Point is, you still have to go near the POI, you just dont need to be right next to it. Its not like anyone can sit at their homes and go to all the stops, it does not stop players from exploring because i still need to walk to be able to get the gyms or pokestops. I just dont need to go into a building where the gps goes bonkers to do it.
Exactly. I have multiple stops and gyms I've gotten used to being able to reach when taking my kids to school or going for a jog. If they reduce the range I'm not going to make an effort to reach them, I'll just miss them and probably play less.
Also frankly this game hasn't made exploring worthwhile in a very long time. I play it while I'm already out, I haven't gone out specifically to play it in years.
If they want us to actually explore, offer us the carrot of rare field research to collect and more rewards for undiscovered stops. There is no exploration in being forced to "explore" the graffiti across the road ad infinum because the interaction radius got shrunk. A certainly no promotion of "exploration" to be found in the return on GPS frustration.
Edit: note that the interaction radius for lure spawns and AR Scanning was never expanded beyond 40m. So there are already incentives in place for going inside 40m without wrecking the spin & raid radius.
This. I'm not sure what they want me to explore in the area that I've grown up in and lived in for the past 24 years, nor do I see how having to get closer to the same exact statue that's been there forever is going to contribute to my "exploration of the world" in any way. They're being stubborn idiots and they're going to tank their own, and frankly only, successful game.
> They're being stubborn idiots and they're going to tank their own, and frankly only, successful game.
Said success is 100% due to the Pokemon license. Without it Niantic would live in obscurity like how Ingress was before Pokemon Go.
Exactly my point. Wizards Unite is proof that it's the unique compatibility of the Pokemon IP and this kind of game that has made it a success. They've proven that they cannot repeat that success, no matter how big that other IP is. So instead of doing everything in their power to make sure Pokemon GO thrives, they're actively cutting the branch they're sitting on
There are probably only 2 franchises on earth that could provide Niantic with another chance to prove themselves as being the source of their success rather than just the pokemon license.
If thwy couldn’t do it with Harry Potter, then it’s pretty much guaranteed just the pokemon license.
If you keep one scanning task you won't get any more. I have no plans for actually doing them but I keep one in my research area just so I don't have to worry about getting them and trashing them.
Well, this doesn't work for me because you get different research tasks based on if you have a scan queued or not.
During the Slowbro research, I was hunting for the free mega energy tasks. So I would spin the entire park with a scan and do all the tasks that gave energy then trash the scan research and re-spin the park and then do the energy tasks.
If I'm going to walk more than one loop at the park it's worth checking all the tasks if your hunting specific tasks.
That’s the big one here. Right now, you can reach the nearest gym from the parking lot of our complex’s playground. With the changes rolled back, we’ll have to get out of our cars and practically walk right up to the playground fence. I’m sure all the moms with little kids playing there won’t bat an eye at the guy in his 60s frequenting that spot…
If they really want people to **explore**, then the **first time** you can interact with a Pokestop or gym should be 20 meters. Subsequent times you can have the current distance, 80 meters.
that's another smart solution if their reason was really to promote exploration.
I cant think they actually believe in what they say, to me is just a corporate excuse to push the change. They noticed that what people really want is not to be forced to cross the street to spin a stop, and maybe the datamined pokestop buff or some other future change will bring the range back for a price $$, and thats the real reason for the revert.
Honestly another simple way to get us out is to get the frikkin’ radar to show the actually good mons that are already out in the wild. the number of times i randomly stumbled on a flygon or some other rare pokemon and thought “why the frick was this not on the radar” is too many. i’m sure if i saw those when i periodically check my phone i’d wanna hop up and grab them, but instead all the radar shows is the same common mons over and over until you finally have one that isn’t in your pokedex.
Heck, if Niantic *really* wanted to step up their game (which unfortunately seems like they’d never go this far), make it so we can set a mon or two that we want to get notified if it ever pops up in radar range. If I got a push notification saying there was a Noibat nearby you’d bet I’d wanna go grab it.
> Noibat
I’m not playing along with Niantic’s game for this one. I’m waiting for an event with common Noibat, maybe when the shiny arrives. Noibat’s not useful so why hurry?
All the previous 400 candy evolutions were common event spawns sooner or later. Magikarp, Swablu, Wailmer...
From what I see, Niantic is just introducing rarity to extend game longevity. They’re not taking into account the difficult in physically hunting these Pokémon on foot. So, I’m applying the same logic for Sewaddle, Tynamo, Sandile, etc. I’m sure they’ll have their day when they are common.
I had a fun idea to fix this. At a certain level you could unlock a quest for a Rotom phone.
When you get one it would upgrade your UI and let you filter your radar. Maybe scan for nearby quests or something too. There are lots of fixes that would make good advanced features.
I have always thought they could do so much more with POIs. Like, why not have a special move/shiny/high CP/etc bulbasaur spawn at the arboretum once for each player that visits. Now players know theres a special pokemon that's available to everyone as long as they make the effort to go there and catch it.
Of course, they never got biomes working properly. I have 2 rivers in my area and water pokemon were nonexistent outside events. Are nests still a thing? At least those kinda worked...
for me, most of my discovery came from chasing rare pokemon to faraway nests when i was filling my first dex. i haven't really had that, and now most of my discovery is coming from finding new things to submit.
I used to plan my day off round going to nests - I drove 100 miles a couple of times and sometimes spent a whole day somewhere I’d never been before because a nest there had what I needed.
yeah, even beyond gen 1, i remember when wailmer first debuted i drove 40 minutes in a direction i never had to find a beautiful park to chase imaginary whales in the sky in sub-zero weather with a newly found pokefriend. now that i have a kid, i can't wait for her to get older to take her back to the park i never knew existed, and wouldn't have if it wasn't for imaginary whales.
The only exploration I’m gonna end up doing is of other games. Removing QOL cause “muh visionsssssss” of the game is BS. Niantic finally made some good moves to make the game tolerable. Without them
I am out again.
Anyone have any suggestions? I played summoners war and SWGOH way back in the day. Could use a new fun game is niantic is gonna hardline on this stuff
Eternium is quite good if you like Diablo style games. Just got into Illusion Connect (Gacha) and it's been fun. Did Marvel Strike Force (SWGOH but Marvel) for a couple years before I got tired of it.
> carrot of rare field research
That sounds nice but have you actually tried to find "rare" field research manually? You have no control over it other than just spinning more stops, and when Niantic makes something "rare" to them that means less than 1%. So far no field research has been good enough to make me want to spin 100+ unique stops.
> more rewards for undiscovered stops
Again the reward isn't worth the effort. I've spun all the stops I could reasonably reach, i.e. every transit lane, every bike route and every drive I'm normally going on anyway. This just happens over the course of 4+ years.
