The other day I saw a wild Venusar in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Go and I just ignored it. Five years ago, when the game had just launched, anyone seeing a wild Venusaur would have needed to change their pants, having either just stained the front or the back of them. These days, who cares? I have six Venusaurs right now - my first one, a 15/15/15 one, two shiny ones, a Shadow one, and a Purified one. They are no longer of any interest to me. It's not a Venusaur thing either - my reaction would have been the same for Blastoise, or Charizard, or Snorlax. Gengar, one of my favourite Pokemon ever, would have drawn the same reaction. Just... meh. That's because wild Pokemon no longer matter anymore in Pokemon Go.
I don't know when it happened. I suppose, like falling in love or deciding that John Green's latest novel isn't worth your time, it happened slowly, and then all at once. Pokemon Go is the casual version of Pokemon, where the 50 hour long RPG is distilled down to its most basic task - catching cute creatures. But somewhere along the way, catching lost its relevance.
While Pokemon Go has battling, both against NPCs and other players, it is still not a major part of the game. You can fight players online for rewards, fight Team Rocket for Shadow Pokemon, or fight in gyms for the right to either take over that gym or catch the Pokemon that has 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:taken over it in a raid. These are all means to 🌺the same end though - collecting.
Battling online gives you resources like Rare Candies, which can be used to evolve existing Pokemon into new ones. Battling grunts gives you Shadow Pokemon, dark variants of your current collection. Raid bosses are usually weak fodder for candies or stronger, rarer, maybe even Legendary Pokemon. The game is about collecting, but I have six Venusaurs. I've collected them. The catching, the simple art of Pokemon that Go was built around in the first place, has been superseded. The catching is only fun if it's part of collecting. When it's something I've already collected... well, may I draw your attention to my earlier 'meh'?
There are only so many Pokemon, and Niantic initially did a good job of drip feeding them at a steady enough pace that we always had new things to collect, but without everything being released in one, overwhelming tidal wave that the collecting got old quickly. I mean, sure, it has now, but we're five years in. For a while, Niantic managed the pace well. That could only last so long though.
The bigger issue with this is that the game has had to think of more creative ways to bring in new Pokemon. Some are only in raids, or eggs, or research boxes - although 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:even research boxes are pointless now. Some Pokemon are still introduced in the wild, but they tend to be rare ones that need to be caught over and over again over a period of weeks, or very specific event Pokemon that are everywhere for three days and then nowhere to be seen. There are only so many Pokemon, but now that I've caught - sorry, collected - them all, it's difficult to care about the ones who are left. If I saw Venusaur in Pokemon Shield, I'd throw everything I had at it, just for the thrill of catching one in the wild. In Pokemon Go, I ignored it and tried to catch a Skwovet instead. Little bastard fled on me too.