Blink and you might miss it. Pokemon GO is holding a “Worldwide Bloom” event right now, increasing the spawn rate for Grass type Pokemon and (ideally) making it easier to find creatures like Chikorita and Bulbasaur. And that’s it: while most Pokemon GO events come with a few different bonuses to get people playing, it appears that Niantic is playing with a slightly more limited format this time around.
Not only is the event limited to the increased spawns, but it’s also pretty short when compared to previous events. It started on May 5 and it ends tomorrow, May 8, sometime in the afternoon PDT.
The event has not been without its share of strangeness, and not just because of its brevity. While there do seem to be people talking on social media about Grass-type Pokemon they’ve caught that they wouldn’t have been able to capture otherwise, Paul Tassi reports that he isn’t seeing any appreciable increase in Grass-type spawns and that others are seeing similarly disappointing results.
My personal experience is more in line with Tassi’s than the lucky Bulbasaur catchers of the Internet: it’s possible I’m seeing more Grass-type creatures around, but it’s hard to say for sure. I can be certain, however, that the spawn rates are nowhere near as skewed as they were with an event like the Water Festival, which saw my neighborhood streets covered in Magikarp.
So with just about a day to go, it’s hard to give high marks to Pokemon GO’s first micro-event, on the whole. One supposes that’s alright, considering it does appear to be an experimental format for the developer.
My guess (just a guess) is that Niantic wanted to play with a more limited type of event not only in terms of the number of bonuses offered and duration but also in the scale of bonuses offered, and that’s led to the somewhat disappointing results. Next time around it might work a bit better to supercharge spawns like previous events have seen, just not for as long.
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