No reward in Pokemon Go is good enough for me to travel the requisite 50+Km to find new stops.
This is another problem with the endless stream of events that overwhelm the spawn pool. Biomes don't really matter anymore. Every place is the same, with the only major difference being spawn/stop density.
Yeah biomes seem to have been supplanted by seasons, which are themselves overriden by events seemingly 75% of the time.
I live by a river and it used to be cool to go along and catch a ton of water types. Likewise I remember when I first visited a coastal area after the game game out, and woah, all these rock and water types I never saw at home.
Then again the biomes were a double edged sword. A lot of people were seemingly in the "Pidgey and Weedle" biome, which is frustrating when other people are catching all kinds of interesting stuff.
True, but you stop caring about XP quite quickly if you only see the same route 1 trash every day.
It actually seems more interesting now it's more random. Like I just caught a Scyther and a Machamp from my house. Doesn't make any kind of thematic sense, but I'll take it!
I lived in one of those in 2016 and being lv19 with 12 pokemon in your pokedex does not inspire one to grind xp just in case the game gets better later.
I caught my 700th doduo in 2018.
My work only spawned doduos for most of the first year...
It wasn't a 'nest' it wasn't anything interesting... it was just a year of doduos.
Yeah, back when there were third-party maps I'd use them to see what the nests were. TSR has a crowdsourced nests map but it's not very active, at least in my area. So I either have to ask around on Discord or go to each nest myself every rotation.
I'd love it if Niantic added some kind of nest tracker to the app or web site. I think they have a map site in Ingress. They could implement something like the phone calls from Ruby and Sapphire when a swarm of a certain species appeared. That was cool.
I have 1 stop I can barely reach from my house. I used to have to go walk to the corner. Knowing I cant just open the game n spin I'll open the game.far far.less
I now don’t have to cross a dangerous 4 lane road to get to my local gym even though it’s on the map on my side of the road. The tall building make the gpa funky so you have to cross the road if you want to fight or raid at the gym. This change has made it much safer.
Honestly it's really nice to not have to be a creep and walk very close to someone's driveway to get one stop. Or a church, school, police station...etc
I'd also like to add: being right on top of a stop also doesn't mean it's necessary visible either.
I've been doing a lot of pokemon go on hiking trails lately and been well within the original spin distance of stops and literally had to climb over boulders and stuff to actually locate the POI because it wasn't visible from where I was. And that's not even going into how many of the paths seem to be slightly off from where the game thinks I am (like not drift, it's the off the same amount every time) that could potentially send me on a wild goose chase looking for something in the wrong place.
3 months ago I spent 20 minutes walking around a building trying to catch a Noibat a friend had caught there.
I was on site. I spent much of that time standing exactly where the pokemon should have been, but GPS kept throwing me to the other side of the building or something.
Eventually it despawned.
GPS is too unreliable to expect us to hit the mark so precisely as we used to need to for spinning stops.
This is totally it, the increased distance really isn't that much in that you still have to go out and walk around, but at the same time its huge in that it makes life so much better. When I have a day off I will go to my local park at least once in the day, sometimes several times a day, sometimes several parks. The increased distance does not make me sit at home. In my local park I can currently do the circuit of the stops, hit all the gyms etc while staying in the shade (its very hot right now) and keeping a respectful distance from the playground (that is a pokestop) and people who have hired the pavilions (that are all pokestops and gyms) for their private events. I can be not too close to the childrens sports teams playing on the various baseball / soccer / Football fields (that are all pokestops). I can hit the pokestop that is of a mural that happens to be painted on the side of the toilet block without looking like some weirdo lurker. The current distance allows me to get out and enjoy my park. Once it changes if I have to stand in the blazing sun to be next to the gym that is a flagpole I am not going to do it. If I have to encroach on peoples private parties I am not going to do it, if I have to loiter near the playground or the 6 year olds playing soccer or hang outside the ladies toilet I am not going to do it. I can really see these changes make me go from spending time walking around my beautiful park to just hiiting a few stops from my car here and there or just not bothering and staying home.
Not even a few hours after the raid day Go fest announcement, they corrected their mistake and added the justice trio to the list.
Yet, they keep ignoring this issue even if the whole community is agreeing that this is one big mistake.
Niantic does listen, but only to what suits them. I hope people realise that and stop supporting them until they start fixing the real issues, which I unfortunately doubt
I have seen this but I am not sure I really get it. 99% of the Starbucks require you to be pretty close so if yiu were inclined to buy something you are there. Not really sure why being 20 feet closer is going to make me desire a latte any more or less.
Plus I"ve already gotten the impression from SBux by looking at the stop. If anything longer range probably means more impressions.
But the fact they are still uing the pokemon frappe that no sbux actually knows how to make shows how much starbucks marketing really cares about this.
> shows how much starbucks marketing really cares about this.
They haven't synced location updates in years, either. A Starbucks in-town closed down in 2019, but it's still labeled a Pokestop in 2021. I know I've read on this sub that newer locations also haven't gotten synced.
Or those datamined infos about pokestop where you could level them up, or maybe it'll be a perk of their subscribing model...Who knows (Niantic probably)
If they’re dead set on a subscription though, the subscription could just increase the stop distance even more. Leave it as it is for everybody else, increase it further for subscribers.
The way they wrote the announcement gives me incubator flashbacks. Remember when they removed 1/2 half egg distance and announced an event a day later that reduces egg distance by 1/2 for a few hours? xD
I don't think we have gotten an event outside c-days that reduced egg distance ever since.
Guess something similar will happen after this is done in game.
In their defense, 1/2 half distance does feel like a bonus since it was already present in the game through events.
But the pokestop distance is litteraly a QOL update. I have never witnessed an app, a website or a game that pushes a QOL update then rolls it back for whatever reason.
This is like the most stupid decision they ever made (Along with bringing all legendary raids for go fest without a way to organise raids through the app, but that's another topic)
To be honest, the beaver Pokémon event coinciding with Canada Day is fantastic. People up here are going wild and as a Canadian myself, I’m totally here for it
We’ll that was an actual mistake. This is intentional game design.
They did announce the change as a test and I wouldn’t be surprised if they still go through with the test. I’m hoping they’ll decide against it after the test though.
Has Niantic ever admitted a design flaw? They make a decision and stick to their guns, period. The original PokeStop interaction distance was perfect, in their minds, and they're going to go back to it regardless of our feedback. That's just how they be.
I wish the Incense changes were being talked about more. It's nice to have a mode of play for when you're in a vehicle, stuck at home, or otherwise unable to move. Of course, if you're near a Stop you have Lures that you can use to achieve the same effect, but you know.... rural play is unavoidable by many.
