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Pokemon GO update removes footprints from nearby tracker

Asmodai48

Member
Great input. If you bothered to read the thread you'd see plenty of people posting who can walk plenty far around their local area and see the same 2-3 Pokemon over and over. This may sound like a novel idea to you, but everyone's experience is different depending on location. In rural areas the game is almost universally shit in terms of what Pokemon can be encountered.

I get shitloads of zubat in my area, shit happens.
 
I tried it once, back when the game first released and I was lucky enough to not be kicked off because of server problems.

Got a pidgeotto and it was fun. It was fun walking in a certain direction seeing the Pokemon get close and closer until it popped up on the screen.

And I thought that was the whole point of the game. To do that. That it was a main feature about it all.

Sucks.

I'm sure it'll be back though.

I think I'll return to the game whenever I'm driving around with friends or when the PVP/Trading update arrives.
 

Gator86

Member
Sure, I agree. Niantic appears to be dropping the ball in terms of communication. I wish they would hire a community manager but that shit takes time, and when I am assuming all of their resources are going to making the game actually work I can understand why there is a hole there. There are a ton of problems I personally have with Pokemon GO. My main point in my post however is that the tone of the discourse needs to be less vitriolic.

Why? Niantic is a commercial entity that released a product with the goal of making as much profit as possible. Unfortunately, they released a half-assed product and aren't capable of supporting it. They're not a charity or some plucky non-profit. There's never a need to be personally insulting or anything like that, but I don't see much of that on GAF anyway, for the most part. I see no need to treat them with kid gloves. Make a better product and be prepared to support it next time.
 

Cob32

Member
The tracker is an issue but the real issue for me is the quality of Pokemon that spawn in non city centre areas. I've been using the gaffer created tracker this week and it's just rattatas and pidgeys mostly.

Hopefully the spawning system gets an overhaul.
 
I'm more surprised so many people used it. I e been playing since the beginning and have never been able to use the tracker nor have I heard people successfully use the tracker. Not that I am the end all be all of Pokemon go but it seems like this might be a gaf issue more than a real world video game problem.

You must live in quite the bubble (in regards to this game) if you think any of this is remotely true.
 

akileese

Member
Already had a huge drop off in players around me. Not seeing a ton of people out walking anymore or cars all pulled up at a pokestop. I see a couple of players at the park now, but that's about it. Now I'm seeing Dragonites at every gym too(never spawn around here)

There is a monstrous drop off in general walking around the neighborhood play. The known hot spots for certain things (like parks with magikarp nests) are still packed. There was an event Saturday night in Bedford, TX that had well over 1000 people walking around catching pokemon and watching the movie.

I can live with the tracker being broken to an extent, but it's not even accurate of what's actually around you. I'll be walking around and stuff will pop up that's not even on the tracker (and what is on the tracker isn't even there). There's a reason people used sites like Pokevision. If you lived anywhere outside of a major city with 10,000 pokestops you're absolutely fucked on enjoying this game.

Taking the trackers down is a shitty thing to do when your own system is bugged to hell. It's even more infuriating once you realize that the community fixed it for you and you're just ignoring them. This is Niantic though. They never listened to anyone throughout Ingress and they're doing it again. It's depressing. They really had something with PoGo in a way that gaming hasn't seen in ages. It only took them 3 weeks to fuck it all up.
 

Complistic

Member
The tracker is an issue but the real issue for me is the quality of Pokemon that spawn in non city centre areas. I've been using the gaffer created tracker this week and it's just rattatas and pidgeys mostly.

Hopefully the spawning system gets an overhaul.

Is the gaf created tracker still functional? Can someone pm it to me?
 

dity

Member
Regardless of what the issue is for the end user, some people will blame them for Niantic's failures. My friend lives in Southern California and has no pokestops nearby. She ran out of balls and the game is basically over for her. I'm sure if she posted here, someone would suggest she move to a place with more stops.
All that means is that no one in her area played Ingress. It has nothing to do with Niantic. They didn't magic Pokestops and gyms.
 

PaulLFC

Member
There is a monstrous drop off in general walking around the neighborhood play. The known hot spots for certain things (like parks with magikarp nests) are still packed. There was an event Saturday night in Bedford, TX that had well over 1000 people walking around catching pokemon and watching the movie.

