Pokémon Go fans speak out against the latest Community Day changes

Many Pokémon Go players share their recent experiences with the recent Community Day changes Niantic made, and those experiences are not favorable. Last month, developer Niantic shared they would be scaling back the Community Day event to its traditional three-hour window, which was expanded to six hours during the COVID-19 Pandemic. On the day of the announcement, fans were not happy about it, and Niantic promised that during the event, players would see the changes. Unfortunately, the first event with these times has come and gone, and players are not happy with these changes.

Many of these opinions are being posted on the Pokémon Go Reddit page, and some also appear on the Silph Road reddit, with one fan calling it a three-hour Spotlight event rather than a proper Community Day. Additionally, players shared the now three-hour event as something that comes and goes, with several fans not having the spare time to jump into the game.

Those who participated saw a distinct lack of shiny Mudkip, or they had trouble locating the Pokémon at all due to their location. Although shiny Pokémon are not the primary design focus for these events, they’re a major selling point for trainers who collect them, especially given how elusive shiny Pokémon are outside of scheduled events.

Leading up to these new Community Day events, Pokémon Go’s game director, Michael Steranka, had multiple candid conversations with journalists and fans. Steranka spoke about these shorter times being data-driven, where “less than five percent of players played longer than three hours on a Community Day.”

The recent community event featured Mudkip as a Community Day repeat, giving players the chance to catch one of the better PvP Pokémon. The next event will be on April 23 and features the debut of Stufful and the charged move, drain punch. Hopefully, these two debuts can entice players to participate in the three-hour window. Still, the Mudkip event might have been a good indicator of how the community plans to react in the future, and Niantic may want to modify its strategy using any new data they uncover.