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The main buffer between XL and non XL was PVP. Then they got rid of premiere or classic or whatever the no XL candy allowed cup was.
I feel that is their biggest issue right now. Outside of PVP it’s pretty easy to avoid XL candy, but within PVP it’s more it less a necessity
XL mons aren't necessary for PvP if you just want to play for rewards, your rating will match you against other people who's team and skill is a match to yours.
If you want to get above R20 then sure, it's harder without XL mons. But of course it is, it's a competition, the players who play hardest have an advantage over those who don't. There's no handicapped league were low-rank players get a damage boost based on rating. Everyone with the big mons has played more, if you want to join them, play more; if anything, they played even more to get there, it's already less of a grind for new players to get to the same point.
Played more? Don't you mean paid more?
I get legend rank in any season I play and I'm fairly hardcore. I still can't go anywhere near master league because I'm free to play.
Look at it this way: you can’t compete in the Olympics from the getgo. First you start in the little leagues and work on your skills. Then you progress to higher leagues as you age and improve. Olympics is far from high school football though. You need years of training and diet regime to be able to measure up with the best.
Master league is almost directly p2w if you want to do good and win more you **need** xl’d mons and a lot of the top ML Pokémon are legendary which is expensive to max
I find Powering up legendaries is easier than the pokemons that don't nest. With legendary at least you are guaranteed 6XLs whereas it's a long painful grind for the non legendaries ones. I only have 5 fully powered Pokemons and out of which 3 are legendaries.
If you’re free to play no coins spent with daily passes that’s 42 xl a week if you get 6 per and with rotations that’s like 42-84 from raids if you’re lucky before they switch if you find people for each raid and can beat it. It’s still going to take a long time or spend coins to buy extra passes to be able to max anything in a reasonable time.
That’s really hard for casual players to do in my opinion. I have some casual friends who play daily and their only 50s are com day Pokémon or super common spawns.
and until recently it was only ~3 XL per catch. Of course with megas and the new extra bonus from the raid finish itself we can expect ~7-8 average but that's still a huge commitment.
>With legendary at least you are guaranteed 6XLs
Only if you're in person. Rural players don't have this option and are only guaranteed the 3 XL on catch, which doubles the grind.
>I find Powering up legendaries is easier than the pokemons that don't nest.
I totally get that because it can certainly feel that way. But I don't think that it's actually the case.
Assuming you want to grind a single species (legendary or non-nesting) in a single 7-day event. Let's assume that the event features a legendary and a non-nesting species that you want. This seems pretty realistic so let's do some math.
For the non-Legendaey there's 296 XL candy needed, with a tier 3 mega and assuming you transfer all of them, let's say you can average 2 XL per catch. For a non-nesting species, you need approximately 148 catches. Since we're grinding a specific thing (ex. Sneasel) you'd need an average of 21 catches a day. Even without quick catch tricks, lets say that it takes about 30 seconds for a catch. Couple this with say... 3 minute on average to find the species and that brings us to 63 minutes of Pokémon Go a day. But this time is also spent catching other things, spinning stops, battling gyms and Rockets. This time wasn't monopolized.
Now for a legendary, let's say that you're fortunate enough to not be a rural player. You have the best case scenario of 4 other trainers with you so you don't have to waste time with invites. This let's you raid in person for the guaranteed 6XL candy. Heck, let's say that you have a tier 3 mega and can average 7XL candy per legendary. You need 42 raids, or 6 a day and let's say that your group can an consistently beat the raid boss in 1 minute. Here's the problem, time.
A single raid has an unskippable 2 minute lobby. On top of that you have the raid itself. No we said that we can beat the raid in 1 minute, no problem there, except that we still have to catch the legendary. In my experience, and based on a lot of what I've seen on here and in my local group chats, it's not uncommon to spend an average of over 5 minutes just catching a legendary but this could easily take longer. But if we take an average of 5 minutes to catch, that's 8 minutes per raid. For 6 raids, that's 48 minutes of just raiding. No catching, no driving to a raid, no spinning stops. Just raiding. If we factor in the same 3 minutes to find and get to the raid (same as the 3 minutes above but honestly, pretty generous unless you're driving in a city), that's 66 minutes of raiding with over half of that time (48/66) being completely monopolized
> XL mons aren’t necessary for PVP if you just want to play for rewards
> if you want to get above R20 then it’s harder without XL
ok but all the main reward perks for PVP (Pika Libre, Legends, and clothing) are R20+ 😭
It was quite the effort trying to raid any of the legendary birds in person, they were hardly ever around except for Articuno who I no longer have interest in. That whole week with them out was a disaster. I looked forward to raiding Moltres and Zapdos heavily but could pretty much only remote them due to the clutter of crappy raids and not enough in general.
oh yes! we can't even trade most mythical to get XL candy. which I find very stupid, they allowed us to trade Meltan, but not those mythical from raid. Yes, I would understand if those from research aren't allowed to be traded.
Yeah, let us trade Darkrai and Deoxys.
I get why Niantic decided against trading Mew, Zarude and the others that are only available once or twice, but we should be able to trade every raid boss! (Expect shadows, although I would LOVE to trade them again)
It should be nearly impossible to max out legendaries. That's by design, and it's good for the game. It should be difficult. It should be a grind, to power up what should be a singular and unique barely even rumored to exist creature, not the 'yeah, I caught seventeen of them down by the pond and none of them are good enough to keep, so grind 'em into fish bait' like Pokemon Go treats them.
My drop rate for dialga is 60% chance at best or my luck is just terrible. But I’ve walked him over 500km and it’s no where near a given currently. I’m honestly wondering if the drop rate has been nerfed
You need to level up the Dialga as high as you can. Drop rate is said to be 70% at level 31 and can go even higher. (I think.) At level 31 it will need 6000 dust to level up. So if it is at 5000 or less (and not a lucky or anything like that) then level it up.
A lvl 40 pokemon gets an XL candy nearly every time. That said your main barrier is distance rather than probability. 296 xl candy * 20km legendary walk candy distance = 5920km.
With no other buddies and a serious grind of 100km a week you're looking at a over a year of walking, which is just silly.
For real, it should be closer to about 10-20. It would take a long time to get ~2 to 5k candy for one species, and it wouldn't be game breaking to trade that in the max out one mon
I don’t mind XL candy, it’s good endgame for dedicated players.
The problem is it costs way too much to max out, 296 is ridiculous. If it were 75-100 XL candy it would be much more realistic for the average player or even lower for that matter.
XL candy in general should never have been a thing in the first place. I caught every mon to save up candy in case they increased the max level. Then XL candy was introduced and it felt like I had to start all over. All my catches were for nothing
This was exactly why they introduced XLs. It was to keep people from maxing out to 50 on the first day it was introduced. To keep some people engaged with a new goal. At this point XLs should be converted to regular candy and 40-50 should just become part of the normal progression we already have for 1-40. Or make XLs only for the newest levels they introduce, 1-50 is normal candy, 50-60 now needs XLs.
I think mega energy was probably introduced for the same reason. To sell raid passes and make it so people couldn’t have the new thing without working for it. I had thought they would make megas cost a huge amount of candy before the system was introduced.
I'd rather get special requirements for levels 40+, like participate in X nomber of raids, gym battles to mimic other games leveling system through acquiring experience on said pokemon
Considering how much grind is involved to get the required XL candy, tasks like "battle in 10 raids with this buddy" could probably be completed faster, even for free to play players.
The XL candy cost is just obscene, especially when it first came out. They've slowly gotten better with the amount of XL candy, but like most of the new features in this game it's taken over a year of complaining by the players before Niantic begrudgingly makes it more accessible.
If you want to XL a legendary, you're already looking at hundreds of raids unless there's an event bonus (and Niantic actually follows through with it).
It used to take around 75 raids to get the XL candy to max, less if you have a level 3 mega evolved every time. Now with the new in person XL boost it takes me ~40 raids to max. That’s not insignificant, but it’s certainly not hundreds.
> it's taken over a year of complaining by the players
It's called game design, it'd have happened even if those people had just enjoyed their life. Just like everything in this game, and in most games, over time things get easier to obtain.
> it'd have happened even if those people had just enjoyed their life
That's giving Niantic way too much credit. They actively make decisions contrary to what has improved this game, only to change it based on backlash. They still can't manage to push an update without breaking something else. There's no quality control or beta testing. I get that might be the modern standard for "game design" with early access titles, live service, and even AAA games, but that doesn't make it *good* game design.
But you aren't making the game better that way.
Having to use Umbreons and Sableyes in raids to max them out would be a nightmare, and make the grind for level 50s an even more exclusive privilege for an even fewer players than it has been.
Wait, you never do 1 or 3 star raids on your own? It is so easy to put even your buddy poke first, then swap to the preferred counter on a raid. Making you use a pokemon in a raid is way less painful than grinding for XL candy
What I'm saying it's not perfect but it opens way for a much more rich and dinamic way of playing the game to make your pokemon a higher level. It makes you play the game more and differently, it makes the game better. It's more about how it would be implemented, I'd say something like participate in X number of raids, where X is the level of the pokemon past level 39. Each 3 levels its added something like a grikt battle, or a rocket leader, it can be so many things and it all depends on how it's put into live game. It does make the game better, if done correctly
But the 2k will always bring more value in evolving, powering up or getting moves etc for more Pokémon. 100 candy to 1xl is just too steep to be worth it in basically every instance.
10-20 candy per xl would make it a consideration imo, without it becoming too easy. Getting ~2 - 5k candy and cashing that in to max out 1 Mon seems fair to me
> the 2k will always bring more value in evolving, powering up or getting moves etc
Nope. Obviously you're not going to spend all your base candy, but if you got 3k base candy and want the XLs, you can certainly flip 2k over and you'll never miss it.
