As someone who plays Pokemon Go as a solo player I've been a bit frustrated for a while that some of the content has been more or less exclusive to people who team up for powerful raids. However, I think the research subsystem has started to do a great job of opening up some of that content to solo players. Completing a week's worth of Field Research has been rewarded with a different legendary every month (first Moltres, then Zapdos, and currently Articuno). Today I was able to complete a rare and somewhat difficult research task that let me capture an Absol, something that was previously only available as a non-solo-able level 4 raid boss.
I first learned that getting access to an Absol via research rewards was possible via this video on the Trainer Tips YouTube channel. Since then I've been trying to cycle my research pretty aggressively, and this morning I finally got the task to make an excellent curveball throw. (I picked up the task from a pokestop in the middle of the Greenway Bike/Pedestrian Bridge on my walk this morning).
I'm in the habit of throwing a curveball with every throw, and I'm usually pretty good at getting great throws, but excellent throws are pretty rare events for me. Today was especially bad because there was light rain and the water drops on my iPhone screen tend to interfere with my pokeball throwing technique. I also wasn't encountering any larger pokemon where excellent throws seems to be easier to achieve, like with those crazy Alolan Exeggutors that were around recently. I was nearing the end of my walk and was preparing to treat merely having the research task as a victory when I happened to luck into an excellent throw on a relatively common water type. With the task completed I was rewarded with the opportunity to capture an Absol:
Unfortunately mine doesn't have the greatest IVs – it looks like it's around 77.8%. Still, I'm glad I was finally able to add this pokemon to my pokedex, and the quest itself was pretty gratifying.