Ultra Research Day and a Lack of Pokestops

Last week, at the time of writing, was Adventure Week. Adventure Week tends to focus on fossil and rock type Pokemon, and, this year, Archen and Tirtouga were released with shiny forms. We also got two new Pokemon: Tyrunt and Amaura. However, at the end of Adventure Week, we got a Ultra Research Day. In this event, we focused on two older fossil types: Shieldon and Cranidos.

Now, Cranidos is actually one of my highly liked Pokemon. It’s very obviously a cool dinosaur with a rock-hard head. Cranidos also has a great shiny, turning red instead of blue. And throughout Adventure Week, I searched high and low, only to come out empty handed. Fortunately though, there was one more chance. During Ultra Research Day, Cranidos and Shieldon had higher chances of being shiny. The only issue was, this was a research event. Which meant spinning Pokestops. Each Pokestop gives you a research task, with a 50-50 chance of being Cranidos or Shieldon once completed. With a higher chance of being shiny.

Let me put it this way: I spun every single Pokemon in the area I live in, and got one shiny. A Shieldon.

Honestly, I know it’s just bad luck, but I’m a bit sad about this. Not only did I not get a shiny Cranidos, the majority of Pokemon I got from research tasks were 2* Pokemon. I got one single 96% Pokemon, also a Shieldon. Personally, that kinda sucks. For the amount of effort I put in, I feel unrewarded. And at the same time, brother, who didn’t play at all, got the same number of shinies as I did.

However, the biggest problem here wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. I just ran out of Pokestops to spin and get research from. Once you’ve done a research from a Pokestop, you can’t get any more research and have to move on. But depending on where you live, there might not be other Pokestops to go to. If you live somewhere rural, you’re basically out of luck. In fact, the only reason I was even capable of actually taking part in this event is because of my nominating places to be Pokestops. Over the course of the last two years, I have been roaming around the area where I live, nominating way points.

What bothers me the most though is that there are multiple solutions to this. One idea is to simply allow you to spin a Pokestop twice, giving you a second research task after you’ve finished the first one. Heck, they could make Pokestops spin-able 10 times. Another option is to have temporary Pokestops appear just for events. We could also adjust Niantic’s 20m rule, allowing Pokestops to be closer together. Niantic could also just use all locations in Ingress Prime and use all of them as Pokestops, the same way they are in Ingress.

But there is a solution already available, tried and tested. Just get a bunch of random research tasks and put them on the Today tab. That’s what we have had for other research days. Make a 10 stage task on the today tab, with 3 tasks per stage. This is what they did for the Nidoran Research and Meowth Research Days. But no, it seems Niantic are being gits and want us to explore more, rather than playing from home. We have to go exploring or we get nothing.

Could I have gone into town to get more research? Of course I could. But that would require me heading back home, putting my bike away and then driving to the town centre. It was also the middle of the day (the weather is very hot here) and I was running out of time as well – this event really didn’t last very long. But that’s beside the point. We always run out of places to find, and some places have absolutely nothing at all, not even a single Pokestop.

I really hope Niantic doesn’t do a research day event like this. It’s like the Feebas event all over again…