"Catching 3 Billion: Some Numbers"

#PokemonGO: The following is just a quick analysis of catch rates from the Bloom Event (the only time I'm aware of where Niantic has released catch totals), as compared to our current goal with this event.Niantic's tweet states that 290 ± 1.5 million grass type pokemon were caught during the Bloom event (± 1.5 since each team's total is given as a round million, so could be 0.5 million higher or lower). This event lasted between 2.5 and 3 days. Which gives us 105 ± 11 million grass-type catches per day.This analysis is the only one I've seen with details of the rates of grass-type spawns during the Bloom Event, so I'll work with those numbers. They lured 3 stops (with 6 hour lures) and analysed the resulting 360 spawns. This gave 19.6% of all spawns being grass type. However, one of the stops lured primarily voltorb/magmemite (and not a single grass type). Excluding that lure's data, the results were 28.2% of all spawns were grass type.If we caught 105 ± 11 million Pokémon per day, and that was only 28.2% of total Pokémon, then one day would have been 372 ± 39 million catches, and a full week would be 2.60 ± 0.27 billion catches, falling short of our target for this event.If the initial data (without discarding the voltorb/magnemite lure) was correct, then one day is 536 ± 56 million and a full week is 3.75 ± 0.39 billion catches. Well over our target for the week.Finally, there are two more considerations. Firstly; the total number of active players now may be less than it was in May. By some accounts the number of players has held fairly steady, by others it has continued to decline. This may mean the catch estimates above need to be decreased slightly. Secondly, the Bloom Event was only a couple of days long. For this event we are being asked to maintain those sorts of catch rates for a full week. It is unlikely everyone can keep that pace up, due to work and other commitments. This will, again, decrease the estimates above. On the flip side, the first reward should kick in before long, and with it we will see increased spawns, which will help increase those estimates.In conclusion, this event probably requires us to maintain about the same catch rate as we had for the Bloom Event, and possibly exceed it, but for a longer period of time and possibly with slightly fewer active players.Also, I have noticed a lot of people stating that they figure Niantic will just release the regionals anyway, since there's a precedent. I thought this initially, however upon reflection I'm not as certain. With other rewards (legendary raids), we were always going to get them at some point - they wouldn't have never released legendaries if we had failed the challenges. However it is perfectly reasonable for them to never release Farfetch'd worldwide. And by making the XP, spawns, lures and stardust all activate earlier, the event will still be worthwhile and enjoyable for many, even without the bonus regionals. So it is a very real possibility that we never see the worldwide Farfetch'd spawn.As a final note, after all of that, I believe Niantic will have chosen a number that is achievable based on our performance in previous events. While we are left trying to pull stats together from assorted, less-than-ideal sources, they have all the actual data and will be able to predict fairly well what sort of total we can achieve if we put in the effort. But that doesn't mean they'll set easy targets, or that we won't have to work for the rewards! via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2yYfWZV