Pokemon GO Fest 2024 may not have been great for free-to-play users

Pokemon GO Fest 2024 was the most highly anticipated event that trainers worldwide had been eagerly waiting for. With Necrozma fusion debuts and a plethora of other Pokemon to catch, players had been looking forward to this event for quite some time. However, it seems that the event may not have lived up to the expectations of the free-to-play (F2P) users.

According to a recent post on Reddit, many F2P players have conveyed how the event seemed to favor the ticket holders, making it less enjoyable for the ones who do not spend money on the game.

In this article, we will look at why the Pokemon GO Fest 2024 may not have been great for free-to-play users.

Pokemon GO Fest 2024 has left the free-to-play trainers disappointed

This go fest was really trash for free to play users byu/Annual_Raccoon9050 inpokemongo

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As a free-to-play user, the Pokemon GO Fest 2024 provided little to no incentive for active participation, and it catered specially to ticket holders. The paid GO Fest ticket had access to special spawns like Unowns, event-related egg hatches, and of course, free Raid Passes as well. Ticket holders also got shiny encounters.

On the other hand, free players received none of these perks, and this disparity has caused a lot of the F2P players to feel left out of the overall experience that the Pokemon GO Fest 2024 offered.

It is true that the Necrozma Raids were not friendly for F2P players either. The amount of Fusion Energy required to fuze it was simply too high for F2P players since they could only do a limited number of Raids.

F2P players had to spend a good deal of Raid Passes that they had saved up, and many trainers spent some bucks to buy passes from the shop. In hindsight, getting the GO Fest Pass would have been a better investment for them. All of this is evidenced by u/Viniou, who said:

"Yeah this event was extremely underwhelming especially since it’s the “biggest event of the year”, not only did I not get a single shiny I also just felt most of the spawns were boring. Definitely not worth going outside for this event when for me it’s either raining super hard or it’s extremely hot. Also the 1000 energy to fuse suuuccckksss."

This wasn't the case for the ticket holders as it came with an additional research titled The Dusk Settles. This allowed them a guaranteed encounter with Solgaleo or Lunala based on the trainer's choices, along with providing 1000 Fusion Energy for their chosen critter.

The free research only awarded one Cosmog, making it impossible for F2P players to get both Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane Necrozma, unless they had Comsog from before.

The Pokemon GO Fest 2024 really was just a glorified Raid-day for F2P players, where they had to keep doing the Necrozma Raids in the hope of getting enough Fusion Energy. Other than that, nothing else was actually available for them, except the Night Scarf Umbreon, Espeon, and Jangmo-o Raids. This has been noted by user u/Annual_Raccoon9050:

"So basically as a F2P player this was just a raid day which is really disappointing for the biggest event of the year."

Overall, Pokemon GO Fest 2024 appears to have fallen short of expectations for a majority of the player base. Without any major incentives or bonuses, it was way too lackluster for the F2P players including myself to go out and grind for the event.

Although the GO Fest allowed all players to catch new Pokemon and participate in Raids, the shortcomings in catering to free-to-play users have left the community with a distaste for Niantic's future events.

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Edited by Ritoban "Veloxi" Paul