"The current Raid system makes it so that your performance actually matters in only a few very limited scenarios"

#PokemonGO: Let's assume you are a Level 30 trainer with most of your dex complete and a couple strong attackers. You are probably able to solo any Tier 1 and Tier 2 Raid without major issues. I think it wouldn't be a stretch to say you can do them with your eyes closed, offering very little challenge.Your other option is to try a Tier 3 Raid. As we have seen on this subreddit, some of them (e.g. Jolteon) are pretty much impossible to solo no matter what you do. Some of them, on the other hand, require careful planning, good performance in battle (e.g. dodging a crucial special attack that would kill your attacker at half health) and a bit of luck (boss's charge attack). These are, in my eyes, what the endgame should be in terms of gameplay and I will come back to these later. If you have a partner with you, Tier 3 raids become once again trivially easy, just like solo T1s and T2s.Finally there's T4s. We know these are currently not soloable, so you need a group with you. There's a sweet spot here, around 4-6 players (depending on boss), where if everyone is at their best, the boss will fall. If someone cannot keep up, the boss survives. If there are fewer players than 4, you usually stand no chance no matter what you do (shoutout to the folks who 3-player'd a T4). If there are more than 6 players, it once again becomes very easy to beat the boss, no matter what you do.The point of this thread is to bring attention to the fact that the sweet spot, where the gameplay is at its best, is very narrow. Soloing a T3 raid or 4-5 playering a T4 raid seems like the most intense (and ultimately rewarding) experiences you can have. Now obviously you cannot influence the number of people at a T4 raid - you may be able to bring friends, but there can be strangers too. And if there are, your fight probably turns into a cakewalk and free rewards - which is cool, but why exactly do you need those free rewards if you have already beaten the hardest content in the game without dropping a sweat? You could make a private party, but then you need to bring exactly 3/4 friends with you each time and how many of us can do that?I believe we need more experiences like a solo T3 raid. I would personally slightly decrease the HP of those bosses and moderataly increase their attack, so that dodging a few attacks becomes critical to survivability, but you still need to keep your DPS up. Then it becomes a great goal for anyone to strive for - hard, but achievable. These goal should then tie to a meaningful medal (Solo all Tier X raids), which we could really show off.It seems Niantic is on the right track if the current research is correct in that more players means tougher bosses, it might just be the numbers that need tweaking for a T4, so that it doesn't become super easy once you have 7+ players. I would even go a step further and take the levels of the players into account, to optimize the experience (and the rewards). The Tier 4 should then become much rarer, so that people actually flock to them if they appear. The standard would be to battle at Tier 3 (and have a great time - especially if the difficulty multiplier for the second person joining is adjusted) and if a Tier 4 showed up during the day, that would be a nice surprise, rather than what everyone is waiting for. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2tq1Xgz