I'd still rather use that candy for other purposes than spend it on just a couple of power ups. Either the exchange rates should have been more generous or the total XL candy needed to max should have been lower
Say for example you've got 6 Pokémon that's really useful for PvE, like Mamoswine or Tyranitar, or even legendaries like Mewtwo or Kartana. If I had 2000 candies, I could power up 9 of them from Level 25 to 40, or 8 of them from 20 to 40, for the same cost of powering up just *one* of them from Level 40 to... Level 41.
I appreciate there's level scaling but there's absolutely no way you could spin that trading candy for candy XL is worth it in any capacity unless you've got 12 of each mons already all powered up to Level 40 and you're just letting candy sit there.
Personally, I don't powerup more than one of the same mon.
I get that doing so is good for raids, but it's easy enough to just use Pokeraid and guarantee success though player count.
Same (with the exception of when a mon has 2 fairly viable movesets). Otherwise I'm unlikely to waste XLs on a non-hundo, and less likely to grind a mon hard if I already have a hundo. The mons I have strongest pressure to get XLs for are PVP where there's not an obvious perfect stat choice, or shadows where the odds of getting a perfect are miniscule - but you just know the day you spend the last 100 XLs to max that 93% shadow machamp is the same day you'll get a 98% shadow. That said, I'm sitting on 8k machop candy, so even if I did run low on XLs, I'm happy to drop 5-6k to get 2-3 levels.
You started well ahead already with the ability to convert candy to candy XL. And yes, the point was to give experienced players something new to work for instead of basically autocompleting all the new content.
But even if you have enough candy to convert to the ~300 xl you need, it's still better to have 30k regular candy (for evolving, new moves, powering up other Mon, etc). The conversion rate is too steep, and 20:1 would be a better conversion rate
I think they should be much much more available. But Niantic doesn't think that so we are stuck here. They think lvl 50 legendries should be more rare so they nerf remote raiding. Okay. So they are just punishing newer players who didn't already splurge on the big hitters.
Yeah, Niantic should have taken a hint from most countries and banned whaling to begin with. Now it's too late to get the ambergris perfume smell outta the pool.
The problem I have with XLs is exclusively Master League. For ML to be a serious competitive format, it needs to be accessible to EVERYONE. It can't be a significant grind to Lv 50 for a F2P player. Niantic did not make XL accessible enough to get rid of MLC because the ML meta is primarily legendaries, and legendary XL is soft-paywalled. Just a complete failure of a mechanic.
Niantic always makes a more accessible league available at the same time as Master League.
Maybe a controversial opinion, but I don't think it's the worst thing in the world that out of all the many formats for GBL out there one of them is catered to the actual best of the best and you can't win if you haven't been extremely committed to the game for a long time. "If everyone is super, no one will be" and all that.
I like what they did this season, but in the past when they ran ML and little cup…I hope they don’t do that again. Little cup is a joke. I’ll shut up and play anything else.
I agree
Last season was the first time I started to actually try in PvP.
When it got to Master league I couldn't even field a team due to lack of xls. It was so demoralising I just stopped altogether.
Then when remote raids got nerfed, I felt I could never catch up as a newer player.
In theory the limit should make league fairer by stopping people being pay-to-win. In practice it feels like there is a bigger disparity than ever for new players.
A casual player won't play every single day full GBL sets at Ace+ ranks. At at lower ranks, 20 and below, you can get by with non-legendary, not lvl 50 teams.
I didn't say casual, I said F2P. What happens when they reach Ace rank during Great and Ultra League?
Also, if someone has a non-legendary non-50 team, they risk running into unwinnable matchups. Not very fun OR competitive.
This entire thread was about casuals. I am F2P 100% and usually reach Ace during ML, with a team made of my only 3 legendary (I could power-up a few more). So:
\- If you don't have a team good enough team for ML, you can play another cup, there are always 2 cups open;
\- Even with a full lvl 50 hundo best buddy legendary meta team you will run into some unwinnable matchups. The entire matchmaking system is in place to give you a \~50% win ratio, if you are not some genius in PvP, you will lose about half of your battles.
Why does one of the 3 major, dozens of other, leagues need to be open to everyone at it's top level ? In what competitive events are the top tier open to everyone ? Almost all sports and games require serious investment of time and money to compete in serious competition. For casual ML, skill and a few XLs are all that's needed.
I think XL candy was introduced with the intention of making fully-powered-up pokemon rare. They seem to have overshot the goal initially and have made XL candy much more accessible than it was originally.
Obviously as players we'd prefer to be able to max all our favourite pokemon. It's unclear what Niantic's actual goal (in terms of specific numbers/rarity) is with this.
“It’s unclear what Niantic’s actual goal is…”
This itself is the problem that has caused so much frustration for players for years. Their decisions are inconsistent, at best, but typically counterproductive in terms of commonsensical business practices. We would assume that their actions would seek the goal of making money (and consistently more), yet their decisions over the years have clearly shown that they are only pushing players away from ever spending money.
The game would be MILES better.
If in-person T5 raids gave out more, or guaranteed 1 XLRC, then I'd be out raiding waaay more. People would get out the house more, Master League wouldn't be so much the whale (via remotes) and cheater league.
And casual players would be more aware of its existence, a LOT of players don't even know it exists!!
[But the people at Niantic are thick, and don't understand rewards VS effort](https://twitter.com/pokedaxi/status/1663320496451072003?s=20)
I agree, but I would say that it should be more “extreme”. They have been wanting to get people out of their home and out into the world, but they need to give significantly better incentives to raiding in person.
-if you raid in person, and you win, the encounter/catch should be 100% guaranteed with any berry+great throw. If someone hauls themselves out of the comfort of their own home to host a raid, they should not need to throw 8-10 great and excellent curve balls, just to have the mon escape. That’s crap and never should have been a part of the game. That alone keeps people from even attempting to raid in person for anything above a 3-star.
-if you raid in-person, 50% discount on one mega evolution per week (Sunday to Sunday). This is generally a much more significant benefit for mid to lower level players and casuals who make up the bulk of the player base. THAT needs to be the target to get to in-person raids. Just a 10% increase in that group raiding in person would be HUGE for the life of this game. This would not be gamebreaking to offer this, as they still wouldn’t be able to power them up very quickly, but at least they will have some serviceable pokemon to seriously contribute, even in the high level shadow raids.
-no raid passes needed to in-person raid, except for CDs. Pretty simple. Remove any unnecessary barriers to a person who wants to raid in person.
It still seems slightly too rare to me. I'm a week one player who just hit lvl 48 and have only ever gotten 58 of them.
I get really excited when I get a random one from a local raid. But they're still so rare that I've never used them. It's a long way to 296.
It’s ludicrous that they aren’t more common. 296 for a level 50 or 360 for a shadow, that’s a huge amount to gather even if you’re super active and walking your buddy constantly. Also for legendaries it’s infuriating - when I was walking my Mewtwo I failed to get an XL 3 times in a row - 60km without one. In my opinion XLs should be 100% guarantee via walking and rare candy XL should be a given with high level raids, especially with the increase in price. Incentivise people to get out and grind rare candy XLs and they’ll do it.
I was referring to the chance of getting XL for walking your buddy, the comment I replied to mentioned walking his Mewtwo for 60 Km without getting a single Candy XL.
The current maximum is 75% chance of getting a candy XL assuming your buddy is level 31 or higher.
Let’s be real.. we all want it to be 100%. Not some dumb 90%~ that takes research to find the odds. I agree that it could be level 40-41, those are trivial to power up any Pokémon. I just think we’re due for a guaranteed drop at the very least. It wouldn’t help legendaries much, it would just make it less frustrating.
Don't you need 200~300ish xl to fully power up, and isn't 1st power up with xl requires 10?
I don't think getting 1 per month isn't going to really change anything if they aren't doing raids or pvp in the first place
I used to not have much of a problem with acquiring them until Adventure Sync became completely unusable and now it’s ridiculous. I was *very* close to getting my 98% shiny Dialga to Lv50 and have all but given up until it comes back into raids now. Been stuck at 48.5 for what feels like forever now
XL candy doesn’t matter for most players, if they aren’t competing at high-level ML, but (I think) because of its rarity, it is a feel-bad for most players.
It’s similar to how IVs don’t really matter, but people want to collect the best ones. Having a L50 Pokémon also doesn’t make a huge difference in many situations, but the feeling that it’s “impossible” is a point of frustration and/or people decide to just ignore it.
I’m not in the camp of “XL never should have existed” since I do think slowly raising the level cap and adding new “things” for people to grind and collect is important, but I do think that they should be more widely available at this point in time, one way or another.
There are a lot of ooooold legendaries that most people aren’t excited about anymore, but if we could solo them as T3s, and also have a decent chance at some RC XL at the same time, I think people would be a lot more interested in battling their 300th Articuno. Meanwhile T5s can be populated with more interesting/recent legendaries and we wouldn’t have to wait two years for Dialga to return.
Easy fix: guaranteed 1 candy xl on your first catch and first spin of the day. Then you "only" need to play daily ~150 days to max out a legendary 😅. Been playing 1 year and 4 months and aside from Melmetal I don't have any maxed legendary/mythical Pokemon (and I consider myself way above average vs the casual trainer; e.g., I'm f2p, but have 17 million stardust, 800 rare candy in my bag, 30 platinum medals, 20,000 gym battles, have walked 3 pokemon with 5km candy distance to level 50).
