Wednesday, October 16, 2024

(Half-Hearted) Attempts at New Unite Event Formats?

Those who have played Pokémon Unite in the past few days will have noticed a couple of new events with interestingly innovative mechanisms and neat rewards to go along with them. However, those mechanisms appear to be very much "ornery" and thus can also be described as "half-hearted" as far as event formats go, even as an attempt to introduce some novelties. Thus, I figured it's worth it to write about them to flesh out what makes them tick and how they give rise to the perceptions above.

One of the new events is called the "Ice Pops Challenge", and it involves earning new items called "ice pops" (go figure) from the event missions and then consuming them for the actual item rewards, the ultimate reward of which is a new fashion set. It seems a little inspired by Energy Exchange and has a similar "bulk open" mechanism. The other event is called the "Treasure Chest Challenge", and it involves earning "treasure chests" (also go figure) from playing matches and waiting for them to be able to be opened, which will take several hours; once opened, they will contain a few small rewards, but the most valuable in this case are the Event Tickets, for which collecting 300 of them allows them to be exchanged for a spectacular Holowear. Both of these also involve Aeos Gems: they are used in the latter to open the chests right away and the former to complete missions rewarding the event item.

Unfortunately, that's the "ornery" part. Because of practically requiring Aeos Gems to complete the events (or at least to accelerate their completion), these events are essentially "paid" events with a "trial" for those who don't pay - the payment part certainly being the purchase of Aeos Gems, which are obviously only available through payment. It makes them seem "half-hearted" for players that still have not committed any effort in the game that is facilitated through payment (for Aeos Gems and then their usage), which practically includes these new events and their ultimate rewards. While they may be happy to play through them, there may also be a sense of sadness in not being able to make the most of them.

When considered as an "attempt" at new formats, these events do seem to fulfill that purpose in any case - it's just that their present practical payment requirement makes them terribly "ornery". Time might tell if they might have the "heart" to be developed into events that everyone can enjoy, but at the moment they only seem to have "half" of that.

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