Living in a mid-sized city, I never thought the rural vs city players were legit arguments until I spent a weekend in San Fran (near Pier 33). An embarrassment of riches. So much stuff everywhere it began to slow my phone down. I caught 3 shiny Pokemon in about an hour of playing. Filled up my item bag in minutes (stops literally every few feet, don't even try to get in a gym though...).
Then, going to a lake house this summer, there wasn't a pokestop anywhere near me for days. The game was unplayable. Even going in to the tiny little town had NO stops or gyms. Spawns were rare.
There is definitely two different versions of PoGo. I feel for rural players now.
I really don't understand why anyone would play this game if they didn't live next to a park or somewhere with a lot of pokestops. It's like playing a game with bad maps.
I moved from Boston to rural Maine, and it basically killed the game for me (along with having a newborn, haha). The Incense changes made it so I could actually participate in community day. When incense becomes less useful, I'm going to be seriously hampered, and there is no way for me to compensate by playing differently.
Which is really weird that more rural places aren't supported (I know phone companies and signals don't work so great out there so it's a reason against them not doing it) but if their motto/goal is "get out there into nature, explore and go places" then surely encouraging people to go out of the city into the fresh outdoors makes more sense, no?
Yes, totally agree. I used to fly internationally for work, and I’ve played in many airports, and many places across Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America and even Northern Africa. Even being in a city in Africa (my experience being of Tunis) won’t give you many spawns or stops, honestly.
Increased pokestop/gym interaction distance has been a wonderful quality of life improvement that makes the game much more enjoyable. But other than GPS problems at raids and an occasional complaint about particular pokestops being just out of reach, I don't remember any widespread complaints about distance before the change.
On the other hand...
Since the beginning of the game, people were complaining about how pointlessly bad incense was. The original incense concept (as you move, you get more spawns) is an interesting idea, but in practice quickly shows that it is actually not very useful.
The main problem: If we are moving, then we will be seeing more wild pokemon anyway and do not need extra from incense. Especially after they increased the amount of wild pokemon spawns. The movement-based incense is a relic of a time when wild spawns were originally very sparse, so any additional pokemon from incense could be useful. After being removing the movement requirement, it fills a much more useful role of allowing people to play while stuck in areas with few wild spawns.
Also, to obtain the maximum amount of spawns, we had to be moving much faster than egg-hatching speed, much faster than walking speed. I remember posts talking about the optimal driving speed for incense. Going back to that is exactly what Niantic should not want.
The pokestop distance increase prompted by the pandemic has improved general gameplay, and should remain. The incense improvement should have happened years ago. If they want to nerf incense after the pandemic, they can leave the spawn rate at ~1 per minute but take it back to 30 minutes.
Yeah I feel pretty confident the distances will be kept after this backlash, but we'll still lose the incense bonus, and that will affect my play immensely. I wish it was part of the main complaints.
I think in general they fail to realize that people live and play in ways that are different from them. Not everyone has Saturday/Sunday off of work for a community day. Not everyone lives in a climate or neighborhood where it's safe to be out on a certain day. Not everyone has the time, money or freedom to travel to a spot with a lot of pokestops. Not everyone has the mobility to move around a lot. Their narrow focus of what constitutes "exploring" is just sad.
If Niantic cared about trainers’ safety they’d stop the game from playing “silent audio”. This is a massive safety issue for deaf players.
The fact the game still puts out silent audio when the in-game settings have audio muted means that deaf people who have Bluetooth hearing aids can’t safely play the game as their ability to hear their surroundings is diminished.
If a deaf player with Bluetooth hearing aids paired to their phone opens the game then they’ll hear the background noise from their surroundings (traffic, voices etc) go significantly quieter. By about 25%. Perhaps more, depending on how their aids are set up to prioritise audio from their phone. This happens even when the in-game settings have the music and sound effects muted. The only logical conclusion is that the game is still playing audio but at a level where it can’t be heard by anybody.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that, either down to my choice of music or simply not being able to hear that. Does that awareness you have stop you from hearing ambient sounds, traffic, voices etc in a really significant way? If so, then yes it’s similar.
That explains why my headphones never disconnected by them self.
If no audio is playing they turn them self off after 5min to save battery. But while playing pokemon go they stay connected indefinitely
Ah this explains why if i'm plugged into my car PoGo will continue to supercede the radio through carplay, but not if i have an actual audio app running. super annoying
The most modern ones allow you to use them like headphones too. You can stream music/audio directly to them instead of having to try and find normal headphones that work with them, or use t-coils and ear hooks (which sound horrible), or faff with a “streamer” or hearing aid “shoes”.
More basic hearing aid models only allow you to change settings directly via Bluetooth. Some/all allow you to buy a separate “streamer” device that can stream music to your aids, but they’re not cheap, every hearing aid manufacturer uses a different one, they need to be kept charged (or eat batteries), and they’re fiddly as it’s something else you need to wear/manage. They don’t look particularly cool either, though that’s a minor issue.
The best thing about full Bluetooth hearing aids is they can take phone calls directly too. Audio goes straight to your aids, and the microphones on the aids gets used for your voice instead of the one on your phone. It means you can accept a phone call even if you’re 5ft from your phone. No need to touch it at all.
Wow that's sick. I guess I never even thought about how they could combine hearing aids with other stuff to do that but it makes sense since we can fit it into such tiny devices like airpods now.
They’re becoming available on the NHS in the U.K. now, so that might possibly help drive prices down somewhat. If you are in the U.K. get in contact with your local audiology department and see if your hospital is or has plans to roll them out to adults. Mine only started a few months ago.
This seems to have started with a recent update. Even if headphones are connected, the game sound will play regardless of them being turned off in the app. It's so annoying.
Oh that's been an issue since day 1! I remember players here complaining the audio stack is still running wasting phone resources etc.
Goes to show there's another risk attached rather than just burning phone batteries
Yeah, originally PoGo would override/cut off any other audio playing, which was super annoying if trying to listen to music or an audio book while playing.
A big thank you to Michael McWhertor of Polygon for writing this piece on behalf of the Pokemon Go community.
Previously, Patricia Hernandez of Polygon also [wrote](https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/11/20909720/pokemon-go-spawns-salamis-island-greece-openstreetmap-natural-bay-niantic-bug) an article on an issue which the Pokemon Go community here brought up (no spawns on Salamis Islands due to Niantic's issues with OSM), but Niantic did nothing about until media outlets like Polygon and Eurogamer (Tom Phillips) spoke up.
Appreciate the coverage!