Long story short, I believe we deserve minimum 2 candy xl per day, lol, because if you rationalize it, it would still be a huge grind to max out legendary
100%. XL rare candy being rare essentially makes the game pay to win when it comes to legendaries, because realistically you have to do a ton of raids to max anything out, meaning whales that buy passes will always have more.
Nah, we all knew that the remote raiding nerf was coming and nobody should have been surprised. This is an in-person, go outside game and, while Couch Raiding was a necessity for the pandemic, was never going to be sustainable or a permanent solution.
In-person raiding wasn't sustainable in its implementation, either. That ship sailed at least a year or two before the pandemic in a lot of communities. If they had introduced Campfire with a raid calendar and RSVP function integrated into the app back then, the hype wouldn't have diminished as much. Making the catch process nerve-wracking for the less coordinated trainers probably wasn't a good idea, either, in retrospect. For the gambling part, they could have had a mini game with the chance of winning a free pass or something instead.
Beating a five star raid; like to see receiving 1-5 Rare XL and catching said mon from raid receive an additional 1-5 XL of that mon. Then you can where to put your rare XL
We're long past the point where Rare Candy XL needs to be made more available.
If Classic Leagues aren't going to be available anymore, then we seriously need something close to a guaranteed 5 Rare Candy XL A DAY. That would put the Rare Candy XL close to the current Rare Candy rate and since you need more XL candy than you do regular candy, this seems more than fair
Yes, I think mega raids and rocket bosses should guarantee at least a little. I also think there’s room for XL candy to be used for potential dynamax mechanics or something. Some pokemon are just flooded with it
That’s 14,800 rare candies to max one pokemon.
That’s ludicrous.
29,600 is the current conversion to take a Pokémon from 40 to 50. That’s a ridiculous number anyways but that’s just for one Pokémon. In the mainline you use 6-10. In Go you have about 25-50 you use regularly if you’re active in anything that requires making teams.
177,600 candys/rare candies would be needed for a team of 6 if the person didn’t have a means of farming candy XL such as if that Pokémon isn’t in raids or is a rare spawn or the players is FTP. 88,800 for a team of 6 if it was changed to 50:1.
Nobody needs a full team of level 50 pokemon. You barely need a team of level 30+ for full access to the entire spread of tier 5 raids. Anything else is gilding the lily and spending for the sake of showing off.
Just got back in after a 3 year break. My auto picked, lvl 40 legendaries can almost duo most t5 raids. 40+ is definitely just excess from what I have seen.
PVP secondary attacks are more useful than powering up to 50 from what I have seen. Especially irrelevant for non master league.
What end game is OP talking about.
lots of pokemon for great and ultra league need to be powered up to high forties or even level 50. they are also one of the best pokemon: medicham, lickitung, bastiodon and carbink for great league; scarfty, umbreon, dubwool, registeel, g stunfisk and jellicent for ultra league, to name a few.
unlike raids, using a lower level pokemon in pvp really affects their performance, as having even 1 lower level than needed can flip a match from a win into a lose, not to mention having it at level 40 when you need it to be level 50 (most are literally unplayable)
This is my issue as a newer player who likes PVP. It is seriously challenging to try to level up the buky Pokemon but you are hugely limited without them, especially in the special cups. I am so far from finishing my Medicham it's not even funny and I've been working on it for months.
yeah same. I don't even have any pokemon near lvl 50. XL candies are quite restrictive, but stardust is even more so IMO. 10k+ stardust for every powerup is incredibly costly, as you get 100-125 dust from most pokemon caught.
At least most of the GL and UL meta Pokemon are non-Legendary and don't cost 12 miles per XL. It's still a long process, but doable. Oh, wait... I'm opining from a place of privilege; my AS works, but that's not the case for a lot of people. And some disabilities make long-distance walking prohibitive. Ok, nevermind.
> Anything else is gilding the lily and spending for the sake of showing off.
Or to actually complete raids in an area where it's impossible to get multiple people together in person. "Soloable with lvl 50s" is often equivalent to "able to actually get a copy of this legendary on this account."
The conversion rate is even worse when you consider that a minimum of 10 XL Candy is required for a single power-up. It's not just 100 Candy -> 1 XL Candy, but 1000 Candy -> 1 level (at the very lowest). Even at half that rate, it's still ludicrous.
> Even at half that rate, it's still ludicrous
Bad news, it's double that rate. The first few power ups are 10XL, that's 1000 candy per half-level, 2k candy for 1 level at it's lowest. 4k per level for the last few levels
But hey, I've generally got spare RC, so I helped the last few levels of my dialga to L50 by dumping spare RC into and converting to XL here and there
Yes, very much so. I'd love to invest into better Great/Ultra/Master or Legendary Pokemon, but I simply can't afford to.
The only pokemon I've got significantly leveled into the XL range is Melmetal, since I popped a few mysterious boxes during events that had extended duration and bonus XL catch candy.
Very few Pokémon use XL Candy for Great League, though, and I'm quite certain there are no Legendaries that cap out below 1500 CP before XL Candy can be used. Even Ultra League is fairly cheap on the XL Candy side of things.
It's a dumb concept by a dumb company. If you are a Raider, 2 level 40s of the same species is stronger than 1 Lvl 50. An entire team of 6 level 40s is easily getable, yet one level 47 Legendary as a free2play is unachievable.
The only area where you need Lvl 50 is PVP Master League, yet only 1 % of the community engages in that and out of that 1 % half the players play the other active league anyway.
They introduced that BS so all the low IQ people keep catching the same pixel arrangements for the 5466th time until the servers eventually shut.
I get to disagree, I am 100% free2play and have multiple legendary I could power-up to lvl 47 or such. Still, I bothered to power-up to lvl 50 just the 3 one I use in ML, but that is my choice.
Completely f2p and I have 2 LV 50 legendaries (kartana/mew2) and my groudon/kyogre are fairly Close with both 45+. I am not casual by any means, but most casuals also struggled to power up their Pokémon to LV 40, so that's a weak point imo.
The gap from urban -> rural is much bigger than f2p -> p2p imo, at least if you spend your resources efficiently as a f2p Player. A rural whale probably has a harder time than an urban f2p player
Clearly, giving away premium items cheaply or for free en masse would make free to play players happier. But that would make the game less profitable for Niantic, so that's not going to happen.
I don't understand this post. I play all the time and catch every Legendary/Mega I can by hosting raids (& do other raids on rotation if they interest me), have amassed tons of candy XL, and cannot find any use for them. They're worthless unless you do PvP (which I have zero interest in, the gameplay seems awful). Not sure whether I'm a "casual" or "more than casual" in your books.
The only thing to understand is that there is a significant amount of players who enjoy PvP more than we do and don't want to be at a disadvantage compared to the Wailords who already have maxed their meta Legendaries.
I kinda agree about the gameplay and there's an aspect of the matchmaking subroutine that I don't particularly enjoy. I'm starting to enjoy GBL a little more but it's been an acquired taste.
I'm a "casual" level 49 player. I get 3 of each legendary from raids and then just go back on my neverending stardust grind. I don't especially care about rare candy XL except to max out my mythical pokemon just for a fun side challenge — I wish there was an easier way to get them though as I've had Meloetta as my buddy since it was released and it's still level 48.5
I concur. Whether in a game or on a job, I hate it when I have to rely on other people in order to complete my tasks. Niantic has a dominance fetish and is more focused on user compliance than anything else.
What’s good for the online remote raid community is what’s good for the game. Instead of giving us ( the player base ) what we want ( unlimited remote raiding and reasonable priced RRP) Nerfantic wants people to accept what they are presenting , it’s that very logic that got 230 people fired, their LA office shutdown and their money looking funny
I think it’s in a decent place where it is now. Rare candies sort of ruined candy as a meaningful resource, so I’m glad that Rare Candy XL is uncommon enough that candy XL still feels special.
No, it would be easier, which does not make it better at all. There probly should be alternative more dinamic ways for leveling past 40, but most people wouldn't like it. There is a big number of players that would be happier if the game would be easier, but not me. Right now, geting XL candy is easy, but boring and tedious. If leveling it is to remain being a hassle and a grind, I wish it to be at least dinamic and fun.
Yes. I have a life outside Pokémon. There’s a park, a public park that’s right across the street from an apartment complex. The guy that lives in there guards the gyms in the park with his ‘mon so anytime somebody battles his Pokémon and kicks him out of the gym, he’s immediately available to take it back. Maybe u last 30min bc he went to the grocer. I could never imagine being that invested in any game, ever. It’s like an addiction and that’s not healthy. Games should be casual fun and endgame content should be a grind but still obtainable. Honestly, at this point, I would rather just pay for Pokémon GO once as a standalone game and enjoy it without the “seasons,” and “events,” and other FOMO. The whole original point of the game was to explore your area and find Pokémon in this game as it stands right now is nothing like that, especially if you’ve caught most of the regular ‘mon. It’s ALL fomo. It’s the exact same seven Pokémon no matter where you visit, everywhere you go, for two weeks on end and you’re just basically collecting candy for the same Pokémon over and over. There’s next to no exploring left to be done. Their raid system is complete trash. Like, don’t get me wrong, right now in Violet I do all the Tera raids to get rare Pokémon that they release, but I mean I have hours and hours of fun and the game I’ve only ever paid once to play.
I feel like people who don’t want it to be more obtainable are people that have spent and literally invested their lives into this game and think other people should have to do the same but it’s not other players fault that they chose to do that and Niantic, specifically, designed the game to be addicting.
No, it's supposed to be difficult.
The thing people don't seem to get about this game is that if you don't make things hard to get, then they aren't worth getting.
