My problem with this game remains unchanged in that you have to effectively plan your life around it to get the most out if it, and that sucks. The community days are cool, but you have to be out playing during a specific three hour window and if you are unavailable for whatever reason, tough shit. You have to join groups of people to do the raids and at this point a good number of the people playing (in my area at lease) are the ones with three phones who judge you based on your team choice. And heaven forbid you choose a team that isn't super popular in your area, good luck doing gyms when they sit there and constantly refill them with blisseys as you work your way through it. The MTX are incredibly predatory too, it is very unfun to throw 20 pokeballs at a fucking Pikachu for nothing.
No game is going to be perfect, but I quit last year for some of these reasons. I am playing again because many of these things are fixed. The game has lots of tasks and events that are split between casual and hardcore players. I only get to play when I take the kids out to the park or when I go for the occasional jog, so I am pretty sure I am on the more casual side.
The multi-week events, like the current Surf's Up event going on now is great for casual players. Water starters, rarer water pokemon, and they take over the normal and mundane spawns. So you don't have to go hunting for these, they are just everywhere.
The community event affects all spawn points. So the window is small, but you can pretty much go anywhere to benefit from it. So it's 2 to 4 full evolutions for hardcore players and a lot of candy for someone who just opens the app during that time frame. I personally played the last event for about 30 minutes and got about 200 candy.
The big win for casual players are the Field Research Quests. A Quest that you finish on your own terms. They reward rare pokemon and items. For every 7 that you complete you can catch a Legendary that changes every month. They are designed from the ground up with us casual players in mind. The quest system is what really dragged me back in.
