Pokemon Go is out now!!!

[Shiri]

That lady in the video should really come here. There's a ton of Clefairies. She'd be at a Clefable in no time. o.o;

I'm not sure how pulling Pokestops from private property is a bad thing. Its private property. People shouldn't be trespassing to begin with. :/ Though I wonder if it works both ways. Let's say you own a store, can you request Niantic to put a Pokestop on your property for business? My local stores near the stops are taking advantage of the extra advertising. xD They made signs for trainers.

 

[Kagayours]

Though I wonder if it works both ways. Let's say you own a store, can you request Niantic to put a Pokestop on your property for business?

I've heard talk about Niantic seeking sponsorship deals with various companies, and getting paid to put pokestops at their stores seems like the most obvious way to go with that.

In any case, it certainly isn't at all the same thing as requesting that stops be removed. It's not like companies can sue Niantic for not turning their place of business into a pokestop. But, if a company is willing to pay Niantic to put a stop there then, well, that's a different story. :P

 

[Boba Fit]

I do agree about some of those things in regards to stops and gyms. I was not saying they were all bad things. However, the shopping center that I mentioned was losing revenue and the poke stops brought thousands more people into the shopping center everyday. The owner released a statement saying thy didn't request them to be removed at all. In fact, they liked them because their revenue streams increased. While I just don't want to play the blame game, it is Niantics fault for putting poke stops and gyms in bad places. It is also their fault for removing them from places that wanted them.

I know they are a small company. However, that excuse doesn't make all the errors fine and dandy. They are owned by Nintendo and have made millions. They could easily hire new programmers and even get help from Nintendo.

I'm not a coder by any means, but it all just appears to be lack of knowledge. I mean, even if people are really pushing you to release an update, (Which I might add, they didn't even fix the things we were asking for. They released updates for things that were not in demand. While maybe not unnecessary to Niantic, were unnecessary to us.) you should test the update before you release it. Why? Because as demonstrated by Niantic, they just created an even bigger problem and pissed more people off.

I've seen reports that now Niantic has even axed pokeradar. You had to register with your Pokemon go account and you could use the tracker. Reports state that your account won't refresh until you log out or delete your account on poke radar.

I'm sorry for the negativity. I want to have positive things to say. I am not looking for all of these things, I am just sharing what I see in the Pokemon go groups I am apart of on Facebook. They haven't been sharing any positive things for whatever reason. If I see some, I'll be happy to share them, but I'm just passing on info for everyone in case they didn't know. If someone has seen positive things, please share them.

I wouldn't say it was a drastic change in mentality that makes me want to quit or take a break. The idea has been creeping my mind and all the issues are making it grow. The game is really becoming less fun. A big part of it was the tracking. I loved trackin down Pokemon and catching them. That is gone for now. I'm at such a high level that catching the commons like pidgeys and rats are necessary to get Xperia to level up. Now that all the xp is gone from the nice, great, and excellent throws, it makes it more difficult. Also the fact that those commons are so hard to catch, has taken the fun out and made it so much harder to level up.

I was holding out for trading and trainer battling, but all the bugs that appear from the updates make it seem like those inclusions are farther and farther away. I would like to think they are going to fix the issues before they introduce new things. With no timeline for anything g, who knows when that will be.

I kept at it because of he rewards. Even through the large amounts of redundancy. Now that more and more of the rewards are dissapearing, even if temporary, it is just zapping the fun from the game for me. With no communication about fixes coming, it isn't worth putting in the hours needed to make any way. Especially if those hours aren't enjoyable.

Even with the excuse of the game blowing up and Niantic being such a small company, no one can really argue the point of Niantic hindering the game. Whether by accident or not.

People that just started playing, may not have a problem with any of these. Which is good. But a lot of the features that kept me interested and playing, are now gone or bugged and it's just not really fun anymore.

