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[Obscuritas]

Maybe you have fun catching commons, but everyone I meet playing this game pretty much hates it. My family, whom I play with quite often also hates it and it kills the desire to play the game that often.

The game even goes against all the lore and mythos that Pokemon has built up over the years. You could NEVER get a Pokemon like Pikachu, Clefairy or Jigglypuff from an egg. It's literally impossible in the regular games. They hatch as Pichu, Cleffa and Igglybuff respectfully. And before you say they haven't added Gen II yet, they probably should have just not had those Pokemon obtainable from eggs.

Not to mention all the different Pokemon that only evolve from trading or other means. I don't think it would have been too hard to include the evolution stones for some evolutions either.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Wasn't the footprints broken anyway?

Also, I believe you're still able to track pokemons if you just use the nearby tab. The top row of pokemon are the closest to you, so just walk in a direction and see them swap places. If the pokemon falls to the rows below you're walking in the wrong direction.

According to the server dumps, the order is now randomised.

 

[Gravy Boat]

Yes, Rattatas pop up. I have currently 20.
Maybe the problem that you all dont understand what kind of Pokemon pop up in areas that are not big citys.
Alone in the standard location of Pokevision, Santa Monica Pier and the streets around, more Pokemon spawned them in my whole town (and lets not even talk about which pokemon spawn. I was baffled to see what could pop up in the wild). And its not a small village, its one of the bigger towns of the area. Pokevision was useful to at least get an idea where its worth the time to go.

When you life in a big city and every couple of meters something spawns, then you dont need this, but in the rural areas Pokemon Go is pointless now.

I don't live in a big city. I live in a pretty small town. But I still see a lot more than just rattatas.

You mentioned using Pokevision to see where was worth going and that's just the opposite of how I play it. I play it when I have to go somewhere, I don't go somewhere to play it. So far I'm sitting on 60 caught in my pokedex.

 

[Moral Panic]

Sure. Keep it at 15 or shorten it to 10. Keep these pokemon rare and reward people that are actively out and about looking for pokemon.

I don't like when these apps are designed for instant gratification. Make it a fucking challenge.

The problem is that every area doesn't have a chance to spawn most Pokemon. There are 143 Pokemon but you are in a very good area if you regularly see 14 different species. How is it fair that someone who lives near the Santa Monica Bay can see such a variety of rare and powerful poikemon but the vast majority of the playerbase will never?

For me that is the killer. Without Pokevision telling me X place spawns this Pokemon semi regularly so check here after work or Y are occasionally spawns this Pokemon so organise some friends to go there on the weekend then a lot of the joy of the game for me is gone. Going with friends, seeing a Pokemon with 1 min on the timer and doing a mad dash to get there is fun! But that is almost completely taken away now.

Which is fair enough if they don't want that to be the way the game is played, but they have replaced it with absolutely nothing. Nearby tracker has been PROVEN to be useless and instead of communicating what their plans are for catching Pokemon are they remove any indication that they plan on fixing it.

 

[Weltall Zero]

It wasn't working properly, they removed the UI. It is obviously an intended feature since they had it on launch.

Maybe a little too early to light the torches. Some people seem really entitled in here.

I was going to silently disagree until you used the fucking E word. Get outta here with that shit, especially defending a company that maintains unacceptably zero communication with its (often paying) customers about anything, including any future plans concerning a crucial feature that was working at launch and removed without any explanation.

That many haven't paid a dime for the app doesn't mean others haven't, and they have every damn right to ask what the hell is going on. Your anti-consumer, corportate defending stance is as nauseating as Niantic's silence.

 

[Zafir]

Ordering is probably based on how they have Pokespawns organized in their database, might be related to what S2 cells they are in. All I can say for certain is that the second closest Pokemon to me according to my Pokemap is a Rhyhorn and it's on the bottom row.

(It is also on the fourth closest Pokespawn, so even if there were Pokemon in all of them, the Rhyhorn still shouldn't have been at the bottom)

Is that having forcibly refreshed the list(ie shutting and reopening the app)?

Otherwise I guess it's possible it's just been coincidentally convenient for me in the past.

 

[veloxStrix]

The game already relied on outside factors - the social aspect of hunting Pokemon together - to be any fun at all. Without the Tracker, especially since it was removed post-launch, I see the casual fanbase moving on. I've already went back to Granblue and VOEZ as far as mobile games go.

 

[ZAMtendo]

Just tweet/contact them, and delete the app until they fix it.

