Pokemon Go players claim catches are harder now and they’re furious

Pokemon Go players are seeing an increase in their Pokemon catch difficulty, with many now furious at the potential change.

There are plenty of elements in Pokemon Go that have to be accounted for when balancing the game for everyone. Each Pokeball needs to have a certain impact on the Pokemon, each type of throw needs to increase your chances of catching, and each Pokemon needs to be a different challenge. After all, a Weedle can’t be as tough to catch as a legendary ‘Mon.

However, balancing that can be a little tricky, as players are likely to get pretty frustrated if they find they’re using countless Pokeballs on a smaller Pokemon, only to fail. This seems to be the case for Pokemon Go at the moment, with players claiming Niantic has made the catches harder.

Pokemon Go players claim Niantic increased catch difficulty

Niantic

Sharing their thoughts on the Pokemon Go Reddit, one user explained that “the amount of balls it takes to catch Pokemon lately is utterly insane.”

They went on to share: “It’s taken 6-9 balls to catch 0 star Pokémon even with using berries, and I just had one Pokémon take 12 damn balls and still fled. This is absolutely absurd. TWELVE balls, and still flees. Unbelievably ridiculous to catch the first Pokémon of the day and still didn’t get it anyway.”

It’s clear the frustrations are viable, with the player losing valuable balls and berries, and still not getting the Pokemon they wanted.

“There is no way it should be that difficult to catch Pokemon with berries and great/excellent throws,” the player stated.

The amount of balls it takes to catch Pokémon lately utterly insane.
byu/CakedayisJune9th inpokemongo

Shortly after posting, the post quickly turned into a discussion regarding this potential change, with some players choosing to believe Niantic altered the difficulty, and others feeling delighted that they’re not the only ones currently struggling.

One user shared: “Honestly thought I was the only one. Doesn’t matter which Pokemon it is. I only ever throw curves. Never straight. I at least hit a Nice throw about 70% of the time. But still have issues catching weak Pokemon. I swear about a month ago I didn’t struggle as much,” highlighting that these issues appear to be relatively recent, and predominantly on weak Pokemon.

“It’s awful” explained one commenter, “especially with daily incense spawns. A Wurmple jumping out of ultra balls makes me want to just stop playing.”

Others explained the changes they’ve seen recently, stating that “In the past month or so I’ve noticed that nearly half of what I try to catch flees and 2nd evolution flee almost every time. It’s very frustrating and I’ve never had this many Pokémon running from me.”

It seems that while the Pokemon breaking out of the Pokeballs is frustrating, the real annoyance comes when the ‘Mon escapes, which will naturally irritate the player who’s wasted multiple Pokeballs on a weaker Pokemon, only to have nothing to show for it.

Niantic is yet to address the increased challenges, but there’s currently no evidence that the company has increased the catch difficulty for players. Nevertheless, the community is certain there have been some changes to their catching experience. We’ll update this if Niantic responds to the frustrations.