Pokémon Go Over The Past Two Years

July

• Niantic likely took a long deliberation on the dwindling player count since the last summer and had decided to finally add some real game changers! In Raid Battles, players band together in groups of up to twenty to take down a massively tanky enemy. On success, everyone gets a unique encounter with the Pokémon that was fought—random IVs and shininess—and a limited quantity of Premier Balls with which to capture it based on performance. Good luck, you'll need it!

• With Raids came the much-needed advent of Technical Machines, which, instead of teaching a specific move, reroll one move at random; Rare Candy, which can be used to increase your Candy stockpile one-to-one for a species (rather than raising the level of an individual Pokémon); and the new Golden Razz Berry for increasing capture odds like in Let's Go.

• Legendary Raids arrived shortly after the release of raids as a whole. The phenomenon began with Lugia, the master of the bird trio; it was released alongside Articuno—Team Mystic, which the bird represents, had won a participation contest during Pokémon Go Fest of the year. Since then, almost all legendary Pokémon from their respective generations have been released in Raid Battles.

• Exclusive Legendary Raids, officially shortened to EX Raids, freed the original menace Mewtwo upon the masses with this unique invite-only system based on participation in EX eligible (parks and certain sponsored) gyms. Besides Mewtwo, all Deoxys formes have appeared in EX rotation, the only "mythical" Pokémon found outside of Special Research (Meltan aside).

September

• Local Safari Zone events began occurring in various European nations and have since been held all across the world. Somewhat like Go Fest, an area in a city is selected to highlight a new shiny Pokémon or two for release and also feature otherwise rare or exclusive spawns like Unown.

October

• The long-awaited Generation 3 'mons were teased with select Ghost types during Halloween; it would take until December for the remainder to start appearing.

December

• Also in December was the introduction of weather. It is not set by Pokémon abilities but rather by real life, supposedly provided by AccuWeather but hardly as accurate as the name suggests. Weather boosts certain move types's power, the frequency of wild Pokémon of that type appearing, and the Stardust received on their capture.

• With this update also came Battle Parties for easy access to a team of six in Raid Battles as well as a much-requested increase in Pokémon storage capacity! Now, players can store more individual Pokémon than is possible in the actual mainline games.

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January

• At this time were kick-started the now famous Community Days, in which one select 'mon gets featured for a brief period of massive spawns, hugely increased shiny rate, and unique new move. The new Community Day move often greatly increases damage output and therefore viability of the 'mon, like Frenzy Plant Venusaur (yes, they made Frenzy Plant an overpowered move). What Pokémon species to feature in the first of these Community Days but Pikachu? Since then, most starter Pokémon, all pseudo legendary lines, and even random fun choices like Slakoth and Swinub have been featured.

March

• Mew was made available as a unique singleton by way of the new Special Research feature, which has you completing multiple pages of tasks with intermediary rewards. Special Research continues to be the way most mythical Pokémon are obtained; they cannot be traded, which means any one user can only get one of 'em. Ever. Celebi was released in August 2018, and Jirachi is slated for later in 2019. With Special Research also came Field Research—individual tasks obtained from spinning Pokéstops that can be completed for similar rewards and contribution to a 7 day streak of stamps with a unique Pokémon reward at the end. These Research Breakthroughs often provide opportunities to catch legendary Pokémon that have only been available in Raid Battles in the past.

April

• The amazing April Fool's prank in 2018 deserves a shout-out. In it, all the classic menu sprites from the mainline games were used instead of the prerendered 3D images and were mistakenly labeled as "8-bit". Sadly, the prank did not return in 2019.

May

• We saw the debut of Alolan Exeggutor, and it was soon followed by the other Alolan formes appearing in Raid Battles as well as the new 7 kilometer hatch distance Eggs.

June

• A Friends list, trading, and gifts among friends were all introduced in June. Friendship has various levels of strength and is gained through interaction: participating in Raids together, trading, or opening each other's gifts all count towards friend experience. Trading can only be done once per Pokémon; it costs massive quantities of Stardust, especially for new Pokédex entries or shiny or legendary Pokémon, and it wholly rerolls the Pokémon's IVs so one cannot hoard 100% IVs easily. Of course, it cannot be done at distance either; the trade has to be local. With high friendship level comes great rewards like exorbitantly cheaper trade Stardust costs and additional Raid challenge Premier Balls.
• As a side note, the summer Raid Battle season in 2018 consisted of three consecutive months of the Regi trio in raids, leaving people in another slump. These golems took massive amounts of time to KO due to their defenses and were all but useless in battle themselves.

