The popular raid hour in Pokémon GO is making its comeback this week. However, trainers are concerned about whether it can function as planned.
What is the raid hour? During the raid hour, raids featuring a specific Pokémon appear more frequently for sixty minutes. This event used to take place regularly once a week. At the beginning of the Corona crisis, it was canceled and subsequently suspended in the following weeks to avoid gatherings.
With the remote raids, the raid hour is now returning.
When is the raid hour returning? Pokémon GO has announced the next raid hour for Wednesday, May 6, 2020. It will run from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM and features the legendary Pokémon Giratina in its Altered Form.
Giratina is among the best Pokémon in the PvP league and is therefore quite useful. However, the new raid hour still raises concerns among trainers.
Can the raid hour function in this way?
This is how the raid hour is intended: In the announcement from Niantic, the basic idea is actually kept quite simple. Players are supposed to get one of the new Remote Raid Passes from the shop, select a Giratina raid nearby, and challenge the monster with friends from a distance. However, this is not always feasible in practice.
This is the problem: To defeat Giratina, at least three players are needed – and the right counters. Gathering enough players for remote raids is quite challenging because there is no way to directly invite friends to raids.
Those who live alone can only hope to click on a raid and find enough trainers in the area at the right time who also want to engage it.
While this may work, it becomes difficult in rural areas without many players or places without many gyms. The raid hour provides the opportunity to coordinate in advance – however, the different distances to gyms can make it challenging to gather the necessary trainers.
The raid hour with Giratina could simply be too difficult in this situation. And this causes discontent among players.
This is what the trainers say: On reddit, the reintroduction of the raid hour was not received very well. The implementation of the event is criticized:
“I don’t understand why they don’t just offer 1, 2, and 3-star raids at the moment,” says user CosmicWizzerd (via reddit). Then players wouldn’t have to rely on other players and could secure exciting Pokémon.
Frequently mentioned in the comments is the Pokémon Practibalk, which is easy to defeat but offers a very strong evolution with Meistagrif: “People would buy more raid passes knowing they could at least do them alone, even if the Pokémon aren’t OP legendaries.”
The situation would probably look different if players could invite friends to raids: “This feature and announcement is an insult to all areas still in lockdown,” user CrizzyBeez says (via reddit): “Remote raids should only be released when we can invite players.” In the current format, players criticize that coordinating remote raids is quite difficult. An invitation feature could remedy this – however, such a feature is still missing.
In addition to the raid hour, this week also marks the first part of the Nostalgia Challenge. This will bring some shiny Pokémon over the coming weeks – here you can find all nostalgia shinies at a glance.