 

[Kagayours]

I do agree about some of those things in regards to stops and gyms. I was not saying they were all bad things. However, the shopping center that I mentioned was losing revenue and the poke stops brought thousands more people into the shopping center everyday. The owner released a statement saying thy didn't request them to be removed at all. In fact, they liked them because their revenue streams increased. While I just don't want to play the blame game, it is Niantics fault for putting poke stops and gyms in bad places. It is also their fault for removing them from places that wanted them.

Well then, removing them from the places that wanted them is a totally different story. But I don't know enough about what could've caused that to happen to really comment on it. :/

I thought you were saying it was a bad thing that Niantic removed stops and gyms because players were upset, even if landowners requested that they be removed (and/or threatened to sue about it).

I know they are a small company. However, that excuse doesn't make all the errors fine and dandy. They are owned by Nintendo and have made millions. They could easily hire new programmers and even get help from Nintendo.

Um... no. They are partnered with Nintendo, for this particular project, but they are certainly not owned by Nintendo. They started out under Google, but I'm pretty sure they technically aren't even owned by them anymore.

I don't know enough about business to say whether or not them "asking Nintendo for help" is really a thing that's possible for them.

What I do know is, they are currently hiring. But who knows how long it'll take for them to hire enough staff to really catch up with all the work there is to be done.

I'm not a coder by any means, but it all just appears to be lack of knowledge. I mean, even if people are really pushing you to release an update, (Which I might add, they didn't even fix the things we were asking for. They released updates for things that were not in demand. While maybe not unnecessary to Niantic, were unnecessary to us.) you should test the update before you release it. Why? Because as demonstrated by Niantic, they just created an even bigger problem and pissed more people off.

Even if they "test" an update, they might not have time to catch every little thing that went wrong. It looks like most of the bugs that were added recently are things that are subtle -- something you might not catch right away. Pokemon becoming harder to catch in particular is something that doesn't immediately scream "glitch" if you're just trying to quickly test the game out so that you can release an update. If whatever small group of people tested the update had a hard time catching certain pokemon for the amount of time that they were testing it, then that could easily be attributed to just plain bad luck.

Yeah, obviously it's easier to see that something is different once you have millions of people playing the game, but... that's not what they have. If they're under a ton of pressure to get bug fixes out, and they don't have a huge staff to test an update (or much time to do so), then it's easy to see how these subtler things can be missed.

I've seen reports that now Niantic has even axed pokeradar. You had to register with your Pokemon go account and you could use the tracker. Reports state that your account won't refresh until you log out or delete your account on poke radar.

Uh... wait, what's pokeradar? Are we talking about the tracker in the game, or something else?

I'm sorry for the negativity. I want to have positive things to say. I am not looking for all of these things, I am just sharing what I see in the Pokemon go groups I am apart of on Facebook.

It's one thing to just share bad news about a glitch or a stupid decision on Niantic's part, but, tbh, it seems like nearly every post from you is just a lot of ranting about how bad and frustrating everything is... Like, ok, yeah, sharing info is one thing, but like,

It's like having a crackhead woman whose body is destroyed from years of hardcore drugs. Giving here complete plastic surgery to where she now looks like a model. Yet, doing nothing about the drug addiction. So she just looks pretty, while her actual body is still wasting away with shit underneath the beauty..........

Shit like this just seems a bit... excessive.

If someone has seen positive things, please share them.

Well, I thought that Niantic actually making an effort to communicate with people was a positive thing. But you seemed to have a negative reaction to that, too. And you never responded to the post where I explained why I thought it was a good thing...

But anyway, as far as "positive things" go, I'd just love it if people could share their fun Pokemon Go stories here... like I said, I often don't bother just because reading all the negativity just puts a damper on my mood, so I really don't feel like being all like "oh and uh I caught a Wartortle today... that's cool, right? Yeah..." despite being eager to share just moments prior.

Why can't we be more like @Razillin? He was so happy just to catch a Raticate. What much-needed positivity.

Even with the excuse of the game blowing up and Niantic being such a small company, no one can really argue the point of Niantic hindering the game. Whether by accident or not.

I never said that they weren't hindering it. I just think that A) they aren't an awful company just because of their faults, and B) I feel like some of the complaints directed at them are a bit excessive, and I sympathize with them in some cases as I think that the sort of thing that some people are demanding of them is a bit much to ask of a small company.

