Please Can We Have a Master Ball?

While Pokemon GO does include many features from the main games, there’s an odd thing that we’ve never had before. While having the same fighting system is one thing this game lacks, I want to talk about something much smaller: the Master Ball.

For the handful of people who have never played a Pokemon game, a Master Ball will catch any Pokemon with a 100% guarantee, and 0% chance of breaking out. In the main games, you generally only ever get one Master Ball for your entire region. It’s such an amazing and useful Pokeball that you really need to save it for something rare, like a Mythical or Legendary Pokemon.

However, Pokemon GO lacks a Master Ball, despite having four other types of Pokeball.

An obvious reason why

Back when Deoxys and Genesect were back in raids, I did a LOT of them. I wanted a shiny Deoxys more but no one else wanted to raid that. So instead I focused on Genesect. While I didn’t get a shiny, I did see a 100% Genesect… which fled. Despite me nailing 20 great throws and excellent throws, the bastard instantly broke out and fled, every time. I failed to capture the Genesect and at the same time had wasted 20 golden razzberries.

If I’d had a Master Ball, this wouldn’t have happened.

But the thing is, pretty much every non-casual player has stories like this. My brother lost out on a 100% Pikachu in a hat because… well, there’s no reason, it just fled for the sake of fleeing. I’ve seen someone lose a 100% Mewtwo. It’s all down to bad luck.

Master Balls would fix this, but how many?

Adding a Master Ball is simple enough. It already exists in Pokemon GO’s files. But the question is, how do we distribute them? Because, while we do want to stop people from losing Pokemon, we also don’t want to have so many Master Balls that it makes the game too easy. Personally, I think one Master Ball a month would be plenty. Any more than that and you end up stockpiling them.

Okay, sure, I already stockpile things like Pokeballs and Charge TMs, but hoarding Master Balls seems… not very Pokemon-y.

There’s already a system set up to offer Master Balls.

Seriously, we already have all the lore and story elements. Team Rocket GO are a subsidiary of Team Rocket in general, and they have a massive manufacturing and R&D departments in order to MAKE Pokeballs! To put all of this into Pokemon GO, it can be done as simply as the current Giovanni boss fights. Beat Giovanni, get a 1-use Master Ball that you can use on whatever you like.

This makes even more sense considering that the only Shadow Legendary Pokemon we had are Gen-1 or Gen-2. People don’t want another shadow Articuno, so why not throw a Master Ball into the rewards when you defeat Giovanni? Especially since Shadow Legendary Pokemon are instant catches.

For now, all we can do is hope.

In the mean time, I guess that we’ll just have to deal with fleeing Pokemon. At least Shiny Legendary Pokemon are a guaranteed catch. Because having those flee would really suck.

Fun fact: if you go over the game’s speed limit (about 40mph I believe), then all Pokemon will try to flee because you’re going too fast.