Introduction

Hiding spawn information is, in my opinion, ultimately harmful to the game and its player base.
That said, I want to be fair and acknowledge the arguments that could be seen in favor of this change and explain why I think they don't hold up.

The Upsides — With a Grain of Salt

Hiding information about spawns has three upsides that in my opinion come with a grain of salt.

1. Community Interaction

Without readily available information, players are pushed to interact with each other — asking around, trading knowledge, being active in Discord.

That's a genuine plus for community health.

But it assumes everyone wants that.

This is an MMO, sure, but like every MMO, part of its population is made up of players who prefer to play solo, at their own pace, without depending on other people to progress.

Forcing interaction as a side effect of information scarcity isn't the same as fostering organic community engagement — it's closer to a toll gate.

2. The Joy of Discovery

Discovery has a real psychological reward — that moment of finding something yourself is genuinely satisfying.

The problem is that hiding information doesn't let players opt into that experience — it forces it on everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not.

A player who'd rather look something up and get on with their session no longer has that choice.

Discovery stops being a bonus for those who enjoy it and becomes a mandatory task for everyone else.

3. Making Content More Attractive for a Longer Period of Time

Hidden information stretches out how long content stays relevant. If everything about a spawn — location, timing, repel requirements — is known on day one, players burn through it in an afternoon and move on.

Scarcity of information keeps people engaged with the same content for weeks instead of hours, which is valuable for a game that needs sustained playtime to stay alive.

But this benefit is easy to mistake for something it isn't.

Stretching engagement by withholding information isn't the same as making content actually last longer — it's making the same content take longer to consume by adding friction, not depth.

The "longevity" here is measured in "hours wasted searching", and not "hours spent enjoying".

And it can just as easily backfire: a player who hits an opaque wall with no clear path forward doesn't necessarily stay engaged longer — they might just get frustrated and leave.

Retention through obscurity is a gamble, not a guarantee, and it reads more like a "metric driven" incentive (keep playtime/player numbers up) than a "player experience driven" one.

Major Downsides

There are actually many more downsides to this as you might think at first.

1. Respecting Players' Time

An MMO inherently demands time investment — that's expected and completely fine.

But there's a difference between content that takes time and artificial friction that wastes time.

A game that respects its players supports their time commitment instead of manufacturing extra roadblocks that add nothing to actual gameplay depth.

2. Efficiency and Player Choice

Not every player is optimizing for the same thing, and that's fine — but for players like me who do want to play efficiently, this system actively works against that.

I have a list of other games competing for my time, and getting stalled by a mechanic whose sole purpose is to artificially create discovery and interaction — rather than offering meaningful gameplay — isn't a good trade-off.

Efficiency-minded and exploration-minded players used to be able to coexist, each choosing their own approach.

Now one playstyle is forced onto everyone.

3. Guilds Gatekeeping Information

It's well known that guilds already gatekeep advantageous information.

General spawns are still broadly shared, but repel-spawn locations in reworked areas aren't public anywhere — they're either unknown to most of the player base or deliberately withheld by guilds to keep their advantage.

In other words: hiding information doesn't eliminate the advantage information provides — it just shifts who holds that advantage.

Solo players and small groups lose access, while large and active guilds with more players to brute-force discovery simply absorb the cost and keep the payoff for themselves.

4. Fragmented, Inconsistent Knowledge

When information isn't public, what circulates informally is often incomplete, outdated, or just wrong. There isn't a single point of truth anymore.

New or casual players end up relying on guesswork, secondhand claims, or bad advice, while the "real" answers stay locked elsewhere.

That's a worse experience than either full transparency or well-designed in-game discovery mechanics — it's the disadvantages of secrecy without the benefits of genuine exploration.

5. Enabling Misinformation and Scams

A lack of public, verifiable spawn data doesn't just create gaps — it creates opportunities to fill those gaps with fake information.

Without an official source players can check claims against, there's nothing stopping a seller from misrepresenting a spawn's actual rarity or exclusivity to inflate its trade value.

An uncommon spawn gets passed off as rare — and the buyer has no way to verify any of it, because the real data simply isn't public anywhere.

This isn't a hypothetical edge case. It's a predictable outcome of the current system — one only possible because there's no accessible, official source of truth to check against.

6. Hiding Rarity Itself Serves No Clear Purpose

Unlike spawn locations or repel conditions, a Pokémon's rarity isn't something players are meant to "discover" — it should be baseline information, not a puzzle.

Nearly every game with a rarity system displays it directly, because knowing what you're looking at is basic UX, not a spoiler.

Hiding it doesn't create discovery or interaction — it just makes trading and evaluation harder for no clear gain, and it's what makes scams and spreading misinformation like Point 5 possible in the first place.

