A Colossal Discovery or colossal waste of time?

Pokemon Go had its first paid, global event ‘A Colossal Discovery’ on Saturday 2 November. Players across the world had access to exclusive missions and rewards, as well as being granted the opportunity to catch a Regigigas before anyone else. The event was a chance for Niantic to showcase the best the game had on offer, a chance that they disappointingly fumbled.

I have been a Pokemon Go fan since launch, sticking through the rough spots to finally see the game where it is today. As such, I was thrilled to finally have the opportunity to attend a ticketed Pokemon Go event. Previously they have been tied to specific cities, requiring you to actually travel somewhere like Chicago something I cannot do on a student budget. I bought the £7.99 ticket as soon as I could and waited eagerly for the day.

Braving the early morning rain at 10:45 I headed to Jephson Gardens with my flatmate, and Pokemon rival, in preparation for an 11:00 start. We ran into a largish group that were circling the local area, tackling 5* Raids as they went, so we tacked on to share in their victories. We occasionally dipped out when tasks would have us go hunt for specific species that raids could not help with, but were sure to dip back in to catch the Regice, Registeel and Regirock we needed.

With this group, the Colossal Discovery tasks were simple enough. My flatmate and I were both finished by 1:30pm, Regigigas in hand, but we shared a sense of dissatisfaction. I had missed the previous opportunity to catch the Regis and so came away with three new legendaries, unfortunately my rival came away only with one. The in-game items and non-legendary reward pokemon were equally useless to us both, the measly 30 pokeballs, pitiful amounts of XP and awkward looking pose were not the best. The raids did come with plenty of loot, but seemingly no more so than from free events.

We shared a sense of dissatisfaction

So how could this event have been improved? Niantic needed to either make the Colossal Discovery pass cheaper, £3.99/£4.99 or improve its value. To do the latter, there are three places to do that. Firstly the quest completion items or purchase rewards should have been better. Some egg incubators or rare candies would have been fantastic and made the price tag way more worth it for every player. Secondly, the reward pokemon for challenges should have included region exclusives, maybe dependent on where you are playing from. In the original Hoen-set games where the Regis first appeared, Relicanth was vital for their discovery, it was sad to not see this ancient fish spawn at all. Furthermore, Regigigas is a pokemon known for moving continents, finding pokemon from other continents would have therefore been fitting. Having one region exclusive for each stage of the questline would have again boosted the perceived value of the ticket. Finally, some smaller boosts would have been appreciated like increased Lure time-limits. Combinations of XP boosts, stardust boosts and other such limited time advantages have accompanied events, all of them should have been activated for this.

I know that it is hard to balance the usefulness of rewards between old and new players, but Niantic needs to find ways before the next event. Though, call it Stockholm syndrome, despite my Colossal Discovery satisfaction being subpar I will almost certainly buy the next ticket. As long as the pokemon on offer are not yet recorded in my Pokedex, expect to see me wandering Jephson Gardens once again. The event was not faultless, but I did add a bunch of new creatures to my in-game collection and as sad as it may be to say, that feeling was enough to sway me. If you are not a diehard player, the ticket probably was not worth your money, and to be fair if you are a diehard enough player, it probably was not great for you either. But if you exist in that middleground like me, the huge Pokemon fan that has missed out on some events along the way, then this was for you. There are currently no announcements of when the next paid event will be but feel free to join me in wandering the streets when it comes along!