"EX Raid Report from 11/11: Writeup, Lessons Learned for Other Players, and Constructive Feedback about EX Raids"

#PokemonGO: Hello,I would like to share a detailed write up, lessons learned, and feedback from the most recent EX raid that my wife and I witnessed on Nov. 11th. I have greatly benefited from the advice shared here and on r/thesilphroad, and I finally feel like I have something useful to contribute back to the community. I wanted to give as much detail as possible so that others can learn and so that others may suggest things I missed.What Happened:Backstory and context: My wife and I live in San Francisco, which is for sure a very favorable place to play pokemon go in terms of spawns and community, but there is a lot of spoofer activity. There are several gyms near the ocean that I can see in game from my residence that I avoid for gym placements because they seem to turn over too much and/or at frustrating times (like 11:55 PM). My impression is that many local players think the same. Not many organized raid groups have been happening at those gyms either, although raids have been popping up.My wife and I had been eagerly awaiting the introduction of mewtwo since early September and had studied youtube video footage, practiced our throwing on scythers, and even made a spreadsheet with how we should power up our counters if and when the invite came, but we never got anything… We don’t live close to the sponsored gyms in and around SF, but we even made trips out to try sponsored gyms hoping to get lucky. Once again, it never happened so far, but I accepted that only a fraction of the players who raid at a given sponsored gym get EX invites.About a week ago, with the reduction in raid time, my wife and I joined a group of ~10-11 that went out to battle a suicune at one of these gyms. Unfortunately, by the time everyone assembled for suicune, there were only about 10 minutes left. One player kept erroring out from a combination of poor cell service and from GPS drift, and we tried to help her to troubleshoot, but ultimately, she couldn’t stay in a lobby without erroring out before we all had to go in because there were only a few minutes left in the raid. Like many, I am not a fan of the 45 minute raids. Hilariously, everyone ran off immediately after the suicune raid when a flaffy spawned nearby at a pokestop.On 11/9, when I was at work, I got a text from my wife saying that there had been a local EX Raid invite that she saw mentioned in discord where we raided recently! It was the suicune raid gym mentioned above. She was not invited, but I should check. My pulse quickened, but unfortunately, when I checked no pass, no luck. Since it was only a short walk and on a Saturday, we agreed that we would just come to watch. At least, we might learn something.What Happened Just Before the Raid: When I loaded the game 30 minutes before the EX raid, I was very surprised to see that the gym looked normal. Aside from a high CP bilssey that looked like it had been well maintained after defending for 7 hours, the other defenders were things like pinsir and arcanine and they weren’t fully motivated either. Also, I was surprised that the gym wasn’t even under attack. My wife and I walked over and we saw no one there except one teenager off to the side on a phone call. My wife and I rechecked discord, and we were indeed at the right place at the right time. I clicked on the gym, and it said it was closed for an EX raid. It had begun.What Happened at the EX Raid itself:I managed to get the teenager’s attention from his phone call, and he also expressed surprise and confusion that there was no one else there especially from the suicune raid group from the week prior. He mentioned that he had just started playing again after a long break, and he was very surprised to learn that none of the regular raiders were invited. I advised him to check the lobby in case spoofers were going without him, and there were 5 spoofers there. After he joined the lobby, he was also confused as he would have expected other players with higher levels, especially if they were spoofers. He showed me briefly, and the players in the lobby were levels 30 to 33. The battle started but all the other players in the room had all brought lugias! My guess was that this was a group of spoofers without many good counters or who were behind on the current meta and the fact that rejoin no longer resets damage bonus. In other words, these were spoofers who were not particularly engaged in the game currently. Sure enough, the spoofer lugias did not do enough damage and the room timed out. As this was going on, another player arrived in time to join the next lobby. She was also from the suicune raid group I mentioned. Luckily, the first group had not been able to take down mewtwo so she could still have a chance. Again, they tried and failed to take it down with the 2 live players and 5 spoofers bringing lugias. They told me that this time they were probably just one player short. I was sorry that there wasn’t anything my wife and I could do to help besides being someone to talk to. Here is where things really went wrong:The next lobby started, and the player who came late was in, but the teenager was not. The teenager didn’t have many healing items since he had not been playing much (and since pokestops don’t give them out as much anymore). As a result, he had tried to buy some from the shop, realized his item space was too full, tossed items, bought max revives from the shop, and healed up his pokemon. By the time he did all that the next lobby was already battling with the live player who came late and 5-6 of the spoofers. I would call this an understandable mistake.With live players, this would be a simple thing to ask people to back out, but there is no way to communicate with spoofers, so it put the other live player in a difficult position. The spoofers had much better counters and fewer lugias this time, and if she hopped out she might not ever get another chance to battle/catch it since the spoofers might continue to take mewtwo down on their own. This was especially true, since she had started with her high DPS Tyranitars (she had 4) and already did significant damage. Consequently, it wasn’t safe for her to jump out. The spoofers and her took down the Mewtwo and she caught it on her 2nd ball.This was not such a clear cut case where the players could/should have jumped out like what Poketwon documented a few months ago during one of the first waves. See: PokeTwon's Video (Off topic, but you might consider subbing PokeTwon. I met him in person, and he seems nice and passionate about the game.) The teenager was understandably disappointed, and he waited for a bit as the lobby fluctuated between having