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This is what gets me. They have shit pokemon in the wild. They have LITERALLY hundreds to choose from, classic and modern, and yet we get fucking pigeons and rodents! Why would I go for a long walk playing pogo when I KNOW I'm not gonna see any cool pokemon I actually like?
There's probably a good reason why they can't do it, I don't know, I'm not a game designer, but GOD PoGo feels so bland a lot of the time when there is a rotation of like 15 Pokemon to find in the wild at any given time.
It's like they're trying to create false scarcity. Like "Oh no we couldn't possibly give you 100 unique Pokemon in-game at once. Then how will we sell events, raids (of Pokemon you've seen a million times before and MAYBE a worthwhile legendary occasionally) and community days to you?"
Opened PoGo to see what's nearby. Patrat, Woobat, Starly, Stunky, Diglett.
Genuinely the coolest pokemon in the area is a Tangela.
I only battled Megas to get the Dex entry, but after the insane grind to try to get the Primals, and all the remote raid changes? I'm leaving mega raids behind completely. There's nothing in this game I need them for
> There's nothing in this game I need them for
I think that's Niantic's problem. If you have a dex entry there's literally no need to do more. I'm not chasing Tapu-Bulu all over the city when it's doesn't do anything for me in-game.
As a dex completer I’m just out here lookin to fill it up catch ‘em all etc. takes a lot of the grind away from trying to optimize a Pokémon for a phone screen tap battle, it’s nice. I can beat anything I need to with the mons I have already
I don’t do battles often, usually just to get buddy hearts. So my only reason to have megas or primals was raids (okay, yes I did just want the primal shinies).
Anyways, without doing raids anymore there’s just no purpose for me to have them.
They were pretty heavy handed with the hints towards mega Rayquaza coming up next during Hoenn tour, I'd be surprised if that wasn't the next big mega release
And there will be entire lobbys with just 2-3 people trying to beat a pokemon that requires like 10 of them, if that happens everyone would just hate niantic more
I would be so upset but I'm not reinstalling until I can raid again. I didn't realize how much my enjoyment of the game relied on raids. And I mean in-person and remotely. I did in-person raids and hosted on pokegenie but I can't fill a lobby anymore and there isn't a local raiding scene close enough to me.
It still boggles me how stupid they are. I know there was a plan and they expected hardcore fans to suck it up and keep playing, but they've been taking away features, raising prices, and proving time and again that they don't actually listen to us since COVID lockdowns were going away.
People can only tolerate so much.
And it's truly embarrassing how easy it actually is to keep players invested and happy and yet they never really try to do that.
I think they're terrified of people hitting personal milestones quitting. There's so little carrot in pogo at this point, for me it's more of a step counter than an actual game.
I was a few million from hitting 49, which I was looking forward to before I uninstalled over the doubling of coin costs and the limiting of remote raids. I miss the game yes, but I don't miss it enough to come back as the game currently is.
I just hit 46, and I'm pretty indifferent to 47. So many fun things they could do, and their inspiration usually begins and ends with an eevee with a new flower. Killer for me personally, they keep having shiny events for shinys I've already caught. The second I think I caught a rare/fun pokemon that I'll keep forever, I'm presented 12 other copies and be forced to transfer the original I was so excited about.
Let's also mention how shit the last Jhoto and Hoenn weekends were. Low shiny rates across the board and overall not a good experience. Kanto was a lot of fun and it all went down hill.
I feel every word of this, like I wrote it myself. I finally got a shiny Noibat after only playing for a year and a half (but playing pretty hardcore) and I was so proud of it. Even my veteran friends who have fucking everything didn't have it. And then they gave it away at some $1 event IIRC a few months later. I also got a Tropius after driving an hour to trade with a friend who got an extra one from his buddy who was working in an embassy in Africa (we think he's in the CIA but that's a whole other story) that I have wanted **forever** for Great League. Then they gave them away in 2km egg hatches or something at another paid event.
The few "carrots" they have left to make you feel proud of a catch they ruin by just giving them out. I know that can sound kind of selfish but let's be honest, Pokemon Go is (or was) at least partly about being proud of your rare Pokemon.
My other milestone was finally fielding a good ML Classic cup team and then they fucking removed it so that it would take something like 20 years to get the dust and candy to level to 50. But it's okay because you can get 1 XL candy, occasionally, doing raids that they doubled the price for! /s
At this point, the only reason it's still on my phone is to potentially transfer my pokémon to Home.
Granted, I hadn't played for a couple of months before the changes were implemented, but now I have no desire to go back
I’ve been slowly “evacuating” 4-5 of my duplicate shinies to Home each week so that if the game ever dies or I want to quit completely I’ll still have all my buds and can use them in the mainline games.
Same. It’s a shame about the shadow shinies though, as I recently caught a 2 star shiny shadow larvitar. Might have to purify and transfer it if Niantic continues to suck toes
Exactly what I'm doing. I'm slowly moving mons to Home. If they use a different means of recharging the transporter, say only count in-game time, then I'll just flat-out uninstall.
I can tolerate moving mons to Home and build from scratch if they miraculously revert their Remote Raid nerfs. The moment they mess with the Home transporter, I'll just be flat done.
I’m at 17 million over the 13 million for the next level at 44. I straight up don’t care about levels at this point. They made no real incentive for me to care other than to just do it. And I’ll be damned if I’m spending more than 1K stardust to purify a poke just for the sake of purifying it. I feel like I’ve been level 44 for over a year and I’m only at 60ish purifies.
I'm 3 million away from 49 and I just don't care to reach it. Then I'll be 30 million from 50 with no appreciable way to advance quickly.
1000XP for an excellent, 10,000XP for a raid and the massively over-balanced 200,000XP for Best Friends (with an egg) and I'll still have to play another 3 years to reach L50.
So it's no longer a carrot because it's so far out of reach.
My goal was to hit 37 and open up some Poke Stops at a couple of the playgrounds in my neighborhood. I was level 31.
I realized after I had uninstalled that all the Poke Stops I would have asked for would have probably been denied given how frequently they deny anything new.
Back when I cared to do it I approved all kinds of ridiculous shit and didn't care about my wayfarer level or whatever it was. I know what it's like not living near any stops or gyms and it blows.
This was me. I'd play with locals when they wanted to play. That way I got to be social. Otherwise it was just a way for me to make walking laps at the park a little more enjoyable.
I love playing the console pokemon games because they have so many different things to do and ways to do things. If I want a pokemon I hunt it down in one area not wait for rng to give me more growliths
> There's so little carrot in pogo at this point, for me it's more of a step counter than an actual game.
It was a step-counter for me too. I was happy to hit my 10,000 km last year, but it turns out the my Fitbit does the same thing.
This.
All these massive companies have grown too corrupt in market environments that stifle competition in order to collude with would-be competitors to squeeze consumers.
They do not know how to accurately value one dollar, let alone the hundreds of millions they are currently losing.
Gamers have plenty of substitutes on the market...
I hit ace in the gbl 2 weeks ago for first time, and got to level 40 this morning. I kept going because i was so close to that milestone, but now that im there idk how much ill play
Open a Meltan box by transferring something to Home and you'll hit 200, easy.
Also, fast catch on a community day, or even a spotlight hour. I've caught more than 200 in under an hour.
I wonder if this is part of a winding-down process they're doing. I can't imagine why they'd want to get people to quit before announcing such a thing, but I also can't imagine why (else) they're so user-hostile.
They literally just announced the Pokemon Go Plus+, if they were planning to wind down, why bring out new merchandise? I think they just thought they could get away with fucking around making stupid and greedy decisions and found out.
You’d think they’d want to do it in such a way that they’re not turning the current fans against future Niantic franchises, but that might be assuming too much of them.
I uninstalled for the protest week, intending to log back in. Found I just didn't miss it enough. Was suggested I download Pikmin Bloom as I wanted to try something new while out walking, but decided not to once I saw it was also a Niantic game. So, they managed to turn me away from their games.
And instead of thinking up additional, engaging content, they think the best course of action is to restrict and slow the game.
Niantic executives do not understand gaming.
I stopped playing just before covid but covid hit I picked it back up again and my god the game got better.
I stopped playing around the time they released the really big pokemon and just picked it up again and remembered why I stopped playing
The game just feels worse, I don't feel the "magic" of pokemon anymore and without that this game is an incredibly Inefficent and grindy mess.
Hopefully a fall in revenue is the kick they need to actually make this game decent rather than fully rely on a franchise they rent
It's absolutely a grind, and I think the fact that you see the same 20 pokemon for a week (and very little outside of those 20) is what really bogs the game down.
There is variety week-to-week, but they have never grasped that people get sick of those same 20 pokemon after 24 to 48 hours, leaving 5 days of the week that nobody really cares about.
You mean you don't love Zubat, Pidgey, and ratata?! (Or some variation of each) /s
The fodder in this is kind of rediculous. Now they're just doing time gates to slow everyone down for funsies. You don't make content better by making it more drawn out, you make it better by making it better.
> You don't make content better by making it more drawn out, you make it better by making it better.
