Pokémon GO may one of the most popular Alternate Reality Games as well as one of the most popular games of the entire Pokémon franchise, peaking at around 20 million players in its heyday as well as managing to revive interest in the franchise. However, this doesn't mean Niantic's efforts worked well the first time... most of the time. Here are some of the most notorious screw-ups that led to frustrating experiences as well as Niantic losing nearly three-quarters of that playerbase:
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Raids
- Raids in general; they are a nice and fun way to connect with other players, since they are designed to be done by large groups... outside of a city, however, the areas with the lowest number of active Pokémon GO players, raids are the game mocking you since raids above three-stars are nigh impossible to solo. Worse still, this is one of the only ways to get some Pokémon period.
- Dodging is downright frustrating at times, due to lag issues which can make it difficult to impossible to know when an enemy is about to use a Special Attack (when an opponent uses their special attack it gives a prompt and a telltale animation, but sometimes with lag the prompt and/or the animation won't generate). Even if a player knows when to dodge, sometimes the game won't respond to the input, or even if it looks like the player did dodge they still take damage. As a result, many players don't even bother with dodging, preferring to just brute force attacks and try taking down the enemy before they get knocked out. This was made even worse with the February 2017 update, which slowed the battle system down and threw off the timing.
- The problem is even worse when dodging when there are multiple people fighting a Pokémon. Due to a bug, if your Pokémon dodges an attack that would have caused it to faint and there are more than 1 people fighting an enemy, it faints anyway. However, the game still thinks it's there with the same amount of health it had after the dodge, but it's invisible and you can't attack, dodge, or swap out. Only after that health runs out does the game swap to the next Pokémon. As a result, many players don't bother dodging during raids to avoid this happening. An update helped mitigate this, but it can still happen occasionally.
- Want to swap a Pokémon out? Due to the real-time nature of the game's combat mechanics, you can't pause the game. You essentially stand there and get beaten up by the other Pokémon until you can pick the one you want to swap to. Your best bet is to switch after a charged attack, or prepare a team beforehand.
- The way raids appear to the player can be very frustrating as well. Initially, an egg will appear at a gym for an hour before the raid boss spawns. This only lets you know what level the raid boss will be, not the actual Pokémon. (Red eggs are 1 star and 2 star raids, yellow eggs are 3 star and 4 star raids, and silver eggs are 5 star raids only, aka Legendary raids.) If you're only interested in one particular mon at the level, this can either leave you waiting for something you don't want, or scrambling to get a team together with the 45 minutes you have to start the raid. An update helped mitigate this; outside of special circumstances, difficulty has been pared down to four basic tiers (1 star, 3 star, 4-star Mega, and 5-star Legendary), with Mega and Legendary raids spawning a specific boss every time.
- Raids stop appearing after nightfall, meaning even if you live in a place with an active raiding community, it may be very hard to bypass these requirements due to your work or school schedule. Raids appearing during the school year in the middle of the day? Guess what - you'll most likely be doing them solo since most of the community is at work or in school.
- Many people are also annoyed by how, after defeating a raid boss, you have to actually catch it. This probably wouldn't be a problem... except for the fact that you're only allowed to use Premier Balls, which have the same catch rate as standard Pokéballs, and the quantity of which is determined by how well you did in the raid battle, how quickly the boss was defeated, and if you have any friends participating with you. More than a few players have voiced how irritating it is to take the time and effort to defeat a Lugia, Raikou, or Latias, only to have them run away after you run out of your very limited Premier Balls and the game decided the Pokémon would resist capture.
- Niantic is at least somewhat aware of this problem: GO Fest 2022 featured Beast Balls to drastically increase the capture rate of Ultra Beast raid bosses and also had a research story where capturing them was impossible to fail. For every other Raid Boss though, the problem still stands.
- EX Raids are invitation-only raids that require special EX passes to attend. These passes are handed out about a week in advance to a subset of players who have previously raided at the gym scheduled for the EX raid. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Oh, so very, very wrong. The passes are only handed out to a subset of players from a few particular past raids, which means the selection process is basically a 3-step nested lottery: First, you have to have raided at the right gym, then you have to have participated in the right individual raid, and finally, you have to be randomly selected from the resulting player subset. Sure, there are a few criteria that lower your odds, such as gym badge level and number of raids done in total. Also, some gyms are more likely to host EX raids (sponsored gyms and gyms in parks). But still, it's a nested lottery. And that's not even getting into real-world issues such as time of day, weather, or not being able to attend for some other reason, which is fairly common since the algorithm favors Mondays at lunchtime for some reason. And it got especially bad when the algorithm apparently thought it was a good idea to generate an EX Raid wave on Christmas Day, potentially ruining Christmas not only for those who stay home but got no pass, but also for those who did but are away during Christmas. Adding even more salt to the wound is the fact that many sponsored locations such as malls are closed on Christmas Day, prompting Niantic to cancel many EX raids on that day. No, not postpone, but cancel. And with the petty compensation of some stardust and two regular passes.
At the end of September 2018 however, Niantic attempted to make the EX raids a bit less frustrating by explicitly labelling the EX raid-eligible gyms, allowing each invitee to invite one friend, as well as allowing normal raids to spawn at a gym even when an EX raid is scheduled there. Unfortunately, the last change also made it possible for a normal raid to conflict with a scheduled EX raid. No problem, just cancel the raid so the EX raid can take place, right? No. The EX raid gets cancelled instead. Yes, you read that right: the EX raid gets cancelled, not the normal raid. You might have taken time off work and traveled far and wide to find out that your EX raid was blocked by a Magikarp. Tough luck. - For a long time, using a battle pass at a raid would immediately consume it. If you used a pass and had to suddenly back out due to other matters, you basically wasted your pass. It wasn't until mid 2020 where the game changed battle passes consumption by not using it until the battle actually began.
- Invitations to raids were highly requested and it was finally implemented in the Summer of 2020. Around October in the same year, Niantic changed the invitation mechanic where you can only send out invites if you're physically at the gym's location. Previously, players were able to send out invites if they were remote raiding due to the COVID-19 pandemic and it was known well ahead of time that the invites and other mechanics would change or be removed eventually. The fact that Niantic changed the invite mechanic while the world was still in the midst of the pandemic didn't sit well for many, and it's been thankfully reverted since.
- As a result of the Coronavirus outbreak, you were allowed to purchase Remote Raid Passes (with Pokécoins) that can let you raid remotely. While this should be an Author's Saving Throw, it manages to not be this way for some players since the gym still has to be onscreen with you. Good luck if you don't live and/or work nearby a place where one is onscreen! And you're also out of luck if you're a rural or suburban player since you also have to pay in Pokécoins, and this is harder to obtain if you are rural or suburban. Likewise, the remote raid passes are capped to a maximum of three (though you can go over the cap if you buy the pass bundle when you have two passes or less in your inventory), which means you'll be constantly burning through your coins and/or buying coins more frequently if you want to access raids from a distance regularly.
