New social features are coming to Pokemon Go sometime within the next few months

New social features are coming to Pokemon Go to help bring people together for raids, and arrange potential meetups.

The new social features, some of which are based on a separate Niantic app, have been “tested over time” and will be available in Pokemon Go sometime in the next few months.

Niantic said the hope is that the new features will make it easier for Trainers to communicate with each other, discover new communities, and enjoy local raid battles.

The company said it is “excited to get back to playing together in person,” and to support players who have difficulty reaching Gyms, it will continue to work on solutions such as tools for community leaders to organize local events and faster approval for new Gyms.

As of this month, Mega Energy and Rare Candy XL are also available as rewards for completing local raid battles, making it easier to evolve and strengthen your Pokemon.

Some Pokemon Go players may not care about this next bit, but some will.

According to Niantic, the 1 PokeCoinEvent Box released every Monday will no longer contain one remote raid pass. Instead, it will feature a rotating array of items. In other words, if you are out of remote raid passes, you will need to fork over 100 PokeCoins for one raid pass, or 250 PokeCoins for three raid passes like always.

This is just another way for Niantic to get people outside to raid with others, and form friendships of sorts. But, the fact there are plenty of people out there who aren’t very close to gyms depending upon where they live who really need remote raid passes should also be taken into account.

Then some are still a bit wary of going around others because, well, COVID hasn’t gone away. Then, others like participating in Raid Hour on Wednesdays, but can’t get out of the house because it falls during the time most are sitting down to dinner. Then, there are some who live in smaller towns where players aren’t very sociable to begin with and there not many people meandering around near gyms or PokeStops.

So, while that 1 PokeCoin Event Box was a nice gesture on Niantic’s part because it’s a relatively free remote raid pass, it’s a bit disheartening for it to be taken away because buying remote raid passes can be expensive in the long run, especially when you sometimes have to expand your Poke Storage and/or buy more bag space for items. The money spent can start racking up pretty quickly if you aren’t careful as is oftentimes the case with a free-to-play game.

Anyway, the 1 PokeCoin Event Box was just something everyone took advantage of in order to remotely raid with others, and now it’s going away. We’ll just have to get used to it, I reckon. Change is always inevitable, whether we like the said change or not is inconsequential.