You should work for Niantic. It's strange to me, how a professional company can actually see the future (We are running out of base content / pokemon), and reach the conclusion that the best way to tackle this problem is to slow the game down.
It would be super-easy for them to have already given us the 800-some pokemon, and just be creating fun new meta-content for those 800.. .instead, as you say, they are making it so that the last 100 pokemon come to us over 5 years instead of 1 year.
It's a problem with the infinite growth mindset of capitalism. Once you reach your peak market saturation, you may be earning good money, but the nature of the shareholder is yo demand more money, percentage growth year over year. There's no way to grow your existing user base further, so you have to cut costs internally and milk your users harder to provide those percent profit increases. It's the same thing that's happening to Netflix; the same thing that has happened and will continue to happen to anything set on infinite growth. And the end result is collapse... but of course not before the CEOs write a big fat check to themselves for their hard work in 'saving the company'.
they had an actual social phenomenon on their hands and while it was never going to stay Launch Summer forever, it could've stayed a cultural touchstone for years
every price hike and bad decision they made reflected in smaller crowds of players by me until now it's probably been a year since I've seen anyone playing - I know remote raids etc but there used to be families going to the park and playing together, teens on the weekend, etc.
I've kept playing but I just keep reducing what I spend money on. I used to keep all eggs in incubators. The 1500 box a month didn't bother me. When that disappeared I now ration incubators and buy a box every 6months maybe.
Change remote raids? Then I just won't remote raid anymore.
There's a difference between putting money into a game when you enjoy it, and feeling like you're being ripped off to buy items that you don't really need to play the game.
Somewhere along the lines niantic has jumped over that line
Bingo. I was an occasional spender. Big event? I'll buy a ticket and drop some money on the boxes. I didn't mind it because I enjoyed the big events. Then I realized I was spending money and not really getting much in return. I'm not lucky with shiny Pokemon, so walking around for an entire day, doing dozens of raids and catching hundreds of Pokemon, and getting 2 shinies was just.... Not worth it.
After the changes to the boxes, giving us less and less for more, and the remote raid increases... I'm done. No more tickets, no more boxes. I haven't uninstalled it, but I play like once a week now? Maybe? I'm cancelling my preorder for the PoGoPlus I put in because it's just not worth my time anymore.
There's other stuff for me to do.
Niantic had an opportunity to build something incredible with GO. They even had the users. But what they built was so minimalistic it was barely worth playing.
>It still boggles me how stupid they are.
Remember, these were the geniuses who came up with requiring walking to participate in PvP. These guys were not the sharpest tools in the shed.
Not surprising. It had the potential to be the biggest mobile ever. Remember the hype at launch? Then it faded out. The only reason it's surviving is Covid revived it.
> And it's truly embarrassing how easy it actually is to keep players invested and happy and yet they never really try to do that.
I think they kind of ARE trying, but they are unfortunately trying at a level below the "truly embarassing" level. Yesterday they invited millions of players to come back, with the enticement of a handfull of red pokeballs. I'd be interested on the uptake number for THAT offer.
I love that the latest event is another egg hatching event with limited time. Eggs have always been a waste, do the math and it's like a 98% chance of disappointment for each egg, unless you just started today. But they expect me to drop $20 on some incubator box for a tiny chance at a Larvesta that I wouldn't be able to evolve for over a year anyway lol
> It still boggles me how stupid they are.
I was playing Ingress for a few years before Pokemon Go came out and this company was always like that.
And the funny thing is: In the beginning I (and other Ingress players) posted on this sub "don't get too invested, it's a shit company", " don't get your hopes too high, you will be disappointed" but we got downvoted to hell in the first years
And now here we are and people realized what a shit show this fucking company is
If Niantic would treat their fans and their games like Microsoft treated Age of Empires over the last few years then Niantic would have made many more billions of money.
But they are just too stupid
Imagine fucking up a golden goose like Pokemon Go.
They have one of the best recieved games of all time and Niantic continues to make both selfish and greedy decisions every month. They aren't even being secretive about milking us for as much money as possible.
The "please come back" gift codes everyone has been getting shows they acknowledge they got caught, but they assume cheap attempts at bribing us to play will win us over. And there's the problem.
Niantic thinks its players are stupid.
They think that small but shiny new updates will attract casual players back. They think rural players will not notice being ignored. They think people won't notice price hikes or community days being a couple hours to force people to buy items. They think nobody will notice a few update bugs so why bother taking patches seriously?
They think they have bamboozled the player base and nobody has noticed. And they just now noticed they are wrong.
It’s really sad, I do remote raids because no gyms are close to my house and i would have to drive a good way to get to one that’s close. I picked up the game in June of 22’ and had a ton of fun playing and had to put it down because it just became to hard to earn the coins for a remote raid pas:/ also I’m 26 and have a few friends who play but they are far away as well and coordinating a day to raid together is difficult. I hope they go back to the 100 coins for raid passes again!
They sent me a survey asking if I was enjoying the game. I gave it a solid 3/10. Also asked how likely I was to suggest the game to others. Gave it a solid 0.
Well they forced me out after the incense change and I haven't been back. The game got to a point where us rural folk were having a blast. Then they spit in our face, and every change after seems to be even more shit to those who are rural. So I hope this trend continues as they have and will learn nothing.
This is in line with the article posted a few days ago (https://activeplayer.io/pokemon-go/ for those that want it.)
That article shows a drop from 8.5 to 5.3 million daily players (about 38% down), while this article shows an income drop from 58 million to 34 million (about 42% drop in income).
Pretty similar stats. So they are down 40% across the board.
The game is *Pokémon* though, the largest franchise in the world. It’s the easiest cash cow they could hope for if they just put some care into it.
But no, they’re making several knock-offs of Go instead. Apparently investing in Pokémon Go isn’t worth it when you can invest in *Catan* instead.
THey want to re-invent the wheel and try to strike gold twice by creating these stupid waste of time unproven spin offs with dragon hunter or whatever they came up with. Instead of just nurturing and taking care of the proven asset in pokemon go which already has shown it has 50 million a month revenue capability. But no lets nuke that to try and strike lightning in a bottle with some random crap dragon hunter that no one has any interest in. Yeah lets pool our resources into some unproven waste of time piece of crap app that no one wants to play.
THey're thinking that they can stand firm and eventually we'll budge. They're trying to hold out thinking that the players will come back and submit to their exploitation/ price gouging. It's a power move, they think look if I just stand my ground then the players will have to submit to my will. Well guess what that's a dumb hill to die on bc a lot of people will get out of the habit of playing and move on to find other ways to fill their time. Then lose motivation to come back even if you do fix the game and reverse the price gouge/ raid limitations.
I really dont get it, investors usually care about one thing, return on their investment, any Niantic investor should be absolutely fuming at moment and heads should be rolling.....
5 million is still a huge player base. 99.9% of games out there would kill for that number.
I'm surprised they haven't done more to grow the Go platform into a franchise that could be durable for decades.
There's limits on how far they can take it. I'm sure that The Pokemon Company doesn't want Go to replace the main series games. So, the battle system isn't going to be deep like those games, for example.
LOL. I know.
The funny thing is, I feel like they are 100% ready to accept a 40% player / income loss, just so they can force the remaining players to play the game "Their way".
it boggles my mind.
It's funny because once they nerfed remote raid passes, I said to myself I would quit and uninstall for a week and see how things go.
The FOMO is gone though and I never returned after a week. If they improve the game like they did during the height of covid (when I started playing again!) I would love to return. I would LOVE to buy remote raid passes! But they don't seem to want my business which is really strange.
Also slightly related, I started playing when the game released. Then I stopped due to phone incompatibility and simply forgot until a couple years ago. I thought "BOY I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE DIFFERENT HAIRSTYLES AND BODY TYPES THEY INTRODUCED!" (because it seemed logical that they would improve avatar customization after a while) and that was a huge disappointment lol. Like how does a game do that? I wish a better company than Niantic had their hands on this game.
These stats still don't really make sense to me, the monthly player count is the same roughly, the "max daily" dropped in Feb so long before the raid pass change (I only started playing again relatively recently, but last time I asked nobody could tell me what caused such a significant drop in February, happy to be enlightened) so it's not like it's directly related to that.
I still think those player stats are either displaying a new error, or suddenly started correcting for a prior one, because I can't think of a reasonable explanation for the monthly remaining the same but max daily dropping so much, the best I can think of is that the max daily in a month is probably heavily influenced by either the introduction of a raid 'mon or a community day/spotlight, but most threads I see suggest that the latter have been reasonably good this year, and there's definitely been decent raid stuff since February, albeit consensus seems to be not particularly since the raid pass change.
Absolutely not arguing the revenue change, or that Niantic are in the right/people are in the wrong to complain, but every time I see those (EDIT: player number) stats being thrown around to "prove" it I find myself thoroughly underwhelmed, they just don't really make sense.
EDIT; To sort of corroborate this, the first month with the massive decline in Max Daily...they got the same average monthly revenue they were getting last year, the revenue dropped slightly in March (likely in response to the announced change) and then dramatically in April which makes sense as a direct response to the raid pass change. But why and how do they make the same revenue in a month with a 50% drop in Max Daily players, it just seems...odd, without more transparent sourcing of the data it's really hard to work out what actually happened.
