I understand the effort to make these in person so players can meet up and play together. But having an elite day is just disastrous. People were stressed driving around to make it to other elite raids in time. It was so dangerous with people driving while on their phones or parking in non-designated parking areas. Pokemon Go should not be a game played while driving.

If they want people to meet up, sure keep the elite raid gym format, with the exception of one change: let the raid boss respawn every 5/10 minutes at the same gym. People will still meet up at the gym during the 45 minutes period, but then people don’t need to rush in their cars to get to the next gym. You can actually get some meaningful interactions with people this way instead of run and gun without saying hi

Very bias opinion... sorry Brandon but if the only good thing is "this helps to bring people together" then it completely failed. Making it a "everyone get into a car and drive around" that is not bringing people together... If helping 1 or 2 people to find the "right gym to start and meet people" is the best argument, then again, improve the Campfire meetup system or do something to notify the people in a better way where are people meeting for regular Raid Days, do not make it a driving experience. I have nothing against Brandon, but we need to think about the smaller communities too, this is just a BAD event and goes against the "group experience" 100%... For anyone that does not play in a major city this was just a bad experience... and for what I am seeing, it was not that much better in big cities.

For context, in Melbourne (2nd biggest city in Australia), we only had about 20 eggs across the whole city at 9am, all in the suburbs (20+ min drive apart). Most people cancelled plans because there was no point doing just one raid per hour, especially those coming from out of town. There was also talk about a make-up event from different independent sources. At 10:30am, all the eggs suddenly spawned, and it was confirmed there'd be no make-up event. So we had to organise 100+ people to get to the meeting point in

This was the worst event ever. I agree with the people complaining about the people driving

Elite Raids should not exist!

Bro raid day was horrible for me. last year when we could actually join remote raids it was awesome but this year with only in person it absolutely sucked especially with the eggs spawn being so random and so far apart Ngl they should just completely redo the event They should just let us use hacks at this point not that I support it or do it though Also love the vids

The raid locations were way too far apart. What made Kyogre and Groudon great was that everyone could walk together from one location to the next for long periods of time without needing to rush.

Not all of us can play pogo full time. Elite is just that. For an elite group. Sad but true

There were so many issues…. One I don’t have many raid passes, and I was hoping for a raid day with free passes. Also even so it was so hard to find the elite raids. I end up having to drive around, and if I start at the wrong spot, there is nobody there…. Then if there’s no one you drive but everyone already left and raided… it’s poorly designed, and there are better ways to do it.

I’m just sick of the strict timed events that happen for 4 hours on a weekend. I am stuck working every weekend during prime event hours/community days.

Put Rayquaza in regular 5 star raids for 10 days… I will be happy. I got the energy, meteorites… lemme farm candy and candy xl now please

Terrible idea to have it as elite raids

I was honestly so against getting campfire but has been a massive game changer for getting raids done easier. I've also found my community has a way more massive community than I thought.

In San Francisco we were able to play 24 raids. We had to play in 2 different parks and ended up walking 17 km at the end of the day. All this was possible thanks to our community ambassadors that woke up at 6:00 AM trying to figure out a route to maximize our chances. I agree, more time to organize is needed. In our community, we have a lot of people that travel from other cities to play big events, and not knowing where we're going to play makes it hard for them to plan the trip to San Francisco.

Niantic " we want you all to go out and play in person " This is a driving sport to hunt all the raids down . I'm in Texas with alot of gyms... Only 4 were Elite raids. Just lots of cars following the same route 🤦

Damn bro. You have the platform and clout to speak for the community louder than this.

I understand you technically work for niantic plus your the #1 player so the goal is to put out a fire right but you have a role to play for the community. A raid day with regular eggs would be amazing like during kyogre and Groudon. You mentioned safety right? Elite raids are so far out right? People drive place to place right? You can still use campfire for regular raids.

There is something so trippy about hearing him talk in a flat tone 😂

Elite raids are a joke, no benefit to do it instead of a regular raid day. Just stresses people out and excludes tons of players. Even with the special spawns after it was pointless because everyone just left for the next one.

The elite raid format yesterday made me care so much less about this game.