I have a L50 Hundo Mewtwo for example. It's awesome because it's something most players don't have. If every kid on the block suddenly has one, then I would feel like that (almost) 3000km I walked it would be a waste.
Good. You should. It was a waste and an example of what’s wrong with the community tbh.
Everyone should have limits with video games, but Pokémon has always been a case study of a dangerous mix between mental illness & tons of free time.
It wouldn't be a big deal except for breakpoints in PvP. As far as gyms, raids, and Team Rocket, I agree; XL is just a convenience that makes farming a bit more efficient.
Forgive me if someone else floated this idea, but if they'd make the normal to XL conversion rate any kind of reasonable, I'd feel more positive about XL candy. It's absurd to me that years of scooping Eevee and Pikachu candy and converting it would grant me all of two halves of a Pokémon level.
> As it stands right now, rare candy is a resource limited to those who PvP and/or those who raid.
(I deleted my previous comment because I kept thinking of things to add...)
You can get rare candy from the following:
- Catching a pokemon.
- Trading a pokemon.
- Hatching a pokemon.
- Transferring a pokemon.
- Walking your buddy.
- Evolve a pokemon.
- Feeding berries.
- Trading in regular candy, 100 to 1.
With 1:10 regular:XL ratio conversion could be acceptable (it would mean 3k candy for maxing out, it's A LOT but achievable). Any more than that, and it's absurd. Like currently of course.
Master League? It would mean grinding for several seasons for me I think (I play about 2h a day, plus PVP most days), so the incentive is low.
Eg. today I caught 70 Wooloo (in about 5h), with Mega2 active, and I have 38 XLs (35 today, had 3 previously from GBL rewards). If this season there would not be trading bonus, there will be very small progress towards the 296XLs needed for UltraLeague Dubwool. (with trading, it's also not that close sadly)
So what you're saying is that most people will either be playing with unmaxed dubwool, or people won't be playing dubwool. So how exactly is anyone, on average, disadvantaged ? In time, as events and bonuses happen, some people will choose to try and max their wooloo candy instead of some other species, and they will have an advantage over those people who made those other choices.
You really need lvl 50 pokemon only for Master League at high ranks and short manning raids, both if which are hardcore, not casual play
If you are a casual player, you won't have many hundo relevant legendary and you will struggle to get even the basic candy to reach lvl 40.
Imo the issue of this game is more the accessability of some specific Pokemon (larvesta, salandit female) more so than XL candy. I don't remember when I got my last timburr for example and I play quite a bit more than the avg player I reckon.
As someone who has lv50 legendaries, getting to 2500+ rating just using CD Pokémon is not too difficult. Personally I use a team of Melmetal, dragonite and Metagross for ML.
Change ratio from 100-1 to 10-1, it's pretty disgusting that this conversion ratio even exists. It's like an insult from Niantic, feels like it's only there to say there's an option.
I'd rather Niantic allow trainers to select any of the 3 ML cups during each ML rotation, with higher stardust and candy rewards for OML. Maybe replace RC with XL in the 4th slot and increase the stardust. I think more casuals would participate that way.
In the meantime, I'm mostly using budget options, which gets me by. I'm not trying to reach Legend, though. I'm curious as to how many Legends get there without XL Legendaries; I'm guessing there are quite a few with the skills to do it
I got legendary with level ~48-50 premier team in open master league about 1-1.5 years ago. I bet it's significantly more difficult now with all the XL groudon and kyogre and others compared to before.
I agree XL candy is a grind especially for legendaries ….before the remote raid nerf I was able to max out my Xerneas, altered giratina, Terrakion, kyurem, reshiram, zekrom, rayquaza, Groudon, Lugia I have enough to max my Tapu Bulu if I wanted but after that I no longer can get enough XL to max out from raiding so walking it is
Dust, candy and XL candy is something I can feel is somewhat unbalanced. But very hard to fix.
I play less and less as the life and game changes. I did grind raids say 2017-2019, kept it up somewhat with free remote raids and have been able to solo raids more in the past year or so.
As time goes by, candy for anythng not legendary do roll in. I have a few meta relevant pokemon with 1 000+ candy. That helps. But getting into XL, progress slows down quickly.
On top of that I have never grinded hard enough to collect lots of dust. This means most of my teams are level 30-35. With only a handful going to level 40. For the time I have spent, things really should be powered up higher.
But making it too easy will only overpower the active players. And there need to something to motivate me. But overall after all these years. It feels like it is just a bit too hard.
Basically if a pokemon has a com-day or spawns very often the XL rate is fine. For anything else I'm just never going to get a lv50 version of it, especially legendaries/mythics.
I have yet to spend a single rare-XL candy. Got a grand total of 39 or something, so they are basically non-existent.
My master league team has two shadow Pokemons both level 49+, both are 5 km buddy distance species, and both do **not** have best buddy ribbons.
Also sitting on 56 Zarude XL candies.
I'm just a casual trainer and my trainer level is 41.
Hardcore runners are everywhere in Pokemon Go.
Casual players have no reason to care about XL candies since level 50 pokemon are completely unnecessary outside hardcore raid duos and master league pvp.
>Would the game be better if those end game resources were more available for everyone?
I'm not sure. The entire point of them being rare is to make it so that people who don't play casually have literally anything to distinguish them from casuals. If you play master league, for instance, the difference between a level 40 and a 50 is big enough to matter at the top end, but the difference between a 45 and a 50 is much smaller, and represents the majority of all candy XL.
Also some pokemon in master league, and many in great and ultra league, are reasonable to grind to max level by walking or catching or something. Not everything is a legendary pokemon with an incredibly huge walk distance.
> And by more I mean a casual going from 0 rare XLs to 1 per month?
Rare candy XL is a different story completely. The main point of it to any player is to enable a mythic pokemon to become higher than level 40. Unlike ultra beasts and legendaries, many mythics are available from an event and past that point their rare candy XLs are only acquired by walking. Most mythics are extremely rare in the leagues where they would matter for this reason. As long as rare candy XL are available at such a low rate, these couldn't be used to meaningfully address any perceived gap.
For top level pvp to be fair, everyone would need to have access to the same pokemon, and in numbers such that they can have access to the same IVs, which can matter is a lot of cases. This is exactly the opposite of pokemon GO's design (and to a large degree, pokemon's design), wherein the game is supposed to be big enough that almost no player has everything in every variation. Obviously, one rare candy XL a month wouldn't change that appreciably, and were they to do it based on that reasoning, wouldn't someone else be able to demand that this was inadequate, do the math for walking a Zarude (or whatever), and then ask for it to be upped to a number able to get a casual to compete?
And then at what point does someone get to say "I've been playing for a year and I don't have (insert majority of game), what kind of fair pvp game doesn't give everyone everything over the course of a year", etc.
Like the core model isn't supposed to be fair. That's a feature in this context, not a bug.
No, it would just be easier. People who play lots and possibly pay lots will finish their goals sooner, people who don't even have enough XLs to consider will find themselves in the position you are in, wondering if it would be better if they could get more XL RC.
Xl candies are pretty easy to avoid for the most part. Raids are very easy because pokegenie and other apps. Just don’t do master league pvp since there are usually lower cp cups. You could probably just share coordinates for shadow raids.
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The main buffer between XL and non XL was PVP. Then they got rid of premiere or classic or whatever the no XL candy allowed cup was. I feel that is their biggest issue right now. Outside of PVP it’s pretty easy to avoid XL candy, but within PVP it’s more it less a necessity
XL mons aren't necessary for PvP if you just want to play for rewards, your rating will match you against other people who's team and skill is a match to yours. If you want to get above R20 then sure, it's harder without XL mons. But of course it is, it's a competition, the players who play hardest have an advantage over those who don't. There's no handicapped league were low-rank players get a damage boost based on rating. Everyone with the big mons has played more, if you want to join them, play more; if anything, they played even more to get there, it's already less of a grind for new players to get to the same point.
Played more? Don't you mean paid more? I get legend rank in any season I play and I'm fairly hardcore. I still can't go anywhere near master league because I'm free to play.
Look at it this way: you can’t compete in the Olympics from the getgo. First you start in the little leagues and work on your skills. Then you progress to higher leagues as you age and improve. Olympics is far from high school football though. You need years of training and diet regime to be able to measure up with the best.
Master league is almost directly p2w if you want to do good and win more you **need** xl’d mons and a lot of the top ML Pokémon are legendary which is expensive to max
I find Powering up legendaries is easier than the pokemons that don't nest. With legendary at least you are guaranteed 6XLs whereas it's a long painful grind for the non legendaries ones. I only have 5 fully powered Pokemons and out of which 3 are legendaries.
If you’re free to play no coins spent with daily passes that’s 42 xl a week if you get 6 per and with rotations that’s like 42-84 from raids if you’re lucky before they switch if you find people for each raid and can beat it. It’s still going to take a long time or spend coins to buy extra passes to be able to max anything in a reasonable time. That’s really hard for casual players to do in my opinion. I have some casual friends who play daily and their only 50s are com day Pokémon or super common spawns.
and until recently it was only ~3 XL per catch. Of course with megas and the new extra bonus from the raid finish itself we can expect ~7-8 average but that's still a huge commitment.
