Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Pokémon GO | Tagged: Niantic, Niantic Labs, pokemon, pokemon go, Pokémon GO Dev Diaries

Pokémon GO Hints At Nerfing Remote Raids In December 2021 Dev Diary

Niantic posted December 2021's Pokémon GO Dev Diaries this past weekend. Let's take a look at what was said in this attempt from Niantic to improve communication with Pokémon GO players and see what we can glean from it.

Game designer Dan Thomas writes:

Our goal for the Season of Heritage is to create an experience that celebrates parts of the Pokémon world that many Trainers may look back on fondly, while also introducing new Trainers to these celebrated locales. As we continue to refine the Season model, I want to build ways for our Trainers to find meaningful challenges in whatever way they choose to play Pokémon GO.

This section of the post talks about how the Season of Mischief showed Niantic that a unifying theme can work well to make Seasons stay out. This is why we saw a storyline build toward Hoopa's release throughout the whole last season. We will see Timed Research and events tie into major releases in the Season of Heritage.

This was expounded upon by Linh L (who works on narrative), Eric Zhang (product marketing), Errol Villasanta (social media), and Eric Tobiason (art direction):

The Season of Heritage's narrative focuses on a historic site Professor Willow has discovered. The story that unfolds over the course of the Season will tie into various in-game events and eventually transform into a focal point of the upcoming Pokémon GO Tour: Johto! The Johto region is home to unique locations like Ecruteak City and the Ruins of Alph that are steeped in history and mystique, and we wanted to echo that feeling of looking to the past for answers through the mysterious locked door featured in the Season of Heritage's historic site.

It is definitely notable that the language here doesn't even seem to be permitted to hint at future content in Pokémon GO, which makes this quite a limited read. So far.

The one bit that may cause waves within the community is this, written by Michael Steranka, Live Game Director:

Each new Season is also an opportunity for us to evaluate the current state of the game and what changes and tweaks we want to make in order make it even better.

Uh-oh! I mean, that's what we want, right, but knowing how Niantic usually applied this kind of thing… uh-oh, right?

In addition to focusing more on Seasons in the coming year, we also want to continue striving toward achieving our company mission and vision by encouraging Trainers to get out and Explore, Exercise and have Real World Social Interactions with other Trainers.

That's what I thought this would be about. Personally? This may be controversial but I am very ready for the game to go back to being a "get out there and walk" style of game. As a member of the game's community, though, I can tell you this: that's a rare opinion.

As part of that goal, we'll be reevaluating some of the bonuses we've maintained over the last couple of Seasons—namely Incense effectiveness while stationary and increased Remote Raid damage. You may have noticed special bonuses during recent Community Day events that incentivized socializing or in-person raids. In a similar vein, we want to encourage Trainers around the world to get out and explore by trying out different Seasonal bonuses.

Oh boy. Get ready for some more hashtags, Niantic.

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