I am in a remote community. We have a nice community but still small. I get kicked from one raid and there were only four in our area. So I got 3/4th of what everyone got in my community.

They f up real bad

It was a massive fail end of story. I would’ve purchased between 15 to 20 remote raid passes but instead I didn’t do one.

I was really excited for raid day until I realized you had to do it in person, I can’t go do them in person and I have no friends so I was hoping to remote raid a Mega Rayquaza 🙁

Has Niantic ever not mess up?!

I can understand Niantic's perspective on trying to have the community come together but in rural areas it will be redundant. You need to cater to everyone, not just one side of the market.

Ive been playing since day 1. I honestly don't even bother with elite raids.

I run a campfire group for Aurora IL and I know that our experience is different then what most players have but this meet up was our most successful meet up we have ever had. We broke our records for both RSVP’s and check-in’s but it took a fair amount of work. Myself and our wonderful mod team made promotional posts to various platforms through Facebook groups and discords before hand. We (the mod team) planned ahead to be up at 6am and make a raid plan for each time slot. We created maps with raid orders and coordinates and pushed those out to all the platforms. When the time came we had crowds. And it was beautiful. We got compliments from so many people thanking us and how much these meet ups reminded them of the glory days of raiding and how much they loved it. When there is challenges, if you as a group organizer are able to overcome them that makes you as a group more vital. There is no perfect solution and the overall meet up was very stressful for us, but the end result is something we are proud of and happy with.

Incentivize people coming together, but do not penalize if its not plausible.

The answer is yes they always mess up the raid days. It’s honestly insane they just need to stop doing them shadow raids are local and so are com day raids that’s enough

This was an event I was really looking forward to, as I moved away from my PoGo community right before this guy came out and this was going to be my first. Planning was difficult. I admit, I still don't understand Campfire that well. I didn't see anything where people were posting about where they were going and what directions they were going. We have a solid crew, but knew the 4 of us wouldnt be able to take one alone in that first hour, and it would still be impossible when our 5th person met up with us at the next hatch. I was so excited at first when we pulled into the park, seeing the swarm of people standing in the middle of an open field brought back amazing memories from the 2016 days playing. But that quickly went away. As we were walking up as it was hatching, one person in our group managed to get into a lobby right as it was going in. That left the 3 of us and 2 other stragglers alone. After, the one who got in said his group only had 8 people in it. I remember the good ole days raid train days where if we had a lobby that had room and there was still time on the hatch, we would jump out if we saw stragglers to give everyone a chance if there was enough time on the raid, then boom, you have solid party to hit the others in the area. I think the panic of not being able to plan well made people not care or even think of helping others. 3 in my group and the other 2 missed that raid, and the second the herd went to. But we decided to just run to the 3rd hatching in the same park while the herd finished the second one. Just kinda stinks that 5 people missed out on 2 chances due to the chaos, and that small party missed out on extra energy with a faster take down. Everyone was in such a rush they didn't talk to anyone else other than their immediate group. It became pure herd mentality just following the biggest group of people and just hoping you could keep up with them, especially after leaving this particular park which was the only one to have several hatches at the 12:00 hour. Our 1:00 hour was just a pure disaster with how spread out they all were. We did one and gave up. Tried again at the 5:00 hour and no one showed up to the one we were at, still saw nothing on Campfire of people communicating. Just sad. I think I was more upset at how I got that wave of nostalgia that got crushed into the dirt.

Niantic doesnt let us remote raid cause he wants us to go outside and get fresh air which i respect the problem is what he doesnt understand is that u have to live in a major city in order to do these cause it takes 10 players or more to beat so if u dont live in a major city u aint gonna have enough players to take any down and if u live in a spot like me u wont even get 1 other player to help u take it down so its seriously unfair and a terrible decision to not be able to invite friends or use pokie genie

Here in Queensland Australia the nearest one to Me was a 40 minute drive and then there was no guarantee that anyone would be there so yet again we get screwed 🎉

I'm not angry or disappointed. How can I be? There aren't any elite raid gyms near me so I was unable to take part in it so I'm neither angry nor disappointed. Closest elite raid gym is 300 miles away.