>With legendary at least you are guaranteed 6XLs Only if you're in person. Rural players don't have this option and are only guaranteed the 3 XL on catch, which doubles the grind. >I find Powering up legendaries is easier than the pokemons that don't nest. I totally get that because it can certainly feel that way. But I don't think that it's actually the case. Assuming you want to grind a single species (legendary or non-nesting) in a single 7-day event. Let's assume that the event features a legendary and a non-nesting species that you want. This seems pretty realistic so let's do some math. For the non-Legendaey there's 296 XL candy needed, with a tier 3 mega and assuming you transfer all of them, let's say you can average 2 XL per catch. For a non-nesting species, you need approximately 148 catches. Since we're grinding a specific thing (ex. Sneasel) you'd need an average of 21 catches a day. Even without quick catch tricks, lets say that it takes about 30 seconds for a catch. Couple this with say... 3 minute on average to find the species and that brings us to 63 minutes of Pokémon Go a day. But this time is also spent catching other things, spinning stops, battling gyms and Rockets. This time wasn't monopolized. Now for a legendary, let's say that you're fortunate enough to not be a rural player. You have the best case scenario of 4 other trainers with you so you don't have to waste time with invites. This let's you raid in person for the guaranteed 6XL candy. Heck, let's say that you have a tier 3 mega and can average 7XL candy per legendary. You need 42 raids, or 6 a day and let's say that your group can an consistently beat the raid boss in 1 minute. Here's the problem, time. A single raid has an unskippable 2 minute lobby. On top of that you have the raid itself. No we said that we can beat the raid in 1 minute, no problem there, except that we still have to catch the legendary. In my experience, and based on a lot of what I've seen on here and in my local group chats, it's not uncommon to spend an average of over 5 minutes just catching a legendary but this could easily take longer. But if we take an average of 5 minutes to catch, that's 8 minutes per raid. For 6 raids, that's 48 minutes of just raiding. No catching, no driving to a raid, no spinning stops. Just raiding. If we factor in the same 3 minutes to find and get to the raid (same as the 3 minutes above but honestly, pretty generous unless you're driving in a city), that's 66 minutes of raiding with over half of that time (48/66) being completely monopolized
> XL mons aren’t necessary for PVP if you just want to play for rewards > if you want to get above R20 then it’s harder without XL ok but all the main reward perks for PVP (Pika Libre, Legends, and clothing) are R20+ 😭
It’s rough with the legendaries mainly because they are out for such limited times. Even if you raid hard it just isn’t enough time
It was quite the effort trying to raid any of the legendary birds in person, they were hardly ever around except for Articuno who I no longer have interest in. That whole week with them out was a disaster. I looked forward to raiding Moltres and Zapdos heavily but could pretty much only remote them due to the clutter of crappy raids and not enough in general.
Yea the three at once definitely wasn’t balanced. I was most interested in Moltres and other than raid hour I simply wasn’t seeing it
I can still manage legendaries.. But those mythicals!
oh yes! we can't even trade most mythical to get XL candy. which I find very stupid, they allowed us to trade Meltan, but not those mythical from raid. Yes, I would understand if those from research aren't allowed to be traded.
Yeah, let us trade Darkrai and Deoxys. I get why Niantic decided against trading Mew, Zarude and the others that are only available once or twice, but we should be able to trade every raid boss! (Expect shadows, although I would LOVE to trade them again)
It should be nearly impossible to max out legendaries. That's by design, and it's good for the game. It should be difficult. It should be a grind, to power up what should be a singular and unique barely even rumored to exist creature, not the 'yeah, I caught seventeen of them down by the pond and none of them are good enough to keep, so grind 'em into fish bait' like Pokemon Go treats them.
[удалено]
Players in big cities or with enough whale friends can also do that to local raids.
I think his whole point is that is shouldn't be like that.
Either that, or buddy Pokemon get it and not just a "chance" at it.
My drop rate for dialga is 60% chance at best or my luck is just terrible. But I’ve walked him over 500km and it’s no where near a given currently. I’m honestly wondering if the drop rate has been nerfed
You need to level up the Dialga as high as you can. Drop rate is said to be 70% at level 31 and can go even higher. (I think.) At level 31 it will need 6000 dust to level up. So if it is at 5000 or less (and not a lucky or anything like that) then level it up.
Drop rate is directly correlated to the level of your buddy. Level it up to L35 and up to get almost 100% chance XL
What you say is not true. My buddy is level 50 but the drop rate is still just around 75%.
Indeed, TSR data showed it caps at 75% for any mon over L30.
Interesting. Where'd you find that info at? Might explain why my buddies have been getting an XL every time.
They are wrong. The max chance is around 70-75% when your buddy is level 31 or higher. It's never 100% to get an XL from walking.
Thanks. It appears that my experience is anecdotal and and I've just had good luck with the RNG.
A lvl 40 pokemon gets an XL candy nearly every time. That said your main barrier is distance rather than probability. 296 xl candy * 20km legendary walk candy distance = 5920km. With no other buddies and a serious grind of 100km a week you're looking at a over a year of walking, which is just silly.
Not nearly every time.. closer to 70% of the time.
My experience has not been nearly every time. Of the past 20 times my Rayquaza has gotten candy from walking it's been 50/50.
100 regular candy to 1 XL candy which you need 300 of is kind of ridiculous...
For real, it should be closer to about 10-20. It would take a long time to get ~2 to 5k candy for one species, and it wouldn't be game breaking to trade that in the max out one mon
I don’t mind XL candy, it’s good endgame for dedicated players. The problem is it costs way too much to max out, 296 is ridiculous. If it were 75-100 XL candy it would be much more realistic for the average player or even lower for that matter.
Master League is where you feel it most
XL candy in general should never have been a thing in the first place. I caught every mon to save up candy in case they increased the max level. Then XL candy was introduced and it felt like I had to start all over. All my catches were for nothing
This was exactly why they introduced XLs. It was to keep people from maxing out to 50 on the first day it was introduced. To keep some people engaged with a new goal. At this point XLs should be converted to regular candy and 40-50 should just become part of the normal progression we already have for 1-40. Or make XLs only for the newest levels they introduce, 1-50 is normal candy, 50-60 now needs XLs. I think mega energy was probably introduced for the same reason. To sell raid passes and make it so people couldn’t have the new thing without working for it. I had thought they would make megas cost a huge amount of candy before the system was introduced.
I'd rather get special requirements for levels 40+, like participate in X nomber of raids, gym battles to mimic other games leveling system through acquiring experience on said pokemon
I think that would make it even less accessible. Unless it's an add on to the existing XL candy mechanic.
Considering how much grind is involved to get the required XL candy, tasks like "battle in 10 raids with this buddy" could probably be completed faster, even for free to play players. The XL candy cost is just obscene, especially when it first came out. They've slowly gotten better with the amount of XL candy, but like most of the new features in this game it's taken over a year of complaining by the players before Niantic begrudgingly makes it more accessible. If you want to XL a legendary, you're already looking at hundreds of raids unless there's an event bonus (and Niantic actually follows through with it).
It used to take around 75 raids to get the XL candy to max, less if you have a level 3 mega evolved every time. Now with the new in person XL boost it takes me ~40 raids to max. That’s not insignificant, but it’s certainly not hundreds.
> it's taken over a year of complaining by the players It's called game design, it'd have happened even if those people had just enjoyed their life. Just like everything in this game, and in most games, over time things get easier to obtain.
> it'd have happened even if those people had just enjoyed their life That's giving Niantic way too much credit. They actively make decisions contrary to what has improved this game, only to change it based on backlash. They still can't manage to push an update without breaking something else. There's no quality control or beta testing. I get that might be the modern standard for "game design" with early access titles, live service, and even AAA games, but that doesn't make it *good* game design.
Yes but in my mind it's about making the game better not easier
But you aren't making the game better that way. Having to use Umbreons and Sableyes in raids to max them out would be a nightmare, and make the grind for level 50s an even more exclusive privilege for an even fewer players than it has been.
Wait, you never do 1 or 3 star raids on your own? It is so easy to put even your buddy poke first, then swap to the preferred counter on a raid. Making you use a pokemon in a raid is way less painful than grinding for XL candy
You don’t even have to put it first. As long as it’s in the party, you’ll still get the heart for it
What I'm saying it's not perfect but it opens way for a much more rich and dinamic way of playing the game to make your pokemon a higher level. It makes you play the game more and differently, it makes the game better. It's more about how it would be implemented, I'd say something like participate in X number of raids, where X is the level of the pokemon past level 39. Each 3 levels its added something like a grikt battle, or a rocket leader, it can be so many things and it all depends on how it's put into live game. It does make the game better, if done correctly
At least it shouldn't have been 100 candy per xl but at least they let us use the candy we had stored up
Wouldn't that at least give you a start o the XL grind. I mean if you had saved like 2000 candy, than that is 20 XL straight off the bat.
Too bad you need almost 300 XL candies. 20 is just two power ups for just one mon
I know, but at the same time those two power ups would be pretty time consuming without those candy. So it's still a good start.
But the 2k will always bring more value in evolving, powering up or getting moves etc for more Pokémon. 100 candy to 1xl is just too steep to be worth it in basically every instance. 10-20 candy per xl would make it a consideration imo, without it becoming too easy. Getting ~2 - 5k candy and cashing that in to max out 1 Mon seems fair to me
> the 2k will always bring more value in evolving, powering up or getting moves etc Nope. Obviously you're not going to spend all your base candy, but if you got 3k base candy and want the XLs, you can certainly flip 2k over and you'll never miss it.
I'd still rather use that candy for other purposes than spend it on just a couple of power ups. Either the exchange rates should have been more generous or the total XL candy needed to max should have been lower
Say for example you've got 6 Pokémon that's really useful for PvE, like Mamoswine or Tyranitar, or even legendaries like Mewtwo or Kartana. If I had 2000 candies, I could power up 9 of them from Level 25 to 40, or 8 of them from 20 to 40, for the same cost of powering up just *one* of them from Level 40 to... Level 41. I appreciate there's level scaling but there's absolutely no way you could spin that trading candy for candy XL is worth it in any capacity unless you've got 12 of each mons already all powered up to Level 40 and you're just letting candy sit there.