In any case

I'm sorry if you no longer enjoy the game. I'm just surprised at the sudden change of opinion from you, since, when I first went on my "I still enjoy playing the game" spiel, you seemed to be right there with me. And, in any case, I for one do still enjoy playing the game. I still want to catch 'em all -- I guess that's the big thing that's really keeping me around. But, in general, I just have a lot of fun going out and catching cool things. I like walking out to the busier areas where there's a lot going on. There are always so many goals in mind -- gyms to take over, pokemon to evolve, evolution sprees to do, things to catch, things that are left to find, eggs to hatch -- plus, I really like watching my level go up.

Yeah, things are harder to catch, which is annoying. Yeah, you can't really track pokemon anymore (although that broke a pretty long time ago, and I've long since adjusted the way I play the game), but... I still enjoy it. And, well... I hope I'm not alone in saying that. Otherwise this will become a very sad and lonely thread. :/

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

I was starting to play Pokemon GO less and less (minus ConBravo) for a while now. Leveling up more seems to punish you more than anything (Less likely to get balls at stops compared to potions, pokemon run away more etc). However, I was thinking "Ok, Niantic clearly got over eager. They rushed a game, I'll wait for some updates".

But these "bug fixes" are only making the game worse, which will only delay the updates the game desperately needs because these bugs will need to be actually fixed first. And on top of that, the longer updates take, the more players will get impatient and quit, which makes Niantic less likely to update the game. And all these "bug fixes" compound that, in both the updates being slowed testing more players patience and that many people will quit just over the bugs alone.

(Quoting Kaga's post here cause it's relevant)

Also, I would like to once again emphasize that this is a very small company working on a very big game. You want to complain about their bad PR? Fine, that's understandable and I'll totally agree with you on all that. Even with how busy they are, it can't be too hard to just write decent patch notes. BUT, when it comes to actually fixing the game? They are a small team, and I'm sure they're under massive pressure to get these bug fixes out as quickly as they can. All that being said, it's really unsurprising that these rushed bug fixes create more bugs. They only have so many programmers, who can only work so quickly.

The way I see it, you either get rushed updates that break other things, or you get no updates for quite a while, making the player-base continue to rage and think that Niantic's just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and ignoring these bugs -- or just demanding that they work faster. You can't have it both ways, folks.

Now I understand that Niantic is a small company, but they were NOT planning for a small game. They knew fully well Pokemon GO was going to be a hit, not at the level it ended up being but big enough they should have certainly gotten themselves a bigger team BEFORE releasing the game. The fact their now overwhelmed is basically on them (well, Niantics head. The rest of workers probably have it pretty awful right now).

And really, this games main hype? The thing that keeps it alive? It's two things (because let's be honest, the gameplay is non-existent).

1. Nostalgia
Which slowly wares off over time. They NEED the above mentioned updates to keep this audience in or else eventually they'll see the game for what it is and drop it.

2. Socialisation
Which honestly is very circumstantial. City folks will see this a lot, Sub-Urban folks not as much, and Rural people have practically no chance. And this is even assuming the people that you do find are social, and aren't one of those drones who simply camp at poke lures, or in their car at a Gym to constantly retake it. And for those who do actually benefit from this, they're going to get it less and less the more people leave due to "Bug Fixes" or simply due to a lack of updates. And the more that happens the more players you'll find leaving just cause it ceases to be social.

So yea... Unless if Niantic get's their act together, like now, I foresee Pokemon GO dying out very quickly. Like, it will be seen as an ancient relic by September quickly.

And personally I'm already one of those players who could be seen as leaving. Cause I don't really intend to put any more time into this game until something new comes out. Not fixes, but something new.

People take up pick-up/drop-off parking just to battle the gym, and come wandering through the facility to catch Pokemon.

wandering through the facility to catch Pokemon.

...

