73 replies to this topic

[Daniel]

The second day it was out I took the gym across the freeway from me at the library. Apparently someone didn't like my character name AdolfHitler and reported it as hours later I got an email saying I had to choose a new one.

[NoeL]

I decided to save up a bunch of commons (pidgeys, caterpies, weedles, ratattas, zubats) as well as purposely not evolve certain Pokemon (e.g. I had the candy to evolve a bulbasaur but didn't have ivysaur in my Pokedex yet). Once I hit level 15 and got another lucky egg as a reward I activated it and did some hardcore evolving: with the double XP bonus I got 2000xp for each new Pokemon (500xp for evolving, 500xp for adding a new Pokedex entry, x2 for egg bonus) and 1000xp for each of my many commons I could evolve into their second form. Jumped from level 15 to 18 in half an hour.

[Russ]

So Pokemon Go recently updated. Rather than fix the three step bug, they removed the ability to track Pokemon all together. They also shutdown all online services that let you track them. Instead of fixing the map issue, they removed it. Instead of fixing the buggy Power Saver Mode, they removed it. They also broke some animation and made the menus laggier.

Suffice it to say I'm very, very unhappy with all this and probably not playing unless they start adding these features back. I've never seen a company remove a game's central mechanic rather than fix a bug with it before.

[David]

Yeah... I'm fairly unhappy as well. It's pretty lazy of them to remove buggy features just because it might take some effort to fix them.

 

I'll probably keep playing the game with my friends, though, since it's still fun.

[Shane]

Do you think they might re-add them when they're fixed? I agree that it's pretty lazy otherwise.

[Russ]

One can only hope. For now though, it's nearly pointless to play. Pokemon are pretty sparse in my town, so if I can't track them with the game or see them on a map, I basically have to wander town aimlessly for hours, which is dumb.

[David]

I feel like a lack of communication has also really got some people upset. Niantic not communicating on why it changed/removed certain features makes it difficult for the community to understand why changes were made at all as we have to guess the reasons. I feel an explanation on why they removed the tracking, amongst other things, would really help because maybe they actually had a legit reason to remove certain features altogether.

 

Also, does anyone else feel like Pokemon are running away a lot more frequently after this update? I kinda get the feeling that they run away way more than before for some reason. If they indeed do that, it makes the game way too difficult since it can already be hard to find Pokemon in the first place.

[Russ]

How often they run away is based off your level, to a certain extent. I have heard complaints of them running away very frequently though, as well as some people saying the break out rate has been increased. Possibly in an effort to drive up microtransactions for pokeball purchasing.

[Gleeok]

When will people realize that they are the pokepeople and Ninantic actually catching them? http://qz.com/741117...over-3-billion/

[NoeL]

How often they run away is based off your level, to a certain extent. I have heard complaints of them running away very frequently though, as well as some people saying the break out rate has been increased. Possibly in an effort to drive up microtransactions for pokeball purchasing.

Yep, it's just your standard F2P anti-consumer bullshit which is why I'll never buy anything on Pokemon Go. At least they don't have ads though! And the pay2win aspects are pretty minimal, so it's a less egregious example of anti-consumerism, but that's like saying it's a less smelly turd.

 

 

When will people realize that they are the pokepeople and Ninantic actually catching them? http://qz.com/741117...over-3-billion/

People realise, but why care? Niantic made a popular game that people enjoy playing so they deserve the fruits... to an extent. Again, I don't like the anti-consumerism, but people are free to spend their money on whatever they want.

 

 

So Pokemon Go recently updated. Rather than fix the three step bug, they removed the ability to track Pokemon all together. They also shutdown all online services that let you track them. Instead of fixing the map issue, they removed it. Instead of fixing the buggy Power Saver Mode, they removed it. They also broke some animation and made the menus laggier.

Suffice it to say I'm very, very unhappy with all this and probably not playing unless they start adding these features back. I've never seen a company remove a game's central mechanic rather than fix a bug with it before.

At least you can recustomise your trainer! There's a few new outfit options too. But yeah, removing a central mechanic is pretty disgusting (it's not as if the game itself hasn't always been lackluster though). Better than the app crashing every minute!

[Anthus]

I'm not surprised they got rid of Pokevision. It was neat but felt kind of like cheating. I did find a Magmar with it though.

You can also fully customize your character at any time which is cool. I suspect they will fix in game tracking with time, at least I hope. I'm about to go meet my friend at the park for a bit. He said the park is raining Scythers right now.

Edit: No Scyther yet but I caught a pretty strong Dewgong.

[Russ]

So they had a two star rating on the app store earlier. This called for pushing out an update. All it did was remove fast scrolling (it was another bugged feature, and we all know how Niantic solves bugs), but that's not the point. On iOS, only reviews for the most recent update are shown by default, so it was an effort to purge the bad reviews. No such update came for Android, which has no feature like that.

Now they're at one and a half stars cuz of all the angry people plus a wave of new people made at the censorship attempt. This is shaping up to be a fantastic PR nightmare.

[NoeL]

Edit: No Scyther yet but I caught a pretty strong Dewgong.

I got a Scyther yesterday! First one I've ever seen in the game so it must be pretty rare.

 

 

I'm not surprised they got rid of Pokevision. It was neat but felt kind of like cheating. I did find a Magmar with it though.

What's a Pokevision?

[Russ]

It was a site that let you view Pokemon's exact location on a map. Developed around the time the three step glitch started so that people could actually play the game. There's a similar tool developed for android now, but apparently it will only work on Androids, and Niantic could possible shut it down too.

[Anthus]

I was using Pokevision on Android before it got canned but it seemed kind of laggy. I have a first gen Moto E so it's a miracle it even works at all.

 

As for the tracking, again, as random as it is when and where Pokemon appear, it's kind of a moot point. It would be nice to know what's nearby, and how far it is, but you could also assume anything is nearby. I feel like more rare Pokemon show up if you are out and about, and not just sitting in one place. Either way though, I agree that removing a feature entirely is not the best way to fix it, unless it is a bigger problem, and they have to spend more time on it, but don't want to take the game completely down to fix it.