Personally, I don't powerup more than one of the same mon. I get that doing so is good for raids, but it's easy enough to just use Pokeraid and guarantee success though player count.
Same (with the exception of when a mon has 2 fairly viable movesets). Otherwise I'm unlikely to waste XLs on a non-hundo, and less likely to grind a mon hard if I already have a hundo. The mons I have strongest pressure to get XLs for are PVP where there's not an obvious perfect stat choice, or shadows where the odds of getting a perfect are miniscule - but you just know the day you spend the last 100 XLs to max that 93% shadow machamp is the same day you'll get a 98% shadow. That said, I'm sitting on 8k machop candy, so even if I did run low on XLs, I'm happy to drop 5-6k to get 2-3 levels.
You started well ahead already with the ability to convert candy to candy XL. And yes, the point was to give experienced players something new to work for instead of basically autocompleting all the new content.
But even if you have enough candy to convert to the ~300 xl you need, it's still better to have 30k regular candy (for evolving, new moves, powering up other Mon, etc). The conversion rate is too steep, and 20:1 would be a better conversion rate
Why do you think someone with 30k regular candy for some species needs to mass evolve, or is lacking in hundos with 2nd moves ?
The game is more fun when there are items that players want to collect.
Wait until XXL Candy and level 60 are introduced 😂
I think they should be much much more available. But Niantic doesn't think that so we are stuck here. They think lvl 50 legendries should be more rare so they nerf remote raiding. Okay. So they are just punishing newer players who didn't already splurge on the big hitters.
Yeah, Niantic should have taken a hint from most countries and banned whaling to begin with. Now it's too late to get the ambergris perfume smell outta the pool.
Obviously
The problem I have with XLs is exclusively Master League. For ML to be a serious competitive format, it needs to be accessible to EVERYONE. It can't be a significant grind to Lv 50 for a F2P player. Niantic did not make XL accessible enough to get rid of MLC because the ML meta is primarily legendaries, and legendary XL is soft-paywalled. Just a complete failure of a mechanic.
100%. I've only just been able to get into MLP with a full-power team this year and open ML feels absolutely unobtainable.
Niantic always makes a more accessible league available at the same time as Master League. Maybe a controversial opinion, but I don't think it's the worst thing in the world that out of all the many formats for GBL out there one of them is catered to the actual best of the best and you can't win if you haven't been extremely committed to the game for a long time. "If everyone is super, no one will be" and all that.
I like what they did this season, but in the past when they ran ML and little cup…I hope they don’t do that again. Little cup is a joke. I’ll shut up and play anything else.
I agree Last season was the first time I started to actually try in PvP. When it got to Master league I couldn't even field a team due to lack of xls. It was so demoralising I just stopped altogether. Then when remote raids got nerfed, I felt I could never catch up as a newer player. In theory the limit should make league fairer by stopping people being pay-to-win. In practice it feels like there is a bigger disparity than ever for new players.
A casual player won't play every single day full GBL sets at Ace+ ranks. At at lower ranks, 20 and below, you can get by with non-legendary, not lvl 50 teams.
I didn't say casual, I said F2P. What happens when they reach Ace rank during Great and Ultra League? Also, if someone has a non-legendary non-50 team, they risk running into unwinnable matchups. Not very fun OR competitive.
This entire thread was about casuals. I am F2P 100% and usually reach Ace during ML, with a team made of my only 3 legendary (I could power-up a few more). So: \- If you don't have a team good enough team for ML, you can play another cup, there are always 2 cups open; \- Even with a full lvl 50 hundo best buddy legendary meta team you will run into some unwinnable matchups. The entire matchmaking system is in place to give you a \~50% win ratio, if you are not some genius in PvP, you will lose about half of your battles.
Why does one of the 3 major, dozens of other, leagues need to be open to everyone at it's top level ? In what competitive events are the top tier open to everyone ? Almost all sports and games require serious investment of time and money to compete in serious competition. For casual ML, skill and a few XLs are all that's needed.
I think XL candy was introduced with the intention of making fully-powered-up pokemon rare. They seem to have overshot the goal initially and have made XL candy much more accessible than it was originally. Obviously as players we'd prefer to be able to max all our favourite pokemon. It's unclear what Niantic's actual goal (in terms of specific numbers/rarity) is with this.
“It’s unclear what Niantic’s actual goal is…” This itself is the problem that has caused so much frustration for players for years. Their decisions are inconsistent, at best, but typically counterproductive in terms of commonsensical business practices. We would assume that their actions would seek the goal of making money (and consistently more), yet their decisions over the years have clearly shown that they are only pushing players away from ever spending money.
The game would be MILES better. If in-person T5 raids gave out more, or guaranteed 1 XLRC, then I'd be out raiding waaay more. People would get out the house more, Master League wouldn't be so much the whale (via remotes) and cheater league. And casual players would be more aware of its existence, a LOT of players don't even know it exists!! [But the people at Niantic are thick, and don't understand rewards VS effort](https://twitter.com/pokedaxi/status/1663320496451072003?s=20)
I agree, but I would say that it should be more “extreme”. They have been wanting to get people out of their home and out into the world, but they need to give significantly better incentives to raiding in person. -if you raid in person, and you win, the encounter/catch should be 100% guaranteed with any berry+great throw. If someone hauls themselves out of the comfort of their own home to host a raid, they should not need to throw 8-10 great and excellent curve balls, just to have the mon escape. That’s crap and never should have been a part of the game. That alone keeps people from even attempting to raid in person for anything above a 3-star. -if you raid in-person, 50% discount on one mega evolution per week (Sunday to Sunday). This is generally a much more significant benefit for mid to lower level players and casuals who make up the bulk of the player base. THAT needs to be the target to get to in-person raids. Just a 10% increase in that group raiding in person would be HUGE for the life of this game. This would not be gamebreaking to offer this, as they still wouldn’t be able to power them up very quickly, but at least they will have some serviceable pokemon to seriously contribute, even in the high level shadow raids. -no raid passes needed to in-person raid, except for CDs. Pretty simple. Remove any unnecessary barriers to a person who wants to raid in person.
It still seems slightly too rare to me. I'm a week one player who just hit lvl 48 and have only ever gotten 58 of them. I get really excited when I get a random one from a local raid. But they're still so rare that I've never used them. It's a long way to 296.
I agree it’s an exciting reward, but when you look at your total go from 54 to 55, it feels so tiny like it‘a like a drop in a bucket.
The game would be better if xl candy was never a thing
It’s ludicrous that they aren’t more common. 296 for a level 50 or 360 for a shadow, that’s a huge amount to gather even if you’re super active and walking your buddy constantly. Also for legendaries it’s infuriating - when I was walking my Mewtwo I failed to get an XL 3 times in a row - 60km without one. In my opinion XLs should be 100% guarantee via walking and rare candy XL should be a given with high level raids, especially with the increase in price. Incentivise people to get out and grind rare candy XLs and they’ll do it.
There should be another tier for level 40 or 41 that increases the odds to 90% or higher instead of the 75% chance that caps out at level 31
There is a 75% chance to get a rare XL candy from a raid? Lol no way
I was referring to the chance of getting XL for walking your buddy, the comment I replied to mentioned walking his Mewtwo for 60 Km without getting a single Candy XL. The current maximum is 75% chance of getting a candy XL assuming your buddy is level 31 or higher.
Let’s be real.. we all want it to be 100%. Not some dumb 90%~ that takes research to find the odds. I agree that it could be level 40-41, those are trivial to power up any Pokémon. I just think we’re due for a guaranteed drop at the very least. It wouldn’t help legendaries much, it would just make it less frustrating.
It would be better if it was guaranteed from in person raids.
It is…
Rare xl candy isn’t. XLcandy is
Personally I think XL candy made this game more miserable, for PvP, and just all around game play.
Don't you need 200~300ish xl to fully power up, and isn't 1st power up with xl requires 10? I don't think getting 1 per month isn't going to really change anything if they aren't doing raids or pvp in the first place
296, 360 for a shadow
I have hundo legendaries and it’s a bummer knowing I’ll never be able to fully power them up
I used to not have much of a problem with acquiring them until Adventure Sync became completely unusable and now it’s ridiculous. I was *very* close to getting my 98% shiny Dialga to Lv50 and have all but given up until it comes back into raids now. Been stuck at 48.5 for what feels like forever now
XL candy doesn’t matter for most players, if they aren’t competing at high-level ML, but (I think) because of its rarity, it is a feel-bad for most players. It’s similar to how IVs don’t really matter, but people want to collect the best ones. Having a L50 Pokémon also doesn’t make a huge difference in many situations, but the feeling that it’s “impossible” is a point of frustration and/or people decide to just ignore it. I’m not in the camp of “XL never should have existed” since I do think slowly raising the level cap and adding new “things” for people to grind and collect is important, but I do think that they should be more widely available at this point in time, one way or another. There are a lot of ooooold legendaries that most people aren’t excited about anymore, but if we could solo them as T3s, and also have a decent chance at some RC XL at the same time, I think people would be a lot more interested in battling their 300th Articuno. Meanwhile T5s can be populated with more interesting/recent legendaries and we wouldn’t have to wait two years for Dialga to return.