- Elite Raids were jeered at from the moment of their announcement. The way they work is that the egg for them appears 24 hours in advance. Once it hatches, players have 30 minutes to complete the raid. What REALLY caused ire is the fact that these raids are exclusively local, meaning you can't use your remote passes for these. This can result in you finding one but having nobody to partake in it with you. This is especially bad since these raids are five stars, meaning they're basically impossible to take on alone and win.
- Shadow Raids - raids that allow players to catch shadow Pokémon - quickly wore out their welcome, due to a combination of limited Pokémon and overcrowding a game mechanic that was already burdened with 3-tiered raids and Mega Raids. Most grating was the decision to have Shadow Legendaries appear more frequently on the weekends, which meant anyone who was looking forward to catching the current legendary on their day off would have to sift through a series of shadow legendaries, with Shadow Articuno being in rotation for 3 solid months while traditional legendaries were lucky to get more than a fortnight.
- During raid days, raid bosses can appear in gyms with little to no warning, and when the timer for one raid boss expires, they will immediately be replaced by another raid boss. If you want to attack the gym or feed berries to your Pokémon, this can be rather frustrating, since neither is possible as long as the boss controls the gym. Likewise, you're out of luck if you're hoping someone will defeat your Pokémon and remove them from gyms, since that isn't possible, either.
Region-or-Lifestyle-Induced Issues
The basic design of Pokémon GO is set up to tailor the experience to the player's region, encouraging them to visit points of interest and spawning Pokémon that would logically appear where they are on a more frequent basis. On paper, it's a cool concept, but in practice, it severely disadvantages certain people purely because they live in certain places or make certain decisions about how they live, something that's unheard of in traditional games.
- Once you pick between Team Instinct, Team Valor, or Team Mystic you never have the option to change again. This is a rather minor gripe, but as the game just suddenly forces you to pick a team at Level 5, some players may regret their decision if all their friends go with another choice or if that particular team has a very minimal influence in the area you live in. In February 2019, an item was introduced that can allow a player to change teams, if you don't mind spending 1000 coins and only being allowed to use it once every 365 days.
- Team bonuses in raids give you extra Premier Balls if you complete a raid with players who are in the same team as you. This didn't work out for players whose teams are in the minority in their area, which usually meant less chances for those players to catch Pokémon after the raid. The introduction to the Mega Evolution mechanic also overhauled the bonuses in raids where the extra Premier Balls are now determined by how quickly everyone completes the raid.
- People who live in large cities have a major advantage over suburbs or rural areas, in that cities contain lots of landmarks and, therefore, lots of Pokéstops and gyms. In rural areas, it can be miles between individual spots/gyms, whereas in cities there will be several in short walking distance. Further, the frequency of Pokémon spawning seems to be dependent on how many smartphones are in the area. Densely populated areas report finding Pokémon with great regularity, while those out in the country can find nothing even after hours of searching. Finally, while urban areas allow you to get near wild Pokémon through the use of streets or parking lots, in rural areas they can be dropped in the middle of someone else's property with no (legal) way to reach them. Worst of all, since biomes do have an (albeit minimal outside of cities) effect on what Pokémon spawn in certain areas, the fact that in real life, Biomes go on for miles upon miles, whereas the video games allow you to walk from an ocean shore to a steamy jungle looking for Pokémon.
- There are several "Region Exclusive" Pokémon that will only appear in the wild in specific continents. What's worse, despite early rumors that these Pokémon could still be hatched via eggs, this ended up not being the case. When eggs hatch, they still are restricted by continent, so an egg hatched within the United States is incapable of spawning the European Mr. Mime or the South American Heracross. For a long time the only way to complete your Pokédex was to plan expensive trips across the world. Several things have since alleviated this: special "Safari Zone" events in certain cities that allow Pokemon from outside the host region to be found alongside other rares, one particular event that temporarily allowed the original four regionals from Gen 1 to hatch from eggs globally, and Trading, which allows one person on a trip to catch a large number of regionals and hand them out to friends when they return home.
- Furthermore, when Mime Jr. debuted in the game during the 2019 Ultra Bonus Week, it appeared as an egg-exclusive mon... Still restricted to those areas where Mr. Mime would appear, an issue that was exacerbated by the inclusion of every other regional Pokémon in the egg lineups.
- Some Pokémon only seem to appear nearby what the game considers a "wetland" biome, and outside of that, only appear whenever it rains or through Incenses. (Which seem to be tied to biome) If you live in what the game considers a desert biome, guess what you're never going to see. And in more-insane scenarios, you're going to see core-series starter Pokémon as common as typical Com Mons, or even surpassing them in frequency (eg. Torchic being more common than both Zigzagoon and Poochyena).
- Special Research. While you are able to get rid of any undesirable field research, Special Research, including the line of quests required to get Mew and Celebi often include things that turn the game into a bizarre Difficulty by Region trope - where obtaining things such as Magikarp candies or battling in raids is borderline impossible because there aren't enough Magikarps or raids forming.
- If two players manage to become Lucky Friends, the next trade they make will make their Pokémon a guaranteed Lucky Pokémon, which reduces the cost of powering them up with Stardust. The only way to benefit from the Lucky status is if your friend happens to live near you or is visiting in your area (trades only work up to 100 meters apart). Otherwise you can forget it.
- The dates and times of Community Days. Despite the name, they only last a few hours each as the signature 'Mon spawns in great numbers on the overworld (with an extra three hours to evolve the Mon to their final stage and gain their special move). Moreso, not every player may be able to go out and partake in the Community Day for one reason or another due to having some sort of event to attend (public sports and conventions as an example) or not having a ride to a location with a large number of spawns during the duration of the event. There do exist weekend Community Days, though they are rare and usually reserved for December's Community Day. The Mudkip Community Day of July 2019, in particular, was criticized for being held very late in the afternoon (4pm to 7pm local time) on a Sunday, a time when most people and families would be busy getting ready for the first day of the work week or having dinner. This issue was somewhat rectified by having Community Day last six hours from 11am to 5pm local time ever since April 2020, although that was mainly because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and was reverted back to three hours starting in Stufful's CD in April 2022.
- Additionally, weather can make an impact in community days, possibly confining players to skipping the day or playing in their cars in the event of a rainstorm, temperatures rising too high or falling too low, or other harsh weather conditions. For example, in the 2019 Mudkip Community Day, some parts of the world were in the midst of a massive Heat Wave that day.
