Date tag?
Some of my pokemon have a new tag with the date I caught it. People of my community have been seeing this too. Anyone know what the deal is?
Answers
That date tag means those pokemon are about to expire. You need to evolve them quickly or you'll lose them.
All right, just kidding. It's now listed for all pokemon from 2016 and 2017, presumably as an aide in trading to know how old they are. (Older pokemon are more likely to go lucky when traded.)
"Older pokemon are more likely to go lucky when traded."
Outside of guaranteed luckies, I'm not convinced. I have seen exactly 0 increase in the likelihood of older pokemon to go lucky despite trading quite a number of them with the current lucky rates and haven't seen anyone publish any actual data either.
My personal evidence: after the Beldum CD, a friend and I traded about 50 Beldum with each other. Zero luckies, although I did get one that I received at 93% (and evolved to Metagross with MM during the post CD hour window).
On the other hand, I've traded all my pokemon from 7/2016 and 8/2016, before the guarantee went into force, and my lucky rate for those was about 70%. I also have been trading for Rhyhorns and Magnemites with local friends, lucky rate is about 12%, and seems to happen primarily when trading older pokemon.
I strongly suspect that as trading has evolved, they have tweaked the rates several times, but they probably have stabilized now. Sounds like you've been unlucky, or haven't done enough trades. Try trading a lot of old stuff for things that you want, and you should hit a few that aren't guaranteed luckies. One of the best tests is to trade stuff from 12/2016 for other stuff from 12/2016 - I think the cumulative age of both pokemon in the trade is what matters.
Counterpoint: My fiancee and I spent about 50 minutes swapping Beldum after the spawns stopped and we had 5(!) trades go lucky, including some sweet 96% and 98%'s on either of our ends. Every single Beldum traded was caught that day.
Cumulative age is an interesting theory I hadn't considered before. Sadly I don't have anything left from 2016 I'm willing to part with to try this out.
I have had maybe two out of 30 pokemon from 2017 or 2016 go lucky in trades for the last 2 months, whether I was the one trading the old mon or it was getting traded to me. And my pokedex shows 16 lucky Beldums, all of which were recent for recent trades. RNG is RNG, but my observations don't support the idea that old mons have an increased likelihood of lucky.
It has been made very clear that Pokemon OVER 2 years old are guaranteed to become lucky when traded.
Try it. Any Pokemon traded from before 5th Jan 2017 WILL BE LUCKY. Regardless of the age of the other Pokemon being traded, they will both be lucky.
Observation plays no part, the facts already released do. Don't over complicate things... 2 years and older is guaranteed to be lucky, any mon younger than that then RNG will kick in and it'll be random.