one other spoofer and 0 people. Apparently, at least one other spoofer had been left out also. After 10 minutes, it was clear to him that it wasn’t happening and he left disappointed. It was very disheartening to see…Lessons Learned for Players:If you don’t see any sign on discord (or whatever communication method is used locally to coordinate raids) of other live player invites, there is a high chance that it could be pretty much you and a room full of spoofers. Same goes for if you get there early and the gym is not being battled and if you don’t see live players shortly before the EX raid is supposed to start. Recognize the signs. Don’t be caught by surprise.If it is going to be just you and spoofers: A) Get there early, and plan to join the first public lobby! B) You should bring lots of max revive/max potions in case multiple tries are necessary. If necessary, you may consider spending coins on these in advance. A cheaper option could also be to power up a fainted pokemon so it gains a little HP and then potions can be used on it to heal it. C) Consider maxing out your counters to make it more likely you can carry a room with spoofers with suboptimal counters or have the best chance to earn damage balls if the room is too full.Same as 2A. Be there early! Don’t be late!!!If you need to try battling more than once, make sure you heal your pokemon from the lobby while the room is counting down. Don’t heal up and then join the lobby.Maintain good situational awareness about what is happening. (Don’t get too focused on something phone calls or like healing your pokemon).As is, casual, infrequent raiders need to check their game every once and awhile, otherwise they may miss their invite. The teenager only found his invite a few hours prior.If invites continue to favor infrequent raiders, don’t assume that your raid group will consist of experienced players or players who know what are good countersFeedback about the EX Raid System:I realize that there have been many great suggestions about alternatives to the EX raid system. I think that many of these would be preferable to what we have seen from the EX raid tests. That said, here are my suggestions assuming that we are sticking with EX raids:Constructive suggestions to improve EX raids:More of a meta-level feedback, it strikes me that Niantic seems to behave as if the EX raid is going to be the next big mechanic band-aid cure-all that is going to reengage players. While this might have been true as a short-term stop gap thing in Oct. 2016 or even to some extent in Sept. 2017, that ship has sailed and is far out at sea. It does not address the real reasons people are leaving the game: A) The lack of battling strategy. B) Lack of fun and compelling in game achievements, goals, story, or clear objectives (besides not wasting a free raid pass, soloing tier-3, grinding XP to L40, or grinding to all metals that aren’t broken). C) Lack of mechanics that might facilitate fun interactions like PvP and trading. D) The feeling in the community that gym defensive strategy isn’t really relevant because of motivation decay. I don’t intend to come off as a cynical downer, but it is not clear to me that Niantic understands that the way to re-engage players is to implement these things and not to try to use a one off EX raid invitation no matter how exciting it might be.Once the algorithm is finalized for the EX raid invites, there should be transparency and it should be clear what we have to do to increase our chances at an invite, even if doing so is difficult.For the last wave, it appears that it favored occasional players, or players who had low-engagement with the game. If the final roll out of EX raids uses an algorithm like this it might actually provide disincentive for players to raid every day, or it might provide an incentive to have multiple low-level accounts raiding infrequently and hoping one gets invited. It is my understanding that multi-accounting is against TOS. Either way, it actually, encourages active players to be less active in the name of rewarding/engaging disengaged players. While I can see how this superficially would seem to be in Niantic’s business interest, in reality, it is counter to Niantic’s interest long-term by rewarding inactivity. It is much better to focus on keeping the player who still play engaged and incentivizing them to buy more raid passes.It would be better if trainers who clear an EX raid and have the chance to catch Mewtwo can join later lobbies to help groups with not enough people/good enough counters. This would also make people less stressed and more willing to cooperate. More importantly, it would be more fun.Assuming that Niantic is unwilling or unable to eradicate spoofing anytime soon, for gyms with a lot of spoofers, it would be better if Niantic could try to always provide enough in-person players to coordinate with or roll out the capability for one player to request that everyone jump out for a given reason. This would also help in very urban environments when people just cannot see eachother because they are on different floors or are in different buildings.Suggestions for smaller improvements:45 minutes is an awkward amount time for the EX raid. It is not short enough to concentrate players to help them find the same lobby, but it is not long enough to start way late to accommodate someone’s schedule if they cannot make it. Go with one or the other or enable people who already cleared the raid to help.It would be better if there was a working push notification about the EX raid system when an EX pass is given. Like I said, one player did not login in several days and almost missed his invitation completely.In some cases, a longer public lobby count down for EX raids might be the poor man’s way to decrease the chances of people getting left out since spoofers and real players have no way to coordinate. This would be at times annoying, but less catastrophic than getting left out.This might be controversial but for those not invited, it would be nice to have a message along the lines of “You fought hard at ABC XYZ gym on 11/1/2017. Of the eligible trainers, 12 of 295 were selected for EX invitations. You were not selected, but keep battling and we hope to see you again soon!” While some people might curse their near miss, I feel that on average, this would at least provide people feedback that they were close and keep them engaged.Enable buying healing items from the raid lobby item menus.TLDR: EX raids can go bad if there are only 9-10 players invited. This especially true if 80% of the invitees are spoofers. If you are a player, prepare for this possibility. If you are Niantic, there is much room for improvement. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2zTjIry