- The alteration to Community Days starting with Deino in June 2022, which managed to consolidate multiple problems together:
- In an attempt to apparently mitigate this, for 5 hours after the spawn window ends, the next evolved stage of the Pokémon starts appearing in raids, and beating it causes the community day's Pokémon to spawn in the gym's proximity for 30 minutes. As usual, this seems like an unnecessary shafting against rural and suburban players:
- The raids are 4-star difficulty, which makes them incredibly hard if not impossible to try and defeat either solo or with two participants. Non-urban players will have to rely on the unreliable possibility of gathering a group of strangers together to participate with just 30 minutes' notice before the raid egg hatches.
- They also explicitly disallow remote raiding in any capacity, further disadvantaging anyone who isn't in a populated urban center when playing by making it impossible to gather a raid group over the internet. This issue also plays into worries with in-person gatherings, as concerns regarding COVID were still around when these changes happened.
- Also, unlike Raid Days, the Community Day Raids don't come with multiple free daily raid passes from Gym photo discs. So if you played perfectly and were lucky enough to participate in them, the raids could have allowed more time catching the community day's Pokémon by a net total of 5 hours after the first 3 hours, but in practice would only extend it by one hour, (if you saved a previous day's free raid pass and used both it and your next one without a hitch) unless you also had a premium battle pass, which are rare when not bought from the store.
- In an attempt to apparently mitigate this, for 5 hours after the spawn window ends, the next evolved stage of the Pokémon starts appearing in raids, and beating it causes the community day's Pokémon to spawn in the gym's proximity for 30 minutes. As usual, this seems like an unnecessary shafting against rural and suburban players:
- Galarian Yamask's evolution requires the player to win several raids while Yamask is the active buddy, which is very time-consuming. While one could just farm the low level raids for easy victories, visiting a raid is not an option for many if they don't live close to a gym and remote raiding requires Remote Raid Passes, which costs 250 coins to buy. The introduction of the Galarian Yamask in October 2020 was also during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic where visiting locales for a gym wasn't an option for many. This wasn't helped by the lack of ways to get Galarian Yamask outside of a paid mission chain, a mistake Niantic repeated with Galarian Mr. Mime two months later. Proving that Niantic is quite adamant about taking polemic decisions, Hisuian Qwilfish could only evolve into Overqwil by winning 10 raids while being the active mon.
- As demonstrated with Pokémon X and Y, you cannot evolve Goomy to Goodra unless it is raining. And since most places of the world have a dry season or a rainy season, you'll just have to wait until the rainy season if you want a Goodra. But if you live in a place that's arid or even semi-arid? You're out of luck - as rains are very rare, and when it does happen it's often not long enough for the game to think it rains. There's a reason why, in every game Goodra has been available in, there has been a place to reliably level it up where it rains in some way.
Other Availability Issues
- A problem with egg hatching is the fact that you can only carry a maximum of nine eggs, and unlike your bag and Pokémon storage, you can't buy upgrades. What's especially infuriating is the fact that items can be easily discarded and Pokémon can be transferred, but the only way to get rid of eggs is to hatch them, which can take a long time. And just when you've got a free space in your egg storage, you receive another egg from the next Pokéstop you spin, or the next gift you open. It certainly doesn't help that incubators aren't available from Pokéstops (unless it's a special event), and are very rarely given out as prizes for levelling up.
- Many of the problems with hatching eggs have been resolved when Pokemon Go incorporated the Adventure Sync function, allowing trainers to track their distance when the app is turned off... provided your phone is able to keep track of it. It still doesn't work for everyone.
- The odds of what Pokémon hatch from which eggs has, over time, gotten so ridiculous that some players have gone so far as to claim that they are starting to feel more like lootboxes in notoriously money-grubbing games than a reward for doing a lot of walking or exercise. The complaints about the egg odds were never completely non-existent, but they were tolerated more in the early days of the app due to there only being a select few mons in the hatch pools at one time, making the odds of getting desirable or rare Pokémon like Dratini, Lapras, Chansey, or Larvitar much better and meaning few saw it as a huge problem. But as more Gens (and thus more Pokémon) were added to the game, the hatch pools became crowded with more and more Pokémon until many felt that the egg-hatching system was so overcrowded with too many reasonably common Pokémon that could very easily be found in the wild that it drove the odds for any more desirable or rare ones down into the gutter. This lead players to believe that the mechanic was starting to encourage shelling out dough for coins in order to buy incubators for a slim chance at a rare Pokémon, which in turn lead to a drastic increase in the Allegedly Free Game complaints leveled at Niantic. The complaints reached a fever pitch in September 2019 during the month's Ultra Bonus event when the odds for hatching Unown and certain regionals were an unimpressive 40% altogether (with the other 60% dedicated to the usual 7k egg spawns such as the baby Pokémon and the by-now reviled by the playerbase Alolan Meowth and Alolan Sandshrew) and some of the Unova Pokémon introduced during that period were discovered to have hatch rates as low as below 1%. All of this ultimately lead to players campaigning for either an overhaul of the egg-hatching mechanics to improve the odds of hatching less common Pokémon and overall make hatching eggs feel more rewarding, or at the very least making it easier to acquire incubators without spending in-game currency or real money.
- When Salandit was added to the game in April 2022, it could only be obtained via 12km eggs, which compounds together a ton of issues that aren't that bad by themselves. Firstly, 12km eggs are hard to come by because you have to beat a Rocket Boss to get them, which means fighting 6 Grunts. Secondly, 12km eggs take the longest amount of distance to hatch. Thirdly, there aren't any Pokémon in the 12km egg group that are rarer than Salandit, making it a Luck-Based Mission to get one — and it has the same rarity as a bunch of other Pokémon. And finally, it's a Pokémon with a 7-to-1 male to female ratio, but unlike most other Pokémon with this trait, the gender of Salandit isn't just something players can decide they want to get for cosmetics; male Salandit are inferior since they can't evolve into Salazzle. If you want a shiny Salazzle or one with perfect IVs (or both), you can preemptively kiss your chances goodbye thanks to the ridiculous luck and time required to get one.
- The lack of any sort of natural healing, either over time or based on distance traveled. This means the only way Pokémon can ever be healed is by use of Potions and Revives, which don't usually drop in excess from Pokéstops.
- The rarity of the starter Pokémon. You can start with one of four (Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle or—if you play your cards right—Pikachu), but once you pick your starter, you can't go back and catch any of the others. Instead, you have to wait until you encounter them in the wild like every other Pokémon. The problem is, all four starters are rare (Bulbasaur spawns more often when it's overcast, Charmander spawns slightly more often in the sun, and Pikachu and Squirtle spawn more often in the rain, so good luck with the latter two), tend to appear with higher CP, and are prone to flee at a greater rate than average. While the rarity of the starters does accurately reflect the core game series (wherein Pikachu are rare in the wild and you can't encounter the other three starters in the wild at all), their rarity makes it very difficult to evolve them (with special "type" events only helping slightly), and it's certainly not helped by the fact that they require 125 candiesnote to fully evolve, due to being three-tier evolutions. Even the Buddy Pokémon update is unfair in this regard, as it disregards their egg group (2 km) to require 3 km per candy, as opposed to 1 km for Pikachu.