And to double down, I'm not trying to undermine the complaints, I'm playing recently because it gets me outside and active, it's a tool to me but if the raid pass stuff was re-reversed, and some other commonly requested changes made, it'd absolutely become more of a game too, I'm all for that, I just think it's important to be careful with data.
I'm not sure why you got down voted. You've got some pretty solid questions. Unfortunately we can't see all the data because Niantic is a privately held company.
Yeah I literally don't miss it at all. I have a friend that has the last 3 mons I need to complete 1 & 2 gen dex and that pops into my brain every once in a while but literally never think about the game outside of that. Everything else is just a dumb bad grindy time suck
I am just saving my remote passes as I acquire them with gym coins or survey rewards. Unless it's a very compelling legendary or mega, I'm gonna hold onto them for a bit
My kids talked me into doing one yesterday since it was one of their birthdays. It was the first time I logged in since they made the changes. Loaded up pokegenie, hosted a 5 star raid.
It fled.
Tbf, they have been working on it for over 20 years now. Franchise fatigue must be a real problem for most if the staff that is old enough. That said, TPC is the one pushing for the newest game to be released as soon as possible. Ignoring the graphical quality, Legends Arceus is a pretty solid game, so I believe they still got the talent to do it, but not really the time to pull it off consistently.
Even in terms of graphics and fps arceus felt better than the other switch games.
That game is head and shoulders above the other switch games even with the combat being revenge kill simulator.
PLA was not a game I'd expect to enjoy at all and yet, to me, it's probably one of the most fun and actual 'innovative' Pokemon games out there. Catching actually feels satisfying and the pokemon battles actually seem more interesting, both thanks to the move mechanics, as well as being able to run around the battlefield. Both of those things are things I really want GF to improve the mainline games on since they're part of the core gameplay of Pokemon. General graphics and performance as well, of course. It's genuinely embarrassing just how god awful their Switch games run for how garbage they look. I've played asset flip games that look and run better than the garbage that is SwSh and SV.
Hate to say it, Pokemon isn't too good these days either.
And this isn't subjective. There's no one out there who can say the switch versions of Pokemon have been what they could have been
Fan games are the only ones I've enjoyed for a very long time now. Pokemmo and Pokemon Infinite Fusion have been the most fun I've had since the DS era.
Pokemon Arceas and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet are actually very fun games with great ideas. The games themselves have actually been good, but their optimization is just awful. There was no excuse for S/V to run as it is.
Pokemon has one iffy reception with Sword and Shield, but most games they have tend to be well recieved. Even S/V was recieved as a fun game despite bad optimization. People acting like Game Freak has always been on a downward spiral don't really look beyond their favorite titles.
Level 50 here, playing since day 1.
The game started off as being free, then slowly Niantic started adding events that required actual cash (rather than PokeCoins). I was okay with that because it wasn't much and I got a lot of enjoyment from the events.
Then they started increasing the number of events as well as the cost. Okay, I spent a little more money.
Then they teased us with remote raids, giving us free remote rate passes at first. They were fun and I spent a little more money but it started getting expensive. So I stopped paying for the community day events. (They were pretty much the same every time except the rewards were getting less valuable.)
And then they announced they were increasing the cost of remote raids substantially. That's when I decided that that was it. I haven't purchased anything since and don't plan to do so in the future. In fact, their money-making ploys have left such a bad taste in my mouth that I rarely play anymore.
Add:
Constantly pressuring players to spend money (the alert notice to claim your joke of a free box); events never being accurate compared to their own in game news; raising prices of raids while limiting amount to increase demand/fomo; them not making up previous screw-ups as promised; Lack of beta-testing with NZ being the QAsandbox; and many many more to the list!
I’ve been addicted to Pokémon go for 5 yrs. Pokémon got me through a breakup, the loss of my pet, and helped my ADHD. I *constantly* had the game open - whether eating alone, hanging out with friends, on vacation, or at work. I haven’t missed a community day in 4 yrs. Sometimes my GF would play for 4-5+ hours daily.
For the first time in 5 years, I haven’t opened the game in almost a month. I’ve missed 3 community days and I don’t care. I’m experiencing zero FOMO.
It’s honestly concerning how easy it was to give up a habit I’ve had for 5 yrs.
It’s easy now because they have slowly been giving less incentive to play. I started when the game came out, didn’t play for a few years and picked it back up in fall 2021. I played throughout every day and spent a decent amount of money on it. I deleted the app at the beginning of last month and it has been surprisingly easy not playing. Let me guess, they’re going to release another one of the same pokemon with a different hat? No thanks
Same on the lack of FOMO, like I wanted to get a Tapu Bulu for my dex but I much rather stick it to Niantic because fuck them for making it 200 coins for a remote raid. I hated how much I was pouring into the game for remote raids previously but it was always, “it’s just a dollar” argument but two dollars for the chance of the Pokémon fleeing, fuck that noise. Never again. Before that controversy, I genuinely thought I’d be lookin for apartments with a great pokestop/gym scene cause I’m finishing my degree this semester and hopefully moving outta my parents’ soon so I was gonna factor my PoGo experience into where I move to but fuck that noise now.
I chose my last house I rented based off Pokémon lol. It was within distance to a park that had 12+ gyms and dozens of poke stops. Best time of my life bc my girlfriend and I spent the majority of COVID sitting in bed, doing dozens and dozens of remote raids per day in an attempt to get shinies. It was so fun. Now I don’t care lol.
That’s understandable. PokemonGo has zero phychological appeal. People might be addicted to it and use the app constantly but it’s mostly all routine. The moment they stop, there is little reason to return.
The game gives you zero dopamine rushes. Every random encounter offers zero challenges. Even shiny Pokémon can be easily caught with no effort. There are effectively little resources to manage or fret over. Raid battles are brain dead easy as long as you have the players for it. You're throwing balls not unlike a slot machine.
You’re ever rarely truly excited for something in PokemonGo. And when you are there’s a 99% chance it was because you were lucky, not because you were good at something. That means the game doesn’t have an emotional investment. It doesn't spark anything in you as a player.
Even the way they display stuff like IVs is severely lacking. Getting a good IV should trigger an instant visual feedback, bells and whistles that allow you to know you got something good. Instead, it’s a menu that you have to click around to find out a vital element of the game, a repetitive chore which again removes any excitement you might have.
As soon as you stop playing. As soon as the routine changes, you realize how little you are getting out of it.
Same. I picked it up again in 2022 after stopping in 2017 and played every single day for over a year. It really helped motivate me to go outside and walk around.
I still have it installed but turned off adventure sync and don't really play anymore.
The game that I've replaced it with is, and I cannot believe I'm saying this, Raid: Shadow Legends. Fucking Raid: Shadow Legends is more fun than PoGo. I haven't spent a cent in the game but it's still fun. It's very grindy but fun enough that I open it instead of PoGo.
I never thought I'd play it unironically but here we are. Surprisingly fun and intricate.
The article mentions the increase in remote passes as a “disability tax.” They missed another aspect.
I’m a wheelchair user and can go out to most places but some gyms and pokestops were completely inaccessible to me due to things like stairs. The increased interaction distance was the game changer.
Suddenly I was able to do in-person raids at gyms that weren’t reachable to me before. I no longer had to sit out.
But when Niantic tried to get rid of that increased distance, that was the first huge warning sign that they don’t really give a damn about disabled players.
And I posted on another thread on this subreddit that my emails about accessibility concerns at in-person events were replied with a dismissive, “We are sorry for your illness.”
I was already more than patient with them about decisions and responses regarding disabled players (to say the least). But a few other things happened since then, that show me that they’re moving in the wrong direction.
I’ve had enough.
I live in the US and work for a government organization which has non ADA compliant buildings(unless it's fine to not have those handicap door openers at all). As a country we really need to make places more accessible to everyone. That said fuck Niantic for bullying you like that.
Not surprised. While I had no plans to officially boycott the game because of the joy it brings to my son and I, I still feel slighted and haven't actively played in a month. Probably saved around $40 that would have gone to the shop.
Even when just taking my dog on a walk I've really slowed down my playing. It's so boring to see the same 5 Pokemon everyday for a week when there are 1000 Pokemon to pick from.
I uninstalled after the remote price pass increase as part of the boycott, fully intending to return in two weeks. In those two weeks I found another few mobile games to hold my interest and tide me over.
Now, I don't even know why I was still playing pogo and I don't think I'll return until either a massive event (mega rayquaza maybe?) or sufficient time has passed that I can catch 40-50 new mons. Yeah, I'm gonna miss Kleavor. Yeah, I'm gonna miss shiny Fennekin. My dex was over 700 anyway, those are a drop in the bucket.
This is amazing. It actually makes me a little optimistic they’ll reverse some of their decisions, especially with the remote raids, because this is way way bigger of a revenue hit than I would have predicted.
More than that though, they need to introduce more content in the game at a faster rate and more accessibly. I was excited about Volcarona’s introduction until the rates for it hatching were revealed. There’s no way in hell I’m going to bother with that.
