Pokemon Go began releasing special Ex Raid Passes that allow players to join the top tier raids in the game. These Raids are primarily for the release of the ultra powerful Pokemon MewTwo. The problem with the system is multi-tiered but begins with the fact that no one understands the methodology behind receiving an Ex Raid Pass. Some gamers who are the most hardcore players of the game in the world seem to have a harder time getting an Ex Raid Pass than more casual players.
This can make it baffling hard to play out an Ex Raid even from players who literally play the game for a living. The player and Youtuber was the most recent large name player to draw questions on the system. Reversal has a youtube subscriber base of around 300k, where he covers the game exclusively. He also has the gamer distinction of being #15 in terms of XP in the world. Those are bonifides that carry weight. After tweeting about his dissastification with system his tweets were picked up by both Polygon and Forbes. FREAKING FORBES!
Oh yeah and also Toylab.......we are the real heavy weight in this jungle kids, lets not even pretend.
Tweets from Reversal:
Unbelievable, a gym where I do raids on a regular basis just got given EX-Raid Pass and I'm like halfway to getting this gym gold, what a crock of shit.— Reversal (@ReversalYouTube) January 7, 2018
You know what? I'm done with this EX-Raid Pass System.— Reversal (@ReversalYouTube) January 7, 2018
Way to kill my motivation on this game.
Taking a indefinite break from #PokemonGO
Is it weird for me to think that I'm not relevant enough to have an impact in this community?— Reversal (@ReversalYouTube) January 9, 2018
Yet there's an article on @Polygon based on my tweets:https://t.co/FmoefU6AuP
I WILL return to Pokémon GO, I'm simply taking a break from my PoGO/YouTube obligations.#PokemonGO
The idea behind the Ex Raid system is that those players that Raid a lot will eventually be rewarded an Ex Raid pass. The Ex Raid is designed to be the ultimate reward for hardcore players to get MewTwo.
There are few problems with this however:
Raids already Exclude Players- Raids are cool, however they do require players to organize themselves and have a lot of freetime devoted to the game which automatically excludes a huge portion of the gamers who play by themselves for a limited amount of time each day.
Raids give out Pokemon almost too fast. The difference between getting rare pokemon Raiding and finding them in the wild is too great. It eliminates the need to do what was 80% of the game. This lacks balance.
The Ex Raid Pass is designed to make it slighly harder to raid for those top tier Pokemon. However, its an artificial gate, and the reasons for giving it out seem nebulous. There are players who have done over a 100 raids in the hopes of earning an ex raid pass but have yet to get one. This leads to great frustration in the ranks of the games most ardent players.