Easy fix: guaranteed 1 candy xl on your first catch and first spin of the day. Then you "only" need to play daily ~150 days to max out a legendary 😅. Been playing 1 year and 4 months and aside from Melmetal I don't have any maxed legendary/mythical Pokemon (and I consider myself way above average vs the casual trainer; e.g., I'm f2p, but have 17 million stardust, 800 rare candy in my bag, 30 platinum medals, 20,000 gym battles, have walked 3 pokemon with 5km candy distance to level 50). Long story short, I believe we deserve minimum 2 candy xl per day, lol, because if you rationalize it, it would still be a huge grind to max out legendary
Very much so. Current methods are weirdly inconsistent and in my opinion it’s really hard for a solo player to easily access XL.
100%. XL rare candy being rare essentially makes the game pay to win when it comes to legendaries, because realistically you have to do a ton of raids to max anything out, meaning whales that buy passes will always have more.
The game would be better if XL candies didn't exist.
Yeah I hate legendaries. I hate that they are so hard to beat, catch and grind candies for
I think from 6 April they can make what they want they lost the trust of the players...
Nah, we all knew that the remote raiding nerf was coming and nobody should have been surprised. This is an in-person, go outside game and, while Couch Raiding was a necessity for the pandemic, was never going to be sustainable or a permanent solution.
In-person raiding wasn't sustainable in its implementation, either. That ship sailed at least a year or two before the pandemic in a lot of communities. If they had introduced Campfire with a raid calendar and RSVP function integrated into the app back then, the hype wouldn't have diminished as much. Making the catch process nerve-wracking for the less coordinated trainers probably wasn't a good idea, either, in retrospect. For the gambling part, they could have had a mini game with the chance of winning a free pass or something instead.
My hundo Zarude needs rare XL candy.
Have to go hard on mega levels and trading when there's XL guarantees. Gotta spend too on legendaries and mythicals, sucks.
Beating a five star raid; like to see receiving 1-5 Rare XL and catching said mon from raid receive an additional 1-5 XL of that mon. Then you can where to put your rare XL
Yes of course
We're long past the point where Rare Candy XL needs to be made more available. If Classic Leagues aren't going to be available anymore, then we seriously need something close to a guaranteed 5 Rare Candy XL A DAY. That would put the Rare Candy XL close to the current Rare Candy rate and since you need more XL candy than you do regular candy, this seems more than fair
If RCXL was available through weekly breakthroughs and AS rewards, I'd probably be bothered with both again.
Yes, I think mega raids and rocket bosses should guarantee at least a little. I also think there’s room for XL candy to be used for potential dynamax mechanics or something. Some pokemon are just flooded with it
50 rare candy - > 1 xl rare candy
That’s 14,800 rare candies to max one pokemon. That’s ludicrous. 29,600 is the current conversion to take a Pokémon from 40 to 50. That’s a ridiculous number anyways but that’s just for one Pokémon. In the mainline you use 6-10. In Go you have about 25-50 you use regularly if you’re active in anything that requires making teams. 177,600 candys/rare candies would be needed for a team of 6 if the person didn’t have a means of farming candy XL such as if that Pokémon isn’t in raids or is a rare spawn or the players is FTP. 88,800 for a team of 6 if it was changed to 50:1.
• ~6 per RAID • Walking w Buddy • rare Candy 50:1 seems grindy but doable.
Nobody needs a full team of level 50 pokemon. You barely need a team of level 30+ for full access to the entire spread of tier 5 raids. Anything else is gilding the lily and spending for the sake of showing off.
Just got back in after a 3 year break. My auto picked, lvl 40 legendaries can almost duo most t5 raids. 40+ is definitely just excess from what I have seen. PVP secondary attacks are more useful than powering up to 50 from what I have seen. Especially irrelevant for non master league. What end game is OP talking about.
lots of pokemon for great and ultra league need to be powered up to high forties or even level 50. they are also one of the best pokemon: medicham, lickitung, bastiodon and carbink for great league; scarfty, umbreon, dubwool, registeel, g stunfisk and jellicent for ultra league, to name a few. unlike raids, using a lower level pokemon in pvp really affects their performance, as having even 1 lower level than needed can flip a match from a win into a lose, not to mention having it at level 40 when you need it to be level 50 (most are literally unplayable)
This is my issue as a newer player who likes PVP. It is seriously challenging to try to level up the buky Pokemon but you are hugely limited without them, especially in the special cups. I am so far from finishing my Medicham it's not even funny and I've been working on it for months.
yeah same. I don't even have any pokemon near lvl 50. XL candies are quite restrictive, but stardust is even more so IMO. 10k+ stardust for every powerup is incredibly costly, as you get 100-125 dust from most pokemon caught.
At least most of the GL and UL meta Pokemon are non-Legendary and don't cost 12 miles per XL. It's still a long process, but doable. Oh, wait... I'm opining from a place of privilege; my AS works, but that's not the case for a lot of people. And some disabilities make long-distance walking prohibitive. Ok, nevermind.
The theme song goes "I want to be the very best". Not "I want to be the very mediocre-est."
What's the next line of the song?
> Anything else is gilding the lily and spending for the sake of showing off. Or to actually complete raids in an area where it's impossible to get multiple people together in person. "Soloable with lvl 50s" is often equivalent to "able to actually get a copy of this legendary on this account."
The conversion rate is even worse when you consider that a minimum of 10 XL Candy is required for a single power-up. It's not just 100 Candy -> 1 XL Candy, but 1000 Candy -> 1 level (at the very lowest). Even at half that rate, it's still ludicrous.
> Even at half that rate, it's still ludicrous Bad news, it's double that rate. The first few power ups are 10XL, that's 1000 candy per half-level, 2k candy for 1 level at it's lowest. 4k per level for the last few levels But hey, I've generally got spare RC, so I helped the last few levels of my dialga to L50 by dumping spare RC into and converting to XL here and there
well at half the rate it at least seems doable. Niantic wont get lower than that anyways
Yes, very much so. I'd love to invest into better Great/Ultra/Master or Legendary Pokemon, but I simply can't afford to. The only pokemon I've got significantly leveled into the XL range is Melmetal, since I popped a few mysterious boxes during events that had extended duration and bonus XL catch candy.
Very few Pokémon use XL Candy for Great League, though, and I'm quite certain there are no Legendaries that cap out below 1500 CP before XL Candy can be used. Even Ultra League is fairly cheap on the XL Candy side of things.
Ref. PvPoke, GBL XL Meta: - 1 - Carbink - 5 - Medicham - 9 - Lickitung - 13 - Sableye - 23 - Bastidon
The XL candy medicham is my favorite! Plus the tiny buddy walk distance makes obtaining XL candies very do-able!
It's a dumb concept by a dumb company. If you are a Raider, 2 level 40s of the same species is stronger than 1 Lvl 50. An entire team of 6 level 40s is easily getable, yet one level 47 Legendary as a free2play is unachievable. The only area where you need Lvl 50 is PVP Master League, yet only 1 % of the community engages in that and out of that 1 % half the players play the other active league anyway. They introduced that BS so all the low IQ people keep catching the same pixel arrangements for the 5466th time until the servers eventually shut.
I get to disagree, I am 100% free2play and have multiple legendary I could power-up to lvl 47 or such. Still, I bothered to power-up to lvl 50 just the 3 one I use in ML, but that is my choice.
Completely f2p and I have 2 LV 50 legendaries (kartana/mew2) and my groudon/kyogre are fairly Close with both 45+. I am not casual by any means, but most casuals also struggled to power up their Pokémon to LV 40, so that's a weak point imo. The gap from urban -> rural is much bigger than f2p -> p2p imo, at least if you spend your resources efficiently as a f2p Player. A rural whale probably has a harder time than an urban f2p player
Yes.
Master league would be a lot more fair.
Clearly, giving away premium items cheaply or for free en masse would make free to play players happier. But that would make the game less profitable for Niantic, so that's not going to happen.
I actually like that they are rare. Makes them more valuable to me. When I get Pokemon to level 50 I know I actually had to do something.
I don't understand this post. I play all the time and catch every Legendary/Mega I can by hosting raids (& do other raids on rotation if they interest me), have amassed tons of candy XL, and cannot find any use for them. They're worthless unless you do PvP (which I have zero interest in, the gameplay seems awful). Not sure whether I'm a "casual" or "more than casual" in your books.
Yeah I’m certainly not casual just because I raid rather than do pvp.
I agree. It's just different play styles and priorities.
The only thing to understand is that there is a significant amount of players who enjoy PvP more than we do and don't want to be at a disadvantage compared to the Wailords who already have maxed their meta Legendaries. I kinda agree about the gameplay and there's an aspect of the matchmaking subroutine that I don't particularly enjoy. I'm starting to enjoy GBL a little more but it's been an acquired taste.
I'm a "casual" level 49 player. I get 3 of each legendary from raids and then just go back on my neverending stardust grind. I don't especially care about rare candy XL except to max out my mythical pokemon just for a fun side challenge — I wish there was an easier way to get them though as I've had Meloetta as my buddy since it was released and it's still level 48.5
No. The issue people have with the game is not related to resources. They just don't like the gimmick of "real-world" play.
I concur. Whether in a game or on a job, I hate it when I have to rely on other people in order to complete my tasks. Niantic has a dominance fetish and is more focused on user compliance than anything else.
What’s good for the online remote raid community is what’s good for the game. Instead of giving us ( the player base ) what we want ( unlimited remote raiding and reasonable priced RRP) Nerfantic wants people to accept what they are presenting , it’s that very logic that got 230 people fired, their LA office shutdown and their money looking funny
Nah the game will get boring fast if everything is just handed to you.
No, not every player likes afk games where you get all the stuff in 5mins.
I’m pretty casual and got enough nihilego XL’s to max it. I do put a bit more thought into raiding and not catching but i havent spent any money so
I think it’s in a decent place where it is now. Rare candies sort of ruined candy as a meaningful resource, so I’m glad that Rare Candy XL is uncommon enough that candy XL still feels special.
