Highlights

  • Some Pokemon GO players find the "last ball" notice frustrating and want it removed from the game.
  • The warning was added without much fanfare in May 2023.
  • Despite the recent criticism, some players argue that the notice is useful, labeling the calls for its removal as an overreaction.

Some Pokemon GO players have recently taken to social media to bemoan the "last ball" notice as frustrating and stress-inducing, among other things. They have consequently called for Niantic to rethink this problematic Pokemon GO feature, ideally by completely removing it from the game.

The polarizing warning was originally added to Niantic's mobile game without much fanfare about seven and a half months ago. Specifically, the first player reports of the "last ball" notice date back to late May 2023, around the time of the Pokemon GO Fennekin Community Day. Since then, fans who would use up all but one of their Premier Balls on a Raid boss have been regularly encountering warnings that they are on their last ball, written in all caps.

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While the feature never received much praise, it was recently targeted by outright calls for its removal that originated from r/TheSilphRoad, one of the largest Pokemon GO subreddits. Specifically, Reddit user LennyNoLion asked if there was a way to disable the notice after encountering it following a Buzzwole raid. Their post amassed a quadruple-digit number of upvotes, indicating that hundreds of other fans dislike the feature as well. A number of players flat-out said as much in response to LennyNoLion's question, while the OP themselves argued that they didn't want "the added stress" from the warning.

Some Pokemon GO Players Are Fine With the 'Last Ball' Notice

Not everyone agreed with their criticism, as dozens of players posited that the notice itself only flashes on the screen for a brief moment, thus concluding that LennyNoLion was overreacting. Some of those fans also pointed out that the warning is a useful reminder for players to use the Pokemon GO Master Ball, assuming they have one available. Seeing how the notice only appears if the player has the Master Ball in their inventory, it is likely that the warning exists precisely for that reason.

Even if that wasn't the case, the chances of Niantic actually removing the notice from Pokemon GO appear slim; while changing the game based on player feedback wouldn't be an unprecedented move for the studio, the company historically required a much larger volume of complaints to do something of the sort.

Be that as it may, the feature itself appears to be buggy, with a number of players now alleging that they recently ran out of Premier Balls following a successful Raid without ever getting the "last ball" warning, despite the fact that they had the Master Ball in their inventories at the time. This wouldn't be the first last-ball bug in Pokemon GO, given how another related issue plagued the game way back in 2017.