Free-to-play Trainers slam “trash” Pokemon Go Fest Global rewards

Pokemon Go Fest Global 2024 is being slammed for locking most of its rewards behind a paid ticket, resulting in an underwhelming experience for most trainers.

While past Go Fests have also included paid tickets that provided additional bonuses like Mythical Pokemon and Special Research tasks, this year’s event felt particularly underwhelming to many free-to-play trainers who were frustrated by just how much was exclusive to ticket holders this time.

As one Reddit user put it, “This go fest was really trash for free to play users.”

Niantic/The Pokemon Company

The poster explained that, while they played in an area with a strong Pokemon Go community, their Go Fest Global experience was “very mild or disappointing” as someone who didn’t buy the ticket.

“Previous go fest events gave additional boosts to paid tickets holders, but everyone could enjoy the event as they wanted,” they explained. However, the lack of rare spawns and amount of Pokemon locked behind a paywall – including Unown and regional exclusives – meant Go Fest was primarily about Raids for non-ticket holders.

This led the poster to say, “basically as a F2P player this was just a raid day which is really disappointing for the biggest event of the year.”

Others agreed, with one commenter calling this year’s event “extremely underwhelming” and “Definitely not worth going outside for this event when for me it’s either raining super hard or it’s extremely hot.”

The difference in quality between paid and free-to-play trainers was made most evident by another commenter who shared their experience without a Go Fest ticket compared to that of their wife, who purchased one.

As they explained, “She caught a total of 54 shinies (including the new releases) and a single hundo Sneasel and lots of the ‘special spawn’ Mons. I got exactly ONE shiny Necrozma (a bunch of 3* though), no hundos, and maybe a couple ‘special spawn’.”

While free-to-play trainers got the short end of the stick with the event, even some Go Fest Global ticketholders came away disappointed for reasons ranging from bad Shiny luck to the grind necessary to get enough Solar and Lunar Energy to fuse Necrozma into its Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane forms.