For me I’d do this- keep the regular raids being one legendary and one mega in rotation, but have one day a week for an elite raid that consist of a random legendary that’s not in rotation. No exclusive elite Pokémon just a random optional Mon people can go for. Not having something exclusively in an elite raid especially something as significant as a rayquaza. Event as big as that should definitely have been in regular raids

Thank you for these videos with community tips. You’ve really inspired me to attempt to grow and untie the community in my town

I was also looking at campfire to see how the earlier time zone works (I am living in the US Central time zone). It was a fun event that I am glad to meet few new players around my town. Would be happy if Niantic does the following 1. We get to a point that we have more than 20 players and would need to separate the group into two. I am in the second group and would love that the elite raid would open up the private group feature. Then, we do not have to wait the first group's timer goes down in the lobby (provided the first group trainers do not ready up). 2. It would be helpful if the elite raids are within walking distance, not driving distance or within the same park. We need to drive from one raid to another and did 4 in an hour (total of 8 for me between 5-6:46pm) and with road construction, it makes it harder. 3. As Brandon was saying about planning, I agree with him that the elite raid eggs can show up at 10pm the night before rather than 6am in the morning. It gives more time to plan the routes.

In my opinion the change that needed to be made was to allow them to be remote raided but still only in elite gyms because there’s still limited spawns so that in person people still know where to meetup as a group but also not excluding rural areas

It was a great day for me! Met lots of new trainers from our West Texas town! It was fun and we did about 8 raids. Only did the noon and one pm raids. We are blessed to have a great leader for our group!

As Noob, I was really excited about this and been preparing my team every since the announcement. unfortunately, the day did not work out at all. I didn'tparticipate in a single raid. There was just one gym available in my town and no community. so looked for the meet up in Nürnberg and by the time I got there it was over. I was really hoping to meet some local players. So that i can finally get in on some bigger raids.

0:27 I totally thought you were going to say "shed some LIGHT on the situation!" I want to add that I had a bunch of fun. Medium sized town, and Campfire was the MVP of the day. We were able to get 10 raids in, and it was awesome to see people out again!

Elite raid day is a stupid ass idea that ruined rayquaza day. I only had the time to do two of them and im 25 mega energt away from mega evolving it and didnt even get the fucking meteorite. Im beyond pissed about it

Really nice to meet a fellow Singaporean today in Rockville - we appreciate you and Princess stopping by for an impromptu visit!

Campfire is 100% the way to do it. At least in Oregon and Washington. We had over 200 people show up.

It was crap for me, only like 3 raids in my area and the others were several hour waits in between eachother. Sucks when you have other things to do and also very annoying how the raids last only 45 mins

it was a bit of a scare checking that morning and seeing absolutely zero eggs in my nearby city, we almost cancelled our plans, luckily it got fixed before we cancelled

Niantic desperately needs to do something for rural players. I think they should just lower the raid boss' CP based on how many people are in the lobby, and make the raid boss go down to a lower level than 20 (25 if WB) if there's only one or two people in the lobby. This way smaller communities could still get these pokemon but they would have to invest in them more since they'll be at a very low level (I'd imagine 2-4 for 1 player). Course niantic would never do this, we can't let people have fun and participate in events, can we?

For people who live outside of a dense city, the amount of drive required for this was actually scary. I managed to beat two raids in a park where I am sure some people spoofed their location. I was there waiting and out of nowhere a the raid gets almost full with players. However, nobody was around. I was so confused...

It was Very Difficult. it was 115 degrees here on Saturday so people were driving around looking for raids. There was a mall with access to gyms but only one raid at noon and 1 at 1pm. two Raids is just enough to mega evolve one.

