"Niantic doesn't get enough credit for making raids, eggs, and battle rewards so unappealing that there's no motivation to spend money on them, helping us all save during these difficult times"

#PokemonGO: Today I almost spent a few dollars on pokemon go. With candy XL in the game, there's suddenly so much more gameplay breathed into it which could last for months, even if Niantic made it easy.Half distance eggs and double candy? Here comes a good reason to walk a bunch. It's an easy gym fee! Except... nearly every egg is 2km with costumed babies which definitely aren't worth using incubators on for a tiny bit of candy and a few minutes of saved walking. The few 10k eggs I had saved turn out to be Sawks, Alomola, Audino, Feebas, and Klinks. I figured I'd maybe go through a bunch of incubators and would get luckier with further 10k eggs, yet in several hours, I didn't find any.Well with candy XL I'd happily knock off a bunch of 1* and 3* raids of interesting things, since there's so many types that are appealing right now. It would still take months or years to get enough candy XL, but it's a good excuse to spend a few dollars on walks which I know will make me go further out of the way, really just the price of a small snack. They could be packed with beldums, larvitars, hell maybe even swinubs (and I did drop a few remote raid passes on them recently), and maybe Niantic could use the advance weather prediction system to ensure most raids line up with weather boosting for a good candy XL chance, to make them hard to resist.Only, raids are consistently full of the most unappealing junk which can be caught dozens of times on any walk, usually around the gym itself. If anything I'd in fact rather pay a subscription fee every month to not have to sit through the endless countdowns and loading screens and victory animations which are involved with raiding, where your walk comes to a hard stop of pointless waiting and doing nothing, where pokemon go becomes pokemon slow.Money saved again.5* raids could have a bunch of stuff in them which groups from around the world would love to be inviting each other to for chasing candy XL for right now, like mewtwo, kyogre, etc. Only... They're filled with the most unappealing legendaries for months on end, and megas which I might do if they had a solo option but which I'm not bothering my friends over, because who wants to spend money for a short barely useful buff which is the very essence of the RPG potion hoarding anxiety problem.Then there's the fact that I can walk for hours around gyms I made and not find any raids anyway.I would be dropping a few dollars on gameplay-worthwhile raids, but money saved again.Finally there's the PvP battle system, which I spent a few seasons working my way up to the top of to unlock just the possibility of interesting pokemon if luck in the battles went my way. Only, every time I get there, exhausted and needing a break, the season wipes all my progress, and once again I have to spend forever just for the chance to maybe get a pokemon I want, and up to that point there's no point using paid passes, which are barely worthwhile even after reaching that point. You'd think using a paid pass would guarantee a decent pokemon encounter, and it wouldn't be filled with junk.Money saved again.Overall it seems Niantic has really hit the sweet spot in making any paid system in the game completely unappealing, missing the mark entirely on what's actually attractive in the game right now. By the time something appealing is in raids, I'll probably have gotten enough candy XL from ambient spawns anyway, and won't have any reason to give Niantic my money. It has been immensely considerate of them to pack everything with junk, though it's not great for my fitness which was really benefiting from when pokemon go had actual exciting reasons to go walk in the early years. via /r/pokemongo https://ift.tt/2L8sysy