Pokemon Go / Tropes S-Z

Pokémon GO Tropes
A to C (Adaptational Badass | Anti-Frustration Features) | D to H | I to R (Luck-Based Mission) | S to Z

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S

• Schizophrenic Difficulty: The research quest for Mew has 8 stages, each with 3 mini-missions. The difficulty and time-expense of each part gradually increases at first, until the 5th-7th stages, where time spent and difficulty vary wildly, with some of the steps being entirely luck-based such as catching Ditto.
• Scratch Damage: In gym battles and raids, charge moves always cause damage; dodging just mitigates how much damage is taken. This is in part to prevent someone from Cherry Tapping a gym or raid to death with something otherwise weak, as it's impossible to fully avoid taking damage. Fast moves that aren't dodged also always cause damage, regardless of the power of the move. However, in the case of Splash and Yawn, they have 0 power, so they only do a bare minimum of damage.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Like in a Safari Zone in earlier entries in the series, it is possible for every Pokémon in this game to flee, with unsuccessful encounters ending in the Pokémon escaping a Poké Ball they just broke out of. Some are more likely to escape from a destroyed Poké Ball than others, such as Com Mons, those with the Run Away ability, and Abra, who teleports away in the main games. Thus, you are likely only given one shot at acquiring a Pokémon before they flee with a Game Over text if the Random Number God is not on your side. The only Pokémon that are forced to stay and let you wail Poké Balls at them until you catch them are Research rewards and Research Breakthroughs.
  • When it comes the time to catch a Raid boss, exhausting the limited supply of Premier Balls causes the Raid Boss to immediately teleport out, compared to the Smoke Out used by regular wild Pokémon.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • The "Team Harmony" Challenge, for players who don't want to get mixed up picking between Teams Valor, Instinct, and Mystic and would prefer to try and ease tension between the three groups. By doing this players lock themselves out of ever battling at the gyms, so the only way they play is to catch and raise Pokémon. Fans have even picked Lugia as their unofficial mascot for this type of challenge, as opposed to Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres the other teams are represented by.invoked
  • The ultimate challenge is to reach level 40 without ever catching a single Pokémon, but rather leveling up only from the 50 XP earned from Poké Stops. That's only 400,000 Poké Stop visits.
• Sequential Boss: Fighting Jessie and James during their events has you fighting them one after the other. Luckily, you can heal your team in between the battles.
• Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: Has an interesting version of emergent competition between the three teams, regarding the most rewarding form of Player Versus Player: gym defense, which gives the premium currency of Pokécoins. Gyms can be controlled by one of the three teams, players of the same team as the gym can defend it with a Pokémon, and players of the other teams can attack it to KO defenders' Pokémon, which rewards the defenders with Pokécoins based on how long their Pokémon was there (up to a limit). As a result, players will naturally be clashing against each other for control of the gyms, but at the same time, players won't want the other teams to stop fighting either, since the only way they're going to get the high-value Pokécoins out of their efforts is if their opponents also have control in the area.
• Smoke Out:
  • The Game Over result of a wild Pokémon escaping an encounter.
  • After defeating a Team Rocket member, they will disappear in a puff when you return to the overworld.
• Socialization Bonus:
  • Pokémon are more likely to spawn in areas with higher mobile data traffic, encouraging players to travel in groups or visit high-population areas.
  • When battling Gyms, multiple players who are not of the same team as the target Gym can gang up on the same combatant, speeding through otherwise troublesome battles and saving on healing supplies. Players aligned with the same team can cooperate to maintain their Pokémon's motivation, extending their ability to defend the Gym.
  • If you want a greater chance at beating higher-difficulty Raids, it pays off to know and coordinate with other players who are willing to join you, rather than hope that the missing manpower happens to be passing by. Likewise, if you plan to join raids through remote raiding, you're better off joining online social groups that focus on remote raiding so that everyone can join rather than hope someone will walk by the gym and join locally on their end.
  • Friends get trade discounts, extra attack power in gym and raid battles, as well as additional Premier balls to catch raid bosses with. The amount depends on friendship level, which is increased by trading Pokémon, battling and raiding together, and sending gifts to each other.
