So, there's speculation afoot that, in addition to the recent changes in spawn points (I get house spawns now!) Niantic also changed something in the CD algorithm to boost parks over parkinglots. My personal experience of the day kinds chimes with that. I was out and playing for the whole day, but the first hour was mostly through my local shopping area, on my way to the park where I played for the rest of the time. Total Trapinch seen in the first hour? 30. I mean, Trapinch were never making up more than about 50% of the spawns I had today (I don't think there were less spawns per-se, but a lower proportion of the CD mon than Slakoth? Outside the park, definitely, and inside it, I think so.) I usually net around 300 CD mon following basically the same routine, and I'm under 150 for the day today. I did get a good handful of shinies though, and, despite the persistent chilly rain, it was good to catch up with several local folks.
Ohh - I hatched a shiny alolan vulpix! I'm excited by this, and really don't know if I should evolve her or not.
I'm quiet enjoying the continued rarity of most of the Gen5 'mon - it's fun to still have the occasional shadow come up on the nearby, and it was like a little flashback to 2016, as a bunch of us ran across the park to snag a Feroseed. I still don't have a Litwick, which is the one I want most from the first wave, but I'm also OK with that, in the hope that it will happen eventually, and Halloween is coming....
I also loved the stardust burst event (so much more useful than XP!) - possibly related to the fact that I am still enjoying Team Rocket stop battles (and the "Catch three different X type Pokemon" research, where they're actually teaching type advantage in the game) I'm up past 320, but, dude, that gold badge is going to take a while.
Caught three shiny Trapinch, but my girlfriend, who was right with me catching the exact same pokemon, caught none! Ah well, that's what trading is for.
I am the GF with no shinies, but lilacsigil promises to share, as soon as we've dealt with our lucky friend swap, which I'm dithering over.
I think we had fewer spawns but it's difficult to tell because we were both stuck at work and there's only one pokestop in range there. There's definitely been a decrease in gifts per spin, though.
Oh - absolutely - going from the event where it was a 100% gift drop rate to the new even-lower one has been a jolt, for sure. (I'm fairly confident it is lower than the pre-event rate - I used to always arrive at work with 10 gifts from my commute, to send out at lunchtime, and now that's routinely 5-8 gifts, despite three extra stops...)
Four shinies in my mostly deserted park. And continuing on the theme of "community day and one odd thing out," I caught my second 100%IV Leydba. I probably used all my shiny luck for the weekend when I spot-joined a Giratina raid yesterday and collected a Shiny for my troubles.
Spawns seemed down, but I also wasn't at a really populated area, and really, so long as I get at least three, everything is good.
Hurray for getting your family line, and a spare! Go team shiny Giratina - I think it's a really pretty shiny. And a hundo Leydeba sounds pretty cool - I rarely see those in the wild.
I definitely saw a lower level of CD spawns than previous Community Days. But I suspect the weather and the fact that our local park is also next to a river and part of a water biome may not have helped with that. It felt like we were getting a similar level of CD spawn in both the park and the shopping area next to it and that the first hour was poor for Trapinch spawns in both areas but that things got better after that. I managed to get enough shinies to evolve an entire shiny line so I was very happy with that.
I loved the stardust burst event. I was on holiday during part of it in a really high spawn area so I did very well out of that :) The recent spawn point changes have been a bit hit and miss for me. Overall I think I'm seeing about 10% less Pokémon on my fifty minute walk into work in the morning, which isn't terrible but does make me a little bit sad as that's my main opportunity for playing during the working week.
The new wave of EX raid gyms has been really good for my local community. Our city center park has a gym that ought to have been EX raid eligible from the start but the park was wrongly tagged on Open Street Map. The OSM tag got corrected quite quickly but it's been a long time since Niantic updated from there. So it turned into an EX raid gym on Thursday and generated passes on Friday evening for a whole bunch of players who'd never had one before, which is great :)
This new spawn-point revision seems to be intensely uneven, and frustrating, and also mysterious. I do wish they'd just *communicate with their players* sometimes.
The spawn point re-shuffle was overall quite bad for my neighborhood; it lost a lot of really good cluster spawns and didn't get enough new ones to make up for it, I'd say it's down like 50% total. My house, though, lost one spawn but gained two, so it could certainly be worse.
For community day I definitely concur that Trapinch rates per spawn were much lower outside parks. Between that and the general spawn changes, all our burned-in memory of the best places to grind are out of date, so that made for a slow start on CD and it was well into hour two before I finally got my third shiny. But then in the last hour I got... six more so I'm not complaining. :D
Speaking of not complaining, I went into the Mewtwo raid hour having gotten zero shinies during its main appearance in raids and worried I'd have to trade for it, but I came out with four! That was some serious concentrated luck. Hoping to find a lucky friend to swap one with for good IVs, and will keep at least one with bad IVs unpowered in my back pocket to save for a rainy day when I need to trade for something else rare and cool.
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Ohh - I hatched a shiny alolan vulpix! I'm excited by this, and really don't know if I should evolve her or not.
I'm quiet enjoying the continued rarity of most of the Gen5 'mon - it's fun to still have the occasional shadow come up on the nearby, and it was like a little flashback to 2016, as a bunch of us ran across the park to snag a Feroseed. I still don't have a Litwick, which is the one I want most from the first wave, but I'm also OK with that, in the hope that it will happen eventually, and Halloween is coming....
I also loved the stardust burst event (so much more useful than XP!) - possibly related to the fact that I am still enjoying Team Rocket stop battles (and the "Catch three different X type Pokemon" research, where they're actually teaching type advantage in the game) I'm up past 320, but, dude, that gold badge is going to take a while.
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I think we had fewer spawns but it's difficult to tell because we were both stuck at work and there's only one pokestop in range there. There's definitely been a decrease in gifts per spin, though.
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Spawns seemed down, but I also wasn't at a really populated area, and really, so long as I get at least three, everything is good.
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I loved the stardust burst event. I was on holiday during part of it in a really high spawn area so I did very well out of that :) The recent spawn point changes have been a bit hit and miss for me. Overall I think I'm seeing about 10% less Pokémon on my fifty minute walk into work in the morning, which isn't terrible but does make me a little bit sad as that's my main opportunity for playing during the working week.
The new wave of EX raid gyms has been really good for my local community. Our city center park has a gym that ought to have been EX raid eligible from the start but the park was wrongly tagged on Open Street Map. The OSM tag got corrected quite quickly but it's been a long time since Niantic updated from there. So it turned into an EX raid gym on Thursday and generated passes on Friday evening for a whole bunch of players who'd never had one before, which is great :)
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For community day I definitely concur that Trapinch rates per spawn were much lower outside parks. Between that and the general spawn changes, all our burned-in memory of the best places to grind are out of date, so that made for a slow start on CD and it was well into hour two before I finally got my third shiny. But then in the last hour I got... six more so I'm not complaining. :D
Speaking of not complaining, I went into the Mewtwo raid hour having gotten zero shinies during its main appearance in raids and worried I'd have to trade for it, but I came out with four! That was some serious concentrated luck. Hoping to find a lucky friend to swap one with for good IVs, and will keep at least one with bad IVs unpowered in my back pocket to save for a rainy day when I need to trade for something else rare and cool.
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Forever with my Freebas.