What Went Wrong At Pokemon Go Fest 2022
There’s no nice way to say it: Pokemon Go Fest 2022 was a bit of a disaster. While it was undoubtedly a financial success for Niantic - who just reported $6 billion in lifetime player spending - the sentiments from the community following the event are overwhelmingly negative. I've been all through the subreddits, social media posts, Discord servers, and fan groups, and everyone is saying the same thing: Go Fest ‘22 was a huge rip-off.
So what went wrong? The biggest point of contention is definitely the Shiny rates. While there’s a lot more to Go Fest than hunting Shinies, the increased Shiny spawns definitely sell a lot of tickets. For many, Shiny hunting is the only reason to show up at all. Unfortunately, the actual rate of Shiny spawns didn’t seem to match the rates that Niantic promised, and some are now accusing the company of false advertising.
Niantic hasn’t commented on the Shiny controversy yet, but we have enough data available to posit a few theories. One of the biggest reasons that there were fewer Shinies this year than last year is that many of the Pokemon in the pool didn’t even have Shiny versions that could spawn. According to Reddit user /MarsNeedsFreedomToo, 23 of the 61 Pokemon in the Wild were not Shiny eligible. Compare that to last year, which only featured nine non-shiny Pokemon out of a possible 53, and you can see why there were so few Shinies to go around.
Related: The Pokemon Go TCG Designs Have Missed A Trick
The vast majority of reports about low Shiny rates are anecdotal but we have at least one data point that indicates Shiny rates were not boosted at all, at least for one Pokemon. Redditor /feewel found a website that takes self-reported Shiny encounters from players to determine Shiny
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