Raid Passes are still a major money maker for Niantic, regardless if you're personally purchasing them or not. There's people on my local group who caught upwards of 50 Moltres with Sky Attack, during its special Raid Day. Giving Legendaries a powerful, meta-defining move will attract a lot of players, and a lot of purchases, whether you agree with it or not.
Since we're talking about Legendaries, the mechanic behind the release of Community Day moves is pretty irrelevant, since a Legendary will never be the feature of a Community Day.
And since Deoxys is an EX Raid exclusive and you can't buy an EX Raid Pass, there's no real comparison with the dynamics of typical Legendary Raids. But sure.
I think you missed my point. People won’t spend money on a bad Pokémon or a Pokémon that doesn’t have the best moves released. Since Moltres doesn’t have a signature Attack, we can safely assume Sky Attack is the best we will get. Lugia also has Sky Attack released as a special move, but people can still assume that it may eventually get Aeroblast. They can view it as a Lick Gengar vs a Shadow Claw Gengar, a second chance at an upgraded Lugia.
Your point of Moltres was with regards to Sky Attack, so of course with the best move it could have (and no future Moltres Signature move since it doesn’t have a signature move in the games), that is why they bought them.
My personal savings was off of subpar moves on good Pokémon with signature moves we can predict they will get, and only spending for when their signature moves, or special day moves are released. I.e. not spending on Ho-Oh and Heatran since they don’t have their signature moves, but spending on special move Sky Attack Moltres even if if it’s typing is the same or worse when compared to Ho-Oh and Heatran.
I will spend when Ho-oh and Heatran re-release with their moves, so it’s not about the Pokémon, it’s about timing it with their moves.
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I think it is comparable to a community day, because in the case of Moltres is was a 3 hour event, with an exclusive move, just like community day. They even gave extra free raid passes for people who didn’t want to spend $. They also increased the catch rates, and even released their shiny forms for their first time (just like Community Day). The only difference was not needing 125 candies to evolve them in a short window, and needing raid passes instead; so some could easily argue special raid days like with Moltres and Gengar are pretty similar to to Community Days in the time limit, special move, increased catch rates, and new Shiny release...
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Ex-raids are the reason why some people buy raid passes even when they don’t like the current rotation of raidable Pokémon. So I would argue it is comparable if you can get a pass, afterall, when people do Tier 1-2 Raids just for a shot at an Ex-Raid invite, that says a lot.
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Maybe Blitz made my point clearer to you, but my focus was not on ever spending for passes, it was based on not spending until it is *worth it*.
If I have a budget, I would rather spend a few $ on a Pokémon when it comes out with its exclusive move, even if I spend $ Now to rack up species candies and rare candies, if I won’t end up using the species candies and rare candies for at least a year (as we saw with Mewtwo’s lack of Psystrike, Gen 2-3 legends, etc.) So when I get rare candies from my daily free Raids, i May as well spend it on what is already good like MMash Metagross, since it is unlikely it will need a new move, and MM Metagross is so meta defining that even if it gets a new fast and/or charge move, it won’t be bad enough to stop using MMash variants.
tldr: Spending $ Now for Raids to accumulate species candies on something that may be years away from its signature move is a waste, especially if new gems supercede what that signature move could offer. I.e. What if Sacred Fire Ho-oh’s Power is weaker than Blast Burn Blaziken? You spend $ on a Pokémon that is never better than something else.