Rural Players=No MewTwo

Niantic just released this article confirming that MewTwo will be released worldwide (http://pokemongolive.com/en/post/exclusiveraids). However, I hate this new system as it is ONLY pay to win. You need to do literally every raid you see in order to get an invitation to defeat MewTwo. What if you do 20 raids, get an invitation and no-one shows up. what then Niantic?

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Im so confused? What do they mean by invitation? I dont live in city centre i cant exactly run to their exclusive party ??

Yeah it’s quite vague. Let’s say you do a raid on a Monday. On The Tuesday you will randomly receive some special pass to compete in a raid on a Thursday. If no one else got the Invitation pass, it’s not Niantic’s problem.

I’m a little tires if the chicken little syndrome. We don’t know if this means you had to do a raid in the past day, past week or past month. We don’t know how the gyms will be chosen and we don’t know the frequency of these raids.

Can we please at least see how things will work before we cast judgement?

As for rural players yes it does stink but there really isn’t a viable option other than get your friends to play the game with you. I do feel for folks in this situation but I also know I went to a rural town where I didn’t know anyone and was able to get in a Lugia raid without issue so I know it is possible. I’ll be traveling in a few weeks and will see how things work when I’m on the road again.

Also feel obligated to point out that Niantic gave us another 3 weeks of other legendaries so they really are trying to make this work for both the community and for their company.

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Niantic is the company that shouldn’t be so vague then. If they actually gave us some specific details then maybe there wouldn’t be as many complaints as there are.

Agree the release is severely lacking in specifics. My strategy based on the limited info we have is to raid different gyms and try to up my chances of receiving the invite. i have at least three each of the legendary birds and two lugia, so my focus now is doing raids at different gyms.

My reading of the release is that in order to get the invite you have to have defeated a raid boss at the gym mewtwo appears. Maybe I’m way off, but that’s my plan.

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I don’t have the time to elaborate as fully as id like to in regards to these forum posts. It’s a good dialogue just dont have Internet access at my new place…yet… I made it to level 37 as a rural player. It wasn’t easy, I grinded at a historical monument 20 minutes away fromme more times than I can count to reach level 37. I never caught mew2 in the original series. It was really hard to get a lenendary bird in the main series game, let alone mew2. Got Zapadose and Articuno birds back in the day, but not mew2. I’m positive I’ll get an exclusive raid pass from one of the 10 gyms around me within 20 minutes driving distance from where I live but I’m also positive that an adolescent without the capability to drive will be there on his bike when he gets an invite to battle mew2 at the only gym he can see on the overworld map and I’ll be there to help. Or I’ll be there to help the 13 year old whose mother understands that her child talks to her the most when playing Pokemon go so she is happy to drive her child to a raid battle. The rural experience is definitely a different experience in regards to urban trainers experiences when it comes to organizing players to join in the fight against a raid boss. For me it’s been the most rewarding, shout out to discord, my first battle against Moltres was with two other over 35 trainers and a 28 lvl trainer that we said we are just going to do it because no one else is coming (we beat it an it was nerve racking because of the tall task we were trying to a achieve). As a rural trainer I’ve also meet almost all of my rivals at raid battles that we barely had enough people to beat the boss. Wasn’t trying to make a point here, was just trying to share, so I’ll say this, Pokemon Go has posed a challenge, it will make my world bigger in order to defeat and capture a mew2. Challenge accepted!

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My personal theory is that the invitation is merely a way to tell you where the raid is. You don’t need some special raid.

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Our official guess is that only the most popular city Gyms will be candidates to host an exclusive Raid.

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1). In my opinion this is primarily an anti spoofing measure. It ensures the raid goes to local players, and someone can’t teleport in to every raid and battle and capture this powerful boss.

I think Niantic will be generous with the window they require for you to get the invite and if they do, it will prevent spoofing.

I also think this has the potential to help players find these raids rather than the change method we have now.

2). Rural players will actually have some benefit from this system if there are enough local players to beat the boss. With less gyms it will guarantee that players will have raided in the gym so the only disadvantage is the potential to not have enough people.

3). It adds some exclusivity to this 'mon. Legendary items in video games are supposed to be hard to obtain. Why should this augmented reality game be any different? It should be a challenge to get the best Pokémon in be game and make it very meaningful when you get one.

