"The monthly TGR Special Researches are too difficult."

#PokemonGO: The monthly Special Researches with Team GO Rocket are too difficult.Note: this is not a rant, this is not a weak player whining. So please don't tell me to git gud. I could always complete the Special Research before the month was over. But lots of other players in my community can't and it saddens me to see them unnecessarily frustrated and quitting the game because of it.So here's what I think is way too difficult/time-consuming about the monthly Special Researches, and what could/should be done to improve the happiness of the players.• Problem 1: You need to beat too many Team Rocket Grunts. If you plan everything very cleverly, you need to beat a minimum of 23 Team Rocket Grunts, before you can meat Giovanni. However, if you're just a regular player who doesn't read everything on the internet prior to going outside, this number can easily go up to 32 or even way more (e.g. if you didn't save any Shadow Pokemon from last month, or if you failed to catch any Shadow Pokemon, or if your Item Bag was full, or if you prematurely used your Rocket Radar on Sierra, Cliff or Arlo before you reached Stage 4/6). Having to beat potentially more than 30 Team Rocket Grunts is too much, it is a huge dealbreaker for many players rural and suburban areas. Beating one Team Rocket Grunt per day sounds reasonable, but there are days on which I don't even see a single dark-blue pokestop at all.- Solutions 1: a) Make more Team Rocket Grunts spawn on the map! It should absolutely not be okay to look at 20 pokestops without seeing a single dark-blue pokestop anywhere for two hours. Increase them generously! b) Reduce the number of required Mysterious Components for a Rocket Radar from 6 down to 5. c) Mysterious Components should be awarded regardless of whether the Bag is full or not.• Problem 2: You're losing too much time with the first three stages. The first stage of the Special Research already wants you to beat 3 Team Rocket Grunts. That alone can, depending on the area you play in, already take 3-5 days to complete. The next stage then wants you to spin pokestops 3 days in a row, and win 5 Raid Battles. If you're a player in a smaller town, chances are that you often don't even see a solo-able Raid anywhere on some days, and chances are that you won't be able to gather enough people to win the T4 or T5 Raids. And the third stage wants you to beat another 6 Team Rocket Grunts. So, those first three stages will often eat up half of the month for some players, especially those who forgot or couldn't afford to spin a pokestop on one day, or those players who have to work late and therefore can't do Raid Battles during the day. The first three stages are unfortunately put together.- Solutions 2: a) Change the task "Spin Pokestops 3 days in a row" to "Spin a Pokestop on 3 different days", so that people don't get reset to 0 if they forget one or if they can't go outside on a certain day. b) Reduce the number of required Raid Battles from 5 down to 3. c) Rearrange the tasks within those 3 stages a bit, e.g. exchange the task "Purify 5 Pokemon" from Stage 2/6 with the task "Beat 6 Team Rocket Grunts" from 3/6, so that you can beat the Grunts WHILE spinning stops on 3 days and doing the Raid Battles. It's better to have the difficult tasks in the same stage.• Problem 3: Finding Sierra, Cliff, Arlo and Giovanni is unnecessarily difficult. Again, this is mostly for rural and suburban players. If you're in an area with around 20 pokestops, it should absolutely not be okay to have zero Rocket Leaders in there. But those days exist. And that's a shame. On other days you will see 2 or 3 Rocket Leaders on the map, but all of them are Arlo, whom you have already beaten. So you will lose several days, simply because RNG didn't make the right Rocket Leader spawn in your town. And this doesn't even touch the problem of those people who come from work late and therefore can't challenge any Rocket Leader at all because it's already too late. And lastly, you also need to find Giovanni, which often takes several days as well, because on some days the Super Rocket Radar shows nothing at all and on other days you'll only encounter Decoy Grunts.- Solutions 3: a1) Increase the numbers of Rocket Leaders and make sure that smaller towns get enough of them too. OR a2) Make the Rocket Leaders independent of location, simply allow the players to battle them in the Battle section. b) Improve the Rocket Radar, so that we can see further. Because right now, you really can't see a lot. c) Allow the Rocket Leaders to be on the map 24/7, so that people who come from work late can battle them too. This isn't like Raid Battles where dozens of people will gather at the same spot, so there's no need to deactivate them during the night. d) Increase the number of Giovannis and make sure that smaller towns get him more frequently than just 1 every 5 days...• Problem 4: The battles against Sierra, Cliff, Arlo and Giovanni are simply too difficult. Now, I'm a person who grew up with pokemon, I know all the type efficiencies by heart, I have quite some experience with competitive battling, and I read The Silph Road almost every day. But even for me, it sometimes takes 3-4 attempts to beat Arlo or also Cliff since he has a Pinsir. Now imagine just how difficult it is for the elderly couple in my community who started playing Pokemon GO because it was fun for them. They have just completely given up on ever being able to beat the Rocket Leaders. It is objectively difficult. Too difficult for too many people. And yes, there are videos of people beating the Rocket Leaders with a team of Great League pokemon (below 1500CP), but all of those people were only winning because they exploited the 'switch delay' and the 'charge move delay', which cause the enemy to stop attacking for a couple of seconds. You shouldn't have to rely on this bug(?) to win the battles.- Solutions 4: a) Reduce the attacking power of Shadow Pokemon. It doesn't even have to be by much. But they are seriously too overpowered right now. b) Show the exact stats of the pokemon and its moves on the pokemon profile. Because right now, you would have no idea that Golem with Rock Throw and Rock Blast is good for shield-breaking, because you have no chance of knowing how much energy its Fast Move would generate and how quickly it can fire off its Charge Move, let alone how much Attack, Defense and HP this pokemon has in general. (c) Potentially, make the Battles easier with every attempt. If you see a player failing over and over again, have mercy and help them. Niantic doesn't win anything if players just leave frustratedly.)---Of course there are more criticisms and more possible solutions. I'm interested in a discussion and your opinions and ideas about it :)I hope Niantic reads this as well. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2SJJTZZ