The GO Battle League is a new PvP system that will allow players to compete with others in competitive matches. The full league isn’t ready to roll out quite yet, but preseason matches have been enabled. These matches allow players to challenge each other, but jumping into a battle isn’t as simple as pushing a button.

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Warming Up

The GO Battle League will become available to Trainers in waves, based on their Trainer level. The highest level Trainers will get first access, though the roll-out is currently paused to “ensure a smooth feature launch and prevent server issues. No matter when a player gets access to the Battle League, the method for actually getting into a battle will remain the same.

To qualify for an online battle, a player must have first walked 5 kilometers that day. This will unlock the ability to play five matches, and can be done up to three times, walking a total of 15 kilometers. That’s a lot of walking, but thankfully it is possible to use PokéCoins to skip the remainder after just 2 kilometers. The closer a Trainer is to completing the goal, the less coins it’ll cost.

Be The very best

Although the Battle League hasn’t yet launched fully, it will be arriving soon after its preseason period. The current plan is for the GO Battle League to be divided into Seasons, each of which will consist of three leagues rotated every couple of weeks. As such, the current preseason schedule looks like this:

Great League: January 28th - February 10th Ultra League: February 10th - February 24th Master League: February 24th - March 9th

These testing leagues are designed to allow Niantic to observe how people are playing their game, which smashed its earnings records in 2019. This means that they can make balance changes before the first real season rolls out. It’s best to think of the preseasons as beta or early access, as the developers figure out ideal settings for season length, rank thresholds and matchmaking.

Pokemon GO is available now on iOS and Android devices.

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