If Niantic's Pokemon GO is about catching 'em all in real life, Pikmin Bloom is about seeing all the cute outfits its titular beings can cobble together from real-world goods. The AR mobile game is an exercise tool, with players encouraged to wander their neighborhoods and find Seedlings for each colored Pikmin at specific places — like Pikmin Bloom's new Sushi Restaurant locale. Part of the fun comes from Niantic simulating the original series by requiring a team of Pikmin to travel and bring items back in real-time.

However, this design is less charming when taken to its extreme. Pikmin may take anywhere from a minute to a couple of hours to complete a delivery (with variation based on their color) if players walk around the block or take a trip to the store. One widespread Reddit post around the game's launch in October 2021 showed it can take over a month for Pikmin Bloom to retrieve items if players travel long distances. While niche, this concern can be problematic for users who want specific items or lose access to their Pikmin for a long time. The underutilized Coins could offer an easy solution that benefits fans and Niantic.

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The Issue with Pikmin Bloom's Travel Time

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Collecting every kind of Pikmin is the closest thing to "completion," and this being a centerpiece of the title is clear given Niantic releases holiday decor for events like Lunar New Year. Its latest activity for Earth Day has Big Seedlings appear that provide the plucked Pikmin a Forest-themed decor. As with prior limited-time events, Niantic makes it more of a challenge by restricting spawns to one event Big Seedling at a time — each requiring 10,000 steps to mature.

Event Seedlings are the most extreme example of how Pikmin Bloom's real-time item retrieval can be problematic. If it takes a Pikmin group upwards of 10 days to collect the Big Seedling, the player may miss their window to collect more. Other items may not be limited the same way, but if someone wants to find an Airport-themed Pikmin, its Seedling may not naturally populate until the user reaches their destination, forcing one's squad to cross state or even oceanic borders.

Beyond the general frustration of having to wait, this real-time restriction may impede other aspects of the game. A player loses access to their Pikmin while retrieving items, and with Expeditions being a main way to raise its friendship level, that Pikmin may not be eligible to receive its own piece of decor (upon reaching four hearts of friendship) until weeks later. It's also worth noting the player can only collect 300 Pikmin at a time without paying money to expand their barracks, which is no small number but may still leave options limited.

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Expediting Travel Would Give Coins Another Use

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Accruing Coins is one way to speed up Pikmin decor collecting. Coins are Pikmin Bloom's microtransaction currency that can purchase goods such as extra slots to plant or petals that grow flowers during a walk (speeding up a Seedling's growth). Planting 500 flowers at a time also rewards users with a Coin, so the main non-cyclical use for Coins is recharging the "Detector" that locates items like Seedlings for whatever locales are nearby.

Given Coins have such a limited use case (even major upgrades like the aforementioned Pikmin storage can only be done with real money), a sliding-scale payment to automatically retrieve items could resolve the issue of overbearing travel times. It could be restricted to only days-long transits to not completely break immersion, with something like one Coin-per-travel-day offering users an out amid awkward situations.

Implementing this kind of system would still require players to accrue their payment, for example 40 Coins taking the Reddit user as a case study. It might take them a few days to gather that kind of scratch by planting flowers as the game intends, encouraging active daily engagement; or they could simply buy the Coins to get it over with and have extra for the Detector, encouraging them to buy-in and support Niantic financially. It's a small quality-of-life addition, but one that might get the company in the good graces of fans who are disappointed after a long flight.

Pikmin Bloom is available now for Android and iOS devices.

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