No we didn’t get 8 hours notice in Melbourne. It was not a small hick up. It was a massive fail. I agree campfire is a great platform. There were less than 20 eggs across all suburbs in Melbourne at 9:30 am, and we cancelled the meet up as we had to travel 30kms apart to 4 different suburbs to get 4 raids in 2 hours. As I was driving to prepare for what would be our first location, the eggs suddenly appeared around 10:30am. But it was not like your experience where we can walk. They spawned in different areas and we scrambled to come up with new plans. Our first location was in a gym that was in the middle of a football pitch. And because we didn’t plan, we ended up disturbing a local football match. Imagine 30 cars turning up and couldn’t find parking. We couldn’t plan for routes, let alone scout location for safe parking. It was not how I would normally host raid. We didn’t get to talk or interact or rest because all the locations require driving. Even the 15 minutes between 12pm and 1pm eggs we used it to drive to the next available location.

Totally mess up. We can’t gather all trainer for elite raid tower. Some of them staying far from it😢

I was in the raid by myself Got destroyed.

Like the videos keep it coming.

Campfire doesnt even exist in my region😂

I always miss out on these kind of raids because of not many people round my area that play

This Elite raid was a disaster. We are many players i our community and all of us 47 people gathered to raid 3 rayquazas, imagine the unpleasant surprise when we discovered that it wasn't possible to split into several groups because the option to PRIVATE GROUP wasn't available. Shame on Niantic😠 Many players spends a lot of money and time and this was far from OK.

Must be nice to live in an area that you can just walk to each Elite raid. I think a lot of areas this is just not possible. In our town the raids were so spread out you had to drive/race to each one. There is no “community” we are each in our own car and no one talks to each other. It’s not fun, it’s stressful trying to keep up.

Campfire didnt show many raids until 10am in Sydney. Then they showed up.

It was chaos, lots of people couldn't do the raids cause they needed a car to move from raid to raid, and we might have broken some laws while doing this event driving around the city.

Hi Brandon, hope you are doing well. I hope that you can hopefully understand the challenge people with mobility issue could deal with. I totally understand that this game want equality without cheats, hope that you can communicate with Niantic about this issue and hopefully to just use the joystick to move around without the teleport to spoof. Thank you

Hmm sounds like a sponsored response for Niantic here

@BrandonTan91 Our community is located near a State Park. During our 1pm hour, the only raids were located inside the park. One issue, there is an entrance fee. Not everyone in our community is able to cover.

Had a great time and met some great people! Was very happy with the event.

I dont get the concept of elite raids. Niantic wants people to come out but like.. people come out on regular raid days. I live in NY. And i swear, there were more people out during the groudon and kyogre raids than there were for rayquaza. I think what make people want to do raids is the pokemon, and the benefits of the event. We had an elite raid with no shiny boosts, or extra raid passes. Really lackluster for one of the best pokemon in the game

Would appreciated the 24 hour wait. We are 8 years into this, it would be different if we were in year 0. I was the one in our community to try and create meet ups. Two Elite gyms didn't get Mega Rayquaza show up at all I am in semi rural FL. It would be nice in a Campfire update on the map you can see it is an Elite raid gym special symbol next to the name . Like I didn't realize one new gym was an Elite raid gym. Many trainers in our area doesn't use Campfire to its full ability. We are in a semi Rural area so many of the Elite raid gyms are various locations isn't easy to do a bunch in that specific hour. We are lucky to have a state park that has 7/13 Elite raid gyms clustered together. Just hope and pray that you can get them at close times together. Like 3 at 12, 2 at 1pm and so on. If you don't have att or Verizon your cellular data isn't the best at the state park. Also, you need to pay to go in unless you have a state park pass. One nice feature to it is I have access to other FL state parks. Also, mosquitos are bad this time of year there. I moved into this community little over 2 years ago. It's not completely United and I am trying to bring it together a bit this past year. First year I just observed from a distance and feel it out. There are many who arent even level 40. I get it There are some communities in different county's where they may have more Elite raids. Question is do people have the ability or transportation from someone else to get there. It is up to the person to figure it out. I get it you can't please them all. Would had it been better if Niantic did it both but at different days? One day will be an Elite raid day, second would be for just one hour it is Mega Rayquaza. The Elite raid will wield you more Mega Energy, rare candy and Rayquaza Xl candy. A guarantee Meteorite and special spawn of sorts.

I'm in a semi big city in San Diego and you could not raid the amount you raided without driving. How you can have a community when everyone is in the car driving. Raid days people were outside walking and playing together. Elite raids people were in there cars.

