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[charlequin]

Hot on the heels of the update where they killed off the actual in-app tracking feature completely rather than fix it, Niantic has pushed a code change that breaks third-party trackers altogether.

Last week, Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke, the creator of Pokémon GO, hinted to FORBES that certain services that helped players locate creatures within the game may be shut down. He did not wait long to act.

On Saturday, one of the more popular services, Pokévision.com said that it was “currently unavailable.” When asked over the phone if the site would be down indefinitely, Pokévision cofounder Yangcheng Liu simply responded “it possibly could be.” He declined to comment further and would not say if the company threatened legal action against him or his site.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac...and-other-creature-finding-apps/#3bd40d693dba

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, also helpfully confirmed that he has no idea whatsoever what people were enjoying about his game:

Hanke previously told FORBES that he was “not a fan” of Pokémon locating services and hinted that a shutdown was coming.

“People are only hurting themselves because it takes some fun out of the game,” he said. “People are hacking around trying to take data out of our system and that’s against our terms of service.”

I knew something enjoyable happening in 2016 was too good to be true.

 

[TheSpoiler]

Here we go.

A battle between purists vs cheaters.

 

[jax]

RIP Pokémon GO

2016-2016

 

[E_Darkness]

Of course they don't like people taking the fun out of their game, they want to take the fun out themselves!

 

[TheWorst]

What the hell are they doing?

 

[Hieberrr]

Honestly, Pokevision made this game playable for me. If I saw something I wanted, I ran for it. I was engaged.

Now, it's become a passive game where I might just play it here and there while on public transit or something.

If anything, they should do something like this:

 

[Kouriozan]

This is the end, my friends.

 

[BoboBrazil]

Hot on the heels of the update where they killed off the actual in-app tracking feature completely rather than fix it, Niantic has pushed a code change that breaks third-party trackers altogether.



http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac...and-other-creature-finding-apps/#3bd40d693dba

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, also helpfully confirmed that he has no idea whatsoever what people were enjoying about his game:



I knew something enjoyable happening in 2016 was too good to be true.

They've also made the catch rate much lower for pokemon. You will be forced to use many more pokeballs to catch weak level pokemon and often times they flee

 

[Karspankey]

I live in the middle of nowhere dude; fix your game dammit. I only just discovered these tools exist and already they are gone. Especially confusing considering that they didn't replace the game or anything, just a broken feature in it instead. Idk how they could have been a threat.

 

[Vuze]

“People are only hurting themselves because it takes some fun out of the game,”

Meanwhile we remain incompetent and can't fix the supposed in-game tracking feature that made a lot of people resort to these sites.
Actually, let's just remove it and pretend it was never there. Have fun aimlessly running around if you live in more rural areas, idiots!

But I think the headline is not right. I just ran the map python script and it works fine, yet slowed down since they understandably limited the API access to a few seconds the other day.

 

[Khezu]

If there's no tracking then how do you play it?
Seems like it sorta defeats the purpose of the game even more then the cheating website.

 

[Lunar FC]

Of course they don't like people taking the fun out of their game, they want to take the fun out themselves!

I mean they're getting really good at doing it..

 

[clearacell]

I think this update signifies "game over"

 

[charlequin]

A battle between purists vs cheaters.

What purists? Where are these mythical people who think this is a fun game without any way whatsoever to find the Pokemon you're looking for? Pokevision filled a hole Niantic themselves created when they broke the tracking feature, I think people were largely content to use the in-game tracking and accept its limitations as long as it actually worked.

 

[daxgame]

Absolutely unnecessary in my opinion.
Maybe they want to care about chinese guys taking gyms all around the world while standing in China, first.

 

[Red]

Pokévision was practically a necessity with the broken tracker. I'm against cheating but locator apps were less cheating and more about fulfilling a need the game had not met.

 

[Jetku]

I am all for blocking of these third party sites operating against the ToS, however, the game needs to have some sort of feature to help you find local Pokemon.

As it stands today, I refuse to "hunt" for anything on my radar since it could be incredibly far away - across highways or on private property. I'll continue to play as I walk to see what I find, and hit up poke stops and gyms, but I really hope they bring in features to help me "catch em all".

 

[L95]

I didn't use these myself, but I don't really blame people for using their own tracking apps when the ingame one was removed/broken... Can I please have footsteps back?

 

[Conkerkid11]

Huh? That's not even remotely true. They just made it so that a single account can now only scan once every 5 seconds. People are just getting around that by making several accounts and scanning with all of them simultaneously.

Also, Pokevision was always garbage. Website only ever allowed one scan every 30 seconds. Meanwhile I've had an app running on my desktop all morning scanning a larger distance 6 times as frequently.

 

[Diablohead]

Honestly, Pokevision made this game playable for me. If I saw something I wanted, I ran for it. I was engaged.

Now, it's become a passive game where I might just play it here and there while on public transit or something.

I had no idea about pokevision until today, I would have been playing pokemon go a LOT MORE if I knew about it, right now I go for walks with my brother and all I catch in my area are the regular pokemon, would be nice to see what was around so I could change my walking route a little bit, you know.

Pokemon Go works better when you have some power to find pokemon, not rely on small chances.

 

[Harpuia]

On one hand, I could see why something like Pokevision hurts Pokemon Go, as it ruins the purpose of walking around and finding things. Pokevision removed a lot of the exploration surrounding Pokemon Go by telling you where and when to find the pokemon.

