the event were dark types, I didn’t expect too much. I suppose the Vullaby encounter was nice because they were rare spawns, but still, it was a simple task with a simple reward. However, the second part of this timed research was a tad harder. The tasks consisted of catching 12 Shadow Pokemon, and purifying 6 Shadow Pokemon. The rewards were a Pawniard encounter and… pinaps.
Not even silver pinaps. Normal, bog-standard yellow pinap berries.
For purifying Pokemon.
Not only would this cost you a minimum of 6000 stardust (assuming you ONLY purified 1k Pokemon), but it would cost you at least 12 hyper or max potions, possibly more depending on your luck and if you fight Leaders and Giovanni or not. Getting pinap berries is an awful reward for, well, anything apart from catching Pokemon. You get pinap berries by spinning Pokestops, and there is a regular, common daily research task that gives you 5 pinaps for catching 5 Pokemon. Purifying Pokemon is expensive and often not even worth it, since Shadow Pokemon are STILL better than Purified Pokemon. Yeah, sure, the reward also contains 5 potions and revives, but it doesn’t really feel like a reward, more just earning less than half of what you put into the task back.
Now, mediocre research rewards have always been a thing, but they feel particularly bad lately. During the Verdant Wonder event, there was a research task for catching 15 Pokemon. The reward was one of the three pan-monkeys. I did 5 of those research tasks and every time I got Pansear, the Pokemon that spawns in my region anyway. The monkeys were spawning in the wild anyway, so the research was kinda pointless. And, honestly, Verdant Wonders was mostly an excuse of an event, only there to sell a real-money-only ticket for a Zarude encounter. Which cost €11!
During the event prior, the weather event, things were just as bad. There was a collectors challenge, to catch all 4 forms of Castform. Including Snowy. Except most of them were locked behind research. Specifically, the research was Catch 10 Weatherboosted Pokemon. Which would be fine normally, except the Snowy one, which everyone needed, had a 10% chance, and most of the time you just got normal cloudy Castform. What made matters worse for me was that, during that whole event, it was either Cloudy or Windy for me, and there were only a handful of spawns that were weatherboosted during that time, most notably Spritzee, which has a HORRIBLE catch rate.
But on top of that, I’ve noticed a lot more dud research. During the weather and grass type events, there were annoying research tasks for spinning 5 Pokestops for 200 stardust, or catching 5 Pokemon for some Pokeballs. These just diluted the research pool, making the desirable research harder to get. Why would I even want to spin 5 Pokestops for 200 stardust? I can catch 2 Pokemon and make the same amount in half the time! And I’m ignoring all the standard crap research you can get, like making 5 nice throws for 1 pinap, or using 5 berries to catch Pokemon for 3 razz berries.
Really, if you’re going to offer research tasks that don’t have encounters, then you need to make a profit from doing them. The daily research tasks do this. Transfer 10 Pokemon, get 10 Pokeballs back. Make 3 Great Throws, get 5 great balls back. Use 3 berries to catch Pokemon, get 5 razz berries. It’s not that difficult. Or give more premium items. I had a Make 3 Great Curveball Throws task for 1 rare candy the other day. Sure, 1 rare candy isn’t much, but normally you only get those from raids or PvP, so getting one for normal tasks is kinda neat.
Seriously, I know Niantic want us to spend money on the game, but research is something you do whether you spend money or not. And people aren’t going to spend money if they don’t think their time is being well spent. So, uh, don’t make us purify a bunch of Pokemon for something I could get by spinning some Pokestops.