4). I am a semi-rural player. My community isn’t a big city or large urban area but also isn’t a small village. At less than 48000 people we fall in a strange grey area of the game. Most days it takes a lot of coordination to do raid battles, and it is rewarding when we win. I have played in even smaller communities and same story, it takes a lot of coordination to make it happen but it’s possible.

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The question is though: are Niantic willing to stop spoofing. They seem to be going at this half-heartily, to make it look like they are trying.
I will agree with you, having less gyms seems like an advantage in this case. However there is still a lack of players. I am 14, can’t travel much and the only way to get my Pokémon out of a gym is with my second account. The point of a legendary is to be unobtainable and special but they are handing them out for free at events anyway.

If you travel to a special event it is actually more effort than just raiding, so “giving them out” isn’t like sitting at home and getting something for nothing.

In terms of stopping spoofers, you should know they are actively trying. Between shadow bans, hard bans, laying traps like releasing Articuno early and banning spoofers accounts that teleported to get it, and this new wrinkle on raiding there is obvious effort happening.

As for rural players, not getting enough people is an issue but the new raid style doesn’t affect that. The only impact it has is that players who are traveling may not be able to get a pickup raid on Mewtwo.

Coordination is key in garnering enough trainers to take down any legendary. I put in an hours worth of coordination on discord this past weekend to get enough trainers to help me to defeat a Lugia on Saturday. I’d gone 0-5 on capturing it but on Saturday I said if I see a Lugia raid boss I’m going to make I happen. At this point legendary birds as raid boss’s were to disappear on Monday, 8/14. Their time in the wild has since been extended though. But you get my point, time was running out for me to capture a Lugia this past weekend. I tagged trainers on discord that I’d met before at raids. That wasn’t enough. So I asked everyone in my city on discord if they would help me to defeate a Lugia and have the opportunity to capture it. A dad in what id estimate his late 30’s confirmed he’d come. That was one player but his two children that had accounts a little over 25 came too and helped in the battle. A 13 year old came on his bike (app open during the whole commute to work towards hatching his eggs). Even my rivals showed up! In total 15 trainers came out to battle a Lugia on a Saturday afternoon even though it was so hot that phones were overheating and the marshland gym that we were battling the Lugia at was infested with mosquitos. The dad in his 30’s didn’t capture a Lugia but his 8 year old did and so did his other child. They were so happy and even though the dad didn’t get a Lugia he still was there to share in the happiness of his children. Shout out to the 8 year old, he criticaled a Lugia and rubbed it in his dad’s face! Guess what I’m trying to get at is: I reached out about my interest of capturing a Lugia to the rural trainers in my area. Everyone that showed up was happy that I did.

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Haha, that’s awesome! (I got mewtwo in the main series ANd the birds BTW, I saved my master ball for mewtwo). And yes, it definitely is a more rewarding experience for a small band of rural players to conquer a legendary than to just join a random group in a city.

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@SCArsenalGunner I applauded your efforts in getting this done.

Everyone you should take note of how this effort and emulate the work be put in rather than complain that it isn’t easy. I guarantee the hard work that went into organizing the raid and getting all those people there made a lasting memory.

I also want to point out this is practically a worst case scenario. Most rural players are faced with misquitos, humidity and phones overheating.

Enjoy the adventure and camaraderie trainers.

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As usual Niantic is being vague but the synopsis of the Exclusive raids are:

  • You will have to organise a group of 20+ people in your area
  • When you defeat a Legendary / Lvl 4 Raid, you will get a notification (of some kind) that alerts you to the Mewtwo raid
  • I’m guessing from Japan that there will be at least a 9hr count down to the Mewtwo raid
  • Whether we will get 52 premiere balls or not is up in the air…

If you are in a suburban / rural area you need to set up Discord channels, Facebook groups and WhatsApp groups - these are all free to download and use. This is the only way you will be able to Legendary and Exclusive Legendary Raids.

I’m working on setting up a local discord for my town and a few neighbouring ones as well. The issue here the requirements being to vague so no one can really plan much at this point. Your simplified explanation was excellent though👍🏻

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Thanks,
We have a Pokemon GO Facebook Group with over 7000 members, we have separate Discords channel for each Pokemon Go Team and regional discords for towns in London. I’m in a Suburb and I’ve joined a group with 20+ people who raid every week.

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What’s the name of the Facebook group because I’m close enough to London? It would help me out a bit.

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