"Critical review of medium-sized community trying to trigger EX-Raid in regard to "Niantic's Developer Insights: An Update on Raid Battles""

#PokemonGO: AbstractEX-Raids are discussed very controversial across the Silph Road (TSR) since the first mention in August 2016. Later this year Niantic posted some hints how to optimize chances of getting an EX-Raid pass. Most of those developer comments didn't satisfy the community in a way, that trainers would get a guide on how to get an EX-Raid pass for every individual. Trainers across the world gathered data and figured out some requirements to determine EX-Raid eligible gyms. This led to a lot of threads on TSR, in which trainers claimed to have triggered EX-Raids in their home town. Nevertheless, the given information didn't help to solve the mechanics on how to definitely trigger an EX-Raid in one specific gym. A main problem is that observation of the whole raid activity in one gym is close to impossible. Organized spoofer communities and the necessity that every single participant has to be known and organized may be the most important obstacles. This brings up the semi-rural communities, which have a high organization grade in their vicinity and which locations are not as attractive for spoofers as maybe metropole regions. This post will not introduce new gameplay strategies nor answer how to trigger an EX-Raid. It is merely our local Pokémon community's contribution to supply raid data to fellow travellers here on TSR in regard to Niantic's Developer Insights: EX Raid Battles will take place most commonly at Gyms found in parks and sponsored locations.Trainers with a high-level Gym Badge are more likely to be invited to EX Raid Battles taking place at that Gym.Trainers who have completed a larger number of Raid Battles are more likely to be invited to EX Raid Battles.EX Raid Battle start times now take into account popular Raid Battle times at that Gym. Note #1:I will not discuss the first statement since it is the only one which was proven in numerous threads already. MethodOur Pokémon Go community consists of nearly 90 trainers. Most of them play casual and do some few raids each week. After the 09.01. EX-Raid, one of the leaders of our community decided to make an attempt at triggering an EX-Raid. We identified a couple of EX-Raid eligible gyms in our city, but concentrated on only one gym (Gym A) which is allocated quite central and has decent parking opportunities for lager raid groups. (I will not share information on the coordinates for this gym, as to not attract spoofers.) The attempt succeeded and we got 26 passes for the wave on 16.01.2018. The week after the EX-Raid we tried to trigger another gym (Gym B) in our city. This time we got 43 passes. For the latest wave on 31.01.2018 we triggered gym A again and got 41 invitations. For all of this three successful EX-Raids we only know the number of trainers which participated in the EX-Raid itself. Note that in each EX-Raid all the participants were known to our community and there is no known spoofer activity at these gyms. There were never EX-Raids hosted in our town before this. For last week's EX-Raid qualification we asked the community to provide data on every single lobby which will participate in the triggering of Gym B (25.01.-29.01.2018). Lobbies were submitted with screenshots or via whatsapp or telegram chat. Recorded Data68 Individual trainers participated in the triggering. The monitored time frame was from the morning of 05.01.2018 until the late evening of 29.01.2018. Note #2: I tried very hard to remind all participant trainers to submit thoroughly every lobby. Nevertheless, the group consists of very young and very life experienced trainers, both which are not so proficient with recording screenshots and such. Table 1: Raid schedule and lobby size.DateStart TimeTierRaid BossLobby #Trainers in Lobby25.01.201809:411MagikarpLobby 12Lobby 22Lobby 32Lobby 4113:405KyogreLobby 11717:221MagikarpLobby 11Lobby 22Lobby 32Lobby 41Lobby 51Lobby 61Lobby 71Lobby 82Lobby 94Lobby 101Lobby 11126.01.201807:142MarowakLobby 11Lobby 22Lobby 3111:031WailmerLobby 14Lobby 21Lobby 31Lobby 41Lobby 51Lobby 6214:401CharmeleonLobby12Lobby21Lobby32Lobby41Lobby51Lobby6127.01.201807:302Marowak/10:003GengarLobby 14Lobby 2216:302MawileLobby 12Lobby 22Lobby 31Lobby 45Lobby 52Lobby 6228.01.1813:371WartortleLobby 15Lobby 21Lobby 32Lobby 41Lobby 52Lobby 62Lobby 71Lobby 82Lobby 91Lobby 102Lobby 11617:403AlakazamLobby 12Lobby 26Lobby 31Lobby 44Lobby 53Lobby 63Lobby 76Lobby 81129.01.201808:162CloysterLobby11Lobby22Lobby3312:305KyogreLobby 11018:31:002SandslashLobby 11Lobby 21Lobby 31Lobby 44Lobby 51Lobby 61Lobby 72Lobby 82Lobby 92Lobby 101Lobby 114Lobby 122Lobby 131Lobby 141Lobby 15114 raids were observed in the monitored time frame and 77 lobbies submitted. Only 13 out of 14 raids were battled. 