Lucky

On January 19th, a Pokémon GO player posted on Pokémon GO subreddit "The Silph Road", showing off his latest discovery — he had traded 100 Pokémon with a friend and they all turned "Lucky".

"Lucky" is a rare, but much-desired type of buff in the game, which has about a 5% chance of happening during a trade, and gives the Pokémon higher IVs and makes it cost half the Stardust to powerup.

Unsurprisingly, this windfall was not what Niantic wanted to see, and they put trading on pause to investigate:

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There are a few things that can increase the rate of getting Lucky Pokémon in a trade, like owning a Pokémon for more than a year, or trading with a "Lucky Friend" — a rare occurrence that guarantees your Pokémon will be lucky, with a 5% chance of happening when you interact with a Best Friend for the first time that day.

There was also a promotion that allowed players to get a 100% chance of a Lucky trade, but the circumstances were limited. It would only happen for Pokémon caught in the first two months of the game's existence, July and August 2016, and the trainer sending the Pokémon must have done 10 or fewer trades. In short, it was aimed at lapsed players who had given up the game after the first frantic months of Pokémon GO's success.

But all of these methods, even combined, do not result in 100 Lucky Pokémon trades, making this occurrence an unintended bug.

Unsurprisingly, players are not pleased at another instance of Niantic taking swift action when the bugs affect their bottom line, but not when the bugs benefit them:

https://twitter.com/DaikiryF/status/1484056746926739456

Does this trading hiatus affect you? How do you hope Niantic will make up for it? Let us know in the comments.

[source reddit.com, via eurogamer.net]