Hype Backlash / Pokémon GO

• This game is hyped so much that many people not interested in Pokémon end up getting tired of it and more likely getting into shouting matches against Pokémon fans just because of a mobile game. It got even worse when an early preview of the game was revealed.
• The actual release has been fraught with server issues (leading to the infamous "Our servers are experiencing issues" screen) and the app repeatedly crashing for many users.
• A somewhat more justifiable example — the game is designed mostly around people who live in big cities. For the millions of people who don't? The game is a much less enjoyable experience marred by blank screens with not a single PokéStop to be found for miles and the only Pokémon who appear are the same Com Mons.
• In November 2016, a leaked Starbucks email revealed plans for "new Pokémon" coming with a promotion on Dec 7th. Hype grew even further with John Hanke promising an announcement on December 12th. Many fans were expecting this to mean the second generation of Pokémon would be coming that day. This was all but confirmed with data mining revealing 100 new Pokémon. Then the announcement came, and the "new Pokémon" were a handful of baby Pokémon that can only be found by hatching eggs. The announcement did suggest the rest of Gen 2 would roll out over the next few months, but fans are tired of waiting.
• The surge of popularity around the game's launch had Ingress players concerned that the loud playerbase of Go could potentially result in the banning of all location-based games for all players.
• For the one year anniversary, players expected a huge event, and got only a purchasable box full of items^* with the most noticeable items being six incubators and two raid passes, which are worth 1,100 coins; the box costs 1,200 coins and another hat Pikachu (this time based on the anime). Reaction to this has been wildly negative. The second year anniversary's box was similarly panned, but ongoing events involving Articuno raids, and Shiny Roselia caused it to be forgotten quickly. The third anniversary didn't have a themed box as a result.
• The 2017 Pokémon GO Fest in Chicago was hyped up for weeks over the possibilities of Legendary Pokémon and region-exclusives appearing. The event turned out to be a failure due to the game itself being completely unplayable because of internet traffic congestion, with crowds booing Niantic, and there have even been unconfirmed reports of violence. Niantic quickly apologized, refunded everyone present and gave them $100 in PokeCoins, and allowed them to obtain Lugia for free while new events around the world were activated and extended by 72 hours, along with Lugia and Articuno becoming catchable in raids. Niantic would learn from their mistakes by the 2018 GO Fest, which proved to be a success, as did the 2019 GO Fest^* besides an evacuation on Saturday due to a thunderstorm, leading to other GO Fests being held in Japan and Germany that were also praised.
• Research Day was introduced in January 2019, with the first featured Pokémon being Feebas. The first event was panned for its difficult quests (which included egg hatching and making up to 15 Great Throws), only available for three hours, and having Shiny Feebas be very rare. Failing to help matters was very bad timing as far as the weather went; several places were experiencing extreme weather weather conditions (portions of North America went through a blizzard, and Australia had its worst Heat Wave since 2011), so numerous players were unable to go out and take part in the event in the first place. The Clamperl Research Day in February fixed some of the issues by adding in easier quests, but it remaining a three hour event and continued poor weather (especially in Australia) didn't help much. Fortunately, the Lotad Research Day in March lasted for nine hours, though by that point, the negative reception caused Niantic to scrap Research Days permanently.
• When the Generation 4 release is announced via the Game Master file, lots of people are shocked about how shockingly bad the new Pokemon's movesets are. Notable examples include Honchkrow not getting Foul Play but getting the inferior Dark Pulse and Brave Bird instead of Sky Attack, ^note Sky Attack is one of the best moves in the game while Brave Bird is literally one of the worst Roserade getting Solar Beam as its sole grass charged despite it was completely unfitting of its frailty, Magmortar and Heatran not getting Overheat or Flamethrower as its charged move, ^note Magmortar got Fire Punch and Fire Blast while Heatran only gets Fire Blast and it has no steel fast move. Be noted that Fire Blast is notorious as one of the worst charged moves in the game and fire punch is also quite underwhelming Hippowdon and Gallade getting literally no worthwhile moves at all^note Hippowdon only gets Earthquake as a STAB move; Unlike in the main games, Earthquake is horrible due to its slow speed and one-bar nature, making it incredibly easy to put off. To top it all off, it does not have a ground fast move. ^note In the other hand, Gallade's fighting moves are outright horrible, since Low kick has low energy gain and Close Combat is an outright horrid and underpowered one-bar move. As for psychic moves go, its charged move is Psychic and it suffers from similar problems as Close Combat and is well known as one of the worst moves in the game, Dialga and Palkia getting Draco Meteor, ^note While Draco Meteor does not seem bad, it does cause Pokémon to underperform as it is an incredibly slow one bar move, allowing enemy Pokémon to put it off easily and last but not least, both of Giratina's formes getting Shadow Sneak as its sole ghost charged move^note Shadow Sneak is literally one of the worst charged moves in the entire game due to its abysmal power and incredibly slow speed.
  • Thankfully, some of these are averted in some way or another, such as Honchkrow getting Sky Attack, Roserade getting Grass Knot^note Grass Knot is one of the best charged moves in the entire game as it's highly spammable and hits like a truck and Giratina's Origin forme getting much more viable moves via a full moveset revamp, making it among one of the strongest Ghost types in the game.
• The "Legendary Lunch Hour" experiment of March 13th, 2019 had a novel concept; in the middle of the day, all gyms would have a Legendary Pokémon raid going on at them, so people at work could go get a raid in during their lunch breaks. However, the event ended up a failure because the time window of only one hour (12pm to 1pm local time) ended up being far too small for most people. Because of this, most raids went unchallenged because people either didn't have time to find a raid after finishing lunch and had to go straight back to work or they didn't want to waste their lunch break time trying to find a raid with a bunch of people around it.
  • Niantic later moved the raid hour to 6pm, and made sure to announce the hour beforehand to give people plenty of time to organize. However, the Mewtwo raid hour for September 18, 2019, had to be postponed when raids failed to load in New Zealand, and came 30 minutes early in central Australia^* South Australia and Northern Territory. This created a lot of scorn from players, especially those from affected areas.
• The first paid event on November 2, 2019, allowed players who purchased a ticket to access an exclusive Special Research that allows early access to Regigigas. The issues involving the event are that costs actual money instead of coins to participate, the Regis are Low-Tier Letdowns (except Registeel, which is a top PvP tank in the Great and Ultra leagues), and the Shiny rates for them and Skamory are standard.
• The launch of Generation V, featuring Pokémon from the Unova Region, was marred by a number of factors over the course of 2020. On top of a global pandemic interrupting and canceling any live events and the rollout of new Pokémon being much slower than any generation before it (even with the regional dex being as large as it is), events focusing on boosting past-generation Pokémon were held en-masse, severely limiting the number of non-Com Mon Unovan species that could be caught at a time. The sudden shift of focus to Mega Evolution in the later half of the year further hampered the rolling out of new Unova lines, and a further Game-Breaking Bug accidentally introduced around the time buffed regional and weather spawns at the expense of nearly everything else made them more difficult to find (including dumping three while evolution lines into Strange Eggs filled with many more undesirable Pokémon).
  • By the time it was time for Generation VI to land in December 2020, a number of evolution lines, more than any generation before it, were still unreleased and unavailable through the wild, raids, and eggs, with the Zorua and Larvesta families still MIA, though the former was introduced in October 2022.

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