I can live with the tracker being broken to an extent, but it's not even accurate of what's actually around you. I'll be walking around and stuff will pop up that's not even on the tracker (and what is on the tracker isn't even there). There's a reason people used sites like Pokevision. If you lived anywhere outside of a major city with 10,000 pokestops you're absolutely fucked on enjoying this game.

Taking the trackers down is a shitty thing to do when your own system is bugged to hell. It's even more infuriating once you realize that the community fixed it for you and you're just ignoring them. This is Niantic though. They never listened to anyone throughout Ingress and they're doing it again. It's depressing. They really had something with PoGo in a way that gaming hasn't seen in ages. It only took them 3 weeks to fuck it all up.
I genuinely don't understand companies who produce social apps and then point blank refuse to engage with the community. I've seen plenty of one-person developed apps on iOS/Android with thousands of users (Reddit clients etc), and their devs are active on Redit/Facebook/Twitter, replying to bug reports, fixing issues and just generally interacting with their userbase.

Niantic do none of these. It took them days to even post an update about server downtime after they decided the correct thing to do when faced with already overwhelmed servers was to launch in 26 new countries... we know how that one turned out.

It's infuriating because it's so easy to provide a basic standard of interaction with your community. Just hire a couple of social media managers using the millions in revenue the app's generated and there you go. Unlikely to be a perfect solution, but it's a start and a damn sight better than what they have now.

Most big or successful companies have learnt this. They have social media presence, and a lot of them interact with their customers. Niantic do nothing, and don't seem interested in changing that either. It doesn't excatly inspire confidence in them as a company.
 

SuomiDude

Member
To me the most fun comes from checking out all the Poke stops around the city and whatever Pokemon comes at me during the Poke stop trip is a bonus. Rarely I've actually went on a Poke hunt just to hunt them. This friday I went to sit in a bar with my wife and while we were drinking, we cought lots of Pokemon while waiting for the nearest Poke stop to respawn items every five minutes. We weren't definately alone doing this. It just as much fun as going for an actual Pokemon hunt.
 

PaulLFC

Member
All that means is that no one in her area played Ingress. It has nothing to do with Niantic. They didn't magic Pokestops and gyms.
I've requested multiple Pokestops around my local area using their official form, because there are barely any here. I requested types of buildings that are Pokestops in other locations (pubs, places of interest, etc). I didn't get a reply, much less any actual addition of Pokestops.

Now I'm sure they get plenty of these reports, and can't reply individually, but I haven't seen a single stop appear or disappear when I've been using the app both in rural and city areas.

They need to do something about it, because while I'm lucky to work in the centre of a city which has plenty to do in the game, where I live there's basically nothing, and that's reflected in how fast the local userbase got bored of the app - which is understandable when there's next to nothing to do.
 

akileese

Member
To me the most fun comes from checking out all the Poke stops around the city and whatever Pokemon comes at me during the Poke stop trip is a bonus. Rarely I've actually went on a Poke hunt just to hunt them. This friday I went to sit in a bar with my wife and while we were drinking, we cought lots of Pokemon while waiting for the nearest Poke stop to respawn items every five minutes. We weren't definately alone doing this. It just as much fun as going for an actual Pokemon hunt.

"Around the city" and for the 85 percent of the people in the world who do not live in a major metropolitan area? Tough luck and hope we fix our bugs.

What I don't get is why ALL tracking is gone. The pulsing was working just fine to follow a pokemon. Why in the blue hell would you remove that when no one was complaining? I wish Pokemon Co. actually cared enough to step in and try to fix this but as long as their money keeps rolling in they won't.
 

ymgve

Member
I've requested multiple Pokestops around my local area using their official form, because there are barely any here. I requested types of buildings that are Pokestops in other locations (pubs, places of interest, etc). I didn't get a reply, much less any actual addition of Pokestops.

Now I'm sure they get plenty of these reports, and can't reply individually, but I haven't seen a single stop appear or disappear when I've been using the app both in rural and city areas.

