Pokemon GO Combat Power Changes and Special Thanksgiving EXP Event Announced

Niantic has announced CP adjustments for creatures in the smartphone app, according to Pokemon Go's official website. But the team is vague about which ones will see alterations (including decreases), only highlighting the increases for the aforementioned Pokemon.

"These changes will allow a more balanced and competitive battling and training experience in Gyms," says the Pokemon Go blog post. "We will continue to adjust the CP going forward to improve the game balance when necessary."

After Pokémon GO’s Halloween special event dramatically boosted interest in the game for a spell, rocketing it back up to the top of the Highest Grossing charts, I said that it was a no-brainer that Niantic would do more events like it. And here we are, just a few weeks later, and yep, you guessed it, Niantic is doing a Thanksgiving event, albeit a more low-key endeavor than what we saw from Halloween.

Pokemon Go players also will see bonuses this month as a thank you from Niantic. From November 23 to 30, the mobile game will offer double experience and Stardust.

The special event comes just a few weeks after Pokemon Go's Halloween update. That seasonal session saw the capture of 1.3 billion ghost Pokemon.

Here’s the entirety of the announcement from Niantic:

“It has been an incredible experience since we launched Pokémon GO a few short months ago in July. We are passionate about creating experiences that encourage exploration and promote exercise. We are humbled that hundreds of millions of you around the world have joined us on this journey. So we would like to say thank you – and what better way to say thank you than to celebrate our community.

So, starting November 23rd at 00:00 UTC and going through November 30th 00:00 UTC, we will double the amount of XP and Stardust you receive when completing in-game actions.”

So, as you can see, it’s not quite as involved as the Halloween event, which actually altered spawns to skew toward more “spooky” Pokémon, and offered double candy throughout the game. But even though this Thanksgiving event is simplistic, avid players should find it pretty rewarding.

While there aren’t any candy bonuses at all this time around, there are double bonuses for two currency categories that we didn’t see before, XP and Stardust. It’s just a flat double increase, meaning the extent of this entire event is more or less just a double XP weekend (err, week), but it should encourage return play all the same given that every action is literally twice as valuable as it was before. I know that some avid players manage to get 50,000 to 60,000 XP from a single “mass evolve” session where they pop a lucky egg and evolve everything they have from Pidgeys to Dragonites, but now that could easily be over 100,000 XP in one go under this new system. Similarly, if you’re hurting for Stardust for upgrades (I feel like most players have a ton on hand, but still) catching Pokémon and hatching eggs during this time will have you drowning in dust soon enough.

I would argue that candy is still definitely the more important currency in Pokémon GO as it’s what allows you to upgrade and evolve while “ranking up” in GO using XP is still not terribly important after a certain point, but this should be an interesting event all the same. I’m curious to see if revenue will spike again for this event, given that it’s sort of the polar opposite of what we saw for Halloween, including the bonuses it gives out and the amount of effort put into it. But hey, it doesn’t hurt to try.