Moreso than any other game in the Pokémon franchise, Pokémon GO relies a lot on the Random Number God. Here are some of the most egregious examples:
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Individual species and Pokémon
- When trying to capture Pokémon, the odds of a successful capture can vary radically, especially if the Pokémon in question is of a rare species or has CP in the quadruple digits. The stronger the Pokémon, the more likely it is to break out of any ball thrown at it. The player can improve their odds by using Razz berries and higher-rank balls, successfully landing their ball inside the colored circle, and doing a curved throw. Even low-level mons with naturally high catch rates have a slim chance of breaking out and running immediately on first throw.
- There's also the case of when a Pokemon decides to high-tail it out of there if it breaks free. It's common to see a Pokémon escape on the very first breakout (especially Pokémon with high flee rates like Abra and Wimpod) while others will stick around for as many as four or five.
- Obtaining a Pokémon of a specific gender can be this. Unlike in main games, the gender markers don't show immediately when you try to catch a Pokémon, and some Pokémon don't have gender differences, so you can't directly determine their genders until after you caught them. Also, the gender ratio is lifted directly from main games, meaning certain species like starters, Eeveelutions and fossil Pokémon have only a 1 in 8 chance of being female. This becomes particularly painful when you're trying to catch a Pokémon that only evolves if it is of a certain gender like Combee or Salandit, and then you spend months without seeing a single female Combee/Salandit.
- Evolving Pokémon with multiple forms:
- The Kantonian Eevee evolutions (Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flareon) are completely random with each evolution, so the only obvious way to get the one you want is to either keep evolving Eevee or catch one of the evolved forms in the wild. There's a bypass that works only once for each Eeveelution, though, afterwards, better pray to the RNG.note
- Clamperl, unlike the main games, is also a random evolution, with no known way to influence whether it'll become a Huntail or a Gorebyss (not even a nickname trick like Eevee). This can be exceptionally frustrating because Clamperl is only available via research rewards or raids (and is thus much rarer than Eevee). In particular, trying to get both a shiny Huntail and a shiny Gorebyss is very much subject to the luck of not only finding multiple shiny Clamperl, but hoping that the Clamperl in question won't all evolve the same way.
- Did you hatch/catch a Cherubi? The form Cherrim takes upon evolving is randomized. The only way to obtain a guaranteed Sunshine Form Cherrim is by catching it in the wild; the inverse is also true for Overcast Form Cherrim.
- "XL" and "XS" tags are randomly given/snatched upon evolving your mon, for no reason at all.
- Catching Ditto. Ditto's Transform gimmick allows it to copy other Pokémon, and that includes wild Ditto. Thus, in order to catch Ditto, you have to hope that whatever low-tier Com Mon you're trying to catch is actually a Ditto in disguise. There are a few hints that a Pokémon may be a transformed Ditto (catch and flee rates for Ditto aren't the same as the Pokémon it's copying), but absolutely no way to tell without catching them.
- Getting babies, barring trading. Since an egg's content is randomized and this game lacks breeding, obtaining a baby Pokémon, let alone a specific baby, is a matter of luck.
- Lucky Pokémon. When traded, there's a low chance that both Pokémon become Luckynote .
- Some Flying Pokémon such as Zubat or Yanma have a dodging maneuver that sees them bouncing across the screen in random patterns of five directions. Only the fifth pattern is predictable, which is them returning to the starting position.
- Catching the Galarian forms of Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. They only spawn when you use the Daily Adventure incense (and the Legendary Birds spawning in the first place is already a luck-based mission), and then they have absurdly low catch rates and ridiculously high flee rates. It's not uncommon for them to escape an Ultra Ball after you fed them a Golden Razz Berry and made an excellent curveball throw, and then fleeing after one single failed attempt at catching them.
- Encountering Smeargle depends on whether or not it'll show up to photobomb your snapshot of your buddy Pokémon.
Movements and Non-Elite TMs (Technical Machines)
The introduction of Elite TMs removed the unpredictability factor of giving mons determined movesets and, as a result, reduced a LOT of RNG usage. However, these are extremely rare in spite of its usefulness, as these can only be obtained at the end of a PVP season at higher rankings, and at certain events. So the following will still apply:
- For starters, regular TMs. They work by giving your mon a random move from a set movepool for that mon. Which move you receive depends on the mon and the available moveset for that mon. Furthermore, each evolution stage for every mon has its own moveset, and these don't carry to the next/final evolutions, so forget about having, for example, a Magmortar with Magmar's Flamethrower, for example.
- When evolving a Pokémon, you have no control over what moves it will end up with. You can evolve something with a great moveset into something much more powerful, only to have it be rendered useless by a lousy moveset if the Random Number God doesn't smile upon you.
- Raid battles can give players one or more Fast/Charged Technical Machines, which allows players to switch a Pokémon's move to a new one. Being a random award from completing the raid, though, there's always the chance of not receiving them as awards, especially in the Level 1 raids, where they seldom appear as rewards.
