The start of the Mythical Wishes season in Pokémon Go was supposed to mark the end of 2022, ushering in an exciting year for the mobile game. However, Niantic’s constant use of paid tickets in every event has come to tire fans, with outcries continuing to pour out for the development team to stop using them and blocking content from being available to everyone.
The Mythical Wishes season began at the start of December 1, and there have been four paid tickets players could have purchased already, all centered around events. The first was for the Hoenn Mega Raid Day, debuting Mega versions of Sceptile, Blaziken, and Swampert for the first time. The second was for the Mythic Blade event, debuting Keldeo, the mythical Sword of Justice. The third, and most recent one, was a Timed Research for the ongoing Winter Holiday event. The largest paid ticket so far is for the Pokémon Go Tour: Hoenn event set to happen in February 2023, with an in-person Las Vegas meet-up.
Although the Pokémon Go Tour: Hoenn is the mobile game’s most significant event, the three paid ticket announcements that followed it in December felt unnecessary, especially the Hoenn Mega Raid Day and Winter Holiday Timed Research ones. Fans were floored to learn Keldeo would appear in the mobile game but were immediately met by a paywall and required to purchase a Special Research ticket to grab it. It’s felt that Niantic has slowly been creeping into this pattern of having some form of paid ticket for nearly every event that releases for the mobile game, and it’s tiring out fans.
The format is so exhausting that when the Pokémon Go Twitter account released a teaser image for what we believe to be the arrival of Vivillon and Scatterbug, several fans took to posting images poking fun at the several ticket releases that have already come out for the season.
Some fans are also posting that Vivillon’s arrival will also be locked behind a ticket, joking that it will cost “$7.99” for a chance to catch one, similar to how players had to catch Keldeo last week.
The vast number of tickets Niantic has been releasing, on top of several new mechanics that release bugged, have also pushed away the big datamining team, Pokeminers. The team announced earlier this week that due to the way Niantic has been handling the game for the past few months, they were going to take a step back from how they format their datamining efforts and won’t be pouring as much time into these efforts because the game doesn’t feel fun to them due to the current states.
Hopefully, Niantic can find a balance in making a profit in this free-to-play mobile game without pushing away their current fanbase or future fans they want to entice. It’s a delicate balance, and right now, Niantic seems to be pushing more fans away.
