Pokemon Go players demand answers over “anti-consumer” Raid Pass Box rollout

Pokemon Go players are growing ever tired of Niantic’s lack of communication surrounding the availability of Raid Passes in boxes, especially during events.

Niantic has recently made a series of changes to items players can purchase in-game without telling players beforehand. Mainly, the changes are the boxes in Pokemon Go that offer a bundle of items for a “discounted” price.

The issue is that these new boxes aren’t offering items of value. In fact, the old boxes offered an assortment of useful items like Super Incubators, Raid Passes, and more.

Despite the value of the boxes decreasing, players are more upset with Niantic because of the lack of communication that proceeds these changes. The Weekly 1 Coin box has been done away with without word, boxes change frequently when they once stayed consistent, and Raid Passes can rarely be found in the Item Shop.

Pokemon Go players want more Raid Passes

Raid Passes have been a hot-button issue for Pokemon Go fans as Niantic hasn’t found a way to distribute them in a way that pleases their players. Trainers used to get one Remote Raid Pass a week in exchange for a Pokecoin, but that was discounted at the same time the three Remote Raid Pass bundle was raised in price.

However, players could still count on the Special and Ultra boxes to supply them with plenty of normal Raid Passes. That was until recently when Niantic began swapping the boxes around removing Raid Passes almost entirely. And this was pointed out by Reddit user lewymd.

They called Niantic’s lack of communication around box changes and even stated that the new boxes were anti-consumer. “Recently there has been a trend of during major events switching all the boxes to be awful for what event wants and almost bait and switching them at the last minute,” they stated.

“The finale was very focused on raids, giving us raids for the 4 Ultra beasts rotating each two hours. There was also 5000 bonus XP for completing in-person raids, and what does Niantic do? They put 0 premium raid passes in boxes again.”

They also pointed out that Niantic’s reasoning for discontinuing the Weekly Remote Raid Pass was to encourage players to go outside and explore. However, due to the removal of Premium Battle Passes in special Boxes, there’s no difference in cost between the normal and Remote passes.

OP stated, “Sitting at home and raiding would actually mean for the same cost per raid you could do more raids as you removed the need to walk from gym to gym, and now we break Niantic’s Philosophy. If it’s just as cheap and easier to raid from home you are not drawing people outdoors, you are not inspiring exploration and you are not encouraging exercise.”

For reference, in July of this year, Pokemon Go offered a box for 1,480 Pokecoins that gave players 18 Premium Battle Passes. This encouraged players to go out and raid in person as it was a considerable discount.

Players in the comments agreed with OP and some long-time players stated they had never seen boxes as bad as the ones in recent months. Others theorized that this was Niantic’s way of testing the market to see what boxes and combinations of items would sell.

Lewymd closed by stating, “Niantic needs to take a good look at whatever experiment they are doing with the in-game economy for Pokémon GO. Not every box can be amazing but recently it’s been all miss.”

It should be noted that today, September 13, Pokemon Go’s Item Shop does contain three decent boxes. The Training, Great, and Ultra boxes contain an assortment of Remote Passes, Premium Passes, and Incubators which are items players have wished to see more of.