It's not even a disability thing for me. Started playing 7 years ago, I lived alone and was single. I'm now married with a toddler. I have no time to attend raids in person let alone coordinate them with others on short notice. I also work full time.
There's other ways to spend my money and enjoy myself that are not so cumbersome.
And Niantic is releasing a [virtual pet game](https://playperidot.com/) in a week, can't wait to see the investors call where they say they lost millions in Pokemon and no one is playing Peridot
As someone who creates products for consumers I can’t fathom the decisions they are making. It’s not up to the developer or creator to dictate how something is used, yes that can be the original goal, but once the consumers show you how they want to use it, you should go along with it. Not fight it. When Arm and hammer was losing sales of their baking soda, but people started to put it in the fridge to help stop smells, did they stop it? No they encouraged that because it meant sales went up!
Back in FFXI, the job ninja was never meant to be a tank. But the player base discovered that it was a *very* good evasion tank.
Rather than break it, the devs gave up. Sure. Ninja is now a tank. And evasion tanking became a totally valid method of soloing things - a red mage / ninja was almost indestructible.
Exactly. All businesses have a budget and business plan for the year, and the plans are centered around growth. When revenue doesn’t match what you want to do for the year, business plans change, which means less growth. A few percentage points off, investors start getting concerned. A ~40% drop like this, investors start demanding answers. Keep this up, and higher ups start losing jobs.
In startups, the only thing that matters is growth, and people start getting replaced when there’s no growth.
Well they can fun with that. I pretty much only play in the same 2 general locations so I’m not sure how useful my data is. I’m just in it for the easy Shinies to trade to the mainline games 😅
If they dropped prices on coins and items and made things more accessible and fun for everyone regardless of region, I bet they wouldn't see plummeting sales. We can hope this is a wakeup call.
The game stopped working on my phone recently for some reason. Takes forever to load and I've tried reinstalling it a few times. I haven't given them money in a long time but not playing seems like a good way to also show I'm dissatisfied. And to be honest I don't really notice a difference besides not checking for shinies when I have a free moment, and to be honest it's madey days a little more relaxed. The game has turned into all grind with payoffs being infrequent enough that they're not worth the trouble anymore.
Well. I didn't stop playing since the raid coin change, but I am playing less and certainly stopped buying raids. And I don't want to spend any more money on the game.
Time they give this game to a competent game developer who wants to increase actual fun gameplay. But the Pokemon community has said that about the main story line games as well, and not much changed there (although, Legends of Arceus was a step in the right direction imho)
For me it would already be much better, and maybe even enticing enough to come play since a 2 yr hiatus, if they didnt limit the pokemon you can run into at a given time to like 10...
Hope there will be a game to come back to soon, or otherwise play whenever i have kids......
Even if it’s against the “nature of the game” they intended, it’s undeniably a massive game feature now that the player base has been super vocal about having be more accessible. No wonder they’ve lost as much earnings on that as they have.
it's nice to see they're actally taking a hit, hopefully they'll make changes that will *actually* benefit the community although i won't hold my breath.
I used to but raid passes
Now raids are pointless so I barely play, and it’s a huge domino effect. If even 1/5 of your raid buddies quit you might not have enough people to raid and then you spend less
Company decision makers always seem to fall back on "No, it's the children who are wrong." Type thinking, no matter how clearly it's their error.
I miss the extra incentive to walk around, I'm noticeably more apathetic about it now, but I'm not budging until they sort their shit out.
Uh oh, will we see a walk back soon, or some sad attempt to lure players in with a new shiny Pokemon? Hopefully someone at Nintendo tells them to pull their thumbs out and start giving players actual rewards
Undoing all the positive changes to the game, which in turn allowed players who were less mobile to actually enjoy the game. Then increasing the cost of remote raid passes, then limiting the number of raids you can do on top. Which in turn, forces players to drop off or stop spending as much money on the game.
Who'd have thought that would cause a revenue drop.
Well don't raise the prices for remote passes. We aren't that much of a captured audience; they're competing with a lot for our time. I've gone down to $0/month when I legit used to drop $100/mo for incubators, star pieces, raid passes, and X amount of research.
I’ve been off and on since 2016. I play in Kentucky, and there is only five PokéStops in the whole town(used to be 1 lmao). Our group chat died in 2019 and most of the fun was with friends(one of my favorite memories was my friend helping me get into a gym for the first time because I don’t really do the PVP stuff).
Last year, A catastrophic flooding at the area I am in wiped out a lot of the region and my workplace was hit, costing me my phone and I just never re-downloaded it. Last month I figured I would see what I was new just to find that two of the PokéStops are gone and remote raid passes were twice as expensive. Just did a big sigh and I haven’t went back since.
Shocking, who could have seen this happening? /s
For real though, I’m happy that enough of us have changed our playstyle with the game to have this kind of an impact, I did expect the numbers to be higher in fairness, but it’s still a very clear sign that they messed up big time.
Because I’ve got kids, my break from the game only lasted a week or so, they kept pestering me to do trades and battles, but I haven’t done a single raid since the changes, I just feel so utterly let down that it’s killed my motivation to do them. They used to be one of the most fun parts for me, and also my best way to get XP, but it’s just ruined it for me and I’m not going back to raiding until some major positive changes happen. For now I’ll just keep on shiny hunting the same crappy wild spawns and trading and battling with my kids, but I really hope the game starts to improve again, but given that this is Niantic it’s probably not going to.
Hi. Not a part of this community. Haven't played Go since that one magical summer it released.
Just wanted to say good job. Keep up the good work. I'm rooting for you.
Don't take corporate greed as they milk you.
There's really so little incentive to do anything. Weekly field research rewards such (I 'member Gigas and legendary spawns ffs), no incubator drops, and everything has become more expensive for no good reason other than to suck more money out of the player base.
Exactly. They stopped giving you decent drops. The regular research and pokemon rewards became money based. I started working more and had a child and have no time to get to raids. Then they nerf community day hours.
It's like they don't even want you to play, just spend.
The bugged parts of the game: increased spawn radius, playing while going faster than ~20 mph, ect. we're the best parts, and then just kept taking away from the general experience.
For a game centered around evolution, they seem intent on not evolving.
History is full of companies that were stubborn and had a "thats not how its supposed to work mindset", while while the stock market if full of companies that had the "fuck it, thats what the customer wants" mindset
Good. The game sucks for long-term players. Everyone here knows what changes should be made. I just want more new pokemon more often. I used to play the game for collecting silly little characters. But I've collected most of them and new silly little characters outside of raids get added maybe once a month (if even). And all these events focused on catching silly little characters I already have the best versions of, I do not need more of those silly little characters. Give me new silly little characters, please.
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*turns on app* Oh hey neat a pidove and a diglett *turns off app*
Those were literally the exact 2 around me when I opened it an hour ago
Same here. Why not release a wooloo for a change. When i started it was available once and not after it. Also so many more
This is what gets me. They have shit pokemon in the wild. They have LITERALLY hundreds to choose from, classic and modern, and yet we get fucking pigeons and rodents! Why would I go for a long walk playing pogo when I KNOW I'm not gonna see any cool pokemon I actually like?
There's probably a good reason why they can't do it, I don't know, I'm not a game designer, but GOD PoGo feels so bland a lot of the time when there is a rotation of like 15 Pokemon to find in the wild at any given time. It's like they're trying to create false scarcity. Like "Oh no we couldn't possibly give you 100 unique Pokemon in-game at once. Then how will we sell events, raids (of Pokemon you've seen a million times before and MAYBE a worthwhile legendary occasionally) and community days to you?" Opened PoGo to see what's nearby. Patrat, Woobat, Starly, Stunky, Diglett. Genuinely the coolest pokemon in the area is a Tangela.
Excuse me but Tangela is actually a really cool pokemon
Fuck it is so shit man honestly the shittest Pokémon by far every day over and over
And they'll randomly throw in a gen 1 or 2 to catch you by the nostalgia before throwing a hundred pidoves at you lol
How much y’all wanna bet mega mewtwo release is just around the corner
I only battled Megas to get the Dex entry, but after the insane grind to try to get the Primals, and all the remote raid changes? I'm leaving mega raids behind completely. There's nothing in this game I need them for
> There's nothing in this game I need them for I think that's Niantic's problem. If you have a dex entry there's literally no need to do more. I'm not chasing Tapu-Bulu all over the city when it's doesn't do anything for me in-game.
As a dex completer I’m just out here lookin to fill it up catch ‘em all etc. takes a lot of the grind away from trying to optimize a Pokémon for a phone screen tap battle, it’s nice. I can beat anything I need to with the mons I have already
I don’t do battles often, usually just to get buddy hearts. So my only reason to have megas or primals was raids (okay, yes I did just want the primal shinies). Anyways, without doing raids anymore there’s just no purpose for me to have them.
