Pokemon Go (Mobile July 2016)

[Dantrag]

I have no trouble finding pokemon spawns out in the wild, but I do live in a relatively populated city, and I randomly stumble upon all kinds of stuff. But there are also community sites/reddits for most places where you can go see which park/area is a nest for a specific type of pokemon and just...go there and catch stuff for however long you can.

The point Celaras was trying to make a couple pages back (albeit badly and snarkily) is the entire vision for "being a Pokemon trainer" is going out and randomly stumbling upon shit. The main line of games entirely revolve around your character Trainer walking around in circles for hours on end finding different Pokemon to catch. And on certain routes all you can find are Pidgeys and Rattatas, yeah. You have to go to other routes and areas to find other kinds of Pokemon.

It's the EXACT same thing in Pogo. You want a clefairy, go find some mountains. You want a Magikarp, better find some rivers or lakes. But due to time/geography/laziness/whatever, people won't do in real life what they enjoy about the main line games. Instead they cry for radar and won't be happy unless they're able to find exactly where the Pokemon around them are, rather than playing how trainer journeys are supposed to be.

And now apparently it's a completely shit game that people want their money back on, even though it's emulating exactly what a trainer journey is supposed to be like. You're not going to be the very best if you don't leave your home area to go catch stuff in other locales.

I do understand - but do not agree with - the people who feel the radar is the end all be all of the game. I think these people come off as entitled and whiny. It would have been better if the game had launched without any sort of radar whatsoever, so people could never have gotten used to it. If it's really that bad for you, while the radar is down, check reddit for nest areas or places where people often congregate and drop lures, such as certain parks. I know in my area there are at least 3 or 4 parks that are lured all day/night every day and a couple of them are even nests. Can net so many items and pokemon just by hanging out there for a while.

I don't think this game should be thought of or treated as any other mobile game where you can just play anytime from anywhere and get your instant gratification on. It's going to be a long grind, and you have to put in work and hours to get a good collection. ...yeah, it is a bit like old XI, which is perhaps why I enjoy it so much. But it's doing the game a grave disservice to treat it the same as other mobile games. Its scope and what it's trying to do are much larger and completely, completely different than your run of the mill Neko Atsume or Candy Crush.

[edit] admittedly we are not all full-time Pokemon trainers like the kid in the games. My stance on the game is greatly affected by having few daily responsibilities and being able to dedicate more time to Pogo than others. I might be a lot saltier about this if I was in the same boat as most of you guys and had a lot less time to play / travel around per day. But I yam what I yam

Except, shit doesn't spawn out in the middle of fucking no where. Central Park, the Piers at San Fran, they get LITERALLY THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF SPAWNS. Go look at some pictures. In one spot you can pop 4-7 pokemon. For me, I get 4-7 pokemon in 2 1/2 hours of walking.

If Clefairy or Charizard or whatever spanwed in random world locations, that would be fine. But another part of the problem is that I can't train my pokemon. Oh, I finally caught a XYZ!.... not I need 100 more... This isn't like the old games where you finally caught something that you were looking for then trained it, no, now you need to catch it a billion more times just to evolve it, then maybe get a decent skill set and hope for the best. It's sad, I caught a Rapidash 2 weeks ago, 790. A few days ago I caught a Ponyta, 870... Yeah...

Problem is, this game is just that, collections, gyms are a joke, no pvp, no pve, no training, basically just catching.

This is starting to get back to the FFXI masochism attitude that was fine when we were all 16 but it doesn't really work when you work 60 hours a week and have responsibilities.

I have NO desire to ever do a XI sytle... anything in my life again. Especially not pre-xp nerfs... 4k/hr was amazing back in the day lol. "Decent Challenge" meant it was going to slaughter you.

[Karbuncle]

Aye, the problem I have is that Pokemon seem to far and few between anywhere but in incredibly populated cities in very specific areas in that city... I live in a city and even going to a popular park (with like 14 stops and 3 gyms, you'd think that was popular enough right? wrong) finding Pokemon is slow...

The grinding Aspect wouldn't be so bad if Pokemon spawned more frequently, even if it was just personal spawns every so often rather than only being open world spawns (unless Incense is used).... If you could get candies from beating Gyms or something (as a faux way of adding "Leveling up"). it would make me more inclined to fight gyms, right now I don't even care to capture gyms unless its close to my claiming time... they need to add more ways to train your Pokemon besides catching more of them and grinding them to candy, and gives reasons for gyms and pvp(when its introduced)

Game is just out though and frankly its incomplete but thats something I'm not really angry about and I personally can wait even if I'm not happy with how long I need to wait... I'll still wait it out cause I see the potential... but I'm not the majority of people, so my only hope is they fix stuff before the vast crowd drops and walks away because they get bored with the games unfinished state.