I did 3 raids and got 2 meteorites and mega evolved one rayquaza W raid day 😎

Ever community is different. Elite raids here are so hard they are hated so much that most of the community boycots them. The few who played only used their 2 free passes when the raids were at the normal raiding park. The gyms were so far apart that it often took 15 minutes to drive from one raid to another. I even used campfire. I ended up chasing random trainers I've never met before but as soon as they had enough trainers, they raided. I often showed up as they finished or were already gone. The 5pm and 6pm raids, I missed 4 I drove to telling them I was on my way but not being able to text and drive telling them I wasn't there yet and only got in one. That one, 9 trianers, no one spoke. I stood in a park clearing to be seen. 2 might have been in a car, 2 might have been at a bench but I couldn't tell if they were playing or just using the phones for something else. The other 4 trainers I have no clue where they were. The earlier raids, we lost some having only 4 trainers and it having outrage and not being able to invite others. I'm the most dedicated player I know here and even I won't drive one and a half hours to catch a few pokemon in the nearest bigger city, not even for Ray. On Wednesday nights when every gym is a raid (supposed to be) the community (mostly older retired trainers) gather, they interact, they show in numbers between 20 and 60 and it is fun even for the most tired "they put this back in raids again" legendary. I would guess if Ray had not been elite, but like a normal raid hour, the community would have turned out around 80 strong. I see why elite raids are hated here. I'll just do my free passes if it's convenient and not waist 4 hours chasing ghosts next time.

I live in a smaller town and got 3 surrounding towns group together so we could actually take down a mega rayquaza. Just to find out that between the 4 hours we were getting a total of 6 raids….no more then 2 an hour, it was gutting and honestly embarrassing trying to keep everyone around so we could get the later raids

Just would like to add that on raid days Niantic gives players extra passes to raid in person.

I agree with not have elite eggs showing 24hours before, your idea of 10pm elite eggs is the ideal solution. I have to disagree with your point about raid days having too many gyms & players not being able to find enough people to play with- The short answer is remote raids are an option for raid days & often there are masses of people wanting to remote raid them. IME, Raid days themselves also discourage raiding via car in most cases, whereas the opposite is true for elite raids (& things like shadow raid days). I'd hazard a guess that for many players if not most of them, doing elite raids can only be done effectively by sitting in a car & driving to raids. I do agree with having fixed time raids for the same-ish reasons tho- I'm a planner & like when everyone one knows where to meet & when. I actually would prefer shadow raid days had fixed hours for the t5 shadows to hatch for the same reason- trying to find shadow raids to do, plot routes to get as many done as possible, then try to either get people onboard with doing them in that order or trying to figure out which order other people are committed to doing them in, is often more hassle than the potential reward. I do use campfire & agree it is helpful- it'd just be more helpful if others used it for raiding as well. My last point would be if Niantic are going to do time restricted raid events, then please increase the catch rate- it shouldn't take 5mins or more to catch the pokemon if you are limiting raids in both time & availability. IME, all it does is put lower level &/or newer players off of playing. ie. For Ray elite raids, there were approx 26 people playing in our community (which is a really good turnout here), but between 5 & 7 of those people were consistently not making it into lobbies with everyone else as they couldn't catch their Ray after the first raid (the highest level of those players was 33). I did half the raids than I could have done & had a failed raid because I knew if someone didn't hold back & wait, the ones struggling to catch their pokemon were going to miss out on most of the raids due to the time frame & distances between them. I did just 5 raids in 2 hours (which was fine for me personally as I only wanted the meteor & candy anyway) before deciding to call it quits, as there was no community interaction since everyone was in cars & the limited time frames to get to & complete each raid was pushing people to rush & ignore those unable to keep up ie. lower level & newer players. If the catch rate had been boosted, the newer &/or lower level players could have kept up & their experience of the event would have been decidedly more positive without taking away from difficulty of taking the raid boss down.

Me and my buddy were gonna do a raid and we were so close to doing it, but since we couldnt invite other ppl, we failed. But if we could just invite some other ppl we could have won EZ. We were both sooo mad.