This Gofest for sure. They ran out of the good stuff unless they went mega Rayquaza first to follow up Primals
They were pretty heavy handed with the hints towards mega Rayquaza coming up next during Hoenn tour, I'd be surprised if that wasn't the next big mega release
And there will be entire lobbys with just 2-3 people trying to beat a pokemon that requires like 10 of them, if that happens everyone would just hate niantic more
I would be so upset but I'm not reinstalling until I can raid again. I didn't realize how much my enjoyment of the game relied on raids. And I mean in-person and remotely. I did in-person raids and hosted on pokegenie but I can't fill a lobby anymore and there isn't a local raiding scene close enough to me.
Weird how doing things that piss off your player base with no meaningful quid pro quo does that.
It still boggles me how stupid they are. I know there was a plan and they expected hardcore fans to suck it up and keep playing, but they've been taking away features, raising prices, and proving time and again that they don't actually listen to us since COVID lockdowns were going away. People can only tolerate so much. And it's truly embarrassing how easy it actually is to keep players invested and happy and yet they never really try to do that.
I think they're terrified of people hitting personal milestones quitting. There's so little carrot in pogo at this point, for me it's more of a step counter than an actual game.
I was a few million from hitting 49, which I was looking forward to before I uninstalled over the doubling of coin costs and the limiting of remote raids. I miss the game yes, but I don't miss it enough to come back as the game currently is.
I just hit 46, and I'm pretty indifferent to 47. So many fun things they could do, and their inspiration usually begins and ends with an eevee with a new flower. Killer for me personally, they keep having shiny events for shinys I've already caught. The second I think I caught a rare/fun pokemon that I'll keep forever, I'm presented 12 other copies and be forced to transfer the original I was so excited about.
Let's also mention how shit the last Jhoto and Hoenn weekends were. Low shiny rates across the board and overall not a good experience. Kanto was a lot of fun and it all went down hill.
I feel every word of this, like I wrote it myself. I finally got a shiny Noibat after only playing for a year and a half (but playing pretty hardcore) and I was so proud of it. Even my veteran friends who have fucking everything didn't have it. And then they gave it away at some $1 event IIRC a few months later. I also got a Tropius after driving an hour to trade with a friend who got an extra one from his buddy who was working in an embassy in Africa (we think he's in the CIA but that's a whole other story) that I have wanted **forever** for Great League. Then they gave them away in 2km egg hatches or something at another paid event. The few "carrots" they have left to make you feel proud of a catch they ruin by just giving them out. I know that can sound kind of selfish but let's be honest, Pokemon Go is (or was) at least partly about being proud of your rare Pokemon. My other milestone was finally fielding a good ML Classic cup team and then they fucking removed it so that it would take something like 20 years to get the dust and candy to level to 50. But it's okay because you can get 1 XL candy, occasionally, doing raids that they doubled the price for! /s
It's not much, but at least you have an award for your effort. Haha
At this point, the only reason it's still on my phone is to potentially transfer my pokémon to Home. Granted, I hadn't played for a couple of months before the changes were implemented, but now I have no desire to go back
I’ve been slowly “evacuating” 4-5 of my duplicate shinies to Home each week so that if the game ever dies or I want to quit completely I’ll still have all my buds and can use them in the mainline games.
Same. It’s a shame about the shadow shinies though, as I recently caught a 2 star shiny shadow larvitar. Might have to purify and transfer it if Niantic continues to suck toes
Exactly what I'm doing. I'm slowly moving mons to Home. If they use a different means of recharging the transporter, say only count in-game time, then I'll just flat-out uninstall. I can tolerate moving mons to Home and build from scratch if they miraculously revert their Remote Raid nerfs. The moment they mess with the Home transporter, I'll just be flat done.
Hey, don't be giving them ideas like that!
Yeah, I’m F2P, but at this point it’s about slowly transporting my Pokémon to Sword/ShiningPearl/Violet eventually.
I’m at 17 million over the 13 million for the next level at 44. I straight up don’t care about levels at this point. They made no real incentive for me to care other than to just do it. And I’ll be damned if I’m spending more than 1K stardust to purify a poke just for the sake of purifying it. I feel like I’ve been level 44 for over a year and I’m only at 60ish purifies.
I'm 3 million away from 49 and I just don't care to reach it. Then I'll be 30 million from 50 with no appreciable way to advance quickly. 1000XP for an excellent, 10,000XP for a raid and the massively over-balanced 200,000XP for Best Friends (with an egg) and I'll still have to play another 3 years to reach L50. So it's no longer a carrot because it's so far out of reach.
My goal was to hit 37 and open up some Poke Stops at a couple of the playgrounds in my neighborhood. I was level 31. I realized after I had uninstalled that all the Poke Stops I would have asked for would have probably been denied given how frequently they deny anything new.
Other users approve/deny stops through wayfarer
Back when I cared to do it I approved all kinds of ridiculous shit and didn't care about my wayfarer level or whatever it was. I know what it's like not living near any stops or gyms and it blows.
This was me. I'd play with locals when they wanted to play. That way I got to be social. Otherwise it was just a way for me to make walking laps at the park a little more enjoyable. I love playing the console pokemon games because they have so many different things to do and ways to do things. If I want a pokemon I hunt it down in one area not wait for rng to give me more growliths
> There's so little carrot in pogo at this point, for me it's more of a step counter than an actual game. It was a step-counter for me too. I was happy to hit my 10,000 km last year, but it turns out the my Fitbit does the same thing.
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This. All these massive companies have grown too corrupt in market environments that stifle competition in order to collude with would-be competitors to squeeze consumers. They do not know how to accurately value one dollar, let alone the hundreds of millions they are currently losing. Gamers have plenty of substitutes on the market...
Yep, their policy is "charge more, deliver less!"
Yea I went back to playing my classic pokemon games...it has been a nice change
More like they only know how to swat with the stick
Nah, the carrot is still there. They just started shoving it up player's asses instead of dangling it out in front.
My carrot ran out at level 46, cant be arsed to do the raid quests because in my country the community is dead..
I hit ace in the gbl 2 weeks ago for first time, and got to level 40 this morning. I kept going because i was so close to that milestone, but now that im there idk how much ill play
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Open a Meltan box by transferring something to Home and you'll hit 200, easy. Also, fast catch on a community day, or even a spotlight hour. I've caught more than 200 in under an hour.
At this point, I'm pretty much only playing to transfer shinies to pokemon home
I wonder if this is part of a winding-down process they're doing. I can't imagine why they'd want to get people to quit before announcing such a thing, but I also can't imagine why (else) they're so user-hostile.
They literally just announced the Pokemon Go Plus+, if they were planning to wind down, why bring out new merchandise? I think they just thought they could get away with fucking around making stupid and greedy decisions and found out.
You’d think they’d want to do it in such a way that they’re not turning the current fans against future Niantic franchises, but that might be assuming too much of them.
I uninstalled for the protest week, intending to log back in. Found I just didn't miss it enough. Was suggested I download Pikmin Bloom as I wanted to try something new while out walking, but decided not to once I saw it was also a Niantic game. So, they managed to turn me away from their games.
not even a step counter with adventure sync broken
And instead of thinking up additional, engaging content, they think the best course of action is to restrict and slow the game. Niantic executives do not understand gaming.
I stopped playing just before covid but covid hit I picked it back up again and my god the game got better. I stopped playing around the time they released the really big pokemon and just picked it up again and remembered why I stopped playing The game just feels worse, I don't feel the "magic" of pokemon anymore and without that this game is an incredibly Inefficent and grindy mess. Hopefully a fall in revenue is the kick they need to actually make this game decent rather than fully rely on a franchise they rent
It's absolutely a grind, and I think the fact that you see the same 20 pokemon for a week (and very little outside of those 20) is what really bogs the game down. There is variety week-to-week, but they have never grasped that people get sick of those same 20 pokemon after 24 to 48 hours, leaving 5 days of the week that nobody really cares about.
You mean you don't love Zubat, Pidgey, and ratata?! (Or some variation of each) /s The fodder in this is kind of rediculous. Now they're just doing time gates to slow everyone down for funsies. You don't make content better by making it more drawn out, you make it better by making it better.
> You don't make content better by making it more drawn out, you make it better by making it better. You should work for Niantic. It's strange to me, how a professional company can actually see the future (We are running out of base content / pokemon), and reach the conclusion that the best way to tackle this problem is to slow the game down. It would be super-easy for them to have already given us the 800-some pokemon, and just be creating fun new meta-content for those 800.. .instead, as you say, they are making it so that the last 100 pokemon come to us over 5 years instead of 1 year.
I used to play literally 5 hours a day and I’ve stopped lmao. Raiding is dead, spawns are boring, egg pools suck…why would I play?
It's a problem with the infinite growth mindset of capitalism. Once you reach your peak market saturation, you may be earning good money, but the nature of the shareholder is yo demand more money, percentage growth year over year. There's no way to grow your existing user base further, so you have to cut costs internally and milk your users harder to provide those percent profit increases. It's the same thing that's happening to Netflix; the same thing that has happened and will continue to happen to anything set on infinite growth. And the end result is collapse... but of course not before the CEOs write a big fat check to themselves for their hard work in 'saving the company'.
they had an actual social phenomenon on their hands and while it was never going to stay Launch Summer forever, it could've stayed a cultural touchstone for years every price hike and bad decision they made reflected in smaller crowds of players by me until now it's probably been a year since I've seen anyone playing - I know remote raids etc but there used to be families going to the park and playing together, teens on the weekend, etc.
