"Raids: The Endgame of Pokemon Go and how to improve them to reach their full potential."

#PokemonGO: One of the first questions trainers ask whenever a new legendary is released is "Is it any good?" While this could have different meanings, they're usually asking if it's any good in raids. I think this thought process is key to understanding what the end game for a lot of trainers is: raids.While raids can actually be fun, I think they're an aspect of the game ripe for a revamp to improve the whole experience while adding new challenges and reasons for trainers to power up their Pokemon.Recently there have been threads discussing burnout or a lull in the game currently. I believe providing a better end game and a reason to strengthen the best Pokemon trainers have could give people something to strive for in place of shiny hunting. We need a reason to power up Pokemon and play the normal game loop of going out, walking, and catching Pokemon.Nearly a year ago I shared some ideas for improving raiding and was happy to see when one of my suggestions actually did happen in the form of raid days. So given this recent lull, I thought it was a good time to share my suggestions again with an updated perspective.Possible quality of life changes:Get rid of the mandatory 2 minute wait time in lobbies. Allow people to "ready up" and instantly begin the raid once trainers are ready. This could be a feature exclusively in private lobbies.Provide an official raid map. Right now, it's incredibly difficult to plan for raids without a third party map or someone just driving around, scouting for raids. Both of these have negative impacts, but could be corrected by Niantic. Third party maps also allow for IV scanning, which makes the game feel incredibly unfair to those who play legitimately. While driving to scout for raids results in an increased cost to players of the game and greatly increases the environmental impact of the game from the CO2 emissions.Extend raid hours. The first summer of raids, we had raid eggs spawning in North America until 6:45. Ever since Daylight Saving Time ended in 2017, raids eggs have stopped spawning here at 5:45. The rest of the world outside of the US now seems to have later raid hours. It's frustrating to see our raids end when there are hours of daylight remaining.Allow the trainer to choose a reward bundle. This is an idea I thought of awhile back when playing Gwent. When you open a card pack, you get 4 random cards and then the 5th one you get to choose between 3. I think having something similar in Pokemon Go would be nice. You could get to choose one of your reward bundles. So I would typically choose the 3 rare candy bundle in the case of legendary raids. But those who need potions, revives, or berries could choose what they're after instead.Possible raid mechanic changes:Introduce a hard or challenge mode. As trainers grow stronger, some of us would like more challenges to put our Pokemon to the test. Right now, the best opportunities for this are in soloing Tier 3 raids and low manning Tier 4 and 5. There are numerous ways a challenge mode could be introduced. There could be an in game hard mode you could enter into in which you are restricted to a maximum number of trainers for raids. 1 for T3, 2 for T4, 3/4 for T5. Completing a challenge like this could grant greater rewards. Another idea would be to just increase the health of Tier 3 raid bosses by a few hundred up to a thousand HP.Do away with some of the RNG of raid spawns. There are a few ways this could be done as well. Right now, you have to wait around hoping for a raid to spawn. I think trainers would enjoy it more if we had more control over when we wanted to raid. One way this could happen is by allowing trainers to spawn their own select raids. When playing an MMO, you don't wait around hoping for the raid you want to do to become available, you choose the raid you want to do and just go do it when you want.Don't give raid bosses the same HP, but instead tailor it to give the expected challenge for the appropriate raid tier. Soloing Tier 3s gave me this idea. Right now, about the only thing that matter for whether or not a Tier 3 raid will be a good challenge is what the defense stat of the Pokemon is. We're currently seeing a couple of good ones in the form of Hitmonlee and Hitmontop, but the way raids are done limit the number of Pokemon who can actually be a challenge. Breloom is currently an easy one and you're not seeing anyone taking pride in defeating one. But if Niantic were to be open to balancing individual raids, Breloom could be just as challenging as the other two I mentioned. This would open up the possibilities for Pokemon that could be added to the different tiers to give the expected challenge.Introduce an endurance mode. Raiding is currently a matter of DPS. An endurance mode could make it so that you can only use one team of 6 Pokemon, but would get rid of the time limit. This would open up the Pokemon you could actually use. Things like Aggron, the Regis, and Latias could become viable.I'm sure there are other trainers with plenty of good ideas for improving the raid system too, these were just a handful of mine. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://bit.ly/2VzIdBn