Contacting them is fine but delete the app? That would be stupid. How do I know if they will ever fix it? The fact that they haven't said anything may mean they will never fix it.

I'll just have to play a MUCH less enjoyable game which sucks. If only Nintendo developed/directed this..

 

[LunaticHigh]

I don't live in a big city. I live in a pretty small town. But I still see a lot more than just rattatas.



You mentioned using Pokevision to see where was worth going and that's just the opposite of how I play it. I play it when I have to go somewhere, I don't go somewhere to play it. So far I'm sitting on 60 caught in my pokedex.

You're lucky then. Where I live the streets are so far apart at times it takes too long to find stuff.

You can't really do it without driving. Poke vision let you know a general area to go. We still had to find the Pokemon when we got there.

Bottom line, people need to stop defending Niantic on this. Without it, the game is fundamentally broken. And unplayable for a very large number of people.

Remember, we don't want to use poke vision, we want Niantic to fix the game, it was only a temporarily solution until they did. Niantic don't think the game shouldn't have a tracker they just are not able to fix their broken game right now for whatever reason.

Hopefully they'll get it right.

 

[Weltall Zero]

You two can't understand Pokemon Go being a walking and social situation enhancer? Drives conversation, adventure, bonding. Even if you just catch commons, at least you had fun together doing it.

Perhaps it's you who shouldn't tell people what Pokemon Go is or isn't, or how it should or shouln't be played? It's pretty obviously a lot of things to different people and designed that way from the ground up; much like regular Pokemon games which can be played as lighthearted RPGs or super-serious, math-intensive, competitive versus games. Go takes it to the extreme allowing people to skip fighting altogether, but also letting people dive as deep as they want into the gym metagame.

The fact that the games support all those play styles is a credit to their design; discounting any of them as the "wrong" way to play is shortsighted.

 

[ramparter]

I walked 3 miles total today in 4 directons looking for a Chansey with 3 feets. It appeared all over my near by page but I never found it.

I want that Chansey!

Thats exactly why i stopped playing after two days. Felt so random to search for pokemon.

 

[Firemind]

Remember, we don't want to use poke vision, we want Niantic to fix the game, it was only a temporarily solution until they did.

LOL guaranteed people would still use it if they fixed the tracker.

 

[Jarsonot]

I was going to silently disagree until you used the fucking E word. Get outta here with that shit, especially defending a company that maintains unacceptably zero communication with its (often paying) customers about anything, including any future plans concerning a crucial feature that was working at launch and removed without any explanation.

That many haven't paid a dime for the app doesn't mean others haven't, and they have every damn right to ask what the hell is going on. Your anti-consumer, corportate defending stance is as nauseating as Niantic's silence.

It is acceptable behavior. Millions are accepting it. I'm not defending THEM as much as condemning YOU for being entitled and thinking you determine what the company does. You don't. They make the rules, they decide what the game is. What you get to do is vote with your wallet. That's how the silent hand of the economy works. Voting with your wallet is extremely PRO-consumer.

If it's such a crucial part of the game I guess you're predicting that the game dies off in the next week? You're right - we disagree.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Even just GPS bouncing between pokestops and gyms gives spoofers a massive advantage over everyone else.

Going after fairly harmless trackers rather than people actually breaking the game is fucked up.

Unfortunately true, but there is little they can do about GPS spoofing without also risking banning people with fickle GPS. My tablet (when it can get a fix at all) tends to bounce me all over the place (often in the middle of literally nowhere, or the sea). Their options are pretty much investing time and money in developing heuristics to detect bots (which usually only leads to smarter bots being developed), or being able to detect those bots running (which I'm not sure is even possible on Android/iOS, and would again just lead to stealthier bots).

It is acceptable behavior. Millions are accepting it. I'm not defending THEM as much as condemning YOU for being entitled and thinking you determine what the company does. You don't. They make the rules, they decide what the game is. What you get to do is vote with your wallet. That's how the silent hand of the economy works. Voting with your wallet is extremely PRO-consumer.

If it's such a crucial part of the game I guess you're predicting that the game dies off in the next week? You're right - we disagree.

Telling people to shut up and vote with their wallet is the fucking 101 of anticonsumer practices, and that's even in cases when said consumers haven't already paid and are getting their product changed for the worse without explanation. Again, fucking get out of here with that shit.

