"[Discussion] Latest EX wave suggests that invite algorithm has been backwards all along"

#PokemonGO: Edit: While not salty, definitely a bit "passionate" about this topic. I'm presenting a theory that seems to connect yesterday's bizarre invite wave and a lot of feedback that's been written off (even by me) as just anecdotal.This is a decent post from a different subreddit that I first saw this claim, and it's honestly the only logical explanation for what we saw from player reports yesterday.tl;dr The theory is that the invite algorithm has likely (not 100% proven or tested yet) been favoring players with fewer completed raids and a lower gym badge since EX raids went live (at least). But, until now, it always required that you had at least raided at that location in the last week. That "last week" parameter must have been removed this wave (perhaps with good intentions), resulting in the GoFest tier fuster cluck. Before, the "within last week" parameter was holding the system together and masking the bug in the algorithm, but now without it, chaos.It's the only thing that makes sense. I'd love to hear alternative theories or holes in this one. But this would explain why people with zero raids at that location, zero hours defended at that location, zero gym battles at that location, zero XP, and only have spun the disc are getting invites to gyms thousands of miles away that they haven't visited in 3 months. These people that should have the weakest lottery chances (and shouldn't even be eligible by Niantic's own statement) are instead the most favored.If this is the case, then this also explains the bizarre distribution of passes over the last 3 months where often the most dedicated and active players are routinely passed over in favor of new and irregular accounts. Why players were having success targeting gyms they had never raided at previously. The algorithm was backwards all along. Like they were sorting in ascending order instead of descending when issuing lottery tickets (ie: a player with no badge/few raids gets 5 tickets in lottery drawing whereas a gold badge/hundreds of raids only gets 1 ticket. Some of the Gold Badge players still get in the EX raid, but instead of being favored, they are now unfavored). Before, the "last week" parameter keep things intact well enough that players could blame it on RNG, but the RNG excuse doesn't hold water any more and so we should seriously re-evaluate whether it ever did in light of this.Some have argued that this was likely a change in the selection parameters to favor new or latent players or those without Mewtwo, but why would they send those players to gyms they don't frequent and far away? And I haven't noticed any significant change in the number of invites to players without a Mewtwo yet. That doesn't make any sense if that's the goal. I really can't see any logical goal that these changes could be intended for.And how could this system be financially advantageous to Niantic? If just spinning a disc is all that's needed to get an EX pass, they lose out on ALL the premium raid passes that people have been dishing out for. Premium raid passes have been a huge buff to their profits, especially once they were supposed to be tied to EX raids. You don't have to be greedy to know that's just a bad business model to untie them. This can't be intentional.I feel like Niantic has to recognize that there is seriously wrong with the EX raid system and has been for a while and players need to be making a fuss if Niantic continues to ignore it. People have completely shifted their play methodology (studying S2 grids, updating OSM tags, targeting specific gyms over others) and some have spent considerable money on passes with the expectation that things worked as Niantic said they would, with no recompense when the whole thing has turned out to be a sham.Hopefully this doesn't read as salty. I have my Mewtwo (two of them even). I haven't spent more on raid passes than I would have otherwise, using mostly my daily passes. Instead this is a genuine and a bit emotional expression of what could have been going on in game and I think the appropriate response if it's true. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2EMsJm3