  • The aforementioned gifts contain 7 km eggs which hatch baby Pokémon, Alolan forms of Kanto Pokémon and other special event Pokémon in addition to various standard items.
  • After an overhaul to the evolution system on January 10, 2020, players can now obtain Machamp, Gengar, Golem, Alakazam, Gigalith, Conkeldurr, Escavalier and Accelgor via trade. Traded Pokémon of these species' previous evolutions^note Machoke, Haunter, Graveler, Kadabra, Boldore, Gurdurr, Shelmet and Karrablast will reduce the candy cost to evolve from 100 or 200 to 0.
• Special Attack: Every Pokémon has two attacks: a basic attack that can be spammed, and a special attack that is more like a Limit Break, needing to be charged up during a battle before it can be unleashed against an opponent. Each Pokémon can also have a second Charged Attack unlocked with extra Candy and Stardust.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To Ingress. The core foundation of the game was created from Ingress. All the Poké Stops and gyms are all the established hotspots and contested portals from Ingress, with no difference at all. Pokémon Go has you join either Team Valor (red), Team Mystic (blue), and Team Instinct (yellow) to fight over gym ownership, just like Ingress had fighting between the Enlightened and the Resistance.
  • To a lesser extent the game also shares some fundamentals with the Pokéwalker from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, in that both are rather simple Pokémon games that encourage the player to walk around to get the most out of them. The game can also be considered the closest we can get to an actual game based on the Safari Zones from the main games as wild encounters are boiled down to "throw Poké Balls and hope for the best".
• The Spook: Towards the end of September 2018's Chikorita Community Day, high server traffic led to all of the Chikorita being replaced by a flood of a mysterious, never-before-seen Pokémon. Its name and CP were listed as "???", and catching it would cause it to turn into Ditto). Naturally, both the GO playerbase and the core Pokémon fanbase went wild with speculation, and the Japanese GO Twitter seemed to imply that the appearance of this new critter was no mere accident. Three days later, it was revealed to be a Mythical Pokémon called Meltan.
• Stat Overflow: Having a full inventory doesn't prevent getting the items from PokeStops. The new items just take up space beyond the nominal cap, and items obtained in other ways still treat the inventory as full, until the number of items falls below the cap once more.
• Stone Wall:
  • In terms of typing, Normal-types in general are treated as this by the metagame, having only one weakness but also lacking super-effective coverage for the moves they receive STAB on. Despite their lack of resistances to any type other than Ghost, the hyper-specialized nature of the Pokémon GO metagame means that opponents will always use the optimum choice anyway, which in this case are powerhouse Fighting-types like Machamp or Blaziken. As a result, they're commonly used as gym defenders but not in raid battles.
  • Blissey is an (in)famous Pokemon in the mainline games for being a damage sponge and that also perfectly describes its presence in GO. Though her attack is sub-par, she has good defense and absolutely beastly stamina. Her HP is so high that she can actually outlast the battle timer when defending a gym..
  • Shuckle, which boasts absurdly high defense in exchange for rock-bottom stamina and attack. Its CP is only marginally better than Magikarp. Its moves mean nothing with its terrible attack. Its only purpose is to take hits.
  • Umbreon, like its main game counterpart — its HP and Defense are very high^note Among all Eeveelutions, Umbreon's HP is second only to Vaporeon, but its Defense stat is the highest, higher than Leafeon and Glaceon who were close behind, but its Attack is cripplingly low, resulting in it being the weakest Eeveelution in terms of CP, despite its advantage over Psychic and Ghost-type Pokémon.
• Super Mode: Mega Evolution returns for this game. Use enough Mega Energy on your Pokémon, and they get a stat boost for 8 hours. They also give you more XP, more candy, and a higher chance of getting Candy XL from catching same type Pokémon and Raid bosses, and increase the damage of all allies during raids (moreso if they're the same type). After Mega Evolution ends, they go into a rest period where the cost of Mega Evolving them again steadily decreases until it's free.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Raid Battles, especially Tier 5 Legendary Raids, give you large amounts of Golden Razz Berries as rewards. Since you're locked to Premier Balls for catching Legendaries outside of special events, these elusive berries become your only chance of adjusting the odds of catching in your favor.

