Pokemon Go Community Days are ignoring a huge part of the player base

Community Day events need to have more variety in Pokemon Go, as nearly every one of them has focused on PvP picks, neglecting the huge PvE fanbase.

The Pokemon Go April Community Day focusing on Victreebel is a rinse and repeat of a shiny already available in the game and getting a PvP boost with the exclusive move. Over the years, these popular events feature Pokemon usually getting more usage in the Go Battle League (GBL) while PvE hardly gets any love.

Salamence, Rhyperior, Garchomp, Tyranitar, and Metagross are a few species that were lucky enough to gain more usage in Raids, thanks to their Community Day moves. Keep in mind that the main perk of this event is to let players catch good Pokemon that they can use in battles.

But with the best and the most powerful Pokemon in the game, including Legendaries, Mega Evolutions, Primal formes, and Ultra Beasts being limited to Raids, trainers, especially those in lower levels or rural areas, need more PvE-relevant additions to catch ’em all.

Yes, you can catch Legendaries or Ultra Beasts active in ongoing Raids from GBL, but this format has hardly ever been ideal, with lags and bugs being only a part of the problem. With a small meta and limited room for strategy, most find Pokemon Go PvP a rigorous and boring grind. So, every other Community Day focusing on new or improved GBL picks isn’t serving the purpose.

What fans truly need is a mix of both PvP and PvE relevance through the 11 months that Pokemon Go gets to host a new Community Day. Metagross is a perfect example, where Meteor Mash turned an otherwise useless Pseudo Legendary into a beast in the Master League and a top-notch Steel type that is unmatched even by Legendaries.

Even if something like Metagross seems like an overkill, Hydreigon is another Pokemon Niantic can take a cue from. Brutal Swing transformed it into a leading Dark-type attacker in PvE and is the shining example of what Community Days should look like.

Reacting to a post about the Bellsprout Community Day on Reddit, many users slammed the choice of the featured Pokemon, calling it “awful” and demanding better picks that are actually useful in the meta.

A fan wrote, “I was really hoping that Victreebel got a good poison move this com day so it could at least be a viable option for raids,” before another added that the event offered “no meaningful meta impact at all.”

Others joked that even the Community Day Classic in April 2024 was better than Victreebel, as Salamence is a top-tier PvE attacker with Outrage. Even PvP enthusiasts argued: “No need to release this as a CD move, though… they could’ve just added it to Vic’s move pool.”

With Pokemon Go players not seeing any value in Community Days, Niantic should focus on making this fan-favorite extravaganza better so that the Shundos and Hundos caught during the event can be viable in PvE as powerful Raid counters.