On the other, if other people could make the tracking functionality work better than what the game actually provides you, maybe they should get on that and fix it?

The pokedex hasn't been working at all lately, and the feature that let you see what area you found a pokemon hasn't worked for weeks now. They, uh, should probably make their game actually work they way they say they want it to!

 

[TheSpoiler]

I don't care if I'm called a cheater or if I'm ruining the meta game or whatever.

Pokevision is what made me friends. It's the thing that drew people together during the meetups. We'd group together, hit a location, and pray the RNG gods were on our side that day. Without it, we would have wandered around like a bunch of idiots and gave up.

I've even met people by ending up in the exact same location as they were searching. So now a big part of the sociability is sapped away.

 

[Superblatt]

So with the tracking features now 100% removed, what's the point of the game? You just walk around and get lucky??

 

[Ricerocket]

They remove their own tracking solution and disable other's.

Basically, you just look at your app and see if there is any on your phone and then put it away... nothing to it.

 

[JoeyJungle]

Eh I agree with him, Pokevision felt kinda too much like min/maxing to me. Takes all the fun out of finding a pokemon nearby when I know beforehand there's no chance of it being anything cool.

 

[Azerth]

So now there is noway to track pokemon

 

[Thorakai]

save us Pokemon Company

 

[Teknoman]

To be honest, they should have put actual notes in the update as to why the busted footprints were removed, but the user made apps shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

 

[lt519]

Shame, I only kept playing because the GAF created finder was a very close replica to the in-game feature and served as a decent chance to find something rare.

Not a problem if they fix the one in game, but they should have left it up until then.

 

[Adaren]

In order to prevent cheaters, break the game completely and make it impossible to actually play.

Although people were only cheating because the game was buggy and broken and impossible in the first place.

Sounds smart.

 

[funkystudent]

So right now the only way to find pokemon is to literally walk around blindly.


GG Niantic

 

[Smiles and Cries]

why is blocking those maps a bad thing?

 

[Ydelnae]

Deleting this waste of time out of my phone, then. There's no point on playing this.

 

[imjust1n]

Hot on the heels of the update where they killed off the actual in-app tracking feature completely rather than fix it, Niantic has pushed a code change that breaks third-party trackers altogether.



http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac...and-other-creature-finding-apps/#3bd40d693dba

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, also helpfully confirmed that he has no idea whatsoever what people were enjoying about his game:



I knew something enjoyable happening in 2016 was too good to be true.

How was this enjoyable? It was cheating and not even fun. IT defeats the purpose of walking around and finding pokemon. I think hes right its hacking and not even fun.

 

[MatrixMan.EXE]

Nianitc really fucking this up, aren't they? Jesus Christ.

 

[Future]

I really wish they'd describe how they want people to play this game. Walk in circles when Pokemon show up on the radar? Commute long distance for the mere chance of finding somethings something you want?

They are too stingy with their Pokemon placement to disallow trackers IMO

 

[Yukinari]

Maybe they should fix their game instead of trying to stop others attempts at fixing it for them?

 

[Anteo]

The game is dead

 

[OfficerRaichu15]

Should have gotten a better company that could handle this PC
Niantic is ruining it.

 

[anothertech]

Servers crashing cause People having too much fun in our game. Let's sht on the game till the servers cool down.

Smh

 

[Azriell]

I'm OK with this, but they should have fixed the in game tracker first. They should probably also consider including some sort of proximity based chat or tagging system, so people can communicate rare spawns to each other and further eliminate the need for 3rd party tools.

 

[Red]

How was this enjoyable? It was cheating and not even fun. IT defeats the purpose of walking around and finding pokemon. I think hes right its hacking and not even fun.

Ideally the game would feature a working tracker.

 

[jax]

I really wish TPC would take over development at this point. Niantic is 100% clueless.

 

[FZZ]

I was okay with the step counter being removed because alternatives were available

But now I am losing all interest to play the game other than visiting nest locations and leveling up mons to take down gyms

Damn shame

 

[glaringradio]

why is blocking those maps a bad thing?

It's not a bad thing, but if a third party creates something that makes your game better, you should at least have your own solution to the problem the third party solved.

In an ideal world, the tracking in-game would let you know when the pokémon are ACTUALLY nearby, as well as give you some sort of hint as to where to go to find rare pokémon. Even something like "there is a surge of rare pokémon near city hall", just to let you know where you should actually head, because wandering around aimlessly hoping for something to happen is not fun at all.

 

[RandomExpletive]

uh oh, if they don't crunch and re-implement the original tracker w/o more server strain, this game's gonna be dead in the water...

 

[TheSpoiler]

How was this enjoyable? It was cheating and not even fun. IT defeats the purpose of walking around and finding pokemon. I think hes right its hacking and not even fun.

Depends on why you played. The sociability factor was much higher in my city because of the app.

 

[E_Darkness]

How was this enjoyable? It was cheating and not even fun. IT defeats the purpose of walking around and finding pokemon. I think hes right its hacking and not even fun.

The radar is working as intended which makes the game funner.

 

[Intel_89]

This'd be good if they fixed the footprint tracker.

 

[pompidu]

Nianitc really fucking this up, aren't they? Jesus Christ.

Slowly destroying the Pokemon brand