Pokémon Go developer Niantic has announced changes to its big new Gigantamax battles feature, in response to this weekend’s initial launch.
Fan feedback to Gigantamax has been decidedly mixed, as Eurogamer reported yesterday, with concerns over the difficulty level of being able to beat the skyscraper-high monsters, and the ease of then actually catching one afterwards.
Niantic has responded swiftly, and in a statement to Eurogamer last night a company spokesperson detailed a number of changes for the game’s next set of Gigantamax raids this weekend, against Gigantamax Gengar.
Most notably, the difficulty of Gigantamax Gengar will be lowered “slightly”, to make the battle easier when compared to other Gigantamax battles.
“While we want Gigantamax to be the new high bar for a meaningful challenge in Pokémon Go, we want to make sure that players have a reasonable chance to defeat Gengar,” a Niantic spokesperson told Eurogamer. “You’ll still need to strategise and coordinate with your group and go in powered up to a degree, but we think this tuning will make things slightly easier to help a range of Trainers jump into Gigantamax.”
Here, Niantic seems to agree with a common complaint I heard this past weekend – that the feature could have benefited from giving players more of a leg-up to get started. Once you have your first Gigantamax Pokémon (and after a battle or two to learn the ropes), the whole thing becomes easier.
Other changes to Gigantamax Gengar include a bonus 25k Stardust reward for beating the boss, and an improved capture rate for snagging it afterwards.
“We want players to feel rewarded for accomplishing such a huge feat, and right now the catch rate didn’t match the experience we wanted,” a Niantic spokesperson said. “We’ll be increasing this for Gengar and will continue to monitor other Gigantamax encounters.”
There’s no changes to the game’s Max Particle limit, which effectively caps the amount of Gigantamax raids you can complete at two without purchasing more of the currency from Pokémon Go’s shop. And there’s certainly no suggestion you will be able to complete Gigantamax Gengar battles without still forming a large group of players.
Also, it’s worth highlighting that these changes are specifically for Gigantamax Gengar this weekend, in a manner that suggests Niantic realises it needs to throw the game’s community something of a bone to encourage participation in the feature once again.
Could these changes stick? “Other Gmax encounters are unaffected for now,” a Niantic spokesperson said, “but we MAY make changes to them in the future.”
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