T

• Take a Third Option:
  • Or fourth option, rather. You're given a choice of three starters when you first start the game (Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle). If you walk away instead of picking one, the game will spawn Pikachu as a fourth choice.
  • Once you click on a gym after you reach level 5, you're forced to choose between Valor, Mystic, and Instinct. It is entirely possible to never pick a team, if you're willing to lock yourself out of those features of the game, by never clicking on a gym.
• Take That!: In celebration for the 2021 New Years Day, Slowpokes wearing 2020 glasses can be encountered, which will evolve into Slowbro and Slowking wearing updated glasses. Amusingly, these have been brought back for New Years Day 2022.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • The February 2017 update changed many of the possible movesets for Pokémon but didn't change any of the invalidated movesets of Pokémon already caught. That means that Pokémon with those specific movesets are now unobtainable. It's not that big a deal, however, since said movesets (with some very highly sought-after exceptions such as Shadow Claw on Gengar and Body Slam on Snorlax) aren't anything special and are inferior to some of the revised versions.
  • Certain Pokémon can only be obtained during limited time:
    • While it can be encountered as an uncommon spawn at other times of the year, Delibird is most notably associated with Christmas and, in prior years, could only be caught during December's holiday season as well as early Janruary.
    • Pokémon with special movesets (such as Pikachu with Surf) can only be obtained during Community Day events.
    • Spiritomb can only be obtained as a Special Research encounter during the Halloween event (with a new one opening up each October).
    • Yamask can only be obtained during the Halloween event.
  • Event Pokémon (unique reskins of Pokémon wearing costumes) are, naturally, event-limited.
• Timed Mission:
  • Gym battles have a time limit of 99 seconds for each Pokémon fought. This prevents situations where a player with an extremely weak Pokémon could, in theory, engage in Cherry Tapping against a much stronger one by dodging constantly. At least half of the defender's CP is sufficient, though it will be a close battle. This makes Blissey a nightmare to fight, as her HP is so high it is legitimately difficult to knock her out fast enough.
  • Raids have a timer of 180 seconds for any given attempt; Legendary Raids last 300 seconds per attempt. Moreover, the raid itself is only active for about 1 hour.
  • Every wild Pokémon will only remain available to catch for a certain period of time (30-60 minutes), which varies depending on the rarity of the Pokémon in question. Any number of players can catch it during this period.
    • Wild Pokémon who were drawn in by Incense last for even less time, less than a minute.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Elite TMs allow you to teach your mon any move it can learn or has learned. And when we say any, we mean it, as it can learn normal moves, almost every Legacy move ever, and event-exclusive moves. It also allows purified Pokémon to re-learn Return. And unlike regular TMs, you choose the move, rather than the game randomly choosing the move for you. The only reason why it isn't a game breaker is that it's the rarest item that the game can spawn, as it's only available at the end of a season of the GO Battle League for certain ranks, or in event-exclusive packages (such as those from the Community Days). This presents a problem for GO Battle League players because certain Pokémon such as the Starters have moves that are mandatory for the metagame and only accessible through the Elite TMs, but such players would only want to use them on Pokémon they are absolutely committed to due to their scarcity, creating a disincentive to experiment and try different team setups.