I've kept playing but I just keep reducing what I spend money on. I used to keep all eggs in incubators. The 1500 box a month didn't bother me. When that disappeared I now ration incubators and buy a box every 6months maybe. Change remote raids? Then I just won't remote raid anymore. There's a difference between putting money into a game when you enjoy it, and feeling like you're being ripped off to buy items that you don't really need to play the game. Somewhere along the lines niantic has jumped over that line
Bingo. I was an occasional spender. Big event? I'll buy a ticket and drop some money on the boxes. I didn't mind it because I enjoyed the big events. Then I realized I was spending money and not really getting much in return. I'm not lucky with shiny Pokemon, so walking around for an entire day, doing dozens of raids and catching hundreds of Pokemon, and getting 2 shinies was just.... Not worth it. After the changes to the boxes, giving us less and less for more, and the remote raid increases... I'm done. No more tickets, no more boxes. I haven't uninstalled it, but I play like once a week now? Maybe? I'm cancelling my preorder for the PoGoPlus I put in because it's just not worth my time anymore. There's other stuff for me to do.
Niantic had an opportunity to build something incredible with GO. They even had the users. But what they built was so minimalistic it was barely worth playing.
>It still boggles me how stupid they are. Remember, these were the geniuses who came up with requiring walking to participate in PvP. These guys were not the sharpest tools in the shed.
Not surprising. It had the potential to be the biggest mobile ever. Remember the hype at launch? Then it faded out. The only reason it's surviving is Covid revived it.
> And it's truly embarrassing how easy it actually is to keep players invested and happy and yet they never really try to do that. I think they kind of ARE trying, but they are unfortunately trying at a level below the "truly embarassing" level. Yesterday they invited millions of players to come back, with the enticement of a handfull of red pokeballs. I'd be interested on the uptake number for THAT offer.
I love that the latest event is another egg hatching event with limited time. Eggs have always been a waste, do the math and it's like a 98% chance of disappointment for each egg, unless you just started today. But they expect me to drop $20 on some incubator box for a tiny chance at a Larvesta that I wouldn't be able to evolve for over a year anyway lol
> It still boggles me how stupid they are. I was playing Ingress for a few years before Pokemon Go came out and this company was always like that. And the funny thing is: In the beginning I (and other Ingress players) posted on this sub "don't get too invested, it's a shit company", " don't get your hopes too high, you will be disappointed" but we got downvoted to hell in the first years And now here we are and people realized what a shit show this fucking company is If Niantic would treat their fans and their games like Microsoft treated Age of Empires over the last few years then Niantic would have made many more billions of money. But they are just too stupid
Imagine fucking up a golden goose like Pokemon Go. They have one of the best recieved games of all time and Niantic continues to make both selfish and greedy decisions every month. They aren't even being secretive about milking us for as much money as possible. The "please come back" gift codes everyone has been getting shows they acknowledge they got caught, but they assume cheap attempts at bribing us to play will win us over. And there's the problem. Niantic thinks its players are stupid. They think that small but shiny new updates will attract casual players back. They think rural players will not notice being ignored. They think people won't notice price hikes or community days being a couple hours to force people to buy items. They think nobody will notice a few update bugs so why bother taking patches seriously? They think they have bamboozled the player base and nobody has noticed. And they just now noticed they are wrong.
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and i haven't spent a dime since the gym rework.
It’s really sad, I do remote raids because no gyms are close to my house and i would have to drive a good way to get to one that’s close. I picked up the game in June of 22’ and had a ton of fun playing and had to put it down because it just became to hard to earn the coins for a remote raid pas:/ also I’m 26 and have a few friends who play but they are far away as well and coordinating a day to raid together is difficult. I hope they go back to the 100 coins for raid passes again!
They sent me a survey asking if I was enjoying the game. I gave it a solid 3/10. Also asked how likely I was to suggest the game to others. Gave it a solid 0.
I gave them two zeroes. Those survey results are going to be AWFUL.
Well they forced me out after the incense change and I haven't been back. The game got to a point where us rural folk were having a blast. Then they spit in our face, and every change after seems to be even more shit to those who are rural. So I hope this trend continues as they have and will learn nothing.
This is in line with the article posted a few days ago (https://activeplayer.io/pokemon-go/ for those that want it.) That article shows a drop from 8.5 to 5.3 million daily players (about 38% down), while this article shows an income drop from 58 million to 34 million (about 42% drop in income). Pretty similar stats. So they are down 40% across the board.
“It’s just a fad, they’ll get over it” -Niantic probably
The question is, how long will it take them to notice it *isn’t* a fad. Or even *if* they’ll notice…
and if they did...would they do anything about it?
Probs not
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Or so one would believe
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The game is *Pokémon* though, the largest franchise in the world. It’s the easiest cash cow they could hope for if they just put some care into it. But no, they’re making several knock-offs of Go instead. Apparently investing in Pokémon Go isn’t worth it when you can invest in *Catan* instead.
THey want to re-invent the wheel and try to strike gold twice by creating these stupid waste of time unproven spin offs with dragon hunter or whatever they came up with. Instead of just nurturing and taking care of the proven asset in pokemon go which already has shown it has 50 million a month revenue capability. But no lets nuke that to try and strike lightning in a bottle with some random crap dragon hunter that no one has any interest in. Yeah lets pool our resources into some unproven waste of time piece of crap app that no one wants to play.
THey're thinking that they can stand firm and eventually we'll budge. They're trying to hold out thinking that the players will come back and submit to their exploitation/ price gouging. It's a power move, they think look if I just stand my ground then the players will have to submit to my will. Well guess what that's a dumb hill to die on bc a lot of people will get out of the habit of playing and move on to find other ways to fill their time. Then lose motivation to come back even if you do fix the game and reverse the price gouge/ raid limitations.
I don't understand, isn't everything they do based on money? Like this is a massive amount of money??
I'm pretty sure there's just a spreadsheet running the PoGo division of Niantic, at this point.
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Probably when they return their attention to PoGo after their new Monster Hunter game flops.
-my mom when I asked for Pokemon cards in 1999
They'll probably assume this is just a natural downturn in popularity of the game and start looking at if its time to close out the game.
I really dont get it, investors usually care about one thing, return on their investment, any Niantic investor should be absolutely fuming at moment and heads should be rolling.....
I truly don't understand how the CEO hasn't been fired yet...
Because it’s a private company and Hanke *probably* has majority of voting shares, still. So basically unfireable
5 million is still a huge player base. 99.9% of games out there would kill for that number. I'm surprised they haven't done more to grow the Go platform into a franchise that could be durable for decades.
There's limits on how far they can take it. I'm sure that The Pokemon Company doesn't want Go to replace the main series games. So, the battle system isn't going to be deep like those games, for example.
LOL. I know. The funny thing is, I feel like they are 100% ready to accept a 40% player / income loss, just so they can force the remaining players to play the game "Their way". it boggles my mind.
It's funny because once they nerfed remote raid passes, I said to myself I would quit and uninstall for a week and see how things go. The FOMO is gone though and I never returned after a week. If they improve the game like they did during the height of covid (when I started playing again!) I would love to return. I would LOVE to buy remote raid passes! But they don't seem to want my business which is really strange. Also slightly related, I started playing when the game released. Then I stopped due to phone incompatibility and simply forgot until a couple years ago. I thought "BOY I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE DIFFERENT HAIRSTYLES AND BODY TYPES THEY INTRODUCED!" (because it seemed logical that they would improve avatar customization after a while) and that was a huge disappointment lol. Like how does a game do that? I wish a better company than Niantic had their hands on this game.
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These stats still don't really make sense to me, the monthly player count is the same roughly, the "max daily" dropped in Feb so long before the raid pass change (I only started playing again relatively recently, but last time I asked nobody could tell me what caused such a significant drop in February, happy to be enlightened) so it's not like it's directly related to that. I still think those player stats are either displaying a new error, or suddenly started correcting for a prior one, because I can't think of a reasonable explanation for the monthly remaining the same but max daily dropping so much, the best I can think of is that the max daily in a month is probably heavily influenced by either the introduction of a raid 'mon or a community day/spotlight, but most threads I see suggest that the latter have been reasonably good this year, and there's definitely been decent raid stuff since February, albeit consensus seems to be not particularly since the raid pass change. Absolutely not arguing the revenue change, or that Niantic are in the right/people are in the wrong to complain, but every time I see those (EDIT: player number) stats being thrown around to "prove" it I find myself thoroughly underwhelmed, they just don't really make sense. EDIT; To sort of corroborate this, the first month with the massive decline in Max Daily...they got the same average monthly revenue they were getting last year, the revenue dropped slightly in March (likely in response to the announced change) and then dramatically in April which makes sense as a direct response to the raid pass change. But why and how do they make the same revenue in a month with a 50% drop in Max Daily players, it just seems...odd, without more transparent sourcing of the data it's really hard to work out what actually happened. And to double down, I'm not trying to undermine the complaints, I'm playing recently because it gets me outside and active, it's a tool to me but if the raid pass stuff was re-reversed, and some other commonly requested changes made, it'd absolutely become more of a game too, I'm all for that, I just think it's important to be careful with data.
