Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: Niantic, Niantic Labs, pokemon, pokemon go, shiny mew

Was The Shiny Mew Masterwork Research In Pokémon GO Too Easy?

Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto introduced what was meant to be an entirely new kind of Special Research experience: Masterwork Research. This, unlike Special Research which started out as intense when the game was new but became commonplace, Masterwork Research was meant to be completed over a long period of time due to time gates and the intensity of the tasks. Now that trainers all around the world are completing this first Masterwork Research and claiming their Shiny Mew encounters, the question should be asked… was that too easy?

Now, you may feel compelled to rush to the comments with an emphatic "No." And you may be right. There were certainly difficult and intense tasks within the Shiny Mew Masterwork Research. Catch 30 Dragon-types? Difficult. Walk 151 KM? Intense. However, most of the work was done on a long, time-gated Page Two. It wasn't even 24 hours after Page Three was revealed that the fourth and final page was as well.

The Masterwork Research is in many ways meant to replace our original idea of Special Research. When Pokémon GO was a newer game, Special Research was harder to complete due to the lack of major in-game bonuses. For instance, evolving a Magikarp up to Gyarados was a major task. I remember evolving my first Gyarados right before the Mew Special Research came out and lamenting at how long it'd take me when I saw the "Evolve a Magikarp" task. It felt intense. Looking back, that Special Research is less intensive in many ways than our current Timed Research which is meant to be completed in less than a week. Pokémon GO has changed and Special Research isn't hard anymore.

Masterwork Research, which was designed to be difficult, I personally feel should be more arduous the next time it comes out. When, for example, we get Shiny Jirachi, I love the idea of a ten or even twenty-page questline that will feel, at the end, as if we've completed a full game within the game. That, that sense of long-term achievement, is currently only tied to Level 40 and Level 50 in Pokémon GO… but it doesn't have to be that way. Shiny Mythicals should take a journey to catch, and I'm ready for a long one.

How about you? We'd love to hear your thoughts on the future of Masterwork Research in Pokémon GO.

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