  • Mega Evolution in its original state. Your Com Mon's final evolution gets exclusive typings (depending on the mon and evolution) giving STAB to otherwise useless moves ^note such as Charizard getting STAB on Dragon Claw and the CD-exclusive Dragon Breath upon megaevolving into Mega Charizard X, and legendary-like CP and stats, plus it can boost the power of mons whose type the Megas share during raids^note your Mega Charizard X can boost Fire and Dragon-type mons, for example. However, its initial activation requires a specific amount of Mega Energy, a certain multiple of 100 depending on the Pokémon, but it only lasts for 8 hours and every subsequent time you Mega Evolve the same Pokémon, you still require 1/5 of the original amount. Pokémon also did not restore Mega Energy by adventuring as buddies, so the only way to get more was by beating Mega Evolved Raids and very rare research tasks; the former are less commonly run even in populated areas thanks to their lower payout,^note significantly fewer item rewards, you only get the base form Pokémon that you can already catch, evolve, or hatch rather than the Mega Evolved Pokémon, and you have to do them multiple times before you get enough Energy to Mega Evolve once) and the latter are rare, don't give out every kind of Mega Energy, and only give a paltry 10 each.
  • The Master Ball.
• Too Dumb to Live: The "be aware of your surroundings" message that shows up on the loading screen depicts a trainer absentmindedly looking at his phone while a Gyarados (and in the later versions, Gengar, Steelix, and Alolan Exeggutor) is poised to attack in front of him.
• Trailers Always Lie:
  • The trailer shows two people trading Pokémon with each other, but trading was not actually present in the final game until two years later, albeit functioning much differently than advertised^note The 'Mons transferred now have a potential of having their stats and CP changed when traded.
  • The trailer initially showed people able to catch Pokémon that were not available on initial release, such as Gen II or Legendaries.
  • The trailer shows a much more comprehensive tracking system for nearby Pokémon, indicating both direction and exact distance to encounter them. The actual system has gone through a couple of versions, neither matching what was advertised. The first gave no direction and only indicated distance through a four-tiered system^note three footprints means they are pretty far away, two means kind of close, one means almost able to be encountered, and no footsteps means the Pokémon is pretty much right on top of you, which was eventually removed entirely. The second, replacing the first not long after its removal, is a dual style "Sightings" system which either identifies the nearest Poké Stop to the Pokémon or uses a tall grass graphic to indicate that it's relatively close.
  • The augmented reality in the trailer was leagues above the actual gameplay. The AR system in the game just superimposes the Pokémon over the camera display, not taking into account any obstacles or even draw distance. The trailer, on the other hand, looks more like a game made for a VR headset.
  • The first trailer shows Pikachu using its cry from Generations I to V. In the game proper, it's the only Pokémon that does Pokémon Speak like in the main series games starting from Generation VI.
  • In the trailers, Pokémon were identified with levels like in the main series, instead of Combat Points like in the actual game.
  • Both trailers (the initial one and the second trailer showing gameplay much closer to the game's actual capabilities) show Player Versus Player battles, the first trailer even showing a three-on-three team battle. This feature was not in the final game until late 2018, which introduced proper fights between players.
  • The trailers show people being able to find Pokémon just about anywhere. While this is not technically false, it does assume the player is in an area with a high volume of cellular activity, which affects how many Pokémon will spawn in a given area. As many people in rural and suburban areas have discovered, spawn rates in low-activity areas are significantly reduced.
• Trapped in Another World: When featured as a Raid Boss during Go Fest 2022, instead of being announced by a Raid Egg appearing and hatching it, Nihilego spawned from Ultra Wormholes that opened at chosen gyms.