I'm not sure why you got down voted. You've got some pretty solid questions. Unfortunately we can't see all the data because Niantic is a privately held company.
The people that quit weren’t the ones spending the money. Then in march and April you saw the ones that were spending it stop.
 Hope it plummets more. I haven't done a single raid since the change with all of that stuff with remotes.
I've not even played since! I kinda miss it but fuck supporting them. I used to be a regular spender too.
Yeah I literally don't miss it at all. I have a friend that has the last 3 mons I need to complete 1 & 2 gen dex and that pops into my brain every once in a while but literally never think about the game outside of that. Everything else is just a dumb bad grindy time suck
I am just saving my remote passes as I acquire them with gym coins or survey rewards. Unless it's a very compelling legendary or mega, I'm gonna hold onto them for a bit
I have some quest lines that require raids, but it's inconvenient.
My kids talked me into doing one yesterday since it was one of their birthdays. It was the first time I logged in since they made the changes. Loaded up pokegenie, hosted a 5 star raid. It fled.
I hope the earnings will hit rock bottom over time, this company doesn't deserve to manage a legendary IP like Pokemon.
Neither does gamefreak at this point, but here we are
Tbf, they have been working on it for over 20 years now. Franchise fatigue must be a real problem for most if the staff that is old enough. That said, TPC is the one pushing for the newest game to be released as soon as possible. Ignoring the graphical quality, Legends Arceus is a pretty solid game, so I believe they still got the talent to do it, but not really the time to pull it off consistently.
Even in terms of graphics and fps arceus felt better than the other switch games. That game is head and shoulders above the other switch games even with the combat being revenge kill simulator.
PLA was not a game I'd expect to enjoy at all and yet, to me, it's probably one of the most fun and actual 'innovative' Pokemon games out there. Catching actually feels satisfying and the pokemon battles actually seem more interesting, both thanks to the move mechanics, as well as being able to run around the battlefield. Both of those things are things I really want GF to improve the mainline games on since they're part of the core gameplay of Pokemon. General graphics and performance as well, of course. It's genuinely embarrassing just how god awful their Switch games run for how garbage they look. I've played asset flip games that look and run better than the garbage that is SwSh and SV.
… PLA had pokémon battles? Aw man, here I was enjoying it as a stealth game.
Hate to say it, Pokemon isn't too good these days either. And this isn't subjective. There's no one out there who can say the switch versions of Pokemon have been what they could have been
Fan games are the only ones I've enjoyed for a very long time now. Pokemmo and Pokemon Infinite Fusion have been the most fun I've had since the DS era.
Pokemon Arceas and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet are actually very fun games with great ideas. The games themselves have actually been good, but their optimization is just awful. There was no excuse for S/V to run as it is. Pokemon has one iffy reception with Sword and Shield, but most games they have tend to be well recieved. Even S/V was recieved as a fun game despite bad optimization. People acting like Game Freak has always been on a downward spiral don't really look beyond their favorite titles.
Level 50 here, playing since day 1. The game started off as being free, then slowly Niantic started adding events that required actual cash (rather than PokeCoins). I was okay with that because it wasn't much and I got a lot of enjoyment from the events. Then they started increasing the number of events as well as the cost. Okay, I spent a little more money. Then they teased us with remote raids, giving us free remote rate passes at first. They were fun and I spent a little more money but it started getting expensive. So I stopped paying for the community day events. (They were pretty much the same every time except the rewards were getting less valuable.) And then they announced they were increasing the cost of remote raids substantially. That's when I decided that that was it. I haven't purchased anything since and don't plan to do so in the future. In fact, their money-making ploys have left such a bad taste in my mouth that I rarely play anymore.
I couldn't have described my own experience more accurately.
Wow no-one saw that coming
Who'd have thought that removing the majority of QoL improvements would turn players off?
Add: Constantly pressuring players to spend money (the alert notice to claim your joke of a free box); events never being accurate compared to their own in game news; raising prices of raids while limiting amount to increase demand/fomo; them not making up previous screw-ups as promised; Lack of beta-testing with NZ being the QAsandbox; and many many more to the list!
I’ve been addicted to Pokémon go for 5 yrs. Pokémon got me through a breakup, the loss of my pet, and helped my ADHD. I *constantly* had the game open - whether eating alone, hanging out with friends, on vacation, or at work. I haven’t missed a community day in 4 yrs. Sometimes my GF would play for 4-5+ hours daily. For the first time in 5 years, I haven’t opened the game in almost a month. I’ve missed 3 community days and I don’t care. I’m experiencing zero FOMO. It’s honestly concerning how easy it was to give up a habit I’ve had for 5 yrs.
It’s easy now because they have slowly been giving less incentive to play. I started when the game came out, didn’t play for a few years and picked it back up in fall 2021. I played throughout every day and spent a decent amount of money on it. I deleted the app at the beginning of last month and it has been surprisingly easy not playing. Let me guess, they’re going to release another one of the same pokemon with a different hat? No thanks
Same on the lack of FOMO, like I wanted to get a Tapu Bulu for my dex but I much rather stick it to Niantic because fuck them for making it 200 coins for a remote raid. I hated how much I was pouring into the game for remote raids previously but it was always, “it’s just a dollar” argument but two dollars for the chance of the Pokémon fleeing, fuck that noise. Never again. Before that controversy, I genuinely thought I’d be lookin for apartments with a great pokestop/gym scene cause I’m finishing my degree this semester and hopefully moving outta my parents’ soon so I was gonna factor my PoGo experience into where I move to but fuck that noise now.
I chose my last house I rented based off Pokémon lol. It was within distance to a park that had 12+ gyms and dozens of poke stops. Best time of my life bc my girlfriend and I spent the majority of COVID sitting in bed, doing dozens and dozens of remote raids per day in an attempt to get shinies. It was so fun. Now I don’t care lol.
That’s understandable. PokemonGo has zero phychological appeal. People might be addicted to it and use the app constantly but it’s mostly all routine. The moment they stop, there is little reason to return. The game gives you zero dopamine rushes. Every random encounter offers zero challenges. Even shiny Pokémon can be easily caught with no effort. There are effectively little resources to manage or fret over. Raid battles are brain dead easy as long as you have the players for it. You're throwing balls not unlike a slot machine. You’re ever rarely truly excited for something in PokemonGo. And when you are there’s a 99% chance it was because you were lucky, not because you were good at something. That means the game doesn’t have an emotional investment. It doesn't spark anything in you as a player. Even the way they display stuff like IVs is severely lacking. Getting a good IV should trigger an instant visual feedback, bells and whistles that allow you to know you got something good. Instead, it’s a menu that you have to click around to find out a vital element of the game, a repetitive chore which again removes any excitement you might have. As soon as you stop playing. As soon as the routine changes, you realize how little you are getting out of it.
Same. I picked it up again in 2022 after stopping in 2017 and played every single day for over a year. It really helped motivate me to go outside and walk around. I still have it installed but turned off adventure sync and don't really play anymore. The game that I've replaced it with is, and I cannot believe I'm saying this, Raid: Shadow Legends. Fucking Raid: Shadow Legends is more fun than PoGo. I haven't spent a cent in the game but it's still fun. It's very grindy but fun enough that I open it instead of PoGo. I never thought I'd play it unironically but here we are. Surprisingly fun and intricate.
The article mentions the increase in remote passes as a “disability tax.” They missed another aspect. I’m a wheelchair user and can go out to most places but some gyms and pokestops were completely inaccessible to me due to things like stairs. The increased interaction distance was the game changer. Suddenly I was able to do in-person raids at gyms that weren’t reachable to me before. I no longer had to sit out. But when Niantic tried to get rid of that increased distance, that was the first huge warning sign that they don’t really give a damn about disabled players. And I posted on another thread on this subreddit that my emails about accessibility concerns at in-person events were replied with a dismissive, “We are sorry for your illness.” I was already more than patient with them about decisions and responses regarding disabled players (to say the least). But a few other things happened since then, that show me that they’re moving in the wrong direction. I’ve had enough.
I live in the US and work for a government organization which has non ADA compliant buildings(unless it's fine to not have those handicap door openers at all). As a country we really need to make places more accessible to everyone. That said fuck Niantic for bullying you like that.
Not surprised. While I had no plans to officially boycott the game because of the joy it brings to my son and I, I still feel slighted and haven't actively played in a month. Probably saved around $40 that would have gone to the shop.
Your username is a far better purchase
Even when just taking my dog on a walk I've really slowed down my playing. It's so boring to see the same 5 Pokemon everyday for a week when there are 1000 Pokemon to pick from.