- Starters from future generations have never been allowed to be selected as Starters, an issue that plays into Broken Base regarding Gen I favoritism. Non-Gen I starters are instead found rarely in the wild; when the Generation II update launched in early 2017, for example, that generation's Starters could only be found in the wild and were given rather low catch rates to match the starters of the previous generation. An update helped on this issue, enabling them to be hatched from 5km eggs, though it takes more walking distance to hatch compared to Kanto starters (not counting Eevee).
- Locking TM's, Golden Razz Berries, and Rare Candies behind Raid Battles- which can require up to 20 players to participate. They spawn most commonly from Tier 4 and 5 Raids which are impossible to beat alone, but can still be awarded from the lower tier raids at decreasing percentages, which are doable solo (though Tier 3 can still be tricky even for experts). Later updates also made berries obtainable via specific and rare field missions, as well as TMs and Rare Candies being available via Player Versus Player and Leader training rewards. All of these items also have a chance of appearing as chain mission rewards after completing specific tasks or phases, as well as Research Breakthrough awards.
- Evolution items:
- Evolution Items were added as part of the Gen 2 update. They drop exclusively from Poké Stops at an extremely low rate, which marginally increases on the seventh day spin bonus. You can spin hundreds of stops and not get a single one. And since there are so very many evolution items, most of which can only be used on one or two species at most, they tend, when players do get them, they may wind up being useless anyway. Niantic has heard the complaints and instead of the 7th day Pokéspot bonus just providing a higher chance of an evolutionary item pop, it guarantees one. However, this still means having to wait an entire week to get one, and it very well might still be useless, resulting in players winding up trashing the dozens of Dragon Scales or Up-Grades they accumulate.
- For a moment, it seemed like they learned their lesson with Sinnoh Stones. Rather than have individual items for each species, all Pokemon in the same generation use the same evolution item. Good start. And for a few weeks after their introduction, Sinnoh Stones were guaranteed rewards for a player's weekly Research Breakthrough, which was appreciated as there were a lot of evolutions, both current and future, which would require them. Then, Niantic made the Breakthrough rewards randomly give the Stone from among its current pool, screwing many players out of the item until the PvP update was introduced with other ways of earning them (though Niantic has made those "other ways" just as petty). All this while players still get piles of Gen II Evolution items that are only useful for one or two Pokemon species but Sinnoh Stones, which are considerably more useful than any Gen II item, are incredibly rare. Chances are players will several copies of every Gen. II evolution item for each Sinnoh Stone they manage to get.
- Mons that require being in range of a specific lure module, due to these modules being a) Store-only and b) rare. If you're starting an account, you can get several of them from the Mythical mons' mission chains, and some other timed chains also grant you modules. But if your account has been Lv40 for quite some time, your best bet is to go to the Store. So far, the culprits are:
- Magnetic lure: Magneton to Magnezone, Nosepass to Probopass, and Charjabug to Vikavolt.
- Glacial lure: Eevee to Glaceon.
- Mossy lure: Eevee to Leafeon.
- Rainy lure: Sliggoo to Goodra.
- There are mons with a huge candy cost in order to get their most powerful formesnote , but the requirement is offset by these lines base formes being Com Mons as well as having a required walking distance of 1km per candy generated. However, some of the mons are much more problematic than that:
- The Gen VI and Gen VII updates added the Noibat line, which evolves into Noivern by getting 400 candies. However, the line has a required walking distance of 5km, usually reserved for more powerful mons such as the Beldum line. And unlike the other examples, the line is not Com Mon.
- Meltan. You can only get one in-game via its own dedicated mission chain; afterwards, the only way to get more is to transfer a mon to Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!. This way you unlock a "Mysterious Box" that is a glorified incense that attracts only Meltan. Also, this Meltan has the same issues as other reward Pokémon: underlevelled at level 15, and a base IV floor of 10-10-10, which means you cannot get a PvP-ready Meltan for Great or Ultra League, and the resulting Meltan may have lackluster stats. If you don't own a Nintendo Switch and either game, or know someone who does? Tough luck, you're stuck with that one.
Combat (GO Battle League, Rockets, etc...)
- The Action Commands of charged attacks in trainer battles have the players swipe icons that appear on the screen to enhance the strength of the charged attack in question, the pattern of which changes depending on the attack's type. For most attacks, the pattern is predictable (Grass, Electric, Psychic), or unpredictable but generally localized in an area of the screen such that the player only needs to swipe rapidly and not need to predict the icons' location (Fire, Poison, Fighting). Flying-type charged attacks don't follow this convention; its icons fly in from the right hand of the screen, spanning its entire edge and with a hard-to-predict pattern to them. The result is that Flying-type charged attacks are incredibly unreliable in damage and generally not desirable.
- The Go Battle League's cycling. PvP players had settled on using the Great League as the main competitive tier for a year prior, due to the expensive costs of preparing teams and the required legendaries for Ultra and especially Master League, so finding out that all three were essentially required to be prepared for did not tide over well with most players.
- On that note, the Master League in general. The Great and Ultra Leagues were capped at 1500 and 2500 CP respectively, keeping equilibrium between most Pokémon and amplifying accessibility. The Master League, however, has no such cap: leaving the only way to even compete to have Pokémon at maximum level (requiring several hundred candy and several hundred thousand Stardust per Pokémon) and ideally with perfect IVs, along with the entire metagame being overcentralised around limited-time-availability Legendary Pokémon such as Dialga and Giratina. Many PvP players were understandably irate when they learned it would be necessary for PvP.
- The introduction of Team GO Rocket Leaders and Giovanni introduced a new, even more irritating problem: Shadow/purified legendaries... with outright AWFUL stats. You have battled your way during some of the most excruciating missions of the Team GO Rocket chain missions, defeated the notoriously difficult Arlo, Sierra and Cliff, and took down their leader Giovanni (after being baited by some of their grunts), and your reward for doing so is... A shadow legendary with no proper IV floor (meaning it's possible this legendary can be as bad as 0-0-0. After an intense fan reaction, Giovanni's shadow legendaries were given an IV floor of 6 (and, with purification, will always be at least 8 in all stats); a step in the right direction, but underwhelming knowing that the easier-to-obtain and more common Pokémon from eggs, raids, and research encounters have a IV floor of 10.
Miscellaneous
- The weather system, which adds bonuses to specific types. While it works as intended, its ability to detect certain weather patterns is flawed and can cause inaccuracies between the game and reality. It also does not give priority to rarer weather patterns (Haze and Snow) or completely mislabels them as different weather altogether.