July

• Lucky Pokémon, received randomly from trades, were released in July. The benefit from these is halved Stardust cost for leveling, making it much more feasible to pump them fully up to level 40. Both parties receive their trade Lucky, starting at a base rate of 1/20 and increasing with age; a Pokémon from the summer of 2016 will have a 1/2 chance to cause a Lucky trade!
• Raid Days were announced, starting once again with Articuno. Over a three hour period, all Gyms host an instance of the featured Pokémon for Raid challenges, providing an invaluable ease in coordination. More recently, beginning with Lapras in 2019, these have given all participants five free raid passes through the course of the event, a rare affordability boon from Niantic.

September

• Direct Pokéstop nomination was released. It was initially posited as a beta test to Brazilian and South Korean players at level 40 only, providing an actual motivation to reach that high a level. The feature is sporadically broadened to new nations. Playing Ingress, another game by Niantic, had previously been the only option to get stops added, as the games feature many shared resources.
• Mewtwo surprisingly appeared in regular raids thanks to worldwide participation in a global research challenge; this was the first time an EX species has been made more easily accessible and hopefully sets a precedent for Deoxys and others to see the same.
• Meltan was finally acknowledged in the same month after a few days of complete speculative mystery. The Let's Go games's release in November provided a renewable method of catching them. Unlike all other Mythical 'mons, they can be traded, evolved, and even placed as Gym defenders.

October

• Generation 4 Pokémon saw freedom in October starting with the, well, starters and continuing in incremental waves. It would take until May 2019 to get Gible into existence. Important meta-relevant focuses include Rampardos, the best Rock attacker; Roserade, which received an unnecessarily strong buff in Grass Knot; Giratina (particularly Origin forme), a monster to finally rival the classic Gengar; and Dialga, an honorable mention in its unique Dragon/Steel typing that will be great for future Fairy– and Ice–type Raid bosses.
• Also in October was the release of Adventure Sync, effectively giving pedometer capabilities to the game much like those of the classic Pokéwalker apparatus and making your Buddy Pokémon walking feel much more convenient.

December

• Out of nowhere came the release of Trainer battles, which immediately was advertised in every movie theater and children's television channel among the commercials. Particularly friendless individuals could fight the team leader NPCs and receive much of the same rewards, which include nice goodies like the Sinnoh Stone for generation 4 evolutions. With Trainer battles arrived the opportunity to unlock the heretofore unfathomable concept of a secondary charge move, making PVP somewhat less one-dimensional. In addition, type effectiveness was amplified for a second time since 2017—from 1.4x super effective damage to 1.6x—allowing for some amazing solo Raid feats before the Raid Bosses were swiftly buffed to compensate. Since then, a handful of balance patches and new moves have been added to the game to make a more cohesive PVP experience.
• A very special Community Day was held, featuring all 11 others from the past months! Those who missed any of the others were able to catch up here and will hopefully have the same luxury in future end-of-year celebrations.

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January

• A new Research-oriented event, "Limited Research", was released in January 2019, in which many tasks featuring Feebas were available during a 3 hour period. These continued each month for Clamperl and Lotad before randomly ceasing to be in April. Will they ever return? Perhaps if you're reading this from the future you will know.
• Also in January was when the unofficial PVP scene organized by an online community known as the Silph Road began hosting themed tournaments, a tradition that has gone strong for these seven months since. Of course, lack of official PVP organization from Niantic inspired and enabled these to help make light of what would have been an otherwise obscure feature.

February

• The Go Snapshot feature made its debut, allowing photography of Pokémon already in your storage as opposed to wild encounters only. This also brought Smeargle out of purgatory, appearing exclusively to photobomb one of these Snapshots daily.
• This update came with the intriguing and oft-requested feature to change your team with a Team Medallion—at a price—and it somehow didn't result in a mass exodus from team Instinct. Looks like we still have some pride despite all the jeering. Zapdos is the best bird!
• New moves were released with PVP in mind, featuring stat changes similar to those in the main games: Power-Up Punch, Acid Spray, and the like. Power-Up Punch in particular made certain threats like Medicham ascend to greatness and end up banned from most Silph Road tournaments.

March

• Legendary Lunch Hour was introduced as an "experiment". Largely a success, this featured hour-long raid events similar to the Raid Days but enhanced all tiers of raid instead of just featuring one Pokémon. It has since been adjusted to a less obtrusive dinner timeslot.

