With trading, in-game events finally coming to ‘Pokémon Go,’ are battles next?

As much as Pokémon Go is a legitimate global phenomenon, fans of the original series of games on Nintendo portable systems have consistently clamored for more to do in the augmented reality game. Although walking around, hatching eggs, and taking over gyms is fun in itself, many of the features of those original games — battling, trading and an ongoing story — are completely missing from Pokémon Go.

But that may be about to change. The first change that Niantic plans to implement is in-game events, which Hanke confirmed in a chat with Recode. These will function a little like story elements, while also allowing for rarer Pokémon to potentially appear in certain places, which should draw Pokémon Go players together.

Right now, unless everyone’s throwing down lures, there’s not much of a reason to bring those players together, but that could all change with trading. A feature that many players have sought for some time, trading would theoretically let people complete their Pokédex more easily by allowing them to swap rare pocket monsters with friends and acquaintances.

There’s also potential for people to get a hold of weaker versions of those rarer Pokémon in order to garner enough candies to evolve them, though that probably won’t be quite as common.

Perhaps the most requested feature is player-versus-player battles. While there is no guarantee that those are coming to the game — it may take a reworking of the current gym battle system to make that happen — we do know that Niantic is considering it and trying to figure out how to make it work.