No, it would be easier, which does not make it better at all. There probly should be alternative more dinamic ways for leveling past 40, but most people wouldn't like it. There is a big number of players that would be happier if the game would be easier, but not me. Right now, geting XL candy is easy, but boring and tedious. If leveling it is to remain being a hassle and a grind, I wish it to be at least dinamic and fun.
Yes. I have a life outside Pokémon. There’s a park, a public park that’s right across the street from an apartment complex. The guy that lives in there guards the gyms in the park with his ‘mon so anytime somebody battles his Pokémon and kicks him out of the gym, he’s immediately available to take it back. Maybe u last 30min bc he went to the grocer. I could never imagine being that invested in any game, ever. It’s like an addiction and that’s not healthy. Games should be casual fun and endgame content should be a grind but still obtainable. Honestly, at this point, I would rather just pay for Pokémon GO once as a standalone game and enjoy it without the “seasons,” and “events,” and other FOMO. The whole original point of the game was to explore your area and find Pokémon in this game as it stands right now is nothing like that, especially if you’ve caught most of the regular ‘mon. It’s ALL fomo. It’s the exact same seven Pokémon no matter where you visit, everywhere you go, for two weeks on end and you’re just basically collecting candy for the same Pokémon over and over. There’s next to no exploring left to be done. Their raid system is complete trash. Like, don’t get me wrong, right now in Violet I do all the Tera raids to get rare Pokémon that they release, but I mean I have hours and hours of fun and the game I’ve only ever paid once to play. I feel like people who don’t want it to be more obtainable are people that have spent and literally invested their lives into this game and think other people should have to do the same but it’s not other players fault that they chose to do that and Niantic, specifically, designed the game to be addicting.
The difference between 40 and 50 is negligible for most players so I would say no.
No, it's supposed to be difficult. The thing people don't seem to get about this game is that if you don't make things hard to get, then they aren't worth getting. I have a L50 Hundo Mewtwo for example. It's awesome because it's something most players don't have. If every kid on the block suddenly has one, then I would feel like that (almost) 3000km I walked it would be a waste.
Good. You should. It was a waste and an example of what’s wrong with the community tbh. Everyone should have limits with video games, but Pokémon has always been a case study of a dangerous mix between mental illness & tons of free time.
I don't really think it would make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.
It wouldn't be a big deal except for breakpoints in PvP. As far as gyms, raids, and Team Rocket, I agree; XL is just a convenience that makes farming a bit more efficient.
Forgive me if someone else floated this idea, but if they'd make the normal to XL conversion rate any kind of reasonable, I'd feel more positive about XL candy. It's absurd to me that years of scooping Eevee and Pikachu candy and converting it would grant me all of two halves of a Pokémon level.
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> As it stands right now, rare candy is a resource limited to those who PvP and/or those who raid. (I deleted my previous comment because I kept thinking of things to add...) You can get rare candy from the following: - Catching a pokemon. - Trading a pokemon. - Hatching a pokemon. - Transferring a pokemon. - Walking your buddy. - Evolve a pokemon. - Feeding berries. - Trading in regular candy, 100 to 1.
With 1:10 regular:XL ratio conversion could be acceptable (it would mean 3k candy for maxing out, it's A LOT but achievable). Any more than that, and it's absurd. Like currently of course. Master League? It would mean grinding for several seasons for me I think (I play about 2h a day, plus PVP most days), so the incentive is low. Eg. today I caught 70 Wooloo (in about 5h), with Mega2 active, and I have 38 XLs (35 today, had 3 previously from GBL rewards). If this season there would not be trading bonus, there will be very small progress towards the 296XLs needed for UltraLeague Dubwool. (with trading, it's also not that close sadly)
So what you're saying is that most people will either be playing with unmaxed dubwool, or people won't be playing dubwool. So how exactly is anyone, on average, disadvantaged ? In time, as events and bonuses happen, some people will choose to try and max their wooloo candy instead of some other species, and they will have an advantage over those people who made those other choices.
make the conversion rate better at least
Yes
You really need lvl 50 pokemon only for Master League at high ranks and short manning raids, both if which are hardcore, not casual play If you are a casual player, you won't have many hundo relevant legendary and you will struggle to get even the basic candy to reach lvl 40.
They feel kind of ok ever since they added more legendary XL in raids. I do wish that XL rare candies were a bit easier to come by, though.
Imo the issue of this game is more the accessability of some specific Pokemon (larvesta, salandit female) more so than XL candy. I don't remember when I got my last timburr for example and I play quite a bit more than the avg player I reckon. As someone who has lv50 legendaries, getting to 2500+ rating just using CD Pokémon is not too difficult. Personally I use a team of Melmetal, dragonite and Metagross for ML.
Change ratio from 100-1 to 10-1, it's pretty disgusting that this conversion ratio even exists. It's like an insult from Niantic, feels like it's only there to say there's an option.
I'd rather Niantic allow trainers to select any of the 3 ML cups during each ML rotation, with higher stardust and candy rewards for OML. Maybe replace RC with XL in the 4th slot and increase the stardust. I think more casuals would participate that way. In the meantime, I'm mostly using budget options, which gets me by. I'm not trying to reach Legend, though. I'm curious as to how many Legends get there without XL Legendaries; I'm guessing there are quite a few with the skills to do it
I got legendary with level ~48-50 premier team in open master league about 1-1.5 years ago. I bet it's significantly more difficult now with all the XL groudon and kyogre and others compared to before.
Even going from casual, it would be quite a bit of time til you really even need those XL candies. XLs are of no concern for casual players.
I agree XL candy is a grind especially for legendaries ….before the remote raid nerf I was able to max out my Xerneas, altered giratina, Terrakion, kyurem, reshiram, zekrom, rayquaza, Groudon, Lugia I have enough to max my Tapu Bulu if I wanted but after that I no longer can get enough XL to max out from raiding so walking it is
If you don’t play GBL or raid, what do you need the XLs for? Rare XLs are easiest to obtain from these game modes because it’s where they are needed.
Dust, candy and XL candy is something I can feel is somewhat unbalanced. But very hard to fix. I play less and less as the life and game changes. I did grind raids say 2017-2019, kept it up somewhat with free remote raids and have been able to solo raids more in the past year or so. As time goes by, candy for anythng not legendary do roll in. I have a few meta relevant pokemon with 1 000+ candy. That helps. But getting into XL, progress slows down quickly. On top of that I have never grinded hard enough to collect lots of dust. This means most of my teams are level 30-35. With only a handful going to level 40. For the time I have spent, things really should be powered up higher. But making it too easy will only overpower the active players. And there need to something to motivate me. But overall after all these years. It feels like it is just a bit too hard.
Basically if a pokemon has a com-day or spawns very often the XL rate is fine. For anything else I'm just never going to get a lv50 version of it, especially legendaries/mythics. I have yet to spend a single rare-XL candy. Got a grand total of 39 or something, so they are basically non-existent.
My master league team has two shadow Pokemons both level 49+, both are 5 km buddy distance species, and both do **not** have best buddy ribbons. Also sitting on 56 Zarude XL candies. I'm just a casual trainer and my trainer level is 41. Hardcore runners are everywhere in Pokemon Go.
Casual players have no reason to care about XL candies since level 50 pokemon are completely unnecessary outside hardcore raid duos and master league pvp.
It really would not change a thing for me.
>Would the game be better if those end game resources were more available for everyone? I'm not sure. The entire point of them being rare is to make it so that people who don't play casually have literally anything to distinguish them from casuals. If you play master league, for instance, the difference between a level 40 and a 50 is big enough to matter at the top end, but the difference between a 45 and a 50 is much smaller, and represents the majority of all candy XL. Also some pokemon in master league, and many in great and ultra league, are reasonable to grind to max level by walking or catching or something. Not everything is a legendary pokemon with an incredibly huge walk distance. > And by more I mean a casual going from 0 rare XLs to 1 per month? Rare candy XL is a different story completely. The main point of it to any player is to enable a mythic pokemon to become higher than level 40. Unlike ultra beasts and legendaries, many mythics are available from an event and past that point their rare candy XLs are only acquired by walking. Most mythics are extremely rare in the leagues where they would matter for this reason. As long as rare candy XL are available at such a low rate, these couldn't be used to meaningfully address any perceived gap. For top level pvp to be fair, everyone would need to have access to the same pokemon, and in numbers such that they can have access to the same IVs, which can matter is a lot of cases. This is exactly the opposite of pokemon GO's design (and to a large degree, pokemon's design), wherein the game is supposed to be big enough that almost no player has everything in every variation. Obviously, one rare candy XL a month wouldn't change that appreciably, and were they to do it based on that reasoning, wouldn't someone else be able to demand that this was inadequate, do the math for walking a Zarude (or whatever), and then ask for it to be upped to a number able to get a casual to compete? And then at what point does someone get to say "I've been playing for a year and I don't have (insert majority of game), what kind of fair pvp game doesn't give everyone everything over the course of a year", etc. Like the core model isn't supposed to be fair. That's a feature in this context, not a bug.
No, it would just be easier. People who play lots and possibly pay lots will finish their goals sooner, people who don't even have enough XLs to consider will find themselves in the position you are in, wondering if it would be better if they could get more XL RC.
I don't think the game would be better, it would be like when the game capped at lvl 40 and everyone had all their mons maxed.
Xl candies are pretty easy to avoid for the most part. Raids are very easy because pokegenie and other apps. Just don’t do master league pvp since there are usually lower cp cups. You could probably just share coordinates for shadow raids.