‘Pokemon GO’ February Gen 2 Update To Come After Valentine’s Event Disappoints?
The Pokemon GO Valentine’s Day event has officially started, and quite unsurprisingly, it brought both exciting and somewhat underwhelming changes to the game. While the PoGO Valentine’s Day event is quite certain to get players walking again due to its 2x candy bonus system and its insane update to the game’s lures, the absence of any new content for the mobile title has been considered by many to be quite disappointing. Despite this, however, a major update for the rest of February appears to be planned for the game, as data miners continue to discover references to new features within the game’s code.
Niantic has announced the official rollout of the Pokemon GOValentine’s Day event through its official blog. Just like the immensely-successful Halloween and Christmas events of 2016, the ongoing Valentine’s Day event followed a specific theme. This time, Pokemon GO would be spawning various pink-colored Pokemon such as Clefairy and Jigglypuff on a more frequent basis. Chansey, one of the game’s rarest Pokemon, is part of the Valentine’s Day event too, and the creature’s increased spawn rate has managed to get numerous fans of the game extremely excited.
Apart from pink Pokemon for everyone, the PoGO Valentine’s Day event also features 2X candy for Pokemon captures, hatches, and transfers to Professor Oak. Walking with Buddy Pokemon for some candy also nets players with twice the number of candy than usual. Lastly, Lures, which normally last for 30 minutes, now last a whopping six hours per use. Considering the colors of Lures in the mobile game’s screen, the maps of Pokemon GO players would most likely be ridden with a lot of pink from February 8 to February 15.
While the increased chances of capturing rare Pokemon such as Chansey are a definite plus for the game, numerous players have remarked that the Valentine’s Day event was still somewhat underwhelming. After all, everything that the current Pokemon GO event does is essentially make the most out of features that are already in the game. Unfortunately, there is simply no new content for Pokemon GO with regards to the ongoing event. New creatures such as Umbreon and Espeon, Gen 2 creatures that were rumored for a Valentine’s Day rollout, as well as features such as breeding, were nowhere to be found.
This is not to say that Niantic’s Pokemon GO Valentine’s Day event is a bad one, however. It does, after all, offer a number of interesting new perks for players. Despite that, it is difficult not to be underwhelmed by the lack of new content for the game. Fortunately, eagle-eyed PoGO fans have noted that new features might indeed be coming to Pokemon GO, and unlike the current Valentine’s event, they would finally be substantial, according to a SlashGear report. In fact, there is even a chance that the new updates might be rolled out immediately after the weeklong Valentine’s promotion.
Data mining the current builds of Pokemon GO has become a tradition among players of the augmented reality mobile game for months. While Niantic’s updates are usually very marginal, new lines of code beneath the game’s surface have revealed a number of new features that are coming to the game. These include 100 new Gen 2 Pokemon, Evolution Stones, Pokemon Gender, Shiny Pokemon, and more than three dozen new Pokemon moves for battle.
Baby Pokemon, which were introduced last December, were a perfect example of new features that were found in the popular mobile game’s codes way before the content debuted in Pokemon GO. Thus, while most of the features that were discovered through data mining are yet to be rolled out, their presence in the game’s codes practically means that Niantic is simply biding its time for the perfect rollout of the game’s new features. This, of course, could translate into a major update that would be coming sometime after the ongoing Valentine’s Day event, possibly this February.
Pokemon GO has suffered from the lack of compelling content for awhile now, with millions of players dropping the game due to its repetitive nature. Thus, while the game still commands a pretty formidable user base, the fact that it lacks fresh content is something that Niantic must definitely address immediately. With the Valentine’s Day event likely to spark the interest of fans once more, there is simply no better time for the developer to release a substantial PoGO update in order to keep the interest in the augmented reality mobile game alive. Fortunately, the time for a big update might be sooner than what everyone expects.
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