May

• The lake trio of Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf were unveiled to be the first ever region-specific Raid bosses... doesn't quite seem appropriate for a species that was a roaming legendary in the main games, does it? They were also released as extraordinarily rare wild spawns like Unown—the first legendary Pokémon to be encountered in the wild! Of course, even in the wild, they are still exclusive to Asia, Europe, and the Americas, respectively.
• The Detective Pikachu movie received a tie-in with Go featuring yet another new cosmetic hat for Pikachu, establishing a nifty precedent for theatrical releases. This has led the way for another crossover event, with Armored Mewtwo from the Mewtwo Strikes Back remake appearing in raid battles in July! One can only pray it will be transferable to Home and maybe even generation 8.
• Type– and Pokémon–specific Lure Modules were added for special location-specific evolutions like Probopass. One user can place it in a Pokéstop, and it will allow any others nearby to enjoy the effects.
• The oddly intriguing Pokémon Direct revealing Pokémon Sleep was met with a spontaneous swarm of Snorlax lounging lazily across the world. These were hard-coded to break out of two balls and finally be "pacified" and captured on the third attempt. To this day, nobody really knows why, and it could be easily bypassed by using the Pokémon Go Plus's automatic catch feature. The inner machinations of Niantic remain an enigma.
• This Pokémon Direct also revealed that Pokémon Home would be compatible with Go, so you can hypothetically store your surplus of Latias somewhere else where they won't hog up a dozen of your valuable 2000 Pokémon box slots.

June

• Go Fest received an upgrade with three establishments across three different continents now hosting different instances of the event staggered throughout the summer. Attendees got an early crack at Jirachi, which was wishfully granted an intensely overpowered Doom Desire. Finally, generation 5 was subtly teased in the official promotional poster for the Go Fest.

July

• One of the biggest single quality of life updates was released. The first improvement one may notice is the Appraisal system, which is much like that of the mainline games now, showing progress bars for IVs and an overall star ranking out of 3 stars. PVP mechanics for charging moves was also reworked; no longer do you have to furiously vibrate your phone like a makeshift personal massager; rather, you fluidly draw gestures on the screen based on the type of the move. For example, Electric-type moves charge with a couple zig-zag swipes following a thundercloud's lightning drops.
• Team Rocket—er, Go Rocket?—The Go-Rocket Quad?—started striking back in Go with a wholly new feature found at discolored, spastic Pokéstops. While in range of one, you can fight the Grunt defending the stop in a PvP battle against their rather powerful, shadowy Pokémon. Indeed, Shadow Pokémon return after almost 14 years of absence from any Pokémon game, and you can once again steal them! Sadly, the purification process is a pretty one-and-done quickie that's easily spammed for progress towards a purification achievement, and the Shadow Pokémon themselves when snagged by yourself are pathetically weak; whatever chemicals Go Rocket were using to pump them up clearly wear off quickly.

September

• The first traces of Unova trickled out into existence upon the Ultra Event signaled by Jirachi's Special Research release, starting with Klink, Patrat, and Lillipup. What an intriguing assortment to kick off the generation with!

October

• Spiritomb returned in a separate Special Research, presenting a new window of opportunity to add it to one's Pokédex. People who already had one from last year were afforded a shot at another copy of this previously singular 'mon.
• Darkrai was released to raids following a second run of Altered Giratina; this marked the first release of a mythical Pokémon into regular raids directly without having first been exclusive to EX raids!
• Cobalion found itself as the first generation 5 legendary to come to raids after Darkrai, with the rest of that trio soon following suit.

November

• Team Rocket Grunt battles were revamped following a series of rather lore-rich ARG posts on the official blog. Rocket Administrators can now be encountered after piecing together recycled components from defeated Grunts; this creates an actual in-game radar that scans nearby Pokéstops for the persons of interest. Following a monthly recurring Special Research quest, the opportunity to fight Giovanni himself arises, and the player can even capture his one-of-a-kind shadow Legendary Pokémon!
• Galarian Weezing was thrust into raids following Community Day in honor of the release of Sword &Shield; indeed, this was the first generation of mainline games to be released during the existence of raids in Go, so what better event to hold! It was a nice callback to how a similarly elongated 'mon, Alolan Exeggutor, had kicked off the release of Alolan formes.

December

• A new Evolution Event was announced, which not only saw vastly increased spawns of evolved Pokémon in the wild but also allowed these to appear shiny from Raids!
• Just like 2018, a yearly review Community Day was announced, featuring increased spawns of all the previous 11 months's community day finds and a limited window of extra shiny chance increases and exclusive moves upon evolution. Fortunately, classic 2018 community day Pokémon would also be granted the same opportunity to receive their moves again; how generous.
• Niantic sent forth another spontaneous rebalancing update, this time featuring the return of many past legacy moves like Mud Shot Poliwrath, Cross Chop Machamp, and Body Slam Snorlax, bringing a lot of these Pokémon back into the limelight. Also, status debuffs in PVP would now appropriately be removed upon switching, as with the main games, a true game changer.

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