- Wild Pokémon's location notifications were very vague. In the first iteration of the tracking system, you're shown zero to three footprints, which respectively indicate a distance of under one meter, 20 meters, 100 meters, and one kilometer. To further compound issues, while you are shown where wild Pokémon might be, some of the indications may be false alarms, so you're randomly wandering for five minutes at a time just to get a read. When a glitch broke this system, it was replaced with a new one. Tracking is now significantly more improved: the game will identify Pokémon that are near Pokéstops and Gyms, and it takes some basic walking around said stop to find them, if they're still present.
- Early in the game's life, the lack of interaction with other players such as not being able to battle other players' Pokémon locally without the use of a Gym or not being able to trade. Over time, though, Socialization Bonus features like the Friends list and trading have been implemented, then later Player Versus Player, though not without their own problems (see below).
- The sheer power drain the game causes due to the fact it utilizes the phone's wifi/data connection, GPS, graphics processor, and optionally the camera at the same time. There is a Power Saver mode, but even with that enabled you're not likely to keep the game running for more than a few hours without stopping to recharge. This isn't helped by the fact that, without the Plus accessory, the game needs to be running in the foreground for its tracking and location features to work. Players are often advised to invest in portable chargers. Additionally, the Pokemon Go Plus will still cause a good battery drain to the phone's battery if used in the background.
- Eggs require the app to be running for your walking distance to count, which can take a serious toll on your battery life; you can't just put the phone in sleep mode and walk around. The Plus accessory alleviates this by tracking steps when the app is closed, but it's still a $35 investment to make, and there's no smartwatch app to use in Plus's place. Furthermore, the GPS isn't always accurate and doesn't update in real time, trying to time hatching to the use of a Lucky Egg for more experience can be thrown off by a wayward update.
- Adventure Sync, which is intended to help mitigate battery issues by tracking walk distance even if the phone is powered down, has the annoying habit of randomly turning off without input from the player, meaning a day's worth of walking with the game off in your pocket can end up being all for naught because Adventure Sync arbitrarily decided to turn itself off.
- The Pokémon Go Plus and Poké Ball Plus accessories when it comes to catching Pokémon: They will only use regular Poké Balls and it only has one chance to catch anything. If it fails, the Pokémon will make a guaranteed escape. You also cannot apply the Razz or Pinap Berries to make the catch more likely to succeed or award more Candy respectively, and the device is a guaranteed Press Start to Game Over. If you run out of Poké Balls, the device will refuse to use your Great or Ultra Balls, making it a glorified paper weight while it keeps buzzing at you to remind you that you have no more Balls left. The Pokémon Plus+ accessory does allow the use of Great and Ultra Balls, but unlike Poké Balls, the device won't automatically use them and you have to press the button to make it use one of the two balls if a Pokémon is nearby. While this was likely done to not drain a player's supply of Great and Ultra Balls unintentionally, there's no option to simply let the player decide if the device can automatically use the balls or not.
- The player has no control over what attacks their Pokémon have, even when evolving them into their next stage. Attacks are chosen randomly and can change drastically upon evolution. This means you have to trust in the Random Number God when you spend your 50 to 100 candies to evolve your Pokémon, and hope you don't get a pair of useless attacks. This also applies to the XL/XS tags for height and weight, which can easily be removed or switch to the opposite tag upon evolving. A later update added TM's as bonuses for Raid Battles, which allow you to shuffle either of the two attacks your Pokémon has to another available move, but this is also random and there's no guarantee that you'll have to use more than one to finally give your Pokémon the desired moveset.
- Furthermore, unlike the main games, your mons don't retain their pre-evolution's moves upon evolving unless these moves are part of the evolution's movepool.
- This was eventually mitigated with the introduction of Elite TMs, which not only allow you to choose which attacks your mon should learn, but also include many legacy attacks such as event-exclusivesnote and attacks formerly removed from a mon's movesetnote . Of course, their rarity (only obtainable via finishing above a certain level on the GO Battle League, buying event packs, and if you're really lucky, at certain event-exclusive mission chains) made them Too Awesome to Use.
- The game's nagging notice of "You're driving too fast" when traveling above a certain speed limit threshold is greatly annoying since it can pop up no matter what screen you're on. Even if you aren't driving, the game will nag you to not play and drive at the same time every couple of minutes until you slow down.
- Sometimes, the game will tell you that you're driving too fast even though you're standing still. If your device's GPS signal gets weak, your character sometimes may appear to just wander around the overworld by themselves. Now, this isn't inherently a bad thing 90% of the time, but it becomes a nightmare to deal with when you're challenging a gym inside a building only for the battle to abruptly end (and negate all of your progress in the battle) because your character on the overworld walked too far away from it under no fault of your own.
- As you try to catch Pokémon, the Pokémon will occasionally perform different actions in self-defense to dodge or invalidate your throw. They will either jump or move across the screen if they are not bound to the ground (flying up, zig-zagging, shifting to the left or right, or floating in a figure eight pattern), or execute a physical attack that knocks your ball away if they perform it right as your ball makes contact. These actions occur entirely at random and (unlike the Let's Go games) are not telegraphed. This can be especially frustrating if you are trying to catch a raid boss, especially a Legendary, with the limited number of Premier balls you're given.
- One trick used by experienced players to overcome this relies on 3 game mechanics: that there is a brief cooldown period between attacks, that catch circles remain frozen in size after the ball has been thrown, and that holding a Pokéball down during an attack animation doesn't affect the size of the catch circle. First, set the catch circle size and wait until the Pokémon attacks. Right before it finishes its attack animation, throw the ball towards the Pokémon. The catch circle will be the same size as before since the ball was thrown during the animation, the ball being mid-throw ensures that the circle will remain the same size after the animation ends, and the cooldown makes it unlikely that the throw will be interrupted by another attack.
- Pokémon that fly around (e.g. Beedrill, Butterfree, Pidgeot, Venomoth, and the Zubat line) are much harder to capture than most other Pokémon because it's harder to aim your phone at them in AR mode, and the hitboxes on them are much more finicky and further away. It certainly doesn't help that they start off further away than other Pokémon, so you have to throw the ball pretty hard just to get it all the way to them.
- Depending on how you aim, you may accidentally toss a curveball when intending to throw a straight Poké Ball, distorting the ball's movement off to the side. Attempting to apply a curve to the ball by spinning it before throwing it can also lead to potentially releasing your grip- causing the ball to lose its spin, or possibly fall out of your hands and wasting a shot. You can also waste a shot by dropping the ball if you accidentally touch and let go of the ball. In addition, when facing certain Pokémon the game may force you to throw curveballs and cause what would have been a straight throw to go wildly off target.
- With the removal of battling wild Pokémon and the ability of any wild Pokémon to flee, catching certain species above a certain CP threshold can be extremely annoying, especially if you don't have Great/Ultra Balls to make the job easier. Razz Berries reduce the risk of this, but it isn't a guarantee. Woe betide you with a Game Over if the Pokémon decides to flee right after breaking out of the first Ball you throw at it.