They need to do something about it, because while I'm lucky to work in the centre of a city which has plenty to do in the game, where I live there's basically nothing, and that's reflected in how fast the local userbase got bored of the app - which is understandable when there's next to nothing to do.

Oh, stops can certainly disappear. They're apparently very responsive to businesses etc that don't want their location to be Pokestops anymore.

But when it comes to adding new stops, you're out of luck.
 

Mariolee

Member
Why? Niantic is a commercial entity that released a product with the goal of making as much profit as possible. Unfortunately, they released a half-assed product and aren't capable of supporting it. They're not a charity or some plucky non-profit. There's never a need to be personally insulting or anything like that, but I don't see much of that on GAF anyway, for the most part. I see no need to treat them with kid gloves. Make a better product and be prepared to support it next time.

Calling them incompetent amateur developers who released a half-assed product appears to me to be "personally insulting" and does not really lend anything to the discussion. They don't need to be a charity for you to treat them with respect. If you have to ask me why we should treat them with respect, then I really can't tell you aside from just common decency.

I also do not think in this thread that Niantic gets enough credit for developing Pokemon GO and having it be the phenomenon it is in the first place, warts and all so in that way I suppose I am biased.
 

jax

Banned
>>most fun aspect
>>never worked

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It worked fine for the first week in America.
 
"Around the city" and for the 85 percent of the people in the world who do not live in a major metropolitan area? Tough luck and hope we fix our bugs.

What I don't get is why ALL tracking is gone. The pulsing was working just fine to follow a pokemon. Why in the blue hell would you remove that when no one was complaining? I wish Pokemon Co. actually cared enough to step in and try to fix this but as long as their money keeps rolling in they won't.

I'm 99% sure the pulsing thing was a myth.
 

SuomiDude

Member
"Around the city" and for the 85 percent of the people in the world who do not live in a major metropolitan area? Tough luck and hope we fix our bugs.
Well the metropolitan area that I live in is a city of 60k people spread in 1700 square kilometers (660 square miles) area.
Not that hugely populated place to live in really.
 

jax

Banned
I think I'll return to the game whenever I'm driving around with friends or when the PVP/Trading update arrives.
They can hardly keep the servers up as is with half of the features removed. I think trading and battling is a long, long ways away.
 

jax

Banned
Half of the features? Aside from tracking what else was taken out? I may have missed it in the patch notes.
Nests seem to be nerfed as well as people reporting countless other account problems and glitches. Tons of the fonts and graphics are also pixelated to shit on the app in the latest update.

Plus, to many, tracking was most of what made the game fun in the first place.

Edit: and energy save
 
This is more of a minor issue, but they messed up scrolling between Pokemon as well. It seems to require a much bigger swipe now and even gets stuck sometimes.
 
Calling them incompetent amateur developers who released a half-assed product appears to me to be "personally insulting" and does not really lend anything to the discussion. They don't need to be a charity for you to treat them with respect. If you have to ask me why we should treat them with respect, then I really can't tell you aside from just common decency.

I also do not think in this thread that Niantic gets enough credit for developing Pokemon GO and having it be the phenomenon it is in the first place, warts and all so in that way I suppose I am biased.

Removing core features without addressing them in any reasonable format/platform is incompetent and unprofessional.

The burden does not fall upon the consumer to correct such a perception or flaw.
 

jax

Banned
Removing core features without addressing them in any reasonable format/platform is incompetent and unprofessional.

The burden does not fall upon the consumer to correct such a perception or flaw.
He's saying Niantic deserves more credit for lucking out with the Pokémon IP and slapping it onto Ingress like that's some sort of monumental task. I wouldn't even argue with him, he's white knighting pretty hard.

The fact of the matter is there was a beta. They knew it would be big. They should have had the servers to handle it. They shouldn't remove features. They shouldn't allow GPS spoofing and they shouldn't hold a complete lack of communication. It's a messed up situation and the people sitting back and defending them aren't making matters easier.

The game is broken with no fix in sight.

post-64231-this-is-fine-dog-fire-comic-Im-N7mp.png
 

Lijik

Member
Energysave mode seems to be removed for iOS, too.
that thing never worked for me after the first update, it wouldnt take my inputs when it came out of the screensaver mode. I guess its another disappointing case of "We couldnt fix it in time so lets just remove it and not communicate plans to bring it back"
 

Mariolee

Member
Nests seem to be nerfed as well as people reporting countless other account problems and glitches. Tons of the fonts and graphics are also pixelated to shit on the app in the latest update.