I'm actually less angry at you for your indescribably shitty beliefs than for insulting my intelligence with that argument. You know what? You don't deserve being banned for, so welcome to my ignore list.

 

[New002]

Perhaps it's you who shouldn't tell people what Pokemon Go is or isn't, or how it should or shouln't be played? It's pretty obviously a lot of things to different people and designed that way from the ground up; much like regular Pokemon games which can be played as lighthearted RPGs or super-serious, math-intensive, competitive versus games. Go takes it to the extreme allowing people to skip fighting altogether, but also letting people dive as deep as they want into the gym metagame.

The fact that the games support all those play styles is a credit to their design; discounting any of them as the "wrong" way to play is shortsighted.

Just playing devil's advocate here, but the poster you quoted was in a discussion/argument regarding pokevision, and according to the creators of the game they are not down with that and it certainly wasn't their intention for that to be a part of the game.

Other then that I agree that people can take it as seriously as they want. I have some buddies that are really hardcore about it, while I may open the app once a week to catch a weedle or something

 

[Firemind]

Unfortunately true, but there is little they can do about GPS spoofing without also risking banning people with fickle GPS. My tablet (when it can get a fix at all) tends to bounce me all over the place (often in the middle of literally nowhere, or the sea). Their options are pretty much investing time and money in developing heuristics to detect bots (which usually only leads to smarter bots being developed), or being able to detect those bots running (which I'm not sure is even possible on Android/iOS, and would again just lead to stealthier bots).

They've had experience with Ingress spoofers.

• Spoofing and botting was "allowed" at launch then bans came in waves. Initially botters were banned spoofers were warned.
• The anti cheat system was updated recently.
• They have the ability to detect GPS spoofing apps although there are some work arounds.
• People who have installed PoGO spoofing apps have been detected and banned in Ingress.
• They can tell if you are playing on a jailbroken iPhone or an Android emulator.
• They can tell if you are playing on a genuine client and not a bot program.
• In the same sense they can tell if you are using a modded client.
• You can be banned for playing the same account on 2 devices at the same time.
• The anti cheat system appears to be progressive and applies an 'abuse score' to an account once a threshold is met it is banned. Some believe this then can go down with normal behaviour and the account unbanned.
• Ingress bans appear similar to PoGO soft bans but can last hours, weeks, months or permanently.

 

[Uno Venova]

When people talk about driving away players in droves...is that actually happening? Is the usage for the game rapidly dropping? Or are they just projecting their own personal anger?

 

[PaulLFC]

It is acceptable behavior. Millions are accepting it. I'm not defending THEM as much as condemning YOU for being entitled and thinking you determine what the company does. You don't. They make the rules, they decide what the game is. What you get to do is vote with your wallet. That's how the silent hand of the economy works. Voting with your wallet is extremely PRO-consumer.

If it's such a crucial part of the game I guess you're predicting that the game dies off in the next week? You're right - we disagree.

No it isn't "acceptable" at all. Plenty of people here and elsewhere have commented on how poor Niantic's communication is - me included. In no way is anyone who questions their communication "entitled" - based on the definition of the word I'm not actually sure you know what it means when you're throwing it round in this thread:

entitled
ɪnˈtʌɪt(&#601ld/
adjective
believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.

In no way is "expecting some basic level of communication" believing oneself to be deserving of "privileges" or "special treatment" - it's just what a company should do, especially one that offers paid products and services as Niantic does within the game. Look at the reputation of Valve's customer service - companies with poor (or in Niantic's case, virtually non-existent) communication and customer service rightly get called out for it, and so they should, too.

When the developers of Pokevision, presumably coded in free time and generating little to no income, can provide up to the minute communication around server downtime etc, and a professional development company with multiple employees generating likely millions of dollars in revenue off the app can't, something is wrong, and they deserve criticism. Hiring a social media manager or two is not difficult, nor cost-prohibitive for a company generating the revenues that Niantic are at present.

 

[Obscuritas]

When people talk about driving away players in droves...is that actually happening? Is the usage for the game rapidly dropping? Or are they just projecting their own personal anger?

Obviously the latter.

 

[Lanrutcon]

Not fixing footsteps? C&Ding Pokevision?

The game is going to die even faster now.

 

[Nibel]

When people talk about driving away players in droves...is that actually happening? Is the usage for the game rapidly dropping? Or are they just projecting their own personal anger?

You know the answer, lol

 

[Zafir]

When people talk about driving away players in droves...is that actually happening? Is the usage for the game rapidly dropping? Or are they just projecting their own personal anger?

