In January, Machop will be the center of the monthly Community Day. However, not all players in Pokémon GO agree with the choice of the Pokémon.
What kind of Community Day is this? As usual, the Community Day will also focus on a specific Pokémon in January 2021. On January 16, 2021, it will be the Fighting-type Pokémon Machop from the first generation.
It will learn the exclusive move Counter and will appear in large numbers in all possible locations in the game. Generally, the shiny variant of the event Pokémon is much easier to catch on Community Day. This is expected to be the case with Machop as well.
Machop is a strong Pokémon; its evolution, Machamp, is one of the best Fighting-type attackers in the game. Nevertheless, the announcement did not bring joy to all trainers.
An old Pokémon and Shiny
This is the problem with Machop: While the Pokémon itself is quite popular and trainers can use the Community Day to farm XL Candy for Machamp, there is a lot of criticism about the choice. This is expressed, for example, under the announcement of the Community Day on Twitter (via Twitter).
One point raised is that Machop was one of four Pokémon from which trainers could choose the event Pokémon for February last January. Back then, players chose Rhyhorn instead of Machop. Now the Pokémon is being pushed, which lost to Rhyhorn in the selection back then (via reddit).
But that’s not the only point of criticism.
Another issue that several trainers mention concerns shinies. Machop has been available as shiny for a while now. Many trainers would prefer Pokémon that have not yet been released in their shiny version.
Around the criticism is that such a Community Day with a well-known and actually rare shiny would “devalue” that variant. New shinies would be equally good for all trainers, but old shinies that were painstakingly collected would suddenly be available to everyone. As a reddit user writes: “I’m unhappy with a Community Day that features shinies that have already been released. It makes my shiny Machamp feel less special.” (via reddit).
The final point raised is that Machop is also a first-generation Pokémon that has been in the game for a long time. Instead of using starters from the new generations, another Kanto Pokémon is being used.
This is not the last time Kanto will play an important role in Pokémon GO. In February 2021, there will be a huge event centered around the original Pokémon – including all shinies from this generation.
