Surprisingly, the Pokémon GO team announced that Community Days are returning to the 3-hour format. The game director explained: This is a request from the players. Is that true?
What’s happening in Pokémon GO? A few weeks ago, Niantic’s developers announced their intention to encourage players to play Pokémon GO outdoors again. As part of this, the incense was already controversially adjusted.
- In the evening of March 23, Pokémon GO announced the Community Day for April
- Part of the announcement was the time adjustment from 6 hours back to 3 hours
- 3 hours is the usual C-Day duration, as it was known before Corona
- Players are bewildered by the change
- Niantic explains: Because trainers wanted it, we changed it back
This is currently causing discussions in the community. We will show you what’s behind it.
This is how Niantic justifies the shorter Community Days
This is the change: The Community Day in April with Velursi will take place on Saturday, April 23, from 2 PM to 5 PM. The last Community Days ran from 11 AM to 5 PM.
Niantic explains that about two years ago, the duration of Community Days was doubled from three to six hours. “According to our data, however, only five percent of all trainers participate in the event for longer than three hours,” it says in the official blog post.
Additionally, they write:
The feedback from players and community leaders about the three-hour Community Day Classic in January was clear: The shorter duration made it easier to meet other event participants – and that was perceived very positively. For this reason, we are returning to the three-hour format for the Community Day with Velursi. We hope to bring more trainers together on-site and give them even more opportunities to connect with new people on their discovery journeys.
via Pokemongolive.com
More information on this can be found in an interview with the website DotEsports. Game Director Michael Steranka gave a statement regarding the changes and explained that the push for the change partly comes from the community.
“One of the reasons that led us to reevaluate the Community Day format was the calls from trainers to revert it to three hours,” said Michael Steranka, Live Game Director for Pokémon GO. “After receiving this feedback, we looked at our data and found that less than five percent of players had played longer than three hours during the Community Day.”
He asks the community not to judge these changes right away, but to wait until April 23. He wants to emphasize that a shorter event brings trainers closer together and that, unlike in the six-hour events, they won’t be playing without seeing another trainer. “I bet that [the trainers] will realize that it’s much more fun to have a real community around them during the Community Day.”
Will this stay forever? Steranka explains that they would reconsider gameplay changes if these negatively impact the gameplay experience of trainers. Then they sit down with a team and discuss how to correct this.
How do you like the changes? Do you think it’s good that we are returning to the usual “3 hours” for the C-Days or did you prefer the 6-hour format? Cast your vote in the survey here in the article and let us know in the comments why a specific format suits you best or what bothers you about the others.