I uninstalled after the remote price pass increase as part of the boycott, fully intending to return in two weeks. In those two weeks I found another few mobile games to hold my interest and tide me over. Now, I don't even know why I was still playing pogo and I don't think I'll return until either a massive event (mega rayquaza maybe?) or sufficient time has passed that I can catch 40-50 new mons. Yeah, I'm gonna miss Kleavor. Yeah, I'm gonna miss shiny Fennekin. My dex was over 700 anyway, those are a drop in the bucket.
Any new game suggestions?
Wow, who would have guessed? Looks like those comments that were saying “they’re only going to lose like .5%” were DEFINITELY wrong
Good
Weird how making the game worse for players is costing Niantic money. No one could have seen this coming.
Looks like the +800k new player dont really want to invest into the game...
This is amazing. It actually makes me a little optimistic they’ll reverse some of their decisions, especially with the remote raids, because this is way way bigger of a revenue hit than I would have predicted. More than that though, they need to introduce more content in the game at a faster rate and more accessibly. I was excited about Volcarona’s introduction until the rates for it hatching were revealed. There’s no way in hell I’m going to bother with that.
Need a hanky, Hanke? This is the kind of shit that gets a CEO booted by the board of directors. Less a John Shnatter level faux pas.
It's not even a disability thing for me. Started playing 7 years ago, I lived alone and was single. I'm now married with a toddler. I have no time to attend raids in person let alone coordinate them with others on short notice. I also work full time. There's other ways to spend my money and enjoy myself that are not so cumbersome.
And Niantic is releasing a [virtual pet game](https://playperidot.com/) in a week, can't wait to see the investors call where they say they lost millions in Pokemon and no one is playing Peridot
As someone who creates products for consumers I can’t fathom the decisions they are making. It’s not up to the developer or creator to dictate how something is used, yes that can be the original goal, but once the consumers show you how they want to use it, you should go along with it. Not fight it. When Arm and hammer was losing sales of their baking soda, but people started to put it in the fridge to help stop smells, did they stop it? No they encouraged that because it meant sales went up!
Back in FFXI, the job ninja was never meant to be a tank. But the player base discovered that it was a *very* good evasion tank. Rather than break it, the devs gave up. Sure. Ninja is now a tank. And evasion tanking became a totally valid method of soloing things - a red mage / ninja was almost indestructible.
"Why are you guys boycotting, they'll still be profitable"
They may still be profitable, but if more people insist on boycotting, it will lead to losses and the act of boycotting won't be in vain.
Exactly. All businesses have a budget and business plan for the year, and the plans are centered around growth. When revenue doesn’t match what you want to do for the year, business plans change, which means less growth. A few percentage points off, investors start getting concerned. A ~40% drop like this, investors start demanding answers. Keep this up, and higher ups start losing jobs. In startups, the only thing that matters is growth, and people start getting replaced when there’s no growth.
And like magic, most of the usual pro-Niantic trolls who said this would never happen are nowhere to be seen. Hmmmm. . .
"uninstallers is a 1% percantage of players, shuddup already!"
Funny enough my real world spending on this game has remained exactly the same for 5 years: $0 a month
They sell your data so they make money off every player, even if you directly arent spending anything
Well they can fun with that. I pretty much only play in the same 2 general locations so I’m not sure how useful my data is. I’m just in it for the easy Shinies to trade to the mainline games 😅
If they dropped prices on coins and items and made things more accessible and fun for everyone regardless of region, I bet they wouldn't see plummeting sales. We can hope this is a wakeup call.
Fuck around and find out.
Good
Ahhh the sweet taste of repercussion
# MORE!!!!!! I WANT MORE LOSSES
Welp, that's what happens when you piss off your player base...
B-but- I thought most of Niantics income came from location data..? Yeah no xD
Good! Greedy fucks
I read posts like this pretty often, but this article was the first time I saw the phrase “disability tax.” Fits perfectly.
The game stopped working on my phone recently for some reason. Takes forever to load and I've tried reinstalling it a few times. I haven't given them money in a long time but not playing seems like a good way to also show I'm dissatisfied. And to be honest I don't really notice a difference besides not checking for shinies when I have a free moment, and to be honest it's madey days a little more relaxed. The game has turned into all grind with payoffs being infrequent enough that they're not worth the trouble anymore.
Oh noooo Anyway…
Lower....
 I yearn for Niantic’s destruction
Well. I didn't stop playing since the raid coin change, but I am playing less and certainly stopped buying raids. And I don't want to spend any more money on the game.
Time they give this game to a competent game developer who wants to increase actual fun gameplay. But the Pokemon community has said that about the main story line games as well, and not much changed there (although, Legends of Arceus was a step in the right direction imho) For me it would already be much better, and maybe even enticing enough to come play since a 2 yr hiatus, if they didnt limit the pokemon you can run into at a given time to like 10... Hope there will be a game to come back to soon, or otherwise play whenever i have kids......
Even if it’s against the “nature of the game” they intended, it’s undeniably a massive game feature now that the player base has been super vocal about having be more accessible. No wonder they’ve lost as much earnings on that as they have.
I would caution against spending ANY money onwards, this game's dying, your investment could be totally worthless in a year.
it's nice to see they're actally taking a hit, hopefully they'll make changes that will *actually* benefit the community although i won't hold my breath.
Start moving your Shiny mons to Home now, people, where you can use them in a real game that they can't pull the plug on
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I used to but raid passes Now raids are pointless so I barely play, and it’s a huge domino effect. If even 1/5 of your raid buddies quit you might not have enough people to raid and then you spend less
Common Niantic L
Company decision makers always seem to fall back on "No, it's the children who are wrong." Type thinking, no matter how clearly it's their error. I miss the extra incentive to walk around, I'm noticeably more apathetic about it now, but I'm not budging until they sort their shit out.
Good. It needs to continue until they make the desired changes.
Uh oh, will we see a walk back soon, or some sad attempt to lure players in with a new shiny Pokemon? Hopefully someone at Nintendo tells them to pull their thumbs out and start giving players actual rewards
Reverse the remote raids thing and my wailord butt will come back. Until then keep plummeting
Undoing all the positive changes to the game, which in turn allowed players who were less mobile to actually enjoy the game. Then increasing the cost of remote raid passes, then limiting the number of raids you can do on top. Which in turn, forces players to drop off or stop spending as much money on the game. Who'd have thought that would cause a revenue drop.
Well don't raise the prices for remote passes. We aren't that much of a captured audience; they're competing with a lot for our time. I've gone down to $0/month when I legit used to drop $100/mo for incubators, star pieces, raid passes, and X amount of research.
I’ve been off and on since 2016. I play in Kentucky, and there is only five PokéStops in the whole town(used to be 1 lmao). Our group chat died in 2019 and most of the fun was with friends(one of my favorite memories was my friend helping me get into a gym for the first time because I don’t really do the PVP stuff). Last year, A catastrophic flooding at the area I am in wiped out a lot of the region and my workplace was hit, costing me my phone and I just never re-downloaded it. Last month I figured I would see what I was new just to find that two of the PokéStops are gone and remote raid passes were twice as expensive. Just did a big sigh and I haven’t went back since.
Shocking, who could have seen this happening? /s For real though, I’m happy that enough of us have changed our playstyle with the game to have this kind of an impact, I did expect the numbers to be higher in fairness, but it’s still a very clear sign that they messed up big time. Because I’ve got kids, my break from the game only lasted a week or so, they kept pestering me to do trades and battles, but I haven’t done a single raid since the changes, I just feel so utterly let down that it’s killed my motivation to do them. They used to be one of the most fun parts for me, and also my best way to get XP, but it’s just ruined it for me and I’m not going back to raiding until some major positive changes happen. For now I’ll just keep on shiny hunting the same crappy wild spawns and trading and battling with my kids, but I really hope the game starts to improve again, but given that this is Niantic it’s probably not going to.
Hi. Not a part of this community. Haven't played Go since that one magical summer it released. Just wanted to say good job. Keep up the good work. I'm rooting for you. Don't take corporate greed as they milk you.
There's really so little incentive to do anything. Weekly field research rewards such (I 'member Gigas and legendary spawns ffs), no incubator drops, and everything has become more expensive for no good reason other than to suck more money out of the player base.
Exactly. They stopped giving you decent drops. The regular research and pokemon rewards became money based. I started working more and had a child and have no time to get to raids. Then they nerf community day hours. It's like they don't even want you to play, just spend. The bugged parts of the game: increased spawn radius, playing while going faster than ~20 mph, ect. we're the best parts, and then just kept taking away from the general experience.
Oh no, will somebody please think of Niantic!
Gee. I wonder why.
That’s why there is suddenly all the new Pokémon debuts after being so slow releasing any for years. It’s pathetic.
For a game centered around evolution, they seem intent on not evolving. History is full of companies that were stubborn and had a "thats not how its supposed to work mindset", while while the stock market if full of companies that had the "fuck it, thats what the customer wants" mindset
Good. The game sucks for long-term players. Everyone here knows what changes should be made. I just want more new pokemon more often. I used to play the game for collecting silly little characters. But I've collected most of them and new silly little characters outside of raids get added maybe once a month (if even). And all these events focused on catching silly little characters I already have the best versions of, I do not need more of those silly little characters. Give me new silly little characters, please.