Recently, Niantic has been discussing several meaningful features it plans to bring to Pokemon Go, including bonuses for catching Pokemon of the same type and improvements to the gym training system. But behind the scenes, the developer appears to have made an interesting change to the Pokedex without warning.
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As of this past weekend, any Pokemon you see at a gym will be added to your Pokedex as a silhouette. Previously, you had to actually encounter a Pokemon in the wild in order for it to appear in the Pokedex, but as countless players have noted, all you have to do now is pass by a gym with that Pokemon occupying it.
For casual players, this won’t make much of a difference. In fact, if you aren’t still playing regularly, you probably never would have noticed the change in the first place, but some players were worried this would mess up their catching ratios — i.e. the number of times they’ve seen a Pokemon vs. caught that Pokemon.
Thankfully, the gym discovery counter appears to max out at 1. In other words, if you see a Dragonite at a gym, the silhouette of the creature will appear in your Pokedex with “Seen: 1” next to it. If you see another Dragonite at another gym, that number won’t move, but if you evolve a Dratini or catch a Dragonite of your own, you’ll see “Seen: 2 | Caught: 1” next in your Pokedex instead.
This is an extremely minor update, but it’s another step in the right direction as Niantic attempts to get more Pokemon Go trainers on a level playing field.