- Unlike in the core series, the gender markers don't appear immediately on HUD when you encounter a Pokémon, only shows up later when the Pokémon's caught. This can be challenging or a pain in your ass if you're trying to catch a Pokémon whose species are of seven-males-to-one-female population, especially if it's a starter Pokémon (excluding Pikachu, but including Eevee) and has good IVs. Even if you live in areas where Eevee are common, unless you're lucky, finding a female Eevee with high IVs can be a pain in your ass.
- The lack of a recall option for Pokemon gyms can be a nightmare for players that want their Pokemon back after they've reached the 50 coin cap, but can't because their teammates keep feeding them berries (for stardust, candy, and gym ranking). Some players have likened it to a hostage situation, and have turned teammates against one another. Some people have even resorted to asking for help from opposing teams on social media to come and knock out their Pokemon so they can get them back.
- The trading mechanic, after two years of fans clamoring for its inclusion, was finally revealed to be extremely botched in comparison to the mainline series. Unlike what Wi-Fi has allowed since the days of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, you can only trade with players that are nearby and you have to pay a hefty dose of Stardust (up to one million for a Legendary Pokémon not in your Pokédex from a freshly-added player on your Friends' list) to complete the trade. What's more is that Go incorporates "Special Trades"- a label given to trades with Shiny, Legendary, Mythical and (with the introduction of the Team GO Rocket) Purified Pokémon, as well as Pokémon not in the player's Pokédex, which cost extra Stardust and can only be done once a day- a limitation that has never been seen in the main series since it first began with Pokémon Red and Blue. What could possibly kill the feature in Go for many players is that traded Pokémon have their IVs rerolled, turning what may be an excellent, battle-ready 'Mon into only an average fighter outclassed by other Pokémon you've caught and raised yourself. Want to give your friend a powerful Pokemon to help them out with battling and defending Gyms? Good luck praying the game doesn't render them outright useless once the trade is over. Though that very same mechanic can be abused to "reroll" rare Pokémon with low IVs that two players have a copy of in hopes of improving them. A mechanic that was added later that gives traded Pokémon the chance to become "Lucky Pokémon" helped with this even further; Lucky Pokémon can be powered up for a fraction of the normal Stardust cost (similar to the concept of Outsider Pokemon in the main series) and have an IV floor of 12, which is even better than the floor of 10 for raids and research. What makes this doubly infuriating is that the restriction seems arbitrary; the game allows players to battle each other remotely once they become Ultra Buddies, but trading isn't allowed at long distances.
- During a long time, and oddly for a Pokémon game's trade mechanic, the trade evolution seen in core-series games were not included in GO, due to certain Pokémon which required trade evolutions in source games already only need candies (and certain items for specific Pokémon) to evolve in this game. So if you need a Gengar or Scizor, you don't ever need to trade a Haunter or a Scyther to evolve them. Trade evolution was finally introduced during the January 10th 2020 update, with trades removing the cost on candies for the final evolutions... But only for Gen I and a few of Gen V Pokémon, and at the cost of raising those mons' non-traded candy costs to 200 in the case of the Generation V Pokémon.
- Traded Pokémon can never be traded back to the original trainer or anyone else due to the above "IV Reroll" being abused by savvy trainers to get the best possible stats. Thus one of the core game's most frequent trading uses, to have a missed Pokémon added to the Pokédex and then trade back, is no longer possible without the trader losing something valuable like a legendary.
- Research:
- In September 2019, it was announced that all research breakthroughs would result in a flower crown Eevee... for two whole months. Usually research breakthroughs result in Legendaries, so it was quite a step down. This was especially annoying for players who do not participate in raids, as research breakthroughs are the only other way to acquire Legendary Pokemon. It didn't help that the reward Eevees only had CP in the mid 400s range, making them impractical for using or evolving. Even players who liked the Eevee rewards admitted that two months of it was far too long. Many players outright stopped doing field research during this time because they saw it as useless.
- For those looking for Legendaries through Research Breakthrough, they have become progressively rarer over time thanks to the shift from using Breakthroughs to reward legendaries to instead rewarding rare, non-Legendary Pokémon that are hard to find in the wild.
- February 2020 introduced the sequel to Flower Crown Eevee by having Woobat as its Research Breakthrough reward. Needless to say, granting 13 candy on catch and being a new species was not enough to cheer fans up regarding the breakthrough being a Pokémon essentially useless for both PVE and PvP players. Not helped by the fact that you have to walk with it in order to evolve it.
- In May 2021, the majority of Field Research tasks were related to battling Team GO Rocket, which some players couldn't or wouldn't do due to lack of experience in battling, making it harder for them to find Field Research tasks that they were more willing to complete, especially since the Research Breakthrough encounter for that month was Galarian Ponyta.
- Some Field Research tied to events require Pokémon that only spawn more frequently during the event, making it borderline impossible to complete if you don't rush through the quests during the event period.
- Legendaries and Mythicals are not guaranteed to have perfect IVs if you get one off Field Research Breakthrough Rewards or Professor Willow's Special Research missions; like raids they have a floor of 10 out of a maximum of 15, which is above average compared to wild catches but can still be quite lacking. It's especially frustrating in the case of Mythical Pokemon from Special Research such as Mew and Celebi because, once you catch it, you are stuck with it whether you like it or not (they are non-transferable) and you cannot catch a better one if the one you got happens to have lackluster stats.
- In September 2019, it was announced that all research breakthroughs would result in a flower crown Eevee... for two whole months. Usually research breakthroughs result in Legendaries, so it was quite a step down. This was especially annoying for players who do not participate in raids, as research breakthroughs are the only other way to acquire Legendary Pokemon. It didn't help that the reward Eevees only had CP in the mid 400s range, making them impractical for using or evolving. Even players who liked the Eevee rewards admitted that two months of it was far too long. Many players outright stopped doing field research during this time because they saw it as useless.
- Generation IV could be considered a Scrappy Mechanic all on its own; although the problems originated with how the Gen was created, Niantic made them worse. A new Generation is released! All kinds of new Pokémon to catch, right? Eh, kinda. See, about half of the Sinnoh region consists of evolutions of existing Pokémon with the (see above) somewhat difficult to obtain Sinnoh stones. Plus, some of those Pokemon aren't terribly common anyway if you weren't lucky enough to have gotten plenty of their candies previously. And then there is a large number of Gen IV 'mons which are babies of previous evolutions, and they are only available through hatching the right eggs. The most common members of Gen IV are actually the starters, and like any starters, they are difficult to catch and prone to fleeing. As a result of all of this, even though there are about a hundred Pokemon in the generation, you're only likely to see about 4-6 of them commonly, and half of those will be hard to catch starters.
