Pokemon Go Raids!

A Raid is MMO game name for a cooperative mission where a group of people work together to accomplish a task.

Something like a Raid was depicted in early Pokemon Go advertising materials.  In the initial trailer for Pokemon Go there is a depiction of a large crowd of Pokemon Go players running to Time Square.  MewTwo the infamous legendary Pokemon appears and the whole crowd appears to battle MewTwo at once.  There is a timer that is ticking down and the crowd seems just barely able to beat MewTwo before it strikes 0.  Then congratulations message appears on every one's phone that they captured the MewTwo.

The phones of all the players say Gotcha!





So far nothing in the game exists that matches that particular experience.  Users now battle separately as they battle Pokemon that have been placed in gyms.  There is no true cooperative like battles.  It has been known however that the Pokemon Go developer Niantic has had interest in staging large scale events where many people show at a given location.  The company has even hired various event managers.  What the actual look and feel of these events will be like however has been unknown.

The Niantic CEO has also mentioned that he planned for Legendary Pokemon to be released sometime in 2017.  It seems likely that a new Raid system would be attached to the release of those Legendary Pokemon.

In the last update though new code was added that appears to point toward Co Op battles that would likely occur.

Phrases in the Code:

• “A raid is starting nearby!”
• "just has fought hard and returned" 
• "back after a hard battle"
•  "fainted at the gym"
• "forced off the gym."

Some of these phrases simply be to provide an extra level of communication to players as to what their Pokemon are doing that are placed in gyms.

The line in the code that really stands out is  “A raid is starting nearby!”. This would seem to be alert that a player would get telling them a gym nearby would be taking part in a Raid. The player would then need to go to that gym and take part in order to earn what ever Pokemon or item would be given as an award for taking part.

Now the part of Pokemon Go that could cause the most issues in this implementation is the legality of it. If a Raid warning goes off will it send people running or driving like crazy to get that location? Is their a liability created by a game that creates an incentive for that kind of behavior. My guess is that Pokemon Go could get around it by warning players a day or so in advance of a Raid and its location. This would also mean that huge crowds though will appear in places where a raid is going to take place which is going to take coordination with people all over the world.

If Raids do come to fruitiion another question is how common will they be. Will they at multiple locations in a state? Or will they only take place at a few places in the entire world becoming like augmented reality woodstock concerts with players coming from all over the world to take part.