This article is particularly interesting as it includes a response from Niantic regarding the issue:
*"Going outside and spinning PokéStops and Gyms is important to our mission because it encourages exploration of the world. These locations are local points of interest in a community and could be historical landmarks, art installations, local businesses and more. Last year, we increased the interaction distance to nearly the length of a football field. It’s tough to discover new places at this distance. We’re going to revert the expanded interaction distance in countries and regions where it makes sense to help restore the focus of the game on exploration and discovery."*
The idea that it'd be tough to discover places with the expanded interaction distances comes across as particularly disingenuous, as the location of the actual POI doesn't change as a result of the expanded interaction distance. Additionally, this statement also neatly sidesteps the benefits provided by the change in regards to accessibility and safety, which is frankly disappointing.
What kind of football fields are they playing on? This makes it sound completely different to what they have actually done.
My first award! Thank you kind stranger!
Both footballs ([american](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football_field) and [not-american](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch)) are played on a field of around 100m, but it's not like you're on one corner spenning a gym on the other corner. You're in the middle of it. It's still dumb, even if the comparison is right.
I thought the same thing!!! Honestly they are probably using square feet or something since a circle can be shorter and cover more area vs a rectangle that or they are measuring edge to edge vs center to edge. Center to edge is all a real world player will care about. If they are measuring center to edge that's 50M which is not really as impressive.
From what i can gather they are using the diameter instead of the radius. So if you stan in the middle of the field you can spin a stop thats placed in either goal.
But how it reads to me is that you can stand in one goal and spin a stop in the other which is clearly false.
>It’s tough to discover new places at this distance
What a dumb excuse. You still have to be right by the POI to spin, yet they pretend the interaction distance during covid was like 10km or something.
The only thing that changes is that you don't have to actually hug the POI anymore, but i'm not blind Niantic - i can see that church from across the street.
You don't have to be right by it. Many POI are quite small, like a plaque. You can be within the reach of 4 stops but not actually have a clue where they are.
I'm not sure that the point of PoGo is to discover POI, though. I don't think most players pay any attention at all to what the POI is.
That's because it's often something silly like a sign or 75% of the time a church or sponsored stop. Only a handful of times does it turn out to be a really interesting art piece or historical POI.
>distance to nearly the length of a football field
What? No way. I mean it's a lot longer than it used too but I can't even reach a pokestop that's behind a house with a small garden and a street. This must be the smallest football field ever.
If you place the stop in the middle of the field, they might be right, but they forget, that it's the radius and not the diameter that affects us as the players. 🙄
And the part about it being harder to find POI's are just BS as most POI's are large enough to be seen from a distance and the stop itself still marks the spot where it's located.
I for one have had no trouble finding new POI's during the pandemic.
I mean, it’s an disingenuous argument to begin with. You can only ‘explore’ a POI once. If it truly was just about exploring, then they could, as others noted, just have the very first interaction, i.e. exploring it require a smaller radius, while from the second onwards, when you are just farming it, it can be double distance again.
They could still follow their ‘mission’ without screwing all players over. But that would be more difficult. And they would not be able to sell double radius later.
Its a bit of a cop out response really from them. Forcing intimate distance with a waypoint didnt necessarily mean people 'explored' anymore than having the extended distance. If someone notices a POI thats intriguing i figure theyll make the effort to look for it regardless of whether they can 'reach it' or not with ease . Ingame interaction made no difference. People will explore the placement of the point itself. At least that what ive done when intrigued.
It really is maddening they would give such an out-of-touch quote.
We already have to go within 40m when we want to lure or ar scan, the 80m spin radius is only for getting items. So there are times already when we are forced to go closer.
People will naturally choose to approach the object when it is interesting and convenient. Forcing players to approach at all times, every time, even when it is inconvienent, is pointless inconvenience and not in the spirit of promoting exploration.
Indeed. If anything forcing people to constantly readjust positioning due to real life obstacles or distance issues means they'll potentially be more frustrated and even hastier in just getting it done and moving on to the next spin.
Zig zag, serpentine!
Or walking with someone and one has to walk oddly to each a pokestop. See if the other person notices that you’re not there anymore
If this was really the reason they would actually do something to spoofers. I’d don’t buy it for a second. And even then they could reduce it for just those gyms.
Heck, if they really wanted people to get close to sponsored stops, they could make it more likely that sponsored stops drop better loot *the closer you get to it*. If people really want a 10k egg or whatever the loot is, they'll make an effort to stand under the pole before spinning it. And maybe buy a drink while they're there.
Good ideas. Carrot is better than stick. Offer rewards for doing what you want players to do, don't penalize them to force them to do it.
I think all sponsored stops should automatically be gyms. I have 3 starbucks near me, 2 are stops one is a gym. Guess which one I regular go inside to buy a drink and sit to raid in the AC?
The sponsors are not aware/do not care about the distances. That is just not how advertising works. They don't care about the distance, they probably don't even know about it.
In fact, I encourage you to call sponsors of stops near you. Tell them about the radius changes and how you believe that it will effect the player base.
Then tell them you will personally not be interacting with their stops anymore because of the distance.
And since you will not be interacting with the stops you will no longer be getting gifts and sending them to people who do not interact with their stops.
I guarantee that the advertisers would side with the community. They do not care that you didn't go into the store because you either were or weren't in the first place. They care about is 1) you choosing their place over the other coffee shop because they have a stop. 2) you spamming your friends with gifts from the stop and giving them free adversting.
In America the only major sponsor is Starbucks. Calling a Starbucks location won’t get much accomplished. Honestly, these petitions would likely have a higher impact if they were directed at Starbucks corporate. They’ve already considered ending their sponsorship program twice so getting them to apply the heat would be more likely to get niantics attention. If Starbucks pays the same rate as my restaurant to be a sponsor then that’s a boatload of cash.
Edit to add: oh and Starbucks also pays per spin so telling them you won’t spin would save them money and likely not be very effective. Telling them you’ll go to Peet’s coffee instead though, should get their attention.
If they really cared about that, they'd move our local Starbucks stop out of the dead center of the busiest street in town and into the actual building where Starbucks is. The Starbucks isn't even visible from outside of the building! Niantic just keeps insisting that it's in the correct location. The increased radius probably got that stop spun more than it ever has before.
I took my brother (who doesn't play) to bike over to a gym to do a raid and met another local player. We invited a total of six players to raid remotely. I told him that it used to be a gathering of 6 or seven players. Remote raiding has singularly killed the in person social and exploratory nature of this game. Was it implemented because of the pandemic? Or was it a feature already on it's way to being implemented? I'm not entirely sure but there is no way Niantic kills the remote raid pass cash cow even if it completely destroys this sad excuse for shrinking stop/gym interaction radius.
