"Snubbull Research Day: Exercise in Good Game Design"

#PokemonGO: There's already a pretty good thread about the topic, but I wanted to take this opportunity to take a deeper dive into "why" Snubbull Limited Research is one of the best events so far in 2020. This comes down to three big points: balanced research; integration; and broad appeal.Balanced ResearchThe biggest win for this event was its thoughtful selection of research tasks. Anyone who's played long enough has slogged through hatching a million eggs or spinning stops for five days in a row. It's much more fun to play the game on your own terms, and 95% of the time, Snubbull's research lets you do that. Only "Catch a Normal Type" felt like it could pose some problem, but even then the ongoing Johto Throwback gives us common spawns like Dunsparce and Teddiursa. "Battle another Trainer" could pose a situational issue if you have no friends and already used up your 25 GBL games, but that's a remote issue.In isolation, the tasks themselves are all decent. The difficulty curve seems reasonable for even a new player, and the time investment of everything -- except the aforementioned battle a trainer -- fits what the research is going for.IntegrationMost impressively, the Snubbull Research is really sensitive to everything else that's going on. Aside from it obviously featuring a Johto Pokemon during a larger Johto event, Granbull is a strong counter against Giratina-Altered, our current raid boss. Additionally, stacking a bunch of Snubbull works really well for the ongoing benefit of double catch stardust, encouraging Star Piece purchases. Oh yeah, and the various tasks -- snapshot, buddy interactions, and trainer battles -- all take advantage of newer GO features without forcing you to stay in any of them for too long.Add in the fact that you really can play this Limited Research 100% from home (pending good spawns or incense), and Snubbull made for a very integrated experience.Broad AppealLastly, the event appeals to much of the player base. Snubbull is a solid mascot for a faux community Day, and its shiny is hard to come across. Even if you had more than enough shiny Snubbull coming into this limited research, it served as a good chance to get the coveted "shundo" (perfect shiny). Oh, and even if you don't care about shinies, completing all these VERY doable tasks and encounters would net you +10,000 stardust!Closing ThoughtsCould this have functioned as a ticketed event? Probably not, especially with the Safari Zone cannibalizing it. However, Niantic should use this Limited Research as a blueprint for how to execute future free research, or improve lower-priced options like the Community Day research. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2zlKt9h