What do you think of PVE as a whole? Do we need any updates, or is this fine?
**TL;DR**: I'd like to see some PVP-esque formats in both classic raids and gyms that encourage you to use a 500 CP Bulbasaur instead of Kartana and Tinkaton instead of Xerneas. I think this would add value to more Pokémon we collect and make the game feel more challenging and fun if the player chooses.
We currently have gym battles, raids, and max battles, but it all feels stagnant to me. Gyms used to feel more engaging when we had prestiging, but now it's become a rather boring and broken experience that has existed virtually unchanged since raids were added in 2017.
This is very odd because gyms are basically at the epicenter of much of the game, yet all we do with them is raid and throw in a Pokémon for Pokécoins. I think a revamp is justified at this point.
**Raids**, I think, are structured well enough, but I'd like to see something happen that gives rise to base form and sub tier Pokémon. You know, the stuff that most people just dex and forget about because they're only good for PVP. I could go on about what sort of fresh ideas they could try in order to make raids more exciting and cool. Instead, I'd be fine if they would just create a meta within what already exists for those dex fillers we love so much.
**Max battles** kind of came out of nowhere, and it was refreshing to me because it had the community discussing the merits of sub tier Pokémon as viable options against 4 star and gmax bosses. Then, before I knew it, it just became a more strategy oriented raid system that locks out the majority in our roster, followed by this weird roll of the dice you fond yourself in if the boss doesn't have an easy charge move when you're in a small group. Yeah...
I get that it's supposed to be a soft reset on what we already have with raids and that it encourages the building of newer versions of our legacy Pokémon, but I don't think that introducing an item *(cough, Max Soup)* would discourage people from engaging with the system if we had a choice to build our OG's. An example of this is how they're rolling out any *Newtwo* that will be mega level 1 level to 3 when caught during GoFest 2026. This is a healthy way to encourage people who already invested in their classic Mewtwo without devaluing what we've spent time building. Because power creep doesn't have to make things obsolete when well thought out systems can be applied. Just my thoughts.