The complete lack of awareness/common decency some people who use Pokemon GO have astounds me. o_o

Like, people complaining about Pokemon GO in say a memorial or museum? I can maybe get that, it's seen as offensive or disrespectful to some people. But in truth people likely use their phones at such places all the time.
But Hospitals? Where people are actually working? Where it's already crowded? Where the work literally determines peoples lives!?

How the hell did ANYONE not have the ability to stop for a second and go "You know what... Maybe I shouldn't disrupt these people over a video game".

This might sound a bit rude/cold. With cases like this I'm willing to bet a number of the people that swarmed Pokemon and love the social aspect so much were those who lacked any sort of social life otherwise, and as a result probably lacked the common sense or knowledge to realise such things to begin with (and I know I'm likely shitting a ton of fellow Autistic people here... But Hospitals? Really!?).

seemed like a ploy to squeeze more money out of players, as making pokemon harder to catch would mean that players would run out of pokeballs faster and would be more likely to buy extras.

Seemed like? :P

And honestly, if players are really upset that certain stops/gyms are gone, they should take it up with the owners of that land who demanded that the stops/gyms be removed. And then hopefully they'll learn that the world is a bit more complex than they at first believed.

Unlikely. If these people are low/clueless/idiotic enough to be complaining about such places wanting to be able to keep functioning. They're not going to listen when explained reality, they're going to plug their ears and cry because the business isn't giving in to what they want.

Though I wonder if it works both ways. Let's say you own a store, can you request Niantic to put a Pokestop on your property for business? My local stores near the stops are taking advantage of the extra advertising. xD They made signs for trainers.

This is honestly something that won't just be nice, but NEEDS to happen.

For two reasons.

1. Sub-Urban and Rural areas. They might have nearly as many people are cities per instance, but overall they'll make up a rather large portion of Pokemon GO's user base. These people are going to be the first to go cause of a lack of Gyms and Poke Stops (and by extension, Pokemon) to keep the game engaging for them.

2. The anger at those we do have being removed, that's going to send people away right then and there if they don't get other, more legitimate stops to make up for it.

 

[Kagayours]

@Gwazi Magnum Yes, "seemed like", because I didn't realize at that point in time that it was only a glitch and not an intentional design feature. >.> If it's a glitch, then it's not a money-squeezing technique. It only seemed like one when I was unaware that it was a glitch.

Anyway!! As stated, I still enjoy the game, I still want to catch 'em all, and, I hate to do this, but, like, those of you who don't even want to play the game anymore... can you please not post here?

Spreading news is one thing, but just general negativity and posts such as "the game will be an ancient relic by September" just feels overly pessimistic. I created this thread out of excitement for the game. Most of my early posts were excitement over the game. I created this thread so that people could talk about playing the game.

And because playing the game means that you'll have to deal with glitches, shitty servers, etc, it's understandable that topics such as these would come up, so I'm not saying you can't criticize Niantic at all, but like... if you've decided you don't even want to play the game, then I could do without the excessive pessimism. Like I said, it kind of brings down the tone of the whole thread. >_>

If you want to make a "Pokemon Go sucks and Niantic is a dog turd" thread then be my guest. I can easily avoid it when I'm not in the mood for such negativity. I just don't want to do that to my own thread...

 

[Shiri]

I've heard talk about Niantic seeking sponsorship deals with various companies, and getting paid to put pokestops at their stores seems like the most obvious way to go with that.

In any case, it certainly isn't at all the same thing as requesting that stops be removed. It's not like companies can sue Niantic for not turning their place of business into a pokestop. But, if a company is willing to pay Niantic to put a stop there then, well, that's a different story. :P

It would definitely benefit both parties. The advertising would work both ways and pay for itself. :D

Last week I stayed at a hotel that had a ton of Pokestops in a nature reserve behind it. Trainers were catching Pokemon and learning about the environment they were in. I'd like to see more of that.

In other news, I might be able to get me hands on a smartphone soon so I won't have to steal my friends phones to play.

 

[Kagayours]

Also!! I should mention that I went to a convention this past weekend where I essentially won prizes for being good at Pokemon Go. :P

There was this thing going on where they would say "who has [pokemon species name]?" and then, out of the people who did have it, whoever had the highest CP with that pokemon would win a prize.