[Myrrh_Quetz]

I'm with karb. Shit sucks but when it's fixed. It'll be awesome and I can wait for that. I'll complain but still play

[Silenka]

Oh, I finally caught a XYZ!.... not I need 100 more...

Serious question, have you checked online to see if there are any pokemon nests near you? It's a really good way to go and catch 100 more of something to train up, and it sounds like nests are able to be found around most areas at least.

I won't deny that Niantic is fucking terrible at communication, like SE-level bad. It would be almost comical if it wasn't so tragic how badly they're mismanaging this game right now. All they would need to do is appoint someone a community manager and tweet out updates once a day about what the team is doing or even just basic acknowledgement that they hear the greivances. It's like they want to lose customers.

But it is also obvious they are working on it. The updates they have rolled out have generally been steps forward even if there are a couple issues. They already fixed two of the most annoying things for me, which was the pokemon flee bag lock issue and having to scroll all the way down to transfer a pokemon. If they could just give those people who need it some kind of radar... but unfortunately, I think that is necessarily tied up with the wristband merch that has been delayed. If they didn't have that wristband looming over their heads I don't doubt they would have implemented a better tracking system by now. It may be whoever is in charge of the wristband (Nintendo?) is to blame for this specific issue.

[Salodin]

Fwiw, some one on reddit said Niantic can't see who requested refunds, just the request for a refund since Google handles all payments. Getting a refund shouldn't be a problem.

The game is broken. Any one who suggests otherwise is in well populated areas where the problems are less noticable. Nevermind that pokemon are now attacking every two seconds, curveballs seem to be flying through 50mph winds, and bonus exp for nice, great, and excellent throws is bugging (some people report getting the bonus sporadically).

If you enjoy the game in its current state, then you do you. But the mass amount of refund requests (to the point that Apple is now refusing them), and the massive amount of negative reviews and press as of this morning say the game is in the shitter.

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[Lebzile]

bonus exp for nice, great, and excellent throws is bugging (some people report getting the bonus sporadically).

I actually just noticed this, I haven't been getting bonuses for those throws at all.

Fix one thing, break another. The cycle continues. Except I'm not quite sure what they fixed.. In fact, now that I think about it, it's a "Break one thing, Break another" cycle in this case.

[Salodin]

Yeah, idk what they actually fixed this update. Smoother animations is nice and all, but that's just polish, not a fix. Anything I actually use in the game either stayed the same or got worse.

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[Gulkeeva]

Doing some searching, it seems they are cracking down on some servers being used as a pokemon scan service

https://github.com/AHAAAAAAA/PokemonGo-Map/issues/2909

[Katlan]

Fwiw, some one on reddit said Niantic can't see who requested refunds, just the request for a refund since Google handles all payments. Getting a refund shouldn't be a problem.

The game is broken. Any one who suggests otherwise is in well populated areas where the problems are less noticable. Nevermind that pokemon are now attacking every two seconds, curveballs seem to be flying through 50mph winds, and bonus exp for nice, great, and excellent throws is bugging (some people report getting the bonus sporadically).

If you enjoy the game in its current state, then you do you. But the mass amount of refund requests (to the point that Apple is now refusing them), and the massive amount of negative reviews and press as of this morning say the game is in the shitter.

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It's dropping as fast as Nintendos stock did once people fouind out they dont make a profit off of this game

[Silenka]

Yeah, idk what they actually fixed this update. Smoother animations is nice and all, but that's just polish, not a fix. Anything I actually use in the game either stayed the same or got worse.

Since the update, I haven't had a pokeball freeze while an encounter is ending. This used to be a big problem. Is anyone still having that issue?
Also, they fixed it so the game doesnt lock you into your bag while you have it open while a pokemon is fleeing. That was a big problem for me before. The transfer button being more accessible is nice as well. And has anyone seen those weird white arrows during encounters now? Encounters seem to have had all the bugs picked out of them as well as the animations changed slightly.

So yes they fixed a lot of shit, people just like to complain.

