Pokemon Go players fed up with tanking meta dominating PvP

Shane Black
Promotional artwork for Pokemon Go Fest 2024 shows several Pokemon walking around a New York park

The Pokemon GO fanbase is getting fed up with the new tanking strategy that is taking over the ranking system of the game.

Pokemon GO has a lot of different metas that come through the game depending on the latest updates that buff or nerf various moves.

However, a recent meta that has begun to creep into the game is tanking, where players purposefully throw matches to decrease their rank and get better rewards in easier fights.

The Pokemon community is upset with this meta, as it has gotten to the point where players are writing up guides on how to tank properly.

Pokemon GO fans are over the tanking method

These concerns were shared on the Pokemon GO subreddit, where a user posted about how to properly lose a game before an opponent does.

Thus far, the responses to this post have not been kind to the tanking strategy that has become the norm in the game.

One comment reads, “This is how you know your game’s battle system is broken: when people are making guides on how to forfeit faster than your opponent.”

Some users point to the fact that this method gives out better rewards than higher-level matches, which is incentivizes players to do it.

It’s having a significant impact on the experience for much of the community, as one person says, “And this is what ‘battling’ has been reduced to. Good job, Niantic.”

Many Pokemon GO fans just want to enjoy the battle system for gameplay purposes and don’t want the idea of getting rewards to dominate player motivations.

“Tankers are wild. I enjoy battling regardless of rewards so I’ll never understand those that need to min-max their rewards so heavily,” says someone else in the thread.

It’s something that is happening enough to prompt the Pokemon GO fans to respond like this, and they’d love to see a change made.

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About The Author

Shane is a Games Writer here with Dexerto, with a focus on first-person shooters, sports games, and just about anything else you can think of. He's worked with other sites like IGN, Dualshockers, and Gamepur, and possesses a huge passion for gaming.