I was one of the people who was quickly banned from playing because I was too good, and they wanted to give other people a chance. XD Although they did emphasize that I was still allowed to shout out what I had and make other people feel jealous. I just wouldn't be able to win any more prizes. :P

So, what did I win? A power bank (which is a lot more convenient to use than the one I currently have, and seems like it can store more power, too), 24 assorted Pokemon cards, and a bunch of raffle tickets, which later won me more things. OwO

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

make a "Pokemon Go sucks and Niantic is a dog turd" thread

Ok.

 

[Razilin]

Ok.

oh

 

[LunaValentine]

A new update just came out. They fixed the "Nice" "Great" and "Excellent" Exp glitch, added power-saving mode back to iOS, you can change your nickname ONCE, added a thing to indicate that you are not the driver if going over a certain speed, and other fixes (<- these are probably misc. fixes that no one's been super vocal about or possibly minor tweaks no one will notice that much). Also hatched a Machoke today!

 

[Sidhe]

A new update just came out. They fixed the "Nice" "Great" and "Excellent" Exp glitch, added power-saving mode back to iOS, you can change your nickname ONCE, added a thing to indicate that you are not the driver if going over a certain speed, and other fixes (<- these are probably misc. fixes that no one's been super vocal about or possibly minor tweaks no one will notice that much). Also hatched a Machoke today!

Oh thank goodness. All the names I wanted were taken so I got frustrated and used 'LazyLamia,' but then realized a lot of people I knew wouldn't know what a lamia was and it would be a bit awkward explaining it to them... that means I can change it to something less strange now. >.> Happy about these fixes. Nice. Just kind of disappointed that the catch rate bug hasn't been fixed yet, but that will come in time.

 

[Kagayours]

A new update just came out. They fixed the "Nice" "Great" and "Excellent" Exp glitch, added power-saving mode back to iOS, you can change your nickname ONCE, added a thing to indicate that you are not the driver if going over a certain speed, and other fixes (<- these are probably misc. fixes that no one's been super vocal about or possibly minor tweaks no one will notice that much). Also hatched a Machoke today!

Wow, all that sounds pretty awesome! I'll have to check all that out later. o.o

 

[Sidhe]

'Nearby' Pokemon has been changed to 'sightings' and also Pokemon now have grass around them. ... I don't know what that means, but all right.

Also apparently my go-to name is also taken ??? YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME THAT NAME IS NEVER TAKEN ANYWHERE 8|

 

[LunaValentine]

'Nearby' Pokemon has been changed to 'sightings' and also Pokemon now have grass around them. ... I don't know what that means, but all right.

Also apparently my go-to name is also taken ??? YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME THAT NAME IS NEVER TAKEN ANYWHERE 8|

That grass in there is kinda cute. It looks like an indicator maybe of common areas that the particular pokemon is found in. Would make sense. Guess I'll have to wait and see until I get to work tomorrow! (I work near a river so during lunch I catch a lot of water pokemon)

 

[Kagayours]

I'd also like to take a moment to appreciate these patch notes. For example:

We're currently testing a variation of the "Nearby Pokemon" feature with a subset of users. During this period you may see some variation in the nearby Pokemon UI.

Do you see what's nice about this? It tells us what they're planning. It tells us what to expect. This is a huge improvement over just saying something like "removed footprints" without telling us why they were removed, like in their previous patch notes.

This shows that they're really trying to get better at communicating with their player-base, and listening to criticisms by improving their patch notes. I am now incredibly hopeful for the future. I mean, I was hoping that Niantic would get their act together at some point, but they're improving their behavior a lot faster than I expected of them. Which is a really good thing!

Similarly,

Resolved issues with the battery saver mode and re-enabled this feature

I had a feeling that the reason why battery saver mode was removed was because of the glitches that it had before. And while it would've been nice if they told us that they were planning on fixing it back when it was actually removed, it's still nice that they did finally tell us that that's what they were doing.