U

• Undesirable Prize:
  • Basic Poké Balls are frequently given for spinning stops and become less desirable when higher-leveled players have access to the rarer but much more powerful Great and Ultra Balls. It's easy to amass more than 200 of them with a Bag that's been upgraded and frequent spins. There's the weekly walking bonus, where 20 Poké Balls are piled onto your current stock. That said, since the Go Plus only uses Poké Balls, they become more valuable to Plus owners as "fuel" for the device; then Great Balls become this trope.
  • Most Field Research tasks include items or random Pokémon encounters as a reward, with some requiring painfully hard (or time-consuming) objectives to complete. However, the items rewarded for finishing these may not be worth the effort and time. One such example is finding and winning a Raid battle for five regular Potions.
  • Pink-spotted golden eggs received from gifts used to be this. Unlike regular eggs whose contents can change over time, these 7 km eggs, outside of certain events, were restricted to hatching into a grand total of seven species.^note Alolan Ratatta, Sandshrew, Vulpix, Diglett, Meowth, Geodude, and Grimer. Additionally, Pokémon that evolve into Alolan forms in the main games (Pichu, Exeggcute, and Cubone) are excluded, leaving a rather barebones selection of Pokémon these eggs hatch into. Thankfully, you can now hatch Baby Pokémon from 7km eggs which allow you to reliably get rare babies such as Riolu or a shiny if you are lucky, turning them into a much more desirable item.
  • From September to October of 2019, Flower Crown Eevee (previously released earlier that year alongside Flower Crown Pikachu before disappearing) was made available through Research Breakthrough. While previous non-Legendary-focused Breakthroughs focused on very rare or otherwise unobtainable Pokémon (with the Snorlax breakthrough noticeably granting Snorlax with the move Body Slam, a move it can no longer learn), Eevee is naturally a very easy find in the overworld- doubly so if the weather is Partly Cloudy, and these particular Flower Crown Eevee do not learn any special unreleased or legacy moves to further distinguish them from standard wild/hatched Eevee (such as the commonly-requested Last Resort). The only added benefit to these Eevee (apart from their aforementioned crown) is their increased odds of spawning as a Shiny Eevee, which is still low.
  • 12km eggs, or Strange Eggs, are quite the effort to receive, requiring the player to beat one of the Team Go Rocket leaders who are no pushovers compared to the Grunts they lead. The egg can hatch into several Pokémon that are available only in the eggs in question (Sandile, Vullaby, and Pawniard) or are extremely rare otherwise (Deino). The rest of the hatches are Pokémon that have existed as either common to uncommon wild spawns (Trubbish, Corphish, Skorupi, and Qwilfish), Raid encounters (Absol), received a Community Day entirely dedicated to them (Larvitar), or were previously available in one of the lower egg tiers. For longterm players, these Pokémon are far less desirable to hatch from a Strange Egg compared to the species exclusive to them.
• Undying Loyalty: Captured Legendary and Mythical Pokémon (excluding Meltan and Melmetal) are explained to be fiercely loyal to their trainer to the point where they will never leave their trainer's side, and thus the player cannot use them to defend Gyms no matter if there's another Pokémon in the player's party that outclasses them in typing or stats. Their only use is to fight in battles and raids.
• Uniqueness Decay:
  • Shiny forms are more frequent (or at least have a significantly greater chance of appearing) than in the mainline games, devaluing their otherwise unique rarity. It's not uncommon to get at least one shiny in a single walk.
  • Event-exclusive moves. While the introduction of the extremely rare Elite TMs tampered this somewhat, Niantic still holds events where certain mons can learn their better attacks at least once per year, prompting people to hold evolving their best mons until said events arrive. This also devaulated 90% of mons with event-exclusive moves, and the exclusive moves of the remaining 10% tend to be not that special in either Player Versus Player or Player Versus Environment.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • With the introduction of the Pokémon Home integration, it's possible to send any Pokémon to Pokémon Home, even Pokémon that the player can only receive once, such as Victini. Sending Victini to Pokémon Home as soon as the player receives it means that they can't finish the Victini Special Research, as that requires the player to take a snapshot of Victini.
  • Before eggs were moved to their own tab on the Pokémon page rather than among items, it used to be theoretically possible to create a situation where you couldn't acquire any new items, by maxing out inventory space and then filling it with only incubators; incubators cannot be discarded and are only consumed after incubating a number of eggs, but you couldn't acquire any eggs because the inventory's full of incubators.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • Gym Pokémon are controlled by an AI, not the player. As a result, they don't bother with dodging, use their basic attack at a set rate regardless of the move's actual recharge time (which in almost all cases is lower), and will use their special attack as soon as the meter is charged even if it would be less effective than the basic attack. (For example, if their special attack is a different type which your Pokémon resists.) To counter this, players will usually place Pokémon with extremely high CP to guard gyms, so their sheer power covers their incompetence.
  • Rocket GO Grunts use Shadow Pokémon with dramatically increased CP. However, they never use Protect Shields, so your Charged Moves can plow through them easily.
• Utility Party Member: Mega-Evolved Pokémon provide a number of benefits, primarily outside combat (though they do provide a damage multiplier for allies during raids). If you Mega Evolve a Pokémon, it'll give you various bonuses for catching Pokémon of the same type.