I'd say both.

The former is inevitable, there's always drop off. That said a lot of people are still playing, so there's projecting too.

 

[iKnackwurst]

They've had experience with Ingress spoofers.

-They can tell if you are playing on a jailbroken iPhone or an Android emulator.

Banning people after weeks of paying and possibly spending money just because they are jailbroken would be really stupid. They even removed part of the PoGo App code that made the App crash ob jailbroken devices in yesterdays update. Prior to that you had to trick the app into thinking the device is not jailbroken. Are there any instances of ingress players gettimg banned simply because they were jailbroken?

 

[DarknessTear]

I don't live in a big city. I live in a pretty small town. But I still see a lot more than just rattatas.



You mentioned using Pokevision to see where was worth going and that's just the opposite of how I play it. I play it when I have to go somewhere, I don't go somewhere to play it. So far I'm sitting on 60 caught in my pokedex.

What most places in my town looks like. Usually flooded with Rattata, Pidgey, Weedle. I have like 25 Pokemon and I (try) to play the game a lot. On the plus side, I evolved all three as much as I coukd. :/

 

[dity]

Perhaps it's you who shouldn't tell people what Pokemon Go is or isn't, or how it should or shouln't be played? It's pretty obviously a lot of things to different people and designed that way from the ground up; much like regular Pokemon games which can be played as lighthearted RPGs or super-serious, math-intensive, competitive versus games. Go takes it to the extreme allowing people to skip fighting altogether, but also letting people dive as deep as they want into the gym metagame.

The fact that the games support all those play styles is a credit to their design; discounting any of them as the "wrong" way to play is shortsighted.

People are saying that the game is broken because of this situation. Broken. This is despite the fact that I caught several Pokemon today and conquered a gym while having lunch. The app works perfectly fine. If the lack of Pokevision makes the game broken for you, perhaps you are playing the game wrong. After all, the game itself doesn't support that style of play.

 

[Jarsonot]

Telling people to shut up and vote with their wallet is the fucking 101 of anticonsumer practices, and that's even in cases when said consumers haven't already paid and are getting their product changed for the worse without explanation. Again, fucking get out of here with that shit.

I'm actually less angry at you for your indescribably shitty beliefs than for insulting my intelligence with that argument. You know what? You don't deserve being banned for, so welcome to my ignore list.

You want me banned for disagreeing with your entitled opinion? Just silence anyone who doesn't agree with you, eh? And putting me on your ignore list doesn't help when you read my comments anyway.

See, I'd argue that voting with your wallet is pro-consumer. The consumers dictate what they see on the market by driving the direction of the market, en masse, with their spending decisions.

What Niantic did is take away some UI for a feature that wasn't working as intended, and you're crying and swearing because they didn't fill you in on their plans. Your reactions are overblown - mountain out of a molehill.

It would certainly be nice if their patch notes were more detailed, and sure - it'd be cool if EVERY developer communicated more, but the wailing and gnashing of teeth, cries of it being ruined, predictions of doom? It's overblown

 

[NobleGundam]

Maybe you have fun catching commons, but everyone I meet playing this game pretty much hates it. My family, whom I play with quite often also hates it and it kills the desire to play the game that often.

The game even goes against all the lore and mythos that Pokemon has built up over the years. You could NEVER get a Pokemon like Pikachu, Clefairy or Jigglypuff from an egg. It's literally impossible in the regular games. They hatch as Pichu, Cleffa and Igglybuff respectfully. And before you say they haven't added Gen II yet, they probably should have just not had those Pokemon obtainable from eggs.

Not to mention all the different Pokemon that only evolve from trading or other means. I don't think it would have been too hard to include the evolution stones for some evolutions either.

This is NOT the gameboy game you want it to be. Also ppl you are so against Pokevisi or any other tracking sites are sad human beings. There's ppl out there like myself that have to travel 15 miles to work just to get to the nearest poke stop. And to find the best hotspot for Pokemon is another additional 15 miles to get to downtown. So having a trusty tracking app helps out. But hey, I don't even use it 95% of the time because they're not fully reliable and I can use the game to find them near me. Also, the whole logic of "Lore is above gameplay design" is just a sad excuse to complain. Honestly. Just enjoy the game to its full abilities that it can deliver atm.

