#'oooooo but Fire it's supposed to be rewardiinig hard work'

[firebirdsdaughter]

Well…

… My take on the Pokemon GO battle thing… Is that it’s too hard.

And this is only partially bc I am unhealthily competitive due to an inferiority complex and general anxiety and so losing makes me irrationally angry to the point I cuss at people who will never meet me and flip off my phone.

It’s that it’s not casual-player friendly. Like I’m fond of Pokemon, but I also work full time and bc of mental/physiological/psychology stuff, am often too exhausted to go out. An ankle that refuses to improve doesn’t help. At the moment, at least, I’m not going out on long walks in heavily ‘poke’d areas, catching Pokemon and fighting gyms and what not. Additionally, even I, at twenty six, lack the patience and focus to go through and meticulously learn all aspects of the game and data. While I was ‘battling,’ despite the CP limit on the match, I ran into Pokemon that did much more damage than my own did, multiple times, bc I don’t know/understand how to tell what makes a ‘good battle Pokemon’ in this version of the game. I’ve been going off the basis of high CP, but that seemed moot, and I definitely don’t get the finer details, and as a result, am regularly destroyed in matches bc I can’t predict what Pokemon are best to take (also is there a way to see your opponent’s Pokemon pre fight??? Bc I swear some people were doing that to me). Also there’s some weird stuff going on w/ timing—even though there’s supposed to be a cool down, I had one other trainer switch out their Pokemon immediately one after another. I don’t know if these are ‘live’ fights, or if it’s an ai using their avatar, but no way in hell is that fair. I shouldn’t be feeling like it’s a lucky fluke that I happened to win a couple times, there should be a sort of ‘level’ that’s comfortable and accessible for players who aren’t able to meticulously build and manage a battle team. Also the tapping is a shitty method bc I was going so hard on my poor phone screen there.

And in light of that… The reward threshholds are too high. I only got through fifteen fights bc I’m stubborn af, but those had me pissed off and wanting to rip my hair out, I feel like some people might get disheartened after the first five… And we’re meant to make it to fifty for anything to count??? Or train one hundred times? Given how long and how much attention battling takes (also the fact that training contributes nothing but new fingerprints to my screen which are a major peeve for me, so that one is definitely way too high), that’ll take ages, lots of slogging, tapping, and frustration, w/ very little reward. It’s one thing to say that it’s intended to prompt you to use all aspects of the game, but to me it feels like it’s locking a number of things behind walls that some people may never ever breach. I’ve run into so many roadblocks w/ events bc I can’t go out to raids, and I sure as hell can never win any bc I have no friends to team up w/, and I’m never on or in the right place to collaborate w/ strangers.

I just feel like there could/should be alternative methods/paths for getting through events/getting rewards that you can follow if you choose. Raising stakes and doing things for people who do want to meticulously make the perfect battle team and can take walks and fight in gyms and all that… Yeah, that’s great. But if you want people to keep w/ the app and use it and explore all the options, you need a level playing field that’s not full of enormous mountains that you just say ‘just climb this.’ I think there need to be more/better in between rewards, and a more gentle slope, on a more level field. Bc nothing destroys the spirit of community like a system that caters only to one type of people, which is what I feel like the battle system does.