With the recent release of Paldea Pokémon in Pokémon Go, Niantic added a bunch of new tasks and research missions for players to take part in, including one type that most players love to loathe.
These are the notorious time-gated tasks that force players to play the game in a specific way over multiple days to finally get them out of their sights. The one added in the Paldea Adventure Special Research is a little more tame than some of the others we have seen, asking players to earn one heart with their buddy over the course of seven different days, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying.
I still remember the soul-crushing Mew 151 tasks, which had players having to catch a Pokémon 30 days in a row to finish one of its tasks. And if you can’t log in a day or forget? It’s right back to the start. There have been multiple instances of this and it feels like a lot of players believe enough is enough.
The time gatekeeping research tasks mainly exist to stop players from storming through rewards in a matter of days but also could have unintended effects on players. For example, currently, the Paldea Adventure tasks revolve around the Pokémon Fuecoco, Sprigatito, and Quaxly that are mainly spawning until Sept. 10. One of the tasks has you evolve one of these three Pokémon into their second form.
Now after seven days, these Pokémon will stop spawning. So what happens if one of the tasks you haven’t seen yet asks you to evolve these Pokémon again, but the Pokémon have stopped spawning in the mass amounts they currently are? Well, that will slow down the task further and force you to plan for unknown factors.
It just makes playing the game a mess and takes away from the enjoyment of it all. Enough is enough.