 

[PSFan]

This is NOT the gameboy game you want it to be. Also ppl you are so against Pokevisi or any other tracking sites are sad human beings. There's ppl out there like myself that have to travel 15 miles to work just to get to the nearest poke stop. And to find the best hotspot for Pokemon is another additional 15 miles to get to downtown. So having a trusty tracking app helps out. But hey, I don't even use it 95% of the time because they're not fully reliable and I can use the game to find them near me. Also, the whole logic of "Lore is above gameplay design" is just a sad excuse to complain. Honestly. Just enjoy the game to its full abilities that it can deliver atm.

Never said I wanted it to be like the original games. Nor was I complaining about it. I was arguing against others saying it's a pure Pokemon experience like the games.

 

[Piers]

Thats exactly why i stopped playing after two days. Felt so random to search for pokemon.

This is why a lot of my friends dropped off too.
I do understand Niantic's incentive for people to collaborate on where particular Pokemon appear, but it's maybe a little naive as well. Most people wouldn't care enough to do that.

 

[Future]

This is why a lot of my friends dropped off too.
I do understand Niantic's incentive for people to collaborate on where particular Pokemon appear, but it's maybe a little naive as well. Most people wouldn't care enough to do that.

They also provide no means within the game to do it

 

[PaulLFC]

People are saying that the game is broken because of this situation. Broken. This is despite the fact that I caught several Pokemon today and conquered a gym while having lunch. The app works perfectly fine. If the lack of Pokevision makes the game broken for you, perhaps you are playing the game wrong. After all, the game itself doesn't support that style of play.

There is no "right" way to play the game. Part of the fun of games is finding new ways to do things, discovering glitches, etc. It may not be the way some people want to play, or even the way most do play it, but that doesn't mean the views of those who do use Pokevision and such can be dismissed out of hand.

The game *did* support that style of play with the Nearby tracker when it actually worked - it was more obfuscated than Pokevision, but you were able to pinpoint where a specific Pokemon was by watching the tracker and number of footprints, and walk to that location to catch the specific Pokemon you wanted. You still had to walk to places when using Pokevision, it was just more open about telling you the location of a Pokemon with less guess work involved. That's not an "invalid" way of playing, it's just a way some people enjoy, and a way some others don't. People's opinions and styles of play differ. This is one of the good things about games - they shouldn't be forced down one path of "You have to play this way", discovering new ways of play is part of the fun. I certainly enjoyed the app more when I used Pokevision than in its current state.

 

[PSFan]

They also provide be means within the game to do it

No they don't. Even without the footprints, the nearby is broken. I frequently play with my brother, niece and nephew and most of the time all four of us will each have different Pokemon on our nearby lists.

 

[Lashley]

This is probably the worst comparrison I've read on NeoGaf to date.

Feel free to enlighten me to how?

Rather than fix a problem, they've removed the entire system.

Fantastic game design.

 

[dity]

There is no "right" way to play the game. Part of the fun of games is finding new ways to do things, discovering glitches, etc. It may not be the way some people want to play, or even the way most do play it, but that doesn't mean the views of those who do use Pokevision and such can be dismissed out of hand.

The game *did* support that style of play with the Nearby tracker when it actually worked - it was more obfuscated than Pokevision, but you were able to pinpoint where a specific Pokemon was by watching the tracker and number of footprints, and walk to that location to catch the specific Pokemon you wanted. You still had to walk to places when using Pokevision, it was just more open about telling you the location of a Pokemon with less guess work involved. That's not an "invalid" way of playing, it's just a way some people enjoy, and a way some others don't. People's opinions and styles of play differ. This is one of the good things about games - they shouldn't be forced down one path of "You have to play this way", discovering new ways of play is part of the fun. I certainly enjoyed the app more when I used Pokevision than in its current state.

Pokemon Go never provided anything like Pokevision. It's not really "hunting" when you know exactly where it is and for how long.

And it is technically wrong. It's basically a MMOG and Niantic has deemed Pokevision and whatnot to be against the ToS. So yeah, it's wrong. Using the Nearby tracker wasn't wrong, but Pokevision is.

 

[NobleGundam]

Never said I wanted it to be like the original games. Nor was I complaining about it. I was arguing against others saying it's a pure Pokemon experience like the games.

I do apologize that I misread what you were saying. This whole update and tracking apps feedback I've been seeing this morning from complaints in GAF has left me in a bad mood. BUT luckily the update seems like it has improved in catching Pokemon easier. Caught a Charmander just now ^-^ didnt have him before haha

 

[Gravy Boat]

Feel free to enlighten me to how?

