If you’ve been playing Pokémon Go as much as us, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen a rare Pokémon slip through your grasp a few times, never to be seen again. Developer Niantic is looking to make this a rare occurrence, as its new “capture bonus” feature will reward you for focusing on catching specific types of monsters.
“Capture bonus” will give trainers an increased ability to catch different types of Pokémon based on the medals that trainer has acquired. Having a first-tier “Punk Girl” medal — gained once you’ve caught 10 Poison-type Pokémon — will give you a +1 bonus when catching other Poison creatures. A third-tier “Kindler” medal for catching 200 Fire-type Pokémon, meanwhile, will give you a bonus of +3.
For Pokémon with more than one “type,” the bonus will be based on the average of all of the relevant bonuses the trainer has acquired.
Though Niantic emphasizes that the new bonuses will let trainers have a better chance of catching rare Pokémon, it sounds like the feature will also be useful for collecting candy to level up your existing roster. Wasting your stock of Pokéballs on a Pidgey that decides to run away shouldn’t be a problem if you’ve already caught 450 of them.
Pokémon Go continues to morph into a very different game than the one we saw when it launched back in July. Niantic CEO John Hanke says that the much-requested 1-vs-1 battles feature is “likely” to arrive in the future, as is trading between friends. Given that a few Pokémon are limited to specific regions of the world, actually catching every Pokémon in the game would require a dedicated trainer to actually plan a trip around the world. At what point do you stop controlling the Pokémon and the Pokémon start controlling you?
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