As you may have read in my last article I’m not a big fan of the Sinnoh Stone.  In short it seems like a cop out to have one stone evolve half of Pokémon from previous generations. Having unique research tasks to unlock the evolution of each one would have been something that I enjoyed far more.

Recently it became well known that now, instead of getting one Sinnohy Stone a week, they were not longer guaranteed as a seven day research reward.  Yesterday Niantic finally addressed this with the following tweet.

The Sinnoh Stone is only one notch above everyone evolving everything just using candy.  It was introduced as something to be doled out very slowly and allowed users to evolve one new Pokémon a week for eleven weeks.

Now it seems that this system has gotten even worse. Instead of being slowly doled out you’re rolling the dice every seven days for the chance of getting a Sinnoh Stone.  Niantic has hinted on a new system but until that rolls out this makes things even more frustrating for players.

I don’t care if it takes me a month to earn whatever I need to through research to evolve one of these new evolutions.  The point is we need something to be playing for, to be working toward.  Doing a research project a day was boring but at least it was something.  Now we are left with just dumb luck until Niantic rolls out this new system they are referring to.  If it’s anything like previous things that were hinted at (e.g. the stat rebalance) then we could be in for a very long wait.

This seems like a move done by 2016-2017 Niantic and not like the much more polished roll outs we’ve seen this year.  I hope they put something great in place soon but I’m really curious as to why they didn’t just put it in place from the start.

I’ve got a big problem with the Sinnoh Stone.

Back in August I wrote My Ideas for Pokémon Go Generavion IV Evolutions which outlined what I’d like to see with the introduction of the Sinnoh Pokémon into the game.  What I hoped was that we wouldn’t see an easy way to evolve all the Sinnoh region evolutions right away with candy as that would be way too easy.

What we have so far is the Sinnoh Stone.

The Sinnoh Stone is very simple.  So far the only reports are in getting it from a 7-day research reward.  And it only evolves eleven of the Sinnoh evolutions from previous generations, exactly half of the twenty-two that will ultimately be available for Gen 4.

While this doesn’t allow you to simply evolve any Pokémon immediately (think Crobat when Gen 2 was released) it also doesn’t add anything interesting to the game.  Now all I have to do is continue doing my daily research tasks and once a week I will be able to evolve a new Pokémon from this batch of eleven until, at the end of January, I will have one of each of the evolved forms for my Pokédex.

Not very compelling.

What I had hoped, and outlined in the article previously mentioned, was that there would be specific requirements for each new evolution.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with the introduction of the Sinnoh Stone as the one stone to evolve them all, a departure from the main series games.  What I have a problem with is the stone being the only thing you need.  Much like the “Visit PokéStops 7 Days in a Row” in the Celebei quest this is just a huge, unnecessary time gate to prevent you from just doing it immediately.  If it’s going to take seven days to do it, I would like to be doing something to work toward it for those seven days.

It will now take exactly eleven weeks to evolve this first batch of evolutions.  And that’s fine.  I don’t mind it taking eleven weeks.  Twice as long would be fine with me.  What I mind is waiting.  I’m not doing anything to work toward this, I’m just waiting and at the end I’ll get a stone that morning and evolve.  It will just mean that I waited the appropriate amount of time and for five seconds, once a week, I did the thing I needed to do.

My main hopes for these evolutions was that there would be tasks to do, something to work toward. What I would have preferred, if we assume the Sinnoh Stone stays in the equation, was to just let it drop once a week.  That’s fine.  Eventually I’m going to be sitting on 16 Sinnoh stones and trashing them the same way I do with Metal Coats, Sun Stones, and the lot.  But while I’m waiting for the next one to drop wouldn’t it be cool if I was working toward something else?  The coolest Pokémon to evolve are the ones that take additional tasks (e.g. Milotec, Umbreon, Espeon).

With the exception of Rhyperior there aren’t really any others from this first half that I’m going to evolve more than one of outside of potential shiny variants.  After that’s done I’m hoping they’ll consider something more interesting to do with the remaining eleven evolutions.  Here are some ideas they could introduced.  It would be great to see some assortment of things like this happen to evolve a Pokémon, especially the meta relevant ones.

 1.) Walk 10km as buddy.
 2.) Defend gym for ten hours with Pokémon.
 3.) Win 100 gym battles with Pokémon.
 4.) Obtain gold medal for Pokémon type.
 5.) Evolve during specific weather.
 6.) Trade specific number of pre-evolved Pokémon.
 7.) Make 3 excellent throws.
 8.) Catch specific number of specific type of Pokémon.
 9.) Earn specific number of candy with buddy.
10.) Win specific number of raids.
11.) Reach trainer level 30.
12.) Reach trainer level of 35.
13.) Reach trainer level of 40.
14.) Make 10 ultra friends.
15.) Make 10 best friends.
16.) Hatch specific number of eggs.
17.) Obtain silver gym medal in specific number of gyms.
18.) Obtain gold gym medal in specific number of gyms.
19.) Obtain certain number of gym badges.
20.) Trade certain number of kilometers.
21.) Complete 10 tier 1 or higher raids.
22.) Complete 10 tier 2 or higher raids.
23.) Solo a tier 3 raid.

These are over twenty things off the top of my head that could make the week between waiting for stones to drop much more interesting.  Instead, for this first batch, we will simply wait and then evolve.  Unless you’re new to the game you probably don’t even need any additional candy, you’re just ready and waiting.

I know it’s early but so far I’m disappointed and hoping that the second half of the evolutions are going to be a lot more interesting.