Rather than fix a problem, they've removed the entire system.

Fantastic game design.

You're comparing a system that was broken and totally unseable to some chipped paint on a wall. Like, that's beyond stupid. The two aren't even close to being on the same level. A wall is still 100% useable even if it had no paint whatsoever. Thinking about it for more than 3 seconds should have been enought to tell you that it was a stupid post to make. You really compared them removing a system that was completely broken, to you tearing down an entire wall because some paint got chipped. I mean my god.

Aside from that ridiculous comparrison, they removed the system because having a broken system is worse than having no system at all. A broken one leads to confusinon. You're assuming they're never going to fix it and I'd say that's a daft assumption to make. They'll put it back when they can fix it, and have removed it in the mean time to avoid confusing people who think all pokemon are 3 prints away.

 

[ymgve]

Pokemon Go never provided anything like Pokevision. It's not really "hunting" when you know exactly where it is and for how long.

Sure it is. It is just a different kind of hunting, one that a lot of people prefer.

 

[mishakoz]

No Pokemon are popping up since my update.

 

[dity]

Sure it is. It is just a different kind of hunting, one that a lot of people prefer.

And it's not supported by the game at all, quite evidently.

 

[Somnid]

This is kinda like if they removed the initial loading bar. It's not accurate or objectively useful but the perceived utility makes people think it had value that's being taken away.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

You're comparing a system that was broken and totally unseable to some chipped paint on a wall. Like, that's beyond stupid. The two aren't even close to being on the same level. A wall is still 100% useable even if it had no paint whatsoever. Thinking about it for more than 3 seconds should have been enought to tell you that it was a stupid post to make. You really compared them removing a system that was completely broken, to you tearing down an entire wall because some paint got chipped. I mean my god.

Aside from that ridiculous comparrison, they removed the system because having a broken system is worse than having no system at all. A broken one leads to confusinon. You're assuming they're never going to fix it and I'd say that's a daft assumption to make. They'll put it back when they can fix it, and have removed it in the mean time to avoid confusing people who think all pokemon are 3 prints away.

3 prints wasn't broken afaik, they just turned it off to reduce server stress. Everything required for it is still there according to server dumps.

 

[Gravy Boat]

3 prints wasn't broken afaik, they just turned it off to reduce server stress. Everything required for it is still there according to server dumps.

Regardless of why it was turned off or why it's no longer available, his comparisson was just awful.

 

[Weltall Zero]

People are saying that the game is broken because of this situation. Broken. This is despite the fact that I caught several Pokemon today and conquered a gym while having lunch.

I don't know what your personal experience has to do with anyone else's. Your personal play style is supported by what the app currently is? More power to you? You can't understand that other people's playstyles are broken by the removal of the footprints? That's entirely on you. If online play was suddenly broken in a fighting game and people were in arms about it, would you tell them to stop complaining because you play the game locally with friends?

The app works perfectly fine. If the lack of Pokevision makes the game broken for you,

Not the lack of Pokevision. The lack of paws on the nearby list. Huge difference.

perhaps you are playing the game wrong. After all, the game itself doesn't support that style of play.

People are playing the game wrong by using a functionality the game shipped with? What?

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Regardless of why it was turned off or why it's no longer available, his comparisson was just awful.

It's fine to me. There was a feature that was pretty essential to the gameplay experience, but was stressing the servers. Niantic internally decided to turn it off, without telling anyone why they had done so and leaving it to the community to figure out about a week later by using server dumps. The community, still needing this essential feature, designs their own alternative. Niantic internally decides to ban this replacement community feature and then remove all traces of the original feature remaining, again without explaining why. The fact that they removed it entirely seems to point at them having no intention of replacing it, which is again a fair conclusion if they're not going to inform us otherwise. So we've ended up in the situation where a feature the game was released with that was critical to play has been apparently permanently removed with no plans for a replacement with the community banned from finding alternatives.

The whole affair was handled atrociously. The tracker was even changed to have the Pokemon show in random order, and it doesn't clear Pokemon that have despawned properly. So right now, my tracker will show: some Pokemon that may or may not have existed in the last hour with no hint to their direction. I can't even rely on them being within 200m, because if Go last checked my Nearby list 500m away, it won't have cleared what it found then off the list if there hasn't been something new to replace them. There is no "finding" element to the game any more unless you are lucky enough to live somewhere with a sufficiently large community and sufficiently common spawn rate to crowdsource. If you don't live in one of those places, Pokemon Go is now just a pedometer with a lucky dip that spits out a Rattata or Pidgey once per hour.

