Will the GO Battle League Schedule Ever Be Good?
Magic 8-Ball: "All signs point to 'no'."
The good news for fans of Pokémon GO’s GO Battle League is that, against the odds, they’ve announced the move updates/additions/changes and schedule for the upcoming season ahead of time. The bad news for GBL fans is, well, also that they’ve announced the schedule for the upcoming season ahead of time. Because it’s bad. I suppose there’s a small consolation in that we have extra time to process just horrendous the GO Battle docket will be over the next three months or so. That’s about it, though.
Statistically speaking, you are even less likely to appreciate this post than my average piece of work, as you probably don’t even mess with GBL, assuming you even play PoGO to begin with. This post is primarily for me. Sorry, dear Reader—you’re along for the ride on my trip to Impotent Rage City. Just let me have this, OK?
But what’s so bad about the GO Battle League schedule, you ask? I’ll try not to weigh you down with too much detail, but here’s why I’m less than enthused about the battles to come in the season of Delightful Days:
No new formats
There’s absolutely nothing we haven’t seen before in GO Battle League: Delightful Days. Sunshine Cup. Fossil Cup. Summer Cup. Element Cup. Hisui Cup. At least Sunshine Cup and Summer Cup make sense thematically. The rest are retreads with no apparent meaningful connection to anything. Maybe some weekly event yet to be announced will illuminate why these Cups were chosen to be held when they are, but in the interim, we’re left to chalk these inclusions up to laziness or a lack of inspiration.
Also, not for nothing, some of these formats weren’t that good the first time, possessing one or more limiting elements. Fossil Cup is a limited meta in which Rock-type Pokémon—you know, the actual fossils in this universe—are, by their nature, at a disadvantage against both Steel- and Water-type Pokémon unless their name is Cradily, and even then, that doesn’t eliminate the weakness to Steel. Hisui Cup is, for a limited meta, very limited, and one of the best contenders is a regional Pokémon which needs to be fully powered up with Candies XL to be optimal. Even the “good” Cups seem to have Normal-type Pokémon shoehorned in to try to round the formats out, leaving these Pokémon structurally unchallenged except for qualifying opposing Pokémon which happen to do super-effective damage with a Fighting-type move.
They say familiarity breeds contempt. Having seen these same formats for several iterations now, my contempt is rising fast.
In-season repeats
It’s already questionable when the GBL schedule runs certain Cups for two weeks, especially when they seem to be weaker offerings. This season, Pokémon GO is taking the bold initiative to—break them up and hold the same cups on different weeks? I don’t get why this is a thing. If you’re going to trot out, say, Fossil Cup, I submit that you should just do it during back-to-back rotations and get it over with. Rip the proverbial bandage off.
MISSING—Have you seen these formats?
Where is Great League Remix? Master League Premier Cup? Does Ultra League simply never get a Remix or Premier version anymore as a matter of principle? Why do these formats get featured during certain campaigns and go missing for others? My most fun this season was easily during GL Remix when some of the more toxic options in the Pokédex were banned. The inconsistency from season to season is truly maddening.
Why is Catch Cup?
Of all the hills to die on, PoGO’s devotion to Catch Cup is the most baffling to me. It’s bad enough that we’re getting this Cup, a format for which the player is specifically required to expend resources to participate in, at all. That it’s the only option alongside pay-to-win Master League is unconscionable. Outside observers continue to openly wonder whether the people in charge of this game actively disdain its user base. Catch Cup’s continued existence only fuels speculation that this is indeed the case.
An update on Scopely’s March announcement of its acquisition of Pokémon GO from Niantic confirms that the deal was closed on May 29, marking Delightful Days officially as the last season we can blame John Hanke & Co. for sucking. After this, it’s all on Scopely. In the course of writing this post, the new season announcement dropped for Delightful Days, and for fans of this news tidbit, I am happy to report that, once again, the link to the GO Battle League webpage is right below the blurb for Themed Stickers. For that matter, its billing comes after that of Pokémon GO Fest, the debuts of Crowned Sword Zacian and Crowned Sword Zamazenta, the debuts of Tatsugiri and Yamper, the debuts of Gigantamax Cinderace, Gigantamax Inteleon, and Dynamax Hatenna, Community Days, the Eggs-pedition Access ticket, GO Pass, the new RSVP Planner feature, and Themed Stickers. I hesitate to say that Niantic’s/Scopely’s promotion of GBL is buried per se, but it’s certainly not the most prominent.
Regarding the move updates/additions, there’s actually a fair bit to like about the upcoming campaign. Bug-type and Steel-type moves were overdue for an upgrade, as were the moves Acid, Ember, and Wrap. The lower odds of a debuff for Crunch also seems prudent with the prominence of Drapion in the meta. Perhaps the only change that runs the risk of being overpowered is the newly enhanced Parabolic Charge, which overnight has turned the likes of Bellibolt, a monotype Electric Pokémon with no Charged Attack coverage, to a top player and, in fact, the #1 rank for Ultra League on PvPoke. I don’t care if it is totes adorbs—that seems a bit high for the EleFrog Pokémon.
This is to say that re GO Battle League, Delightful Days doesn’t seem like a total loss. Having a lackluster schedule to accompany these shakeups, however, really limits the enthusiasm they stand to generate. Influencers within the PoGO community have long been advocating for an alternative to the blind-three format characteristic of GBL play, favoring something more in line with the show-six, pick-three format of tournaments. Not only won’t we be getting an overhaul in this respect, though, and not merely to beat a fainted Ponyta, but there are zero new formats this time around. And [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Catch Cup is still a thing. I can see the views plummeting on Twitch for the Pokémon GO category that week already.
If GO Battle League were a runaway success, it would be fair for the PoGO team to rest on its laurels, even if ill-advised. But after years of refusal to invest in growing this mode of play and treating it as second fiddle to graphical renderings of palm trees, sharks, and toucans, we’re clearly not at that point—not even close. Throw in the idea that the game probably still won’t be running at anywhere near ideal performance, and unless you’re a GBL diehard, it’s hard to be excited for the future both in the short term and long term.
Will the GO Battle League schedule ever be good? I’m not terribly optimistic on this front. Under Niantic, the prospects of improvement were functionally null, so the sale to Scopely is a slight ray of hope amid the larger concerns for consumers about ethics and monetization, and because Scopely is inheriting an absolute mess of a product, they do deserve a bit of a grace period. If things don’t substantially improve after Delightful Days, meanwhile, the ticking of the clock will get awfully loud awfully fast for Pokémon GO’s new management.
The lack of new Cups is wild. You've literally spitballed ideas in this very column, without taking weeks to figure them out haha. Absolutely baffling
Oh, wow. I actually have a Bellibolt built for UL - I ran it in a weird double electric team. It was a lot of fun as a silly spice pick, sort’ve sad to see it at the top now.
I’ve probably said this before: Catch Cup is in theory a fun idea to help out new players. The reality is that experienced players rebuild meta Pokemon to get whatever edge possible. Didn’t they kill Catch Cup before? To much fanfare?
I thought the splitting of the formats was weird as well. Perhaps they want to give people a chance to climb in any of the formats? ie if Sunshine Cup is your meta, it’s fairly useless having it first up & then not again. I’m speculating though!
Scopely officially taken over now, huh? Sad. If I play at all it will be the Fossil Cup & Element Little Cup, just for nostalgia.
Speaking of S6P3, I took part in a 16 person LC tournament yesterday (Blissey, Chansey, Wobbuffet, Shuckle & Bronzor were banned). It was so much fun! I hope for your sake they consider introducing it in regular GBL.