Pokemon Go Is Revamping Gyms And Adding Legendaries (Sort Of)

You might soon be able to catch legendary creatures in Pokemon Go. In the coming weeks, the mobile game will add a new Raid Battle feature that allows you to team up with friends to simultaneously fight powerful Pokemon at Gyms. Those that take part in raids frequently--and succeed more often than not--will be invited to enter exclusive Raids that "can" yield legendary Pokemon.

Up to 20 people can take part in Raids, though you'll only be able to play one per day before you have to pay up. After you defeat a Raid Pokemon, you'll get a chance to catch it, along with the reward of a Golden Raspberry.

Gyms themselves are getting revamped, meanwhile. Pokemon you leave in Gyms now need to be periodically revisited and fed berries by you or your teammates in order to keep their motivation up. Let their motivation fall to 0 and they'll return to you, leaving the Gym vulnerable to attack.

The Prestige system of Gyms has been scrapped, with all Gyms allowing a maximum of six defenders going forward, and you'll also earn bronze, silver, and gold badges at each Gym you fight at. These badges will give you greater and greater rewards with each rising tier. Lastly, every Pokemon Gym will also include a PokeStop, with the aim of evening the playing field for fans who might not have strong enough monsters to mount a challenge.

Developer Niantic said the update incorporating these changes will be rolling out in stages over the coming weeks. Regarding whether PvP battles and trading would be on the way soon, Niantic's senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura said:

"We're definitely looking into it. We're a small team, we're doing one thing at a time. Whether those will be our next thing or not, we still can't really talk about it."

Niantic's VP of strategic partnerships, Mathieu de Fayet, recently stated that PvP would be coming this summer, and CEO John Hanke had previously said new features, such as trading and PvP battles, would come "soon."

One legendary bird, Articuno, was spotted in some players' rosters last year, but it was later revoked by Niantic.

"We recently noticed that a few legendary Pokemon got into a few accounts when they shouldn't have," the company said at the time. "To preserve the game's integrity and as a measure of fairness, we have rectified the situation and revoked the legendary Pokemon from the Trainers' accounts."