V

• Victory by Endurance: As long as you have the last Pokémon standing in a gym battle, you win. Made easier by the fact that you always get to use six Pokémon, while the gym could have as few as one. That one Pokémon could defeat your first five, but if you defeat it with your sixth, you win. Furthermore, as you defeat Pokémon and degrade the Motivation of a gym Pokémon, you can heal up and try again. So long as your potion and restore supply isn't an issue and you can reliably beat at least one each time, victory is more or less certain barring outside interferences.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • As of June 2018, players have the option to befriend each other in-game. If they do this, they can send gifts to each other (among other perks). Some players have gone out of their way to befriend folks who live in remote areas with very few Pokéstops or gyms so they could send items to help them out.
  • The Buddy system overhaul brings several options for this, with rewards for doing so. Playing with your 'mon increases their friendliness towards you, which reduces the distance needed to find candy for them. When they become especially friendly, they start following behind you on the map, and can help you catch wild Pokémon.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Sometimes it's just easier to not swap out your Pokémon if it's hurt, or even lead with a Pokémon that only had a sliver of health left and force it to faint, since you can then use a Revive on it and automatically gain half its health back as opposed to spending twice as many potions to heal it to full.
  • Players can attack and take over gyms that were just conquered by other players. If the gym's defenders were placed less than 10 minutes ago, they won't even see a single coin out of this.
  • Many players won't bother purifying caught Shadow Pokémon. Willow says they're struggling and in obvious pain, but despite his words, it's very likely that a purified Shadow Pokémon will be stuck with poor stats even after purification, and some players simply won't bother with Pokémon that cost an increased amount to purify when they have no chance of being confident fighters. Furthermore, after an update, mons in their Shadow state gain a bonus that turns them into glass cannons (increasing their attack at the expense of defense/health), they can still gain a second attack, and GO Rocket Takeover events also give players the chance to replace Frustration with a better attack by using a TM. And if that isn't enough, Niantic made purification a joke since the only bonuses purified Pokémon gain are an overall slight discount in stardust/candy, the ability to be traded, the ability to Megaevolve (for certain mons only), and the move Return... one of the worst Normal-type moves in the game (which even got a Nerf in a balance update). As a result, a lot of players are not bothering purifying their mons when the pros of their Shadow formes outweigh those of their normal/Purified formes, as many Pokémon turn out to be better attackers for gyms/raids/PvP only in their Shadow forms.
  • Some players will use low CP Pokémon to defend gyms and then transfer them for candy as a way to delete them from their collection once they're defeated. Since it takes about two or three defeats to fully boot out a Pokémon from a gym (assuming their CP didn't degrade), players can mooch off other players on the same team by placing weak Pokémon in the gym to earn coins and then transferring their weak Pokémon once it's knocked out. Players can also place weak Pokémon in a gym and troll opposing players by feeding the weak Pokémon berries to keep them active and deny the enemy players entry to the gym. In short, you can use a weak Pokémon to let it get beat up over and over before giving it away to the professor.
• Video Game Perversity Potential:
  • In the 0.35 update, a new feature was added where you can have a Pokémon appraised by a team leader. They will comment on the Pokémon's stats, and if they're of an unusual size, they will comment on that as well. However, they will refer to the Pokémon by whatever nickname you've given it, which can lead to some rather humorous lines. This has been somewhat curtailed by filters as of trading being added.
  • You can take a snapshot of a Lopunny or Mega Lopunny from its rear, close-up.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • PokéCoins earned for defending a gym can't be collected while defending the gym - they're automatically collected along with the defending Pokémon's return when it's defeated. This means that in areas with a low gym turnover rate, one often has to beg the opposing teams for kicking out one's defender in order to collect the coins.
  • PvP, especially GO Battle League has this in spades:
    • In gym battles and raids, the best IV's (appraisal) are, as one would expect, the highest possible (15 each). This is also true for the Master League. For the Great and Ultra Leagues? Not so much for most relevant Pokémon. These leagues are restricted to Pokémon with a CP of not more than 1500 and 2500, respectively, and because the Defense and Stamina (HP) stats are square-rooted in the CP calculation formula, the Attack stat influences the resulting CP much more than the other stats. This means that the best Attack IV for most relevant Pokémon in Great and Ultra League are usually zero or something very low, because then you can power up that Pokémon further before it hits the CP cap than with a high Attack IV, which results in a higher total Defense and HP while not sacrificing much total Attack.
    • The stardust Consolation Prize you get from losing all 5 matches in a set is so significant that one of the best ways to farm a lot of stardust quickly is to gather a team of 10 CP Pokémon and let your opponents obliterate it.
    • There are no bigger rewards or other incentives to have a high rating on rank 7 onwards (barring some extra stardust at the end of a season, and not counting the end-of-season rewards for rank 10). And since you cannot rank down no matter how much you lose, this means it's better to stay at as low a rating as possible in order to maximize your chances of going up against weaker opposition, and consequently get more rewards. So when your rating gets sufficiently high, it's advantageous to deliberately lose several sets, in order to "tank" your rating down to something on-par with newer and weaker players.
    • When legendaries were a possible encounter reward for winning 4 matches in a set (2 using a Premium Pass), many players were purposefully not winning any more than 3 matches in order to avoid the encounter. This is because catching them is mandatory - you can't proceed or finish the set until you've done it. Legendaries were also the most common encounter, and are very hard to catch, often requiring several attempts even when using golden Razz berries and ultra balls, so many players saw them as a punishment rather than a reward.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Players can customize the appearance of their trainer. Most clothing options require coins, however.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Ditto, which can become any Pokémon, copying their appearance, moveset, and base stats perfectly (its level, however, remains the same). This even applies to catching them; Ditto disguise themselves as random Pokémon, so you never know if a Pokémon is actually a transformed Ditto.