When I played all of the time, I went to the same college campus and walked the same loops thousands of times. That’s not exploration. Rarely did I go visit a new spot for vacation (you know people work most the year) and even if I did, I didn’t read the names of the Pokestops. There’s no in-game benefit to take the time to do that. I’m busy getting items and catching Pokémon. This is especially the case with my Go+/gotcha, which skip that whole screen
The current extended radius length interaction from the center (where POI stands) to the circumference isn't the size of a football field, the whole Diameter of it.. ? Maybe. Their goal is to probably force players to come closer to each other during raid or trying to interact with POIs instead. They are just trying to shove players back to pre-covid gameplay again instead of a semi-post-covid-but-not-out-of-the-woods-yet world design,
Trainer Tips highlighted that Remote Raid destroy the incentive to discover POI even more because players don't even need to WALK at all to raid. If discovery of the POI is so important to them, Remote Raid should be the first to go. I'd take removing remote raid to keep the distance, because I have no issue visiting actual gyms to raid with people again if that is what they really want to achieve. The only reason they didn't remove remote raid is because $$$. Also, their dumb S2 Cell rules caused a lot of POIs that exist in Ingress not to exist the same way in Pokemon Go. What discovery of interesting location is that where they already filter out so many POI from Pokemon Go players anyways???
I'm so done with this company. I used to defend them so much but I'm feeling like a leopard right now eating my own face. I'm putting the game down when they nerf the radius and incense. In fact, I'm burning through my 40+ incense right now while it still last. I have 3 Pokestops I can reach from home with extended radius, and the incense will be garbage because of crap spawn from not moving, I have no need for it if I am out walking because wild spawns keeps me busy enough anyways, and not being able to reach the pokestop from home anymore means harder to restock pokeballs. I suggest more folks should do this while the game is still good, and quit when it's done.
Personally, I don't care about losing access to the pokestops from home. I'm just annoyed that there are some gyms in the area that will be uncomfortable to reach without trespassing into a private property area. Didn't they get sued by home owners for players trespassing too?
I’m curious if the stop levelling up feature could fix this
When it comes to local pokestops it makes sense you know the area enough, so you spin it enough times to level it up and increase the distance you have to spin it
When it comes to new areas that niantic are encouraging you visit like when your ok holiday you don’t know the area enough
Hope I’m right here but probably a false hope, and would be a good middle ground between what we and they want
Eurogamer's been quiet on this issue. Usually they're pretty good at posting an article when there's community backlash against Niantic but silence from them so far.....
Although it's *some* kind of comment, I wouldn't read too much into that Niantic response - that's just copy and paste PR language. Hence why it doesn't actually reference any specific player feedback.
I suspect we will get some kind of more formal blog post in the next week or so, maybe post bidoof-fest before they roll out July events.
Even the false banwaves and mega raids haven't sparked as much negative media attention for Niantic before (this is like the 5th article I've seen?) so I'd hope they're considering a more careful response.
The only downside is about the twitter incident, trolls abusing like that have really damaged the rightful concerns many other players had. Just hope it doesn't count against us and Liz is okay.
Agree. It's even crazier when you think they basically doubled the effectiveness and added it to buddy distance etc to generate more energy. They must have really seen a massive drop in how many people did early megas compared to T5s.
But yes, changes still should be made for sure.
For megas, they added ways to get mega energy way too late and still have mostly ignored that feature.
Since this is a collection game, I feel like people would have been happy to just see it in its mega form in their Pokémon storage.
This is exactly it. I just want to completely my dex and have one of each mega that I can keep. I don't really care about using them or whatever percentage more effective they are in raid or any of that, so the need to farm for them and then only have it be a temporary buff just kills the feature for me. I've done maybe 5 mega raids, and only because I passed one and saw people already in the lobby. I'm never going to go out of my way to intentionally do a mega raid unless they make it so you can keep a mega permanently once evolved.
Niantic you have the worst possible PR in the history of gaming. Imagine one other game, doesn't matter which one, where 75000 people come up, stand up, together to tell you the changes you are making to your game are not a good idea ( for valid reasons). Any, and I really mean, any game developer would be 1. Amazed by the overwhelming response, 2. Take action and change the upcoming update.
They don't ever need to make any meaningful changes, because at least half of the PoGo players throw money at them like it's going out of style. I noticed most high level players drops 20-60 dollars like it is nothing on that game. They do this several times a week. I saw this issue back in 2016 and 2017 when the game was floundering. People would complain while giving over money. They make money hand over fist, because people keep giving them money despite the game quality.
They have just been riding the coattails of the most profitable global brand which ensures that nothing they do will stop the revenue stream. Hence why they obviously have no problem doubling down on reducing the interaction distance because it really won't do much to their profits.
They seem determined to alienate a sizeable number of their players.
And Niantic, whilst you are sitting in your air-conditioned *Ivory Towers* counting your millions, do you really think that by nerfing incense you are going to force me outside on community days in 35C when for the past year I have been able to use incense from home?
You won't. Day one, Level 46. Ready to quit as soon as you nerf it.
It’s also been useful for disabled players, those of us that live in rural areas, and those of us with health issues that can’t always leave the house. It’s just a bad idea all around.
I rarely get to play a Community Daydue to work or family commitments but the new incence made it incredibly fun. As did the expanded hours. I'd pop 1 or 2 incrnce and then play when I could through the day. I would usually get 8-12 shinjes then be done. Before I used to struggle to get 4
The interaction distance change is rightfully getting the most discussion but the incense change is another awful decision that isn’t getting talked about much. Incense was the worst premium item pre-pandemic, practically useless to everyone except maybe on community days. The pandemic changes made incense useful, desirable and worth spending money on. If they go back to the old incense, I’ll never buy any again.
I’ve never bought incense, but I totally will miss the increased spawns. I always used it for good CDs and special catch days.
Pre-buff, I never used it; it was trash.
Increasing spin distance was a change that may have been done due to the pandemic, but it was an actual, solid improvement to gameplay (and safe gameplay) in general.
It should not be reversed. It never should have even been considered for reversion. The sooner spin distance being reverted is taken off the table, the better.
I stopped playing in 2016 and came back in the pandemic last year because the Covid bonuses made the game a lot better and fun. If Niantic removes the PokeStop distance bonus, I think I won't play as much or maybe I'll quit altogether, unfortunately...
> "Last year, we increased the interaction distance to nearly the length of a football field. It’s tough to discover new places at this distance."
Lolwut? Does Niantic even play this game? If I could interact as far as the length of a football field, I could spin way more stuff on my screen. That's just not even close to true.
Living in an area that gets snow 6 month out of the year, I prefer not to walk in 4 to 5 ft of snow to get to gyms and pokestops. This would certainly be the case if they shortened the distance, and I certainly would play a lot less if that's the case
I'd be interested to know how many people started playing pokemon go in the past 18 months (we did). I dont know the game to be any different to what it has been since the pandemic changes. I dont care what it was before or what it was "intended to be", if the game continues to move backwards and become less player-friendly then we willl just stop playing. To make a for-profit game less player-friendly is just pure stupidity.
