If it worked so well why was it removed?
Whether or not Niantic is technically capable of something is irrelevant. For one, they're clearly not given that features have been entirely removed due to issues. Secondly, the choices they're making are absurd. If the beta had a functional distance tracking system, the final game should have as well. Footsteps are a bullshit arbitrary unit that just make the game less enjoyable.
I didn't say it worked well, I'm just saying it's possible and that saying they're just an incompetent developer like multiple others posts have done and then not choosing to go after them for not adequately contributing to the discussion but instead go after the people who are saying to just simmer down a bit is just weird to me. Also, I find it hard to believe the amount of people playing in the beta was at all indicative to how immensely culture changing the actual game would be. I myself participated in the beta and it worked out fine, but I imagine doing it in a larger scale with so many more people playing would make the whole distance mechanic exponentially more difficult to fix and that may have been a problem they needed more time to figure out so they just released the game with footprints instead.
Because people seem to not believe I have any issues with the game, here are my issues (which I have already touched upon in other posts, but apparently I "handwaved" them away?):
PROBLEM: Tracking - Yes, I really dislike that it's broken. I've spent hours trying to search for Pokemon through the tracking device before realizing there was a three step glitch. Hell, last week my friends and I tried to track down a Rhydon for about half an hour, all of us going in different directions. Eventually we did find it, but one of my friends and I ended up going in the opposite direction nearly half a mile away and the Rhydon was still appearing to be within three steps despite being more than a mile away in the other direction. It's frustrating. In addition, I do think Niantic should have been way more transparent about working on this and not have taken down Pokevision and similar third party apps until they got their own tracking device working.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: However, I do think that they took it down in order to stop from misleading people into thinking the tracking device still worked, so I get it. I can't imagine they just took out a core mechanic of the game because they were too lazy to fix it. Like, are you serious? Did this happen in Ingress? Did they wholesale take out entire core mechanics of the game forever? If not, then why not just wait more than a couple days to see if they actually end up fixing it?
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PROBLEM: Fucking Dragonites everywhere - Every gym is filled with Dragonites (and to a slightly lesser extent, Vaporeons) and it's so annoying. I mean, I can take them down with my Lapras pretty easily but I just dislike the lack of variety within the game. In addition, I don't have the time to farm Dratinis or go to the Dratini nests.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: I believe they tried to fix it in this update by changing the nests so there are less Dratini ones, but it sucks for people who didn't get a chance to get a Dragonite so now people with Dragonites have MORE of an advantage. So yeah, too little too late. They need to balance out the Pokemon better.
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PROBLEM: GPS spoofing - Cheating sucks. It's annoying and takes the fun out of the game.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: However, people have already stated that Niantic faced similar problems in Ingress and started banning such players. Considering their history, I would imagine they would do the same here.
Other than that, I'm still having fun with the game. I love my team, I love the people I still meet playing it, and I want to see it improve.