"A summary of valid criticism of the Hoenn event on TSR (repost)"

#PokemonGO: There have been many posts like this during the last couple of days, so I'm going to sum up and analyze why the Hoenn event is extremely underwhelming. I'm only posting about the event-related parts of the game, not the other major issues some people were experiencing, such as being locked out of their accounts.There are only few Pokémon boosted by this event and it's mostly the Gen 3 starters, which already have spawned before, but not very often. Only Shroomish is noticeably boosted everywhere and the exclusive move from evolving it is one of the few good aspects about this event. Many other Gen 3 species were already common (Zigzagoon, Taillow, Makuhita, Meditite, Barboach, Spheal) and only some others were more prominent in other biomes (Numel, Corphish).The lack of weather-dependent Pokémon is a disaster. Not a single Lotad in rain, Cacnea in the sun or Snorunt in snow. The only way to get them seems to be eggs or trading. Since we're talking about a Hoenn event here, which should reasonably boost all species from the 3rd generation, this is downright absurd. Instead, we only get all (respective) types of Castform, which was almost missing before. If these Pokémon aren't supposed to be more common now, when is it going to happen?The lack of rare spawns. The only otherwise rare Pokémon which are boosted here are Trapinch and Slakoth, while still not extremely common. The Feebas day was already a failure, especially here in Europe, and the spawns haven't been noticeably boosted since. Bagon doesn't exist here anyway. Beldum and Ralts aren't extremely rare here, I remember seeing only one of each on my radar during this event, which is definitely less than during normal play. Even the Kanto event, while not boosting all rare Pokémon, spawned more Lapras and Hitmons than otherwise.The lack of evolved forms. I haven't seen a single Swellow, Linoone, Nuzleaf, Whiscash or Hariyama during this event - and none of them were extremely rare here before. If you compare this to previous events, this is a major downgrade. The Water type event in June 2018 had lots of second and even final stages, such as Pelipper or Blastoise. The current event doesn't feature any - and final evolutions are still unreleased!Volbeat and Illumise are still locked in their respective regions, same for Lunatone and Solrock (which is much more common than Lunatone in the wild) and Seviper/Zangoose. This is definitely a missed opportunity to introduce them all at once or at least swap them again.Some Hoenn Pokémon are still completely missing. Niantic already managed to botch Shedinja by not giving it any special ability, making it completely useless and still releasing it as a research breakthrough. It's even less understandable they're holding Kecleon, just because it has an ability which would require some battle changes and is potentially invisible in the wild. Same for Clamperl, which was actually long overdue during the water event. The Johto event showed us that there is no problem in releasing evolution items through field research, so adding only two new ones wouldn't hurt much.There is no reliable way to get many other Pokémon. A lot of Gen 4 Pokémon is already unnecessarily rare and sometimes weather-dependent (Buizel, Bronzor, Finneon). Even many Gen 1 and 2 Pokémon basically went extinct since they were excluded from nests (normal Geodude, Marill) even before this event. There is no solution for this and the current period shows how big this issue is getting.There are no notable event-only research tasks right now and lower level raids are less exciting than ever, with only rather weak Pokémon in T2 raids (starter evolutions belonging in T1) . T1 is basically useless and it's better to catch these Pokémon in the wild. It's a waste of time (120 seconds of waiting and a few hits) to raid them and there is no advantage in comparison to regular gameplay. The only raids which are really worth it are obviously Kyogre and Groudon, since Metagross' performance without Meteor Mash is underwhelming anyway.In mid- to late 2018, it became rather obvious that the only long-term concept Niantic has in making regular catching and grinding attractive is releasing more shinies. Now that there are few evolutionary families from Gen 3 which have not been released as shinies yet, they somehow had to resort to Zigzagoon and Taillow.This "event" also definitely drowns out the Psyduck spawns, which is another parallel event and which I'd definitely like much more, since it's my favorite Pokémon. Its shiny rate is also rather low. In case I don't get any, this will be a major disappointment.(Edit) The egg pools have been diluted for a couple of weeks and including some Hoenn species in 7 km eggs doesn't make it any better. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://bit.ly/2WlPUfk