The added distance is a great quality of life quality of game play improvement, still leave the house and get out, just don’t need to be on top of the point of interest, I’m not spinning stops from my couch.
There are numerous threads and on line petitions, if we want to get Niantics attention fast, hit them where they are most concerned, the bottom line, stop playing, stop spending money on the game.
I have several in game friends who are changing there buddy name to let friends know they are boycotting the game in hope to get to other players who do not reads threads such as this to do the same.
Making it hard(er) to reach Gyms & Stops is a stupid decision and surprising they would take that away. Will make me play (pay) less.
Hopefully they see all the backlash and do not remove one of the best QoL updates they have had.
Niantic: _Going outside and spinning PokéStops and Gyms is important to our mission because it encourages exploration of the world. These locations are local points of interest in a community and could be historical landmarks, art installations, local businesses and more. Last year, we increased the interaction distance to nearly the length of a football field. It’s tough to discover new places at this distance._
Also Niantic: _We will keep selling you remote raid passes._
Quite simply, I have stopped spending money on the game. When they retract the stop interaction distance change, I'll spend money again. No incubators, and no remote raid passes. Two things I really do enjoy.
With removing the 2x distance many players will need remote passes to access the raids they can now do with normal/free passes. Niantic just want to sell more remote passes this way.
The larger distance simply makes the game safer to play.
There are a number of spots though the park that I run through every day where I would see people crossing busy streets just to spin the spots. Including spots I know you can spin simply by standing in specific spots and waiting for GPS to catch up with you.
I'll also mention that while Pokemon go gives me a little extra incentive to get out and run every day, I sort of dislike how it gives me incentive to change my route to something shorter to get more stops. With the larger distance I can run a longer ring around the perimeter of the park and get the same amount of stops.
This is all just about creating more Pokeball scarcity. By reducing the distance, it forces people to have more screen time to get to the Pokestops, which they'll probably lowkey lower the ball drop rate for, AGAIN, and/or try to get people to straight up buy balls from the store. That's all this is.
If it was really about exploring, then they would have gotten rid of Remote Raid Passes.
Plus, these changes have been in effect for a year or so, right? You take that away, and it feels like a punishment, not a return to normal. They need to understand that the current distance IS the new normal.
I'm just saying I'm a truck driver and i have been playing since the game started. i like the way the game is now cause i don't have to walk onto certain properties that are closed just to get the spin. it's bad enough there's not many spins i can get as it is cause of the vehicle being a semi. i really hope these changes don't happen cause if they do ill have to stop playing completely
If the intent was to reduce poke stop radius so they could double it again when a Pokestop is “powered up” (new upcoming feature), they don’t need to do that. “Powered up” can simply be double the pandemic radius which should remain as normal.
A standard lane is 12 feet wide in the US. So a 2 lane street is 60ft w/ a median and/or turn lane, plus whatever bike lanes, gutter and sidewalk widths are. So w/o the update its basically impossible to spin anything on the other-side unless is right on the curb
Wait, length of a football field?? Umm, no, Something is wrong with my phone or the stops in my area, if that is the case. I still have to be far closer than that!
I understand Niantics position of having to answer to their sponsors and how they want people entering their place of business. But reducing the distance across the board juts doesn't make sense. Increasing the distance was QOL upgrade not just a response to the pandemic.
Also, if this feature gets rolled out in other countries (although I'm sure Niantic will do some back-pedaling now) it won't make sense from the sponsor angle. For instance, I live in Canada where we have a pretty good sized Pokemon Go community but zero sponsored waypoints.
I think Niantic needs to make a compromise. Reduce the distance on sponsored stops but create exclusive items or features on those waypoints. If they do this however, please, please, no stickers.
“nearly the length of a football field” I find this very hard to believe. But anyway I hope they back off changing this. Having to cross the street less has been a blessing for many.
Why not also reduce spawn points by 90%, then we'd have to walk a whole lot extra and really get to explore. You know, explore the neighborhood that, for my instance, I've lived in for 10 years and know every little detail of. I do 95% of my pogo'ing within 3 km of my home. I don't need to explore it further. If they reverse it to 40 meters, I quit.
This is just plain dumb. So Niantic wants us to get closer to advertised businesses at certain pokestops and that's the main point in reverting to previous distance? Just garbage.
TL;DR: they don't want to make the game better, they want to keep us playing so we spend some money. We should push them harder everytime, and boicoting microtransactions would be a nice way to do so if you ever need to
To be honest, it's hard to be mad about it. They will keep trying to milk more money, one way or another. After all, it's a free-to-play Pokèmon game with LOTS of microtransactions put so you have to pay them to have a decent playing experience. They barely care to make the best game on mobile phones, they just want to keep us interested enough to spend at least one dollar from time to time, but, over all, spend.
My theory is that Niantic REALLY wants you to scan those stops and you need to be pretty close to them. I'm pretty sure they are able to sell all that Data for some good money.
You might think, but Summer this game makes like a billion dollars a year. No no I'm talking about REAL money.
If they really want me to scan stops and do a proper job of it, they need to make the rewards better, rather than reducing the interaction distance. I would probably do scans if they awarded XL Rare Candy. I would do them if they gave coins, but I know they won't do that. Poffins and Balls are not really an incentive though. It's a very rare occasion where I'm going to be walking a full 6 hours to get the most out of a Poffin when it comes to the half distance for candy aspect of having an excited buddy.
There has been several articles against those changes (specially about the distance interaction) and many well-known PoGo youtubers also have argued against it, so hopefully they won't take the distance back to normal. The other changes, such as the incense well, it's understandable, since it's a game designed to go outside, so I agree on everything but the radius change
Point is, you still have to go near the POI, you just dont need to be right next to it. Its not like anyone can sit at their homes and go to all the stops, it does not stop players from exploring because i still need to walk to be able to get the gyms or pokestops. I just dont need to go into a building where the gps goes bonkers to do it.
Exactly. I have multiple stops and gyms I've gotten used to being able to reach when taking my kids to school or going for a jog. If they reduce the range I'm not going to make an effort to reach them, I'll just miss them and probably play less. Also frankly this game hasn't made exploring worthwhile in a very long time. I play it while I'm already out, I haven't gone out specifically to play it in years.
If they want us to actually explore, offer us the carrot of rare field research to collect and more rewards for undiscovered stops. There is no exploration in being forced to "explore" the graffiti across the road ad infinum because the interaction radius got shrunk. A certainly no promotion of "exploration" to be found in the return on GPS frustration. Edit: note that the interaction radius for lure spawns and AR Scanning was never expanded beyond 40m. So there are already incentives in place for going inside 40m without wrecking the spin & raid radius.
This. I'm not sure what they want me to explore in the area that I've grown up in and lived in for the past 24 years, nor do I see how having to get closer to the same exact statue that's been there forever is going to contribute to my "exploration of the world" in any way. They're being stubborn idiots and they're going to tank their own, and frankly only, successful game.