I was able to get like 12 raids in, but had to drive nearly 20 minutes from my house

The notion of more people showing up for elite raids than for mega raid days is false from my own experience. Both the local area's I play in, have good size Pokemon Go communities. There was 100% more people out raiding during the last primal raid day, than there was for the elite rayquaza raids. Plus during the elite Rayquaza raids, many players would get left behind and miss out completely on many raids.

Where I was yesterday or I should say in my hometown didn’t have a Mega Elite Rayquaza Raid at All until 5pm Hawaii time! I’m not mad since I just wanted a better Shiny,a Hundo or Shundo!! Mahalo Braddah BrandonTan91 for ALL of YOUR videos!

The driving is nuts. Even when it was possible to walk some people drove anyway and then they would start the lobby and everyone who was walking would now have to run to not get left out of the lobby and then stuck alone unable to raid. They need to make it so you can stay at one park and get just as much out of it as if you went to every local park.

I agree with others. Make it so the raid boss respawns every few minutes. This would eliminate the caravan playstyle with tons of driving. It would allow you to chill and have fun with local trainers.

I was playing in New Zealand and we only had 6 eggs hatching in the whole of Auckland (biggest city/ popular place to play pogo) when it hit 12pm. We were only able to do one raid at 12pm and it showed all the eggs that was going to hatch at 1pm. We should of just had a raid day for Ray.

The prep time wasn't the issue for me, it was the lack of eggs available within walking distance. Effectively forcing people to drive around isn't the way to get people to come together as a community.

I can't speak for anyone else but I took the day off in the middle of my work week, I work graveyard shifts too and I was sacrificing my sleep schedule for this. I live in a rural area and right after work (working from 5pm to 5am the following day) I drove an hour to my home town to meet up with a group of friends for Mega Rayquaza. Went to bed at 6:30am and woke up at 10am. I was looking around and there was No Elite Gyms. I told my friends the bad news and I drove an hour BACK to my town. After that I was praying that there were random people that I could meet up to beat the raid and after a total of 4 tries, I was only able to catch 1 Rayquaza. I just feel like my day was stole from me.

The point about Elite raids bringing people together is very valid, and I have seen this first-hand. However, I think having the 3x 1-hour raids offer more flexibility for communities and leaders to set up meet-ups using campfire. especially in suburban or rural areas where elite raid gyms may be more spaced apart. Instead, the community could be more focussed on one area that is densely populated with gyms for ease of communication and trainers that do not have access to private transportation can easily participate with everyone

eventho i managed to down 4 raids and had a great time, i still cannot advocate for elite raids. All the eggs in my CITIES spawned at either 12 or 6. a single at 5 but not a single one at 1pm. so it was near impossible to tackle more then 1-2 raids per time slot. besides the amount of eggs spawning in a pretty big city was just pathetic, you cant tackle a gym that you maybe need 10-20min prep for, down it in 10, go to the next BY CAR and be on time for a gym on the same timeslot with 45min spawns. it was one giant sht show tho im glad i managed to get 3 rayquazas. (also i seen 1 shiny out of probably over 30 seen total so boosted shiny odds wouldve been nice.)

Elite raids would not be bad if they appeared at all gyms and not just ex raid gyms. Raid day will always be better than a stupid elite raid day.

If you live in Las Vegas it was a blast !! Lots of raid and people coming out !

You are completed correct. I’m from NZ (Christchurch) where there is a huge park and I was expecting more raids inside of it, I was only be able do 2 raids as the 12pm did not show up and I had to work from 3pm. Have bought lots of passes, but I was not able to use it. No much time to plan as I live 40 minutes from the park. 😢😢😢