- Straw Hat Pikachu and Mimikyu Costume Pikachu. Unlike other event Pikachu decked in special limited-time hats, these variants cannot be evolved into Raichu and it is impossible to acquire Pichu with these special costumes through hatching eggs. The same goes for the Halloween Kanto Starters available in raids from mid to late October 2019, leaving them in their mediocre to abysmal base forms. Continuing the trend, the celebration of Pokémon Day for the tail end of February 2020 featured Clone Pikachu (based on Pokémon: The First Movie), as well as Pikachu, Eevee, Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur all wearing party hats and none of them can be evolved, regulating them to weak trophy 'Mons with no usage in battles. Unfortunately, all further costumed Pokémon introduced starting from January 2020 or later would lack the ability to evolve, including Party Hat Wurmple and Flower Crown Togepi and Bunnery. October 2020 would also introduce more Pokémon with hats that can't evolve such as Croagunk, Smoochum, and Kirlia. The only exception is Flower Crown Pichu, which can evolve into Flower Crown Pikachu... and that's it. To date, the only costumed Pokémon to have not experienced a high level of backlash since Straw Hat Pikachu have been Banette Costume Gengar and Litwik Hat Sableye (for the game's Halloween 2020 event), who are lucky enough to already be at their final (or, in Sableye's case, only) evolution stages and thus be able to serve more of a purpose in the game beyond just being a Bragging Rights Reward.
- The game's announcement to hatching eggs. A nice surprise if you forgotten about your eggs. What's not nice is how the game will stop you from what you were doing just to show you that one of your eggs is hatching (luckily it can't interrupt battles). It’s worse if multiple eggs hatch in a row, as you’re forced to watch the animation multiple times.
- Any Legendary, Mythical, Shiny, or event Pokemon you catch will have the game ask you "Are you sure?" whenever you want to transfer it for candy. The intent is to prevent people from accidentally giving out a Pokemon they likely will never get again, but it's highly annoying when you have multiples you want to get rid of, especially common with the countless variants of Series Mascot Pikachu and fellow Breakout Character Eevee as well as Meltan if you have the Mystery Box from the Let's Go games. The annoyance is ramped up further since these Pokemon cannot be multi selected and have to be transferred one by one.
- Visiting new areas with your Pokemon buddy requires you to visit a Pokestop or Gym you never been to before. This means that you will eventually have to travel very far to reach a stop or gym that you never been to before if you want to get a heart for your buddy. Most people don't bother and easily gain hearts through other means.
- After reaching a certain level with your buddy, it will do its "happy" animation every time you feed it, making the process more time-consuming even through Quick Treat. The animations were eventually shortened, however.
- Stickers were added in mid 2020 and their only use is to apply them on gifts so your friends can see them. While stickers are a neat little novelty, they are also one of the possible items you can get from a gift, meaning that you can potentially get less useful items due to the sticker taking one of the slots.
- Much like eggs, stickers cannot be discarded; the only way to get rid of them is to attach them to gifts. Players with fewer friends will end up with more stickers than friends to give them to. You're also very likely to get a sticker from every gift you open, and even if you don't open any, you might still get some from spinning pokestops. At least they don't take up inventory space.
- The updated AR+ for the Buddy system allows you to place a Buddy Pokémon in one spot, so you can take pictures of it at various angles. Despite adding realism, it makes the Buddy system more aggravating in practice. Before you can do anything with your Buddy, you have to slowly move your phone around a "wide, flat surface" until spots of yellow footprints appear. You then tap to place the Pokémon in one of those spots- but only in those spots, nowhere else in the area. The game doesn't seem to have a consistent definition of what counts as a "wide, flat surface;" you can spend several minutes moving your phone around a large park without any footprints showing up, or you could easily place down a Pokémon on the steering wheel of a car. While you can use the Quick Treat system to quickly feed your Buddy so it can walk with you without going through this, you can't interact with it in any other way without using the AR+ system, making it much harder to earn hearts and receive gifts.
- Mega Evolutions drew a lot of flak from their implementation. As opposed to needing a key item to initiate and lasting till the end of the battle, Mega Evolutions are initiated by spending Mega Energy, and last only 4 real-world hours. You only get Mega Energy by winning Mega Raids specific to the Pokémon species you want to Mega Evolve, and each Raid victory yields only a portion of the requirement for the first Mega Evolution (about 30-55, out of a required 200). The Mega Raids themselves are Damage Sponge Bosses of the highest difficulty requiring lots of participants to take down. After Mega Evolving a single Pokémon for the first time, that Pokémon (and only that 'mon) would require less Mega Energy for subsequent Mega Evolutions. People were quick to criticize the mechanic, calling it a cash-grab from Niantic trying to sell Raid Passes.
- To introduce players to the mechanic, Mega Beedrill was made available through a special quest chain. Completion of the quest chain yields plenty of Mega Energy to Mega Evolve a single Beedrill a few times. But that's all you were getting so far, because Beedrill didn't have its own Mega Raid. So you'd end up not initiating a Beedrill Mega Evolution at all. This was eventually mitigated with the Mega Buddy event, where Field Research that rewards Beedrill Mega Energy was regularly handed out for a week in September.
- Charizard suffered extra hard from the Mega Evolution mechanic, since it has two distinct Mega Evolutions. The game would only allow you to enjoy discounted Mega Evolutions for a Charizard if it's been Mega Evolved into both forms at least once each.
- Niantic tried damage control by raising the Mega Energy yield from Mega Raids (you now get at least 60) and by adding weekly 1-coin bundles consisting of 3 Remote Raid Passes, but the initial release soured impressions of the mechanic. They also added a way to earn Mega Energy outside of Mega Raids, but this took the form of a limited-time field research quest that not only awarded a whopping 5 Mega energy (for one of the Kanto starters only, not Beedrill), but was so ridiculously rare that not even one could be found in Tokyo without using a bot-scanned map.
- In April 2022, Niantic addressed some of these issues when they overhauled the mega evolution mechanics where Mega Evolved Pokémon can mega evolve with zero cost after several days of resting and can mega evolve without waiting at a reduced mega energy cost. Newly mega evolved Pokémon will still have to deal with the high energy cost and certain Pokémon had their initial energy cost increased with the update.
- Events that have certain Pokémon spawn is generally good for people doing the event or are looking for Pokémon they don't have yet. If you aren't doing the events or are looking for specific Pokémon or Pokémon types related to a different event or task, then you'll have to deal with Pokémon spawns that do nothing but clutter the screen and/or delay your tasks and said events generally last for days at a time.