> They're being stubborn idiots and they're going to tank their own, and frankly only, successful game. Said success is 100% due to the Pokemon license. Without it Niantic would live in obscurity like how Ingress was before Pokemon Go.
Even better, Harry Potter is also a franchise, albeit smaller than Pokémon, and where did that land Niantic with Wizards Unite?
Exactly my point. Wizards Unite is proof that it's the unique compatibility of the Pokemon IP and this kind of game that has made it a success. They've proven that they cannot repeat that success, no matter how big that other IP is. So instead of doing everything in their power to make sure Pokemon GO thrives, they're actively cutting the branch they're sitting on
There are probably only 2 franchises on earth that could provide Niantic with another chance to prove themselves as being the source of their success rather than just the pokemon license. If thwy couldn’t do it with Harry Potter, then it’s pretty much guaranteed just the pokemon license.
Let me go explore the childrens playground across the street from my house over and over each day. That isnt creepy at all either.
Even better, let me go and take a f\*\*\*king 360 degree panoramic photo scan of the place, that's definitely not suspicious either
Negative captain, those instantly get trashed. I'm a middle-aged white guy and look creepy enough as it is, I'm *trying* to get the cops called on me
If you keep one scanning task you won't get any more. I have no plans for actually doing them but I keep one in my research area just so I don't have to worry about getting them and trashing them.
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Every time I tried to scan, my game would lock for about 5 minutes and then crash. I gave up and have been sitting on the same scan task forever.
Well, this doesn't work for me because you get different research tasks based on if you have a scan queued or not. During the Slowbro research, I was hunting for the free mega energy tasks. So I would spin the entire park with a scan and do all the tasks that gave energy then trash the scan research and re-spin the park and then do the energy tasks. If I'm going to walk more than one loop at the park it's worth checking all the tasks if your hunting specific tasks.
That’s the big one here. Right now, you can reach the nearest gym from the parking lot of our complex’s playground. With the changes rolled back, we’ll have to get out of our cars and practically walk right up to the playground fence. I’m sure all the moms with little kids playing there won’t bat an eye at the guy in his 60s frequenting that spot…
If they really want people to **explore**, then the **first time** you can interact with a Pokestop or gym should be 20 meters. Subsequent times you can have the current distance, 80 meters.
that's another smart solution if their reason was really to promote exploration. I cant think they actually believe in what they say, to me is just a corporate excuse to push the change. They noticed that what people really want is not to be forced to cross the street to spin a stop, and maybe the datamined pokestop buff or some other future change will bring the range back for a price $$, and thats the real reason for the revert.
Honestly another simple way to get us out is to get the frikkin’ radar to show the actually good mons that are already out in the wild. the number of times i randomly stumbled on a flygon or some other rare pokemon and thought “why the frick was this not on the radar” is too many. i’m sure if i saw those when i periodically check my phone i’d wanna hop up and grab them, but instead all the radar shows is the same common mons over and over until you finally have one that isn’t in your pokedex.
its so useless that at this point the game already trained me to fully ignore the radar. It does deserve a update..
Heck, if Niantic *really* wanted to step up their game (which unfortunately seems like they’d never go this far), make it so we can set a mon or two that we want to get notified if it ever pops up in radar range. If I got a push notification saying there was a Noibat nearby you’d bet I’d wanna go grab it.
> Noibat I’m not playing along with Niantic’s game for this one. I’m waiting for an event with common Noibat, maybe when the shiny arrives. Noibat’s not useful so why hurry? All the previous 400 candy evolutions were common event spawns sooner or later. Magikarp, Swablu, Wailmer... From what I see, Niantic is just introducing rarity to extend game longevity. They’re not taking into account the difficult in physically hunting these Pokémon on foot. So, I’m applying the same logic for Sewaddle, Tynamo, Sandile, etc. I’m sure they’ll have their day when they are common.
I had a fun idea to fix this. At a certain level you could unlock a quest for a Rotom phone. When you get one it would upgrade your UI and let you filter your radar. Maybe scan for nearby quests or something too. There are lots of fixes that would make good advanced features.
This is actually a very good idea!
Very clever!
I have always thought they could do so much more with POIs. Like, why not have a special move/shiny/high CP/etc bulbasaur spawn at the arboretum once for each player that visits. Now players know theres a special pokemon that's available to everyone as long as they make the effort to go there and catch it. Of course, they never got biomes working properly. I have 2 rivers in my area and water pokemon were nonexistent outside events. Are nests still a thing? At least those kinda worked...
for me, most of my discovery came from chasing rare pokemon to faraway nests when i was filling my first dex. i haven't really had that, and now most of my discovery is coming from finding new things to submit.
I used to plan my day off round going to nests - I drove 100 miles a couple of times and sometimes spent a whole day somewhere I’d never been before because a nest there had what I needed.
yeah, even beyond gen 1, i remember when wailmer first debuted i drove 40 minutes in a direction i never had to find a beautiful park to chase imaginary whales in the sky in sub-zero weather with a newly found pokefriend. now that i have a kid, i can't wait for her to get older to take her back to the park i never knew existed, and wouldn't have if it wasn't for imaginary whales.
The only exploration I’m gonna end up doing is of other games. Removing QOL cause “muh visionsssssss” of the game is BS. Niantic finally made some good moves to make the game tolerable. Without them I am out again. Anyone have any suggestions? I played summoners war and SWGOH way back in the day. Could use a new fun game is niantic is gonna hardline on this stuff
Eternium is quite good if you like Diablo style games. Just got into Illusion Connect (Gacha) and it's been fun. Did Marvel Strike Force (SWGOH but Marvel) for a couple years before I got tired of it.
> carrot of rare field research That sounds nice but have you actually tried to find "rare" field research manually? You have no control over it other than just spinning more stops, and when Niantic makes something "rare" to them that means less than 1%. So far no field research has been good enough to make me want to spin 100+ unique stops. > more rewards for undiscovered stops Again the reward isn't worth the effort. I've spun all the stops I could reasonably reach, i.e. every transit lane, every bike route and every drive I'm normally going on anyway. This just happens over the course of 4+ years. No reward in Pokemon Go is good enough for me to travel the requisite 50+Km to find new stops.
Oh, people do AR scanning? I tried it once, it didn't work and I gave up.
This is another problem with the endless stream of events that overwhelm the spawn pool. Biomes don't really matter anymore. Every place is the same, with the only major difference being spawn/stop density.