 

[jax]

They should have handled this better. They removed it with no mention of when or if it'll be back (which is Niantic's problem, their communication (or rather lack of) is an embarrassment). They then also chose to intentionally break tools the community had developed in the meantime to mitigate the loss of the Nearby tracker, while still allowing GPS spoofing to go ahead with no repercussions.

This. A million times this. How are people not understanding this? People were already bored of the app before this update. This update needed to fix tracking in order to keep the hype train going. Now who's gonna play a broken game? Especially with zero ways to actually track Pokemon. No one, that's who. They took the resurgence of Pokemon and drove it right into the trash. It's terrible.

 

[Gravy Boat]

It's fine to me. There was a feature that was pretty essential to the gameplay experience, but was stressing the servers. Niantic internally decided to turn it off, without telling anyone why they had done so and leaving it to the community to figure out about a week later by using server dumps. The community, still needing this essential feature, designs their own alternative. Niantic internally decides to ban this replacement community feature and then remove all traces of the original feature remaining, again without explaining why. The fact that they removed it entirely seems to point at them having no intention of replacing it, which is again a fair conclusion if they're not going to inform us otherwise. So we've ended up in the situation where a feature the game was released with that was critical to play has been apparently permanently removed with no plans for a replacement with the community banned from finding alternatives.

The whole affair was handled atrociously. The tracker was even changed to have the Pokemon show in random order, and it doesn't clear Pokemon that have despawned properly. So right now, my tracker will show: some Pokemon that may or may not still exist with no hint to their direction. I can't even rely on them being within 200m, because if Go last checked 500m away, it won't have cleared those off the list without something new to replace them. There is no "finding" element to the game any more unless you are lucky enough to live somewhere with a sufficiently large community and sufficiently common spawn rate to crowdsource. If you don't live in one of those places, Pokemon Go is now just a pedometer with a lucky dip that spits out a Rattata or Pidgey once per hour.

None of that is even remotely the same as tearing down a wall because the paint got chipped.

 

[dity]

I don't know what your personal experience has to do with anyone else's. Your personal play style is supported by what the app currently is? More power to you? You can't understand that other people's playstyles are broken by the removal of the footprints? That's entirely on you. If online play was suddenly broken in a fighting game and people were in arms about it, would you tell them to stop complaining because you play the game locally with friends?



Not the lack of Pokevision. The lack of paws on the nearby list. Huge difference.



People are playing the game wrong by using a functionality the game shipped with? What?

Oh, my mistake, I thought you were talking about the third party solution that worked. Not the first party solution that has been broken since a few days after launch. Sorry, what play style has that broken feature cultivated exactly?

 

[Deleted member 231381]

None of that is even remotely the same as tearing down a wall because the paint got chipped.

Step-feature putting too much stress on serves = paint chip. Tearing down wall = removing all and any ability to determine the direction of a spawn.

The analogy seems fine to me. The game makes millions per day for a company with less than 40 employees, they can afford better servers.

 

[Waylon Drums]

What most places in my town looks like. Usually flooded with Rattata, Pidgey, Weedle. I have like 25 Pokemon and I (try) to play the game a lot. On the plus side, I evolved all three as much as I coukd. :/

That's incredibly accurate for my experience. Those are pretty much the only Pokemon I see around my area, except my "nearby" thingie is never that varied at any given time.

Edit: We can see why Niantic doesn't have much of a PR department, people are willing to do it for them free of charge.

 

[Gravy Boat]

Step-feature putting too much stress on serves = paint chip. Tearing down wall = removing all and any ability to determine the direction of a spawn.

The analogy seems fine to me. The game makes millions per day for a company with less than 40 employees, they can afford better servers.

It's not the same at all. Putting too much stress on the servers was causing people to disconnect and be locked out of the app very regularly. Like, several times an hour recently. Chipped paint does nothing to the performance of the wall and can be fixed in a second. It's a terrible analogy.

For that anaolgy to make anything close to sense, they would have had to remove all sprites in the game because on Pokemon was the wrong colour or something. They removed a feature that was causing severe issues with regards to stability and useabilty of the app until they figure out how to fix it, they didn't tear down core functionality because becuase of a minor aesthetic imperfection.