Plus, to many, tracking was most of what made the game fun in the first place.

Yeah, that admittedly sucks. I can definitely see why they would try to "nerf" the nests, especially when it comes to Dratinis and trying to keep every gym from becoming a Dragonite-fest. However, it feels too little too late and makes it unfair for people who did not have the chance to get any Dratinis yet. I am hoping that in a future patch they balance out the Pokemon a bit better before trying to release any other generation.

Removing core features without addressing them in any reasonable format/platform is incompetent and unprofessional.

The burden does not fall upon the consumer to correct such a perception or flaw.

It certainly doesn't, but it really does not take that much more effort to think that there's a high chance that the core feature was taken out to be fixed and put back in. So when a person isn't acknowledging the high probability that tracking will be put back in again it just makes it difficult to discuss or reason with them.
 

Teknoman

Member
How do you know? When asked about the bug at comic con they literally laughed it off. No reassurance of a fix what so ever.

It just wouldn't make any sense. I'm not sure why they didn't just add a message about it in the notes, but I just don't see them removing that aspect. I'm sure Nintendo still has some say so, and even to bring up that old gaf meme, that truly would be shooting themselves in the foot.
 

jax

Banned
The thing is, the community has had an opportunity to ask Niantic directly what's going on with tracking. They could have given a simple "we're working on it" but instead we got "we're aware it's broken"

"We're working on it" okay, great. It'll hopefully be fixed soon.

"We're aware of it" its not being worked on, or it's not a priority

Cue the outrage
 

Arkam

Member
Why are people complaining about them removing something that's broken. I'm sure once they fix it they'll add it back.

What? How dare you think that devs of a live service game would ever release more updates! You sir are just stirring the pot with your craziness!
 

Adaren

Member
I'm sure this has already been answered, but is the ordering on the "nearby" menu at least working again? Like, for the first couple weeks in NA, the top left Pokemon was the one closest to you.

It would be unbelievably dumb if they removed that as well.
 

imjust1n

Banned
Sorry if this news isn't thread worthy, but I think it kind of deserves its own thread. Via the patch notes:



So basically, they took the most fun aspect of the game and threw it away. pretty disappointed right now.

How is that a disappointment? It didnt work anyways. They are prob trying to fix it so might as well not even have it there.
 

jax

Banned
They laughed it off because of the absurdity of people chanting "three step glitch". They even said they acknowledged the problem and were working on it.
I was in the front row breh. They didn't say shit about working on it. The reason people were chanting is because they literally ignored the question the first time it was asked.
 
He's saying Niantic deserves more credit for lucking out with the Pokémon IP and slapping it onto Ingress like that's some sort of monumental task. I wouldn't even argue with him, he's white knighting pretty hard.

The fact of the matter is there was a beta. They knew it would be big. They should have had the servers to handle it. They shouldn't remove features. They shouldn't allow GPS spoofing and they shouldn't hold a complete lack of communication. It's a messed up situation and the people sitting back and defending them aren't making matters easier.

The game is broken with no fix in sight.

post-64231-this-is-fine-dog-fire-comic-Im-N7mp.png

Yeah. A lot could have been avoided.

And the problem that then develops is..... once you catch lightning in a bottle, you don't dare open that bottle and go "oh well with just a few edits it'll be even better" without losing lightning.

Niantic completely fucked up the tracking system. Alright, take the L and let the unofficial solutions live until you come up with something better and work on the meta.

Niantic did not pursue this route and the fallout is starting to show already.

Whoever said this game's popularity was beyond Niantic's league was absolutely correct.
 

jax

Banned
I'm sure this has already been answered, but is the ordering on the "nearby" menu at least working again? Like, for the first couple weeks in NA, the top left Pokemon was the one closest to you.

It would be unbelievably dumb if they removed that as well.
That stopped working the day they nerfed the 3-step footprints, at least for me. Just 100% random spawns.
 
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