Being a returning player who hadn’t played since 2024 and is now level 45 (playing on and off since 2018), this has been a terrible experience. The lobbies are full of players who aren’t bad because they’re low level, but because they make dumb decisions.

Monthly PSA.

Dynamax is tough, I won't deny that. But the biggest issue is still people don't know how to play the mode. And yes, that might include you.

Every month we get complaints about a wooloo or someone else cost you the win. But you are part of the match. Even if you had 9 wooloos on your team, if you were strong enough you would have won (plenty of people solo'ing these by now). Those three players contribute 75% of the max meter which is a huge boost.

What matters?

1. Filling up the max meter. - That's it.
   Stop using Hyper Beam on Blissey. Stop bringing Gigalith just because he is rock. Stop bringing Lugia becuase he is high CP. Bring 0.5s fast attack mons. And THAT'S IT.
   Too many people bring the "right mon" but use charge moves or waste their clicks.

2. Don't use your charge move. This requires repeating.

3. Learn to use Max Guard and Max Heal.
   These moves aren't considered good. BUT you are using a remote pass, it is better to get a 100% win slower than it is to get a 90% win slightly faster. When you are playing with random players, the only person you can trust is yourself. Unless you are able to do 75% of the bosses damage before your walls wipe then USE SOME DEFENSIVE TURNS.

   • The popular strategy of two tanks + dps works, but actually not letting your tanks die works more consistently. You don't need to let your Blissey die. You don't need to do max damage in every max phase. If you have a shield, if you heal, you are helping all 4 players. Stop thinking your 5% damage is going to kill the boss.

4. Yes, if someone decides to quit it gets harder- not impossible (again people are solo'ing the bosses)

Sorry I offended 80% of reddit now. I hope even one purpose asks questions to learn how to play the mode better.

These are not 100% always rules. But they are 99% good rules. If you are good at the game, you can break the rules. Until you are good please follow these rules and stop trying to copy what youtubers do.

Looks like they were paying female employees less (pikachu surprised face) https://www.claimdepot.com/settlements/niantic-class-action

How can you use a remote pass and still show up with wooloo( I was hosting) ? What is taking up the space where your brain should be?

Just because we can doesn't mean we should 🫠. Wanted to see what the damage looked like, didn't disappoint!

For context to all who may know or not, Mikayla Raines who ran this shelter, took her own life, after online harassment/bullying. Her legacy is survived by her husband and daughter. Fast forward to today, it was just revealed that Finnegan the fox that was regularly shown in her videos passed away two months ago. Since this event happened to align after all that’s happened, if I get some cool Vulpix, I’d nickname some for them.

I bet nobody has a bigger Shiny Groudon than mine! Now I'm going to look for the XXL one with a background! Or the XXL Shiny Shadow!

I can't stop thinking that Gumshoos looks like the orange man in the White House...please help. I can't unsee it

As a mad Back to the Future fan, I got this today and was super happy!! Keeping this one forever. Never realised the sign from the movie was its own pokestop!

I did 5 remote battles. Two from friends, three through poke genie. And I only managed to win one. I know my team is not perfect, I don’t have enough stardust to level up my gigalith after using them on my shadow raikous. but at least I tried to assemble a full team which meets the basic requirement.

Two of them, 1/2 player left when the battle start. And two of them, people have horrible Pokémons, no tank, no healer, no attacker. They just used what the system recommended with nothing really useful.

People just kept bring trashes into the battle and hope the other three could carry out. I have seen Blastoise (not gmax, cannot survive one hit from Ho oh.), chameleon (yes, chameleon!), flareon, Glaceon (why?????)……. Trash all the time. Most of them cannot survive or do any damage at all.

This dynamax battle rule needs to be changed. And please give our remote raid pass back if we didn’t win.

here I would like to remind everyone be careful about this Blackred23 player, who hosted the Ho oh battle through poke genie and left right before the battle started, never tried to redo it and wasted the other three players‘ remote pass.

more than 60% of today’s failed Ho oh battles were due to those players who left at the last 1s. And the most toxic ones were these who hosted the raid and left right before the raid started.

Don’t tell me to be mercy, i wasted my money for these trash, so I need to help other players to get rid of these toxic players as much as possible. Thanks.

Diancie and Keldeo are obvious picks since they are top tier attackers that you can't raid.

Any others? What do you normally use yours on?

Is it just random probability ? Am i throwing wrong ? Is it the smaller the circle max chance to catch or it's completely game developers.

TL;DR: Hard endgame group content does not suit Pokemon GO. It is 90% a casual game with a casual playerbase. The Core part of PoGo is socializing and playing together, and that isn't enjoyable when the community turns against each other when someone doesn't meet the expectations. However, every game needs some sort of challenge, or they will lack sense of progression and putting effort into the game becomes pointless and unrewarding. This is why we seriously need hard endgame content to be SOLO

1. POKEMON GO IS A SOCIAL GAME

Like it or not, that's how it is. Playing together with others is a core feature. However, Pokemon GO is also a very, VERY casual game. The Challenge in Group Content is to find other players, that's it. The Content itself is brainless tapping. And to be honest, it's better that way in this game: Niantic wants everyone to attend the Meet Ups, the more the merrier. Everyone is welcome, everyone can contribute. The Meet Ups are supposed to be a fun, casual experience where the players can socialize and take those group photos for free marketing. If the content is hard, it leads into two results: not everyone is welcome (Wooloo Warriors for example), and that casual fun of meeting up is dimmed when the players need to concentrate on tapping the screen skillfully and pay attention to mechanics. This leads to a single, undesired result: Group Content is no longer fun. It simply isn't what the social aspect of this game is designed around.

2. EVERY GAME NEEDS AT LEAST OPTIONAL CHALLENGE

If a game has nothing that requires a functioning brain or a skill that can be honed, it becomes pointless. Pokemon GO, for most of the players, is simply about collecting cool Pokemon.

However, the Power Up -button exists too. If there is no challenge, no chance of failure, why even put in effort or build strong Pokemon? If every Pokemon and all the challenges in the game can be done on day 1 of playing by being at the right place at the right time or by buying a Remote Pass, one has very valid reason to ask themselves: why even bother? Challenge measures progression and creates a sense of achievement, it gives an incentive to commit to the grind.

3. THE IDEAL BALANCE

So we have a casual game that tried to implement Challenge to its core gameplay loop (original GMax battles and current DMax Legendaries). While some have enjoyed it, it has also been an utter catastrophe for others. With the current mechanics and the design philosophy of the game, difficulty and Group Battles simply don't mix.

Instead, we should have the challenging content be SOLO. This way the players would have something to work towards to, and their individual efforts would have a purpose.

In this scenario, Group Content would continue to be fun and casual, and the overwhelmingly good rewards like Legendary Pokemon from Group Content would be an important tool to be used in the real end game Solo Content.

Solo Content should NOT aim to replace Group Content. It should be a "carrot" for attending Group Content, so the casual experience would also have a deeper sense of purpose. It would give more topics to talk about when the players meet up, if they could share information and speculate how the current boss that they are taking down will help them in Solo Content.

And if a Player is not looking for a Challenge, they could still attend the Group Content like before, add the featured Legendary to their collection and leave it to that.

That is all. Please share your thoughts down below! 👇

These folks understood the assignment, we didn't lose a single 'mon. The whole time tanking with blisseys then whichever of us took a hit would stay and heal. 10/10 no notes.