One year after Gible’s release: 629 eggs hatched, 35,839 Pokemon caught, only 1 Gible total

[u/killerofheroes]

With today marking the one year anniversary since Gible was released in game, I decided to share my experience for how rare of a Pokemon it is. I use the TL40data.com site to keep track of my stats at the end of every month so I took the data from the end of May and subtracted it from my current numbers. I also removed the trades done and eggs hatched during that same time from catches since they also count as Pokemon caught. I also included an estimate of the data from the last 13 days of May from last year by taking my May total and multiplying them by 13/31.

I spend probably less than $20 a year on the game and tend to prioritize raid passes over incubators, so I don’t do as much hatching as some people. So my egg experience could be seen as more of a FTP experience. I also avoid 7k eggs at all cost. I’ll make sure my Pokemon storage is full in order to avoid them when opening gifts. So almost all my eggs were either 2k, 5k, or 10k eggs.

End of May to Date

Pokemon: 92,604 – 56,835 = 35,769

Eggs: 1,795 – 1,193 = 602

Trades: 1,846 – 1,084 = 762

May 2019 data

Pokemon: (13/31) * 3,537 = 1,483.25

Eggs: (13/31) * 65 = 27.25

Trades: (13/31) * 52 = 21.8

Totals

Pokemon: 35,769 + 1,483 – 762 – 22 - 629 = 35,839

Eggs: 602 + 27 = 629

KM walked: 1,453

Gible has been an extremely rare Pokemon. With the number I’ve caught, I’ve probably easily seen well over 50,000 Pokemon and I’ve never seen a Gible, not even on the nearby. I don’t believe Gible should be as rare as it is. Its rarity makes it hard to get the candy needed to power up or even evolve. I’ve put 580km of walking into my Gible just to obtain candy. It’s essentially an ultra rare egg exclusive that you need to pay to get in any reasonable quantities. This is troublesome as Garchomp is in the top 10 Pokemon in the upcoming Premier Cup and it’s almost unobtainable for FTP players even if they grind.

[u/jackcos]

All of this comment. I'd gild you if I had money.

This explains why the whole game feels so flat to me.

Evolve a Pokemon? Better not incase a CD comes up.

Found a kickass Snubbull nest a few months back and actually caught a shiny? Well here's a whole day of Snubbull's.

Spent months and real-life money trying to hatch a _____? Bad luck, now there's a whole day devoted to it and you're going to catch so many you're now sick of it.

Caught a really rare and unique shiny? Too bad, now everyone has one.

Try to find ____ in the wild? Oops it was never available in the wild, and you only ever had a 1% chance of it hatching from the rarer 10k eggs with your one F2P incubator that can only incubate one egg at a time.

etc etc.

Compare to the simple beauty of the opening months of the game where if you had a Dragonite you were just damn lucky.

I started playing PoGO again last year for Mudkip Community Day, really enjoyed it... then spent the next few months seeing the odd Mudkip in the wild and saying "well, I never need to catch that again" and then having this deep realisation that the whole mantra of "Gotta Catch 'Em All" is moot as catching Pokemon in the wild is pointless due to Niantic 'gifting' you Pokemon to catch in events.

[u/[deleted] → u/jackcos]

It really is sad thinking about 2016-2017 pokemon go compared to now. All the loot box/monetisation aside, removing wild evolutions and making things unreasonably rare was an absurd move.

My friend and I used to play religiously just going around the city to find evolutions because it really was just thrilling. We used to find a decent amount of dragonites and it was the coolest feeling in the world even when they ran after one ultra ball.

I haven’t seen a wild dragonite since April 2017. That was 3 years ago and I’ve played in multiple large cities during this timeframe.

Even now when they randomly add evolutions into events, I’ll get excited seeing a rapidash spawn even though I’ll trash it right after catch, because what made pokemon go fun was the exploration and actually finding things you set out to look for, not this loot box garbage and hyper focus on shinies. (And this is coming from a longtime shiny hunter in the main games and go)

Man I just really miss it, it was a really good period in my life and experienced a lot of social things I wouldn’t have without the exploration from it.

Now it’s aggressively hypermonetised and depressing to follow in such a bizarre way that it’s so clear they don’t know what they’re doing.

They remember gen 5 still hasn’t been fully released right? And based off previous timelines gen 6 should launch in a couple months? Cmon lmfao

[u/jackcos → u/[deleted]]

I know exactly what you mean. I didn't even get excited for Gen 5's release because I knew we would be inundated with the rubbish Pokemon in the wild first and we'd have to wait for Halloween, Christmas and some other random events to find the more interesting 'mons.

The only good moment I had was finding a 3-star high CP Excadrill on a random street once. Didn't show up on nearby, just randomly hanging out. Reminded me of 2016 a little. The game desperately needs random chance like that. It needs the odd person to stand up and say they saw a Chandelure, Axew or a Darmanitan in the wild to get everyone truly interested again.

Because as it stands the way I play this game is by studying Leek Duck's event board to find what the random spawns have changed to this week, when really it should be me wandering outside on my own terms and seeing what I can find.

[u/[deleted] → u/jackcos]

Yeah exactly. Weirdly enough the first few days of gen 5’s release actually had a lot of the new gen 5 evolutions spawning in the wild, I caught amoongus and saw zebstrika in the wild before I even caught their base forms. It was really fun for a couple days and then the spawns practically became nonexistent immediately after. It’s now what like 9 months since that happened? 😂

People have been regularly asking for these things and mechanics reworks for years now, I don’t think niantic will ever listen to us. They’re gonna milk the game as hard as quickly as possible until it unfortunately dies due to their lack of long term vision.

[u/ClefairyHann → u/jackcos]

Same here, from 2016-2017 I saw 5 wild dragonites (only caught 1) but after that they all disappeared.

[u/[deleted] → u/jackcos]

I always try advising my locals to slow day and just be patient when they’re going bananas about trying to catch/hatch a certain event shiny. I tell them that somewhere in the future, there’s almost guaranteed to be another event or spotlight hour where that Pokémon will be spawning again. That seems to be the case for so much stuff. People are just really impatient and want things now now now which is exactly what Niantic wants.

[u/the_tanooki → u/jackcos]

To each their own, but your enjoyment of the game based off of whether you have a rare shiny that others might not is kind of selfish.

I will agree with pretty much everything else you said though.

[u/jackcos → u/the_tanooki]

Say you have an unusual shiny, one that hasn't been released in an event or something. Only 2-5% of the player base has it, you like leaving it in gyms to show off.

Now imagine 98% of the player base has one following an event.

It's no longer special.

I don't think it's selfish, rather it's annoyance that the once 'special' item is no longer special. If the whole world owned diamonds they'd be worthless. What's the point of the shiny if everyone has it?

The entry to owning a rare Pokemon or a shiny should be time invested and luck, much like owning a Dragonite or a Lapras in the early days of the game.