I'm just really happy about this update, and really looking forward to future ones now. OwO

 

[Kagayours]

Woah! The "sightings" thing seems to be able to refresh really quickly, and it no longer leaves old Pokemon hanging around there...

I didn't plan on going out again today, but, man, I gotta test this update out. o.o

 

[Sidhe]

Woah! The "sightings" thing seems to be able to refresh really quickly, and it no longer leaves old Pokemon hanging around there...

I didn't plan on going out again today, but, man, I gotta test this update out. o.o

Yeah, I read this on the update thread in the Pokemon Go subreddit:

1. It scans the area around you roughly every ~15 ~10 seconds (EDIT: Did more testing this is closer to 10 seconds)
2. Any new pokemon that spawn on this scan will be added to the sightings list.
3. If a pokemon despawns it will be removed from the sightings list.
4. If you move too far away from a pokemon it will be removed from the sightings list.
5. Any pokemon that you move within 700 ft (200 m) of on this scan will be added to the sightings list. (EDIT IN: this was already known but I figured I would make sure it was added in as the counterpart to 4.)

On number 4 I found this distance to be around ~700 feet (~200 meters) (which is what I believe the 3 step max use to be).

 

[Kagayours]

O_O I fucking LOVE this new tracking system. For the first time in a good long while, I actually felt like I was tracking Pokemon.

When I saw a Pokemon disappear from my list, I would try walking back in the direction that I came from, and it came back -- and I was able to use this to try to figure out where it was. Just like with the original tracking feature. I admit it's not nearly as precise as the original tracker, but, holy shit, it is still a vast improvement over the broken radar we had up until this point.

Honestly it's the responsiveness of it that's really good. Even before the "three footprints glitch", I still recall having issues with the radar being too slow to update, so that I'd think I was walking closer to a pokemon, only to already be way out of range by the time the radar finally updated. And after the three footprints glitch, the radar became even more useless, because things were definitely not disappearing after they despawned or after you walked too far away.

Now, though, I feel like I can trust that when the radar says something's nearby, it's actually nearby. I can use my radar to track pokemon down. Up until this point, I had to take everything that the radar said with a grain of salt -- but now, I feel like I can actually trust it. And did I mention I can actually track Pokemon?? Because I did. I did just now. I used the in-game radar to figure out where a pokemon was and captured it. And it felt so good. OwO

Honestly I am really happy with this, and it seems like Niantic's not even finished with what they have planned for how this will work. I'm really looking forward to how this will work when they're finished. I know I was sort of a lone optimist before, but now I feel like I have a really good reason to be hopeful. OwO

 

[LunaValentine]

O_O I fucking LOVE this new tracking system. For the first time in a good long while, I actually felt like I was tracking Pokemon.

When I saw a Pokemon disappear from my list, I would try walking back in the direction that I came from, and it came back -- and I was able to use this to try to figure out where it was. Just like with the original tracking feature. I admit it's not nearly as precise as the original tracker, but, holy shit, it is still a vast improvement over the broken radar we had up until this point.

Honestly it's the responsiveness of it that's really good. Even before the "three footprints glitch", I still recall having issues with the radar being too slow to update, so that I'd think I was walking closer to a pokemon, only to already be way out of range by the time the radar finally updated. And after the three footprints glitch, the radar became even more useless, because things were definitely not disappearing after they despawned or after you walked too far away.

Now, though, I feel like I can trust that when the radar says something's nearby, it's actually nearby. I can use my radar to track pokemon down. Up until this point, I had to take everything that the radar said with a grain of salt -- but now, I feel like I can actually trust it. And did I mention I can actually track Pokemon?? Because I did. I did just now. I used the in-game radar to figure out where a pokemon was and captured it. And it felt so good. OwO

Honestly I am really happy with this, and it seems like Niantic's not even finished with what they have planned for how this will work. I'm really looking forward to how this will work when they're finished. I know I was sort of a lone optimist before, but now I feel like I have a really good reason to be hopeful. OwO

hurrah! I might be able to track some awesome shit at work!