- In October 2020, Galarian Farfetch'd was given the ability to evolve into Sirfetch'd. However, unlike other previously released Pokémon that required using the buddy feature to evolve, instead of having to walk a certain distance with it, you have to make 10 excellent throws while it is your buddy, which is potentially more time-consuming than simply doing the former. Thankfully, this is not reset if you switch to a different buddy and, aside from Galarian Yamask, later additions of Pokémon that require you to "adventure together" to evolve have easier tasks.
- Tyler from Gamepress made a case
about XL Candy being a major low point of the GO Beyond Update. For those of you lacking the time to read the article, here's the rundown:- Availability. XL Candy is locked for players below level 40, even if they have levelable Pokémon.
- Scarcity. While you have a guaranteed amount of regular Candy every time you do something in the game (catching, transferring, walking or trading them), getting XL candies depends on RNG or using a ridiculous exchange rate between them (100 candies = 1 XL). For the record, fully powering up a mon from level 1 to level 40 takes 308 regular candies; fully powering up a mon from level 40 to level 50 takes about 296 XL Candies.
- Their in-game importance. Some mons only become viable in the different tiers of the different leagues of the GO Battle League by being powered up beyond level 40. Additionally, the GO Beyond Update elitized the Master Leaguenote and Premier Cupnote tiers, to the point Niantic had to introduce the Master League Classic and Premier Cup Classicnote formats in order to give players a fighting chance. And even then, these "Classic" formats started being phased out in mid-2022.
- The Seasons update brought a major downer by cutting the amount of species that can nest, making some mons even rarer than they were before the update. Some valuable and previously common mons in nests such as Medicham and Sableye (key players in the GBL Great League tier) became much rarer as a result.
- In May 2021, Sylveon was introduced to the game, with the evolution requirement (aside from the naming Easter egg) being that you have to make an Eevee your buddy and earn at least 70 hearts with it before evolving. The problem is that it isn't (yet) retroactive, so any Eevee that already had 70 hearts beforehand can't be evolved into Sylveon unless another 70 hearts are earned. It doesn't help that there's no counter for how many hearts you've earned with your buddy overall, only per day, so it can be hard to keep track of how many more you need. The worst part is that this was temporarily lowered for Eevee Community day in August 2021, but the evolution requirements for any buddy Eevee were accidentally reset when it was raised back up, meaning those who were currently in the process of earning hearts for Sylveon and missed their chance to do so during the Community Day would have to start over.
- Adventure Incense attracts Pokémon near you, but only if you're moving and the incense itself only lasts 15 minutes. While this may not seem like a big deal, the main issue is the item mostly attracts Pokémon that already spawn naturally (including ones spawning from events) and a very low chance that a more rare Pokémon could spawn, such as Nidoqueen or Dragonair for example. On the off chance that you are extremely lucky, you can see the Galarian forms of Zapdos, Articuno, and Moltres appearing in the wild, but they tend to flee right away if your first ball doesn't work. Since you're always given the option to share what your catches were with your friends once the incense is finished, the item seems to be nothing more than showing off how many Pokémon you caught in 15 minutes (and even then, only Pokémon caught with the incense count).
- Leveling up past level 40 requires not only a ton of EXP, but also requires the player to complete a set of tasks that are not easy to do or are very grindy:
- One of the tasks required to reach level 41 involves powering up a legendary Pokémon 20 times. Getting candy for any legendary Pokémon is very difficult since Rare Candy is, well, rare, and using a legendary Pokémon as a buddy to candy grind requires 20 km of walking just to earn one candy for it or 10 km if it's in an excited state. Some events do offer candy for featured legendary Pokémon, but those are also rare. There's also a task that requires you to catch 200 Pokémon in a single day. Woe to anyone who lives in an area where Pokémon hardly spawn.
- Reaching level 44 requires you to win 30 battles in every league and fight 20 battles in the GO League . While you can rig the game with a friend to let you win every time, it's still grind heavy.
- One of the tasks for hitting level 47 is to have 3 Pokémon reach maximum CP. Doing so requires a lot of Stardust and XL Candy, the latter which is not easy to acquire.
- One task to reach level 48 requires you to walk 25 km a week 8 times. Simply put, that's a ton of walking. Another task also requires you to walk 200 km with your buddy Pokémon.
- A task for reaching level 49 requires you to make 10 trades with another player who caught a Pokémon that is at least 300 km away from your location. Unless you're at an event in person to trade with others, know someone personally who can visit you, or you have a friend that can send you 7km eggs as gift (and you have a place in your egg list), you're out of luck. Another tasks also requires you to obtain 50 lucky Pokémon, which rarely happens when you trade. While some events boost the luck chance to a certain extent, having a lucky friend guarantees that your traded Pokémon will be lucky, but having said lucky friend is also up to chance.
- One task to hit level 50 asks you to make 999 excellent throws. Another requires you to beat a GO Rocket Team Leader 3 times using only Pokémon whose CP is 2500 or less, which means you're handicapping yourself against a team of Pokémon whose CP is extremely high. A third task requires you to catch legendary Pokemon in your next five encounters, meaning that if one gets away, you have to start over.
- Earning coins from defending gyms can be nightmare inducing if the gym is in an area with a ton of foot traffic. Popular areas may have gyms change hands constantly, which makes it nearly impossible to earn enough coins to make defending the gym worthwhile. It's also possible for coordinated players to work together and effectively lock the gym(s) down and prevent anyone from holding the gym to earn coins from it.
- Feeding berries to a gym defender restores some of its CP while Golden Razz Berries fully restores CP. If you happen to be unlucky enough to gain the attention of a defender's Trainer while you try to take over the gym, they can feed any Pokémon a Golden Razz Berry to effectively nullify your hard work. Since a lot of players can have a huge stockpile of Golden Razz Berries, a Trainer can stall the invaders by constantly feeding Pokémon gold berries until the attacker gives up.
- The new feature that records the size and weight of freshly-caught Pokémon, which has a habit of overlaying all the other stats and delays your ability to appraise it. Not to mention a new record is made seemingly every single time you catch a Pokémon, which isn't the wisest decision considering there were at least 800 mons in the game when the feature was introduced.
- This feature was meant to be utilized in Pokéstop Showcase, which rewards players whose showcased Pokémon set the record for height and weight. The problem is, upon launch, the showcases were limited to a single designated Pokémon per event and players were limited on how many times they could enter a showcase per day. For extra frustration, the more players enter a showcase, the higher the chance your own Pokémon would slide from first place to a much less rewarding position, losing out on any big rewards if they're knocked out of the top 3. All in all, it's a pretty underwhelming feature considering how long Niantic was working on it.
- Also related to sizes in relation to showcases are the events where a Showcase is asking not for a specific Pokemon species, but a specific Pokemon type. While this can make for an easier time on paper, the game does nothing to restrict players from submitting Legendary Pokemon so if, say, the showcase was for largest Fairy type then there's a very real chance of being stuck with an unwinnable showcase if you're the only one without a Xerneas.