I understand completely what you mean that we should come together and, work together. But this raid day/event/monstrosity was definitely poorly planned. First "free" meteorite, locked behind a elite raid. So it's free under pre-requisites. Secondly, the removal of the timers made me believe that we will be having eggs the day of. They never appeared. But they appeared 270 miles from us at 8am,so that something right. I dangled with the thought of driving through, burning nearly $200 for food gas ect. Decided against it because why didn't Niantic at least vet new EX gyms. If I recalled when Hoopa unbound was release I had an invite to one of my local gyms, I remember being giddy with joy&honor. By that logic there should have been a rayquaza raid here, or am I in denial? Thirdly, and this kills me as the local ask your poke helper man, some of our communities up and comers blew a whole lot of stardust, in some cases all of it for the counters. And how are they suppose to recover from that? Sacrifice all of my stardust for one of the biggest attackers ingame but not receiving even just one local raid? I never felt so embarrassed in my life about advice before. But to recap, Niantic can keep their "free" stuff, and they can keep Rayquaza too. This event has bittered my experience with Rayquaza and the game as a whole and I sincerely hope this doesn't foreshadow Go-fest. TLDR: Upset that our EX gym didn't spawn one once. Stardust blown, can't get it back. Vet your gyms, you have the data to see where active/small communities are. Keep your "free" meteorite. Hope for better results at Go-fest.

There were 2 eggs at 12-1 and 2 eggs from 5-6. 4 raids the whole entire day in my city

The raids at noon and 1 PM were fine. Using my e-bike and with the raids lasting 45 minutes instead of the usual 30 minutes for elite raids, I was able to do 5 raids each for noon and 1. But the 5 PM raids were a dumpster fire with Niantic having server issues. I was only able to do two raids and I couldn't do the catch on the second raid because of the server issues.

It would help so much if they dont start 1 raid here and the other only one at that specific time span (lets say 12 o'clock) is at the other end of the city even though there is another top raid gym right next to the first one.

Yes messed up for us early time zones. Thx for pointing it out

I’m a player who very rarely ever sees someone else join the raid lobby in my area without a remote raid pass. I didn’t have enough time to raid outside of my local area. But I was able to use campfire to get people to come on very short notice. We got a raid lobby of 18 which never happens. I understand why people don’t like elite raids but they’re not all bad. I do suggest that they bring ex raids back instead or something similar to it which might fix some of these problems and have the same effect.

Hey Brandon, you should make a video explaining how to navigate and best use the campfire app. Thanks!

I COULDN'T DO ANY ELITE RAIDS . There's no one to play with.

6 hours to coordinate for a raid event is too little. Why couldn't they announce the gyms and times weeks in advance? Like raid days.

6:45 unfortunately this point contradicts with my experience. Had it been a normal raid, we wouldn’t have even needed larger groups for raiding since defeating an elite raid boss is significantly harder. In the end it equalizes: regular raid with less people per raid will grant the same if not a better result than fighting an elite raid with let’s say three times the group size

I had a good Mega Rayquaza Day! I really enjoy Elite Raids, always meet new people in person and this one was no exception. Mega Rayquaza was the most challenging raid I've ever done so far. I didn't do the 12-1pm ones or even the 5pm; but I did the 6pm and just barely. Right at 6pm I was there ready to go and so were about 12 others, I'm in the raid screen and you know what, MY GAME CRASHES. I restart my phone and missed out on that big group raid and those 12 people got it all said and done. So for the next 30 or so minutes, the last minute crew and myself are struggling to get the numbers for the raid. Twice we failed to beat it with 6 people. One person and I friended and partied up to get the raid attack boosts so that really helped. With 5 minutes left, we finally took it down with 7 people and even that was too close for comfort. In the end, I'm happy I got one done and I got the Mega Rayquaza and Bonus tasks done so I ended up getting 2 Meteorites which was my goal. We ended up sticking together to take on a Shadow Raikou Raid as well and I ended up getting a Shiny Shadow Raikou so that was a huge WIN.

Very well said. Thank you.

I'm fine with them wanting to build up the communities in each area, but this really didn't need to be an Elite Raid. Mega Rayquaza has been out for a while. It should've just been a normal raid day. Give a bonus shiny chance or XL candy chance if you do it in person to boost the community doing it together. In my area it was a heat wave and temperatures was around 97 degrees, but with the humidity it was in the 100s. I don't really want to stand around in that kind of heat hoping to meet up with enough people to do it. I really think Elite Raids should be a way to introduce new powerful legendaries in advance for players who can do them before they are later put into normal raids.

It was laggy as hell. Game kept crashing