How To Potentially Fix It

There are surely a few ways to solve this without keeping the current downsides, ranging from a quick patch to an actual structural fix.

A Proper Fix: Bring the Information In-Game

The core problem isn't that information exists — it's that it's unofficial, incomplete, and unevenly distributed.

Solving that means making it official, complete, and evenly distributed:

1. Improving the existing Map Spawn UI by displaying time-of-day and level ranges for each spawn directly in-game.

2. Highlighting repel spawns directly on a Pokémon's page.

3. Displaying rarity directly on a Pokémon's page.

A Temporary Fix: Delay the Public Spawn Dump

A simple fix is delaying the public spawn dump by roughly two weeks after each content update.

This doesn't eliminate the effort of finding repel spawns during that window — but two weeks of temporary scarcity is a fundamentally different problem than permanent gatekeeping, since it resolves on a fixed timeline instead of indefinitely.

Players who want to discover things early can still do so organically or by interacting with the community during that window.
After two weeks, the data becomes public and everyone converges on one accurate source of truth.

Conclusion

Hiding spawn information doesn't actually create the discovery or engagement it's meant to — it just relocates who has the advantage, shifting it from every player equally toward whichever guilds have the playerpower to brute-force it.

Genuine discovery and community interaction only mean something if they're chosen, and not forced. Information scarcity doesn't create either, it just makes both mandatory.

Making repel and spawn data official and accessible in-game doesn't remove discovery or interaction as options — it just stops forcing them on players who'd rather not engage with either, all while leaving them fully available to anyone who still wants that experience.

~Caenneth

I completely agree with everything, meanwhile I agree new spawns should be hided and I totally understand the decision since we want players to discover new spawns, area, daily activities etc.. !

I myself dont agree in hiding some former pokemon information, for example let say I want a Marill in Kanto because it is my favorite pokemon, I dont want it to be hided from me, the pokemon have dropped since years since it's not a new pokemon, I would like to know at which point I can get it and having something I really love.

Same for repel, should have informations on pokedex so you can prepare.

Hello there 🫣,

as a casual player and an outside observer, I don't think this change is permanent, but rather something temporary.

Currently plenty of new Pokemon have been introduced, and the magic lies in discovering them ourselves rather than simply being handed that information.

That's what PRO used to be all about: stepping into the unknown. When you started the game and saw someone with an awesome Pokemon you'd never seen before, or didn't even know existed in the game, it sparked a passion in new players to push through the story and explore.

Over the years, it has become easier and easier for new players to complete the story. Difficult requirements and grinding milestones (like the level 80 Rattata) were removed, leaving only a fraction of that original challenge (like unknown Pokemon levels in battles). But it's supposed to be challenging, not effortless.

We are playing an MMO, a baseline level of interaction with other players should be expected. But even for those who prefer to play solo, that's completely fine, they can research and discover information on their own, just as others have done.

When Astrella releases, I wouldn't want the experience ruined by Day 1 guides explaining how to rush through it, listing spawn locations, or spoiling new features. Naturally, there shouldn't be a Day 1 Astrella Story Service either. That would undermine years of hard work by the staff team and destroy the thrill of experiencing new content for the first time.

While older Pokemon and spawn locations have been common knowledge for veterans, they remain completely new to fresh players. In that sense, there is new content here for everyone, regardless of experience.

With all that said, I believe the spawn dump will eventually return. Assuming it won't be seems like a hasty conclusion in the long run.

This isn't really a vote, just my perspective on the situation.

Kind Regards,
Lugario

Edited August 20Aug 20 by Lugario

In my opinion, not giving spawn information like what's been done with Sinnoh, the excavation sites and the new spawns in Vulcan Island is good, I'm not against that at all, find information first, have them available afterwards.
On the other hand, not sharing stuff like rarity, items that a pokemon can hold in a route etc. is a terrible idea for multiple reasons and those have been shared in the thread so I won't add anything more.

This whole idea that lack of information makes for better communication between players cause we're one happy community and everyone will share the information is pure utopia, I don't understand how after 10+ years of observing the PRO community you would think this is a good idea, it's not even about guilds gatekeeping, it's the single player himself that is not going to tell you cause it doesn't benefit him, it won't even benefit him if everyone knows where an item is cause he can claim it's scarce even if it might be easy to get, it won't benefit him if he tells you a Pokemon is uncommon and not rare cause it can get him more money, for the record the latter has been already happening. So, if there was misinformation when the info were available, cause trust me, there was plenty, I won't even dare to imagine what will happen in the future, remember who you're trusting when you think about healthy communication.