4 out of 5 days had 3 raids. Only on Sunday there were 2 raids hosted at monitored gym. The biggest lobby was a Tier 5 Raid on 25.01.2018, 13:40h with 17 participants. The Raid with the highest number of trainers was on 28.01., 17:40h with 37 participants and the raid with the highest number of lobbies for a single raid was on 29.01., 18:31h (15 lobbies). Table 2: Individual Trainer ID listed with total amount of raids and the Arena Badge.Trainer IDArena BadgeEX-Raid Pass# of Raids001bronze11002silver16003silver11004bronze11005bronze12006gold14007bronze020083009silver12010gold13011gold15012bronze11013silver02014silver15015silver14016silver11017silver03018silver15019gold17020bronze11021silver12022silver13023gold13024silver130251026silver130272028silver17029bronze11030silver16031bronze11032silver01033silver12034silver12035bronze11036silver03037silver12038silver13039silver12040silver14041bronze11042bronze11043silver11044silver11045bronze01046bronze11047bronze01048bronze13049gold16050silver01051silver17052silver03053bronze13054gold14055gold13056gold12057silver13058gold14059silver11060silver15061bronze02062silver15063silver16064gold11065bronze11066bronze12067bronze12068silver12 Note #3: These 68 trainers include 3 young trainers (008, 025, 027) which are not connected to our community. Right now I do not have data on the gym badge or if they got an invitation. I will not include those trainers in the statistics. Therefore, the sample size is 65 individual trainers. From 65 Trainers which gave me a feedback, 55 received a pass. Only 10 trainers did not get a pass. For this wave we assume that 85% of participants received an EX-Raid pass at the monitored gym. DiscussionI am neither a mathematician nor any good in statistics; also the sample size is too small to derive anything really useful for most other communities. I will keep this discussion very short but all fellow travellers are free to use the data or ask me for the raw data.Nevertheless, I will play a little with the recorded numbers and compare them to the mentioned Developers Insight's. Developer Insights #1: Trainers who have completed a larger number of Raid Battles are more likely to be invited to EX Raid Battles. Table 3: Distribution of EX-Passes based on total number of raids completed.# of Raids# of TrainersEX-Raid Pass receivedpercentage733100644100555100455100313107721411791211781 For this analysis my interpretation of the mentioned statement is, that you have a higher chance getting an EX-Pass for the upcoming wave, the more raids you played (won or lost). Table 3 shows that from all participants, those with 4 and more raids all received passes for this wave. Trainers which have raided less than 4 times in the monitored time frame were only 80% likely to receive an EX-Pass. Developer Insights #2: Trainers with a high-level Gym Badge are more likely to be invited to EX Raid Battles taking place at that Gym. table 4: Distribution of EX-Passes based on gym badge.Arena Badge# of TrainersEX-Raid Pass receivedpercentageAverage # of Raidsgold11111003,82silver3428823,14bronze2016801,45 From our small number you could really assume the statement seems right. Trainers with a gold badge were more likely to get an invitation. The table indicates that silver and bronze badge trainers had an equal probability to get an invitation. But if you compare the average battles for each badge tier, bronze trainers only had to battle 1,4 raids to achieve the same probability as silver trainers with 3,14 raids. Developer Insights #3: EX Raid Battle start times now take into account popular Raid Battle times at that Gym. Table 5: Raid activity based on time of the day.raid start time# of lobbies# of trainerslargest lobby7:14h3427:30h///8:16h3639:41h47210:00h26411:03h610412:30h1101013:37h1125613:40h1171714:40h68216:30h614517:22h1117417:40h8361118:31h15254 As most trainers have time in the afternoon to attend raids, we were sure to get a late EX-Raid time. The times, which were triggered before are 2x 16:30-17:15h and 14:00-14:45h. The data from table 5 triggered an EX-Raid at 14:00-14:45h again. This is quite surprising, because there are more recorded lobbies after 16:00h than before (Table 6). *Table 6: Raid activity before and after 16:00h.Raid Start Time# of lobbies# of trainerslargest lobbybefore 16:00h379317after 16:00h409211 If we take the data from Table 6 Niantics Developer Insight means, that the most important factor to determine the EX-Raid time is the lobby size. Since there are more than just two possible times for EX-Raids, the values in row "before 16:00h" will be devaluated even further. The only really outstanding number is the 17 trainer lobby, which did a Tier 5 Raid on 25.01. at 13:40h. ConclusionAs stated before I am aware of the small sample size and that there is little to none statistical value to suck out of the recorded data. The main reason we did this is, that we are pretty sure to have control over nearly 100% of the gym activity at mentioned gyms. The main achievement our local Pokémon community accomplished is, that we definitely triggered 4 consecutive EX-Raids at a target gym, by keeping the raid activity relatively high. If we keep up the motivation, every single trainer in our group will get an invitation sooner or later. The fact that we received 55 passes out of 65 participants for the next EX-Raid blew our minds. We assume that the high percentage is based on the high number of lobbies. From our subjective feeling we assume that this week was our most active. There is no data to back this up. We plan for the upcoming qualification time frame (31.01.-06.02.) to trigger the later EX-Raid time (16:00-16:45). So for one more week I will annoy my fellow trainers before and after each raid, so that I may present a bigger sample size next week.Edit #1: TL;DR: Sharing data on one successful EX-Raid triggering on a gym where our local Pokémon Go community controls nearly 100% of raid activity. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2EpVBjH