- Just caught a Mew and want to use it in battle? Good luck rolling a good moveset from an enormous move pool that has moves from every type in the game!
- The typing of Hidden Power is determined at random as opposed to IVs in the original games. On the plus side, it may be the best fast attack your mon can get, or it can offer very useful coverage, especially in the meta-heavy PVP modenote . But it can backfire as well.
Other
- Team GO Rocket:
- Prior to the introduction of the GO Rocket Balloons as part of the COVID-19 Pandemic measures, finding and fighting Giovanni. First of all, of course, you need a Super Rocket Radar, which are handled near the end of certain mission chains. Then, searching for PokéStops, there's a chance you'll run into a Decoy Grunt posing as Giovanni so it's up to luck (or communication with your local PoGo group) on whether you'll find the real deal. Likewise, finding the specific Team Rocket GO Leaders for your quest can also be this. With the aforementioned Balloon feature, the Leaders and Giovanni himself will be visiting you directly. Lastly, Giovanni himself will follow a pattern: Persian, a random mon of a pool of 3, and the featured Shadow Legendary. There's a lot of Trial-and-Error Gameplay involved, as not only the three mons are tough as nails, but the middle mon will never be the same.
- Fighting the GO Rocket Leaders. Again, they have a pattern they follow: the featured drop, and two mons out of two pools of 3. Unlike Giovanni, who tends to use Ground-types akin to his mainline game incarnations, these mons can be even more random, though the leaders have certain Signature Mons that are usually fielded (Sierra has Houndoom, Arlo has Scizor and Cliff has Tyranitar). Don't count on them fielding the same team twice, though, especially on them using their Signature Mons.
- And finally, fighting the Grunts. Unlike Giovanni and the leaders, all three members of their teams are always random, but for the most part follow a themed set, mostly around typing (which is usually signaled by their introductory phrase). If you have a VERY bad luck, you'll get greeted with the phrase "Don't bother – I've already won.", "Get ready to be defeated!" or "Winning is for winners!". If the trainer is male, there's next-to-no-problem (as they field the starters), but if the trainer is female, they'll field a team composed of Snorlax (even up to three!), and two of Gardevoir, Poliwrath, Dragonite or Gyarados.
- During certain events, Jessie and James can also appear in a Meowth-shaped balloon instead of regular Grunts, fighting the player in tandem. They'll usually field the drop of the event (usually a mon linked to them such as Scyther and Pinsir), their Signature Mon (Ekans and Koffing, respectively), and a stronger mon at the end.
- Obtaining an EX Raid Pass on your own. Such passes grant access to invitation-only EX Raids and are randomly "awarded" to a subset of players who have recently raided before at the gym where the EX Raid will take place.
- In the same vein as Lucky Pokémon, becoming Lucky Friends. It's a random event that has a low chance of occurring upon the first interaction of the day with a Best Friend (though your individual chance of becoming Lucky Friends with someone is higher the more Best Friends you have, of course), and lasts only until after the next trade. However, should that happen, the next trade is guaranteed to be lucky.
- Research tasks:
- Any research task built around catching, except when it comes to the commonest of Com Mons, since you can't control what spawns around you. For example, the mission "Catch X Weather-boosted Pokémon" may output either Vulpix or Poliwag (and in some occasions it would add Anorith and Lileep to the spawn pool). And even then, in some cases, you aren't guaranteed to get Pokémon from the same task (the Weather-boosted mon catch task could either reward you with a mon, berries or stardust).
- Ditto is also associated with the most random task of the game: "Catch a Ditto". Ditto doesn't spawn at all; instead, a different Pokemon can randomly turn out to be Ditto when you catch it. Completing a "Catch a Ditto" research task consists of throwing pokeballs at anything that wanders across your path until one of them is unveiled as a Ditto after you catch it. There was a time when it was easier to get an idea of which mons can turn into Ditto (any Com Mon with no Shiny form released), but after Shiny Ditto was released and made available everywhere, even this was rendered moot.
- If you're trying to complete Meltan's chain, unless you're in an event where you can catch the required mons, there are three missions you have to look for: "Make 3 Great shots" (for a chance at either Anorith or Lileep), "Win a Level 3 or Higher Raid" (for a guaranteed Omanyte/Kabuto) and "Win 5 Raids" (for a guaranteed Aerodactyl). These missions are quite rare, so you may be doing a search for your entire city or town, and you may not encounter such missions until several days later.
- PVP fighting in general:
- You need to win a 3-on-3 fight against 5 opponents. Upon winning 3 battles on regular tier, you get the chance of catching a random mon. The available monpool depends on the rank you're on, the higher the ranking, the higher the chance of catching a better mon.
- Giving that you're going to be matched with a random player and that you must choose your team beforehand, winning a battle always requires a bit of luck, no matter how good your Pokémon are, or how good your strategy is. Fast thinking and a good strategy only get you so far when your opponent has a team full of Pokémon that can easily counter your team.