[Salodin]

Hm, forgot about the pokeballsl freeze, it only happened a couple times in the past week so I forgot it was a thing. The freezing while in a bag I've had happened before, but my fix was to just not be in such a rush to open my bag .5 seconds faster lol.

Was transferring a problem for people? It never bothered me, but I appreciate the removal of the map on the bottom that I never used (and is useless now that they revealed that nests change).

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[Obsidian]

Doing some searching, it seems they are cracking down on some servers being used as a pokemon scan service

https://github.com/AHAAAAAAA/PokemonGo-Map/issues/2909

They're banning the popular cloud services IP ranges (Azure, AWS, ect). Surely nothing could go wrong by doing that, right?

[Not Kuno]

Since the update, I haven't had a pokeball freeze while an encounter is ending. This used to be a big problem. Is anyone still having that issue?
Also, they fixed it so the game doesnt lock you into your bag while you have it open while a pokemon is fleeing. That was a big problem for me before. The transfer button being more accessible is nice as well. And has anyone seen those weird white arrows during encounters now? Encounters seem to have had all the bugs picked out of them as well as the animations changed slightly.

So yes they fixed a lot of shit, people just like to complain.

It shouldn't take a month to fix stuff like that. Yes the servers are stable now, but there's new bugs now and the core gameplay feature is now completely removed. If it's going to be another month before the next patch/round of fixes the game is gonna crash and burn.

[Aerin]

They did fix a lot of things, which is nice, but taking away your ability to see how far away Pokemon are and forcing alternative options to shut down makes those improvements moot because for some it makes the game virtually unplayable.

Not everyone wants to, has the time, or is physically able to go around to tons of places at all hours of the day to look for these things. Things like pokevision made the game more accessible and provided a feature that was basically shown in the trailer for the game, albeit a little more advanced. Some people are fortunate enough to only have to go to one big area that has a great variety, like Central Park in NY. But that's certainly not an option for most.

Yeah you probably won't mind or care of people leave the game over this, but the developers should. Players are content in these social games, the fewer there are the less money they make.

[ronin sparthos]

If Pokemon had a rhyme or reason to spawning it'd be one thing but as it stood before Vision went down, things just popped wherever they wanted. So the idea that you needed to be in a certain environment to catch a certain Pokemon isn't supported by evidence. You could find a Magikarp on the streets landlocked or Geodudes near water. If PoGo took environments into hard consideration, there would be less complaining. And it'd be a whole different ballgame.

Want Charmanders? Go visit your local volcano.
Farm Magikarp and Omanyte at the beach!
Parks have solely Weedle, Pidgey, Ratatas.

Scanners directly benefit the players. When I was doing Central Park laps you saw tons of people running Vision, camping the next 'big' spawn, which filtered down to other people who may not have had or known about a scanner app. Know what that creates? Camaraderie. And those mad dashes for Vaporeons that make the news. Me and a random guy were running while pretending not to run for a Magneton that popped uptown. We just looked at eachother and knew what was up. Shit ran on me though.

Trying to make the game more grindy and random when this game already demands some serious battery resources is a good way to kill off your base. Calling scanners cheating is nonsensical considering you need to still track down pops. There's your old school kings. Claim before it depops!

This was a bad move and I hope another scanner pops up to replace the prominent ones because PoGo seems to forget it's competing for people's precious time.

[Salodin]

Since the update, I haven't had a pokeball freeze while an encounter is ending. This used to be a big problem. Is anyone still having that issue?
Also, they fixed it so the game doesnt lock you into your bag while you have it open while a pokemon is fleeing. That was a big problem for me before. The transfer button being more accessible is nice as well. And has anyone seen those weird white arrows during encounters now? Encounters seem to have had all the bugs picked out of them as well as the animations changed slightly.

So yes they fixed a lot of shit, people just like to complain.

Lmfao, and now that I responded to you I just froze during the wiggle animation. So much for those bug fixes =P

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[Xno Kappa]

Meh. It was fun while the novelty lasted. Can only capture so many pidgeys and rattatas before you're like, why the fuck am I even bothering with this?

[Tyrath]

Meh. It was fun while the novelty lasted. Can only capture so many pidgeys and rattatas before you're like, why the fuck am I even bothering with this?

Quit complaining and git gud scrub. This game is totally working and a perfect 5/7.

[Omniyoji]

This game is totally working and a perfect 5/7.

LOL

[Kirbyprime]

I hope you spent $3.50 on IAP then.