W

• Weak, but Skilled:
  • A player good at dodging can take down a gym Pokémon leagues more powerful than their own mon.
  • An additional example is lots of non-evolved Pokémon often have superior moves compared to their evolved forms, such as Haunter naturally learning Shadow Claw and Lick while Gengar doesn't have these options available as of currently, instead having the inferior Hex, or Mareep learning Thunder Shock, Discharge and Thunderbolt, which is superior to all of Ampharos' electric moves.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly:
  • A Pokémon assigned to a gym has a "Motivation" meter that scales the Pokémon's CP and stats, making the Pokémon weaker the less motivated it is. In addition to being lowered upon defeat (kicking the Pokémon out of the gym if depleted), it declines pretty fast over time (full to empty in as little as 8 hours for Pokémon with 2324 or more CP) and has to be replenished by feeding the Pokémon berries.
  • Subverted with Buddy Pokémon: they need to be fed before they can join you in adventuring, but not feeding them won't harm them or even prevent them from finding candies while you walk.

Y

• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The Super Rocket Radar allows the player to track down PokéStops taken over by Giovanni, the Boss of Team GO Rocket. However, when interacting with these PokéStops, occasionally the player will find not Giovanni, but a Team GO Rocket Grunt instead, acting as a decoy, who will mock the player for getting fooled.
• Your Size May Vary: Raid Bosses are absolutely gigantic for their species while in a Gym. After being beaten, they shrink down significantly to something more in-line with an Alpha Pokémon, but the actual Pokémon that the player gets to catch will be a standard size for their species.

Z

• Zerg Rush:
  • When fighting a gym held by an opposing team, you get to use six Pokémon regardless of the total currently at the gym (which can be up to six). This makes it quite easy to overwhelm a Pokémon individually stronger than anything you have by chipping away at them with a rush of weaker ones. Furthermore, multiple trainers can team up against the same gym, making victory more a matter of attrition, and Pokémon in the gym lose CP as their Motivation lowers, either from losing battles or simply over time.
  • The only effective way to take down a high-difficulty Raid boss is to organize a group of people and overwhelm it with sheer numbers.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Tier 1 raid bosses are generally very easy and quite doable to take on solo; the boss CP typically ranges not too far above a standard fully-evolved Pokémon's CP. Raid bosses also generally tend to be not fully-evolved Pokémon, such as Magikarp.

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