Did Niantic Mess Up Mega Rayquaza Elite Raid Day?

I understand the effort to make these in person so players can meet up and play together. But having an elite day is just disastrous. People were stressed driving around to make it to other elite raids in time. It was so dangerous with people driving while on their phones or parking in non-designated parking areas. Pokemon Go should not be a game played while driving.

Very bias opinion... sorry Brandon but if the only good thing is "this helps to bring people together" then it completely failed. Making it a "everyone get into a car and drive around" that is not bringing people together... If helping 1 or 2 people to find the "right gym to start and meet people" is the best argument, then again, improve the Campfire meetup system or do something to notify the people in a better way where are people meeting for regular Raid Days, do not make it a driving experience. I have nothing against Brandon, but we need to think about the smaller communities too, this is just a BAD event and goes against the "group experience" 100%... For anyone that does not play in a major city this was just a bad experience... and for what I am seeing, it was not that much better in big cities.

If they want people to meet up, sure keep the elite raid gym format, with the exception of one change: let the raid boss respawn every 5/10 minutes at the same gym. People will still meet up at the gym during the 45 minutes period, but then people don’t need to rush in their cars to get to the next gym. You can actually get some meaningful interactions with people this way instead of run and gun without saying hi

For context, in Melbourne (2nd biggest city in Australia), we only had about 20 eggs across the whole city at 9am, all in the suburbs (20+ min drive apart). Most people cancelled plans because there was no point doing just one raid per hour, especially those coming from out of town. There was also talk about a make-up event from different independent sources. At 10:30am, all the eggs suddenly spawned, and it was confirmed there'd be no make-up event. So we had to organise 100+ people to get to the meeting point in <90mins. We only just managed 3 raids each at 12 and 1pm because we couldn't plan a good route and meeting point without people completely changing their travel (not to mention safety concerns around some locations). Getting 100+ people to drive/travel last second to a meeting point is absolutley reckless.

The raid locations were way too far apart. What made Kyogre and Groudon great was that everyone could walk together from one location to the next for long periods of time without needing to rush.

This was the worst event ever. I agree with the people complaining about the people driving

Elite Raids should not exist!

Bro raid day was horrible for me. last year when we could actually join remote raids it was awesome but this year with only in person it absolutely sucked especially with the eggs spawn being so random and so far apart Ngl they should just completely redo the event They should just let us use hacks at this point not that I support it or do it though Also love the vids

There is something so trippy about hearing him talk in a flat tone 😂

I’m just sick of the strict timed events that happen for 4 hours on a weekend. I am stuck working every weekend during prime event hours/community days.

Has Niantic ever not mess up?!

I was honestly so against getting campfire but has been a massive game changer for getting raids done easier. I've also found my community has a way more massive community than I thought.

Not all of us can play pogo full time. Elite is just that. For an elite group. Sad but true

They f up real bad

There were so many issues…. One I don’t have many raid passes, and I was hoping for a raid day with free passes. Also even so it was so hard to find the elite raids. I end up having to drive around, and if I start at the wrong spot, there is nobody there…. Then if there’s no one you drive but everyone already left and raided… it’s poorly designed, and there are better ways to do it.

Niantic " we want you all to go out and play in person " This is a driving sport to hunt all the raids down . I'm in Texas with alot of gyms... Only 4 were Elite raids. Just lots of cars following the same route 🤦

Put Rayquaza in regular 5 star raids for 10 days… I will be happy. I got the energy, meteorites… lemme farm candy and candy xl now please

I am in a remote community. We have a nice community but still small. I get kicked from one raid and there were only four in our area. So I got 3/4th of what everyone got in my community.

I can understand Niantic's perspective on trying to have the community come together but in rural areas it will be redundant. You need to cater to everyone, not just one side of the market.

The elite raid format yesterday made me care so much less about this game.