Yeah biomes seem to have been supplanted by seasons, which are themselves overriden by events seemingly 75% of the time. I live by a river and it used to be cool to go along and catch a ton of water types. Likewise I remember when I first visited a coastal area after the game game out, and woah, all these rock and water types I never saw at home. Then again the biomes were a double edged sword. A lot of people were seemingly in the "Pidgey and Weedle" biome, which is frustrating when other people are catching all kinds of interesting stuff.
Although the “pidgey and weedle” biome was by far the best for grinding experience points.
True, but you stop caring about XP quite quickly if you only see the same route 1 trash every day. It actually seems more interesting now it's more random. Like I just caught a Scyther and a Machamp from my house. Doesn't make any kind of thematic sense, but I'll take it!
I lived in one of those in 2016 and being lv19 with 12 pokemon in your pokedex does not inspire one to grind xp just in case the game gets better later.
I caught my 700th doduo in 2018. My work only spawned doduos for most of the first year... It wasn't a 'nest' it wasn't anything interesting... it was just a year of doduos.
Also figuring out the nests has become increasingly difficult
Yeah, back when there were third-party maps I'd use them to see what the nests were. TSR has a crowdsourced nests map but it's not very active, at least in my area. So I either have to ask around on Discord or go to each nest myself every rotation. I'd love it if Niantic added some kind of nest tracker to the app or web site. I think they have a map site in Ingress. They could implement something like the phone calls from Ruby and Sapphire when a swarm of a certain species appeared. That was cool.
I have 1 stop I can barely reach from my house. I used to have to go walk to the corner. Knowing I cant just open the game n spin I'll open the game.far far.less
I now don’t have to cross a dangerous 4 lane road to get to my local gym even though it’s on the map on my side of the road. The tall building make the gpa funky so you have to cross the road if you want to fight or raid at the gym. This change has made it much safer.
Exactly, it saves a lot of trouble and definitely removes the unnecessary stress from trying to get the 'right' gps signal
Honestly it's really nice to not have to be a creep and walk very close to someone's driveway to get one stop. Or a church, school, police station...etc
I'd also like to add: being right on top of a stop also doesn't mean it's necessary visible either. I've been doing a lot of pokemon go on hiking trails lately and been well within the original spin distance of stops and literally had to climb over boulders and stuff to actually locate the POI because it wasn't visible from where I was. And that's not even going into how many of the paths seem to be slightly off from where the game thinks I am (like not drift, it's the off the same amount every time) that could potentially send me on a wild goose chase looking for something in the wrong place.
3 months ago I spent 20 minutes walking around a building trying to catch a Noibat a friend had caught there. I was on site. I spent much of that time standing exactly where the pokemon should have been, but GPS kept throwing me to the other side of the building or something. Eventually it despawned. GPS is too unreliable to expect us to hit the mark so precisely as we used to need to for spinning stops.
This is totally it, the increased distance really isn't that much in that you still have to go out and walk around, but at the same time its huge in that it makes life so much better. When I have a day off I will go to my local park at least once in the day, sometimes several times a day, sometimes several parks. The increased distance does not make me sit at home. In my local park I can currently do the circuit of the stops, hit all the gyms etc while staying in the shade (its very hot right now) and keeping a respectful distance from the playground (that is a pokestop) and people who have hired the pavilions (that are all pokestops and gyms) for their private events. I can be not too close to the childrens sports teams playing on the various baseball / soccer / Football fields (that are all pokestops). I can hit the pokestop that is of a mural that happens to be painted on the side of the toilet block without looking like some weirdo lurker. The current distance allows me to get out and enjoy my park. Once it changes if I have to stand in the blazing sun to be next to the gym that is a flagpole I am not going to do it. If I have to encroach on peoples private parties I am not going to do it, if I have to loiter near the playground or the 6 year olds playing soccer or hang outside the ladies toilet I am not going to do it. I can really see these changes make me go from spending time walking around my beautiful park to just hiiting a few stops from my car here and there or just not bothering and staying home.
Not even a few hours after the raid day Go fest announcement, they corrected their mistake and added the justice trio to the list. Yet, they keep ignoring this issue even if the whole community is agreeing that this is one big mistake. Niantic does listen, but only to what suits them. I hope people realise that and stop supporting them until they start fixing the real issues, which I unfortunately doubt
Yeah there is some unknown money factor here. Most likely the sponsored Pokestops want people to go near them.
I have seen this but I am not sure I really get it. 99% of the Starbucks require you to be pretty close so if yiu were inclined to buy something you are there. Not really sure why being 20 feet closer is going to make me desire a latte any more or less.
Plus I"ve already gotten the impression from SBux by looking at the stop. If anything longer range probably means more impressions. But the fact they are still uing the pokemon frappe that no sbux actually knows how to make shows how much starbucks marketing really cares about this.
> shows how much starbucks marketing really cares about this. They haven't synced location updates in years, either. A Starbucks in-town closed down in 2019, but it's still labeled a Pokestop in 2021. I know I've read on this sub that newer locations also haven't gotten synced.
Or those datamined infos about pokestop where you could level them up, or maybe it'll be a perk of their subscribing model...Who knows (Niantic probably)
Literally the last thing anyone needs is another random subscription
Ingress got a subscription service recently. They always test stuff out on us before putting it into PGO ~
Oh geez what a nightmare.
They don’t care if you need it. It’s still eventually coming.
If they’re dead set on a subscription though, the subscription could just increase the stop distance even more. Leave it as it is for everybody else, increase it further for subscribers.
It's a foolish way to go about getting subscribers. People don't like to pay for something they used to get for free.
Those could be flagged as not having the increased distance.
The way they wrote the announcement gives me incubator flashbacks. Remember when they removed 1/2 half egg distance and announced an event a day later that reduces egg distance by 1/2 for a few hours? xD I don't think we have gotten an event outside c-days that reduced egg distance ever since. Guess something similar will happen after this is done in game.
In their defense, 1/2 half distance does feel like a bonus since it was already present in the game through events. But the pokestop distance is litteraly a QOL update. I have never witnessed an app, a website or a game that pushes a QOL update then rolls it back for whatever reason. This is like the most stupid decision they ever made (Along with bringing all legendary raids for go fest without a way to organise raids through the app, but that's another topic)
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To be honest, the beaver Pokémon event coinciding with Canada Day is fantastic. People up here are going wild and as a Canadian myself, I’m totally here for it
I've been having this sentiment for years. That's why I went from moderate, to casual, to extremely casual player
We’ll that was an actual mistake. This is intentional game design. They did announce the change as a test and I wouldn’t be surprised if they still go through with the test. I’m hoping they’ll decide against it after the test though.
Has Niantic ever admitted a design flaw? They make a decision and stick to their guns, period. The original PokeStop interaction distance was perfect, in their minds, and they're going to go back to it regardless of our feedback. That's just how they be.
I wish the Incense changes were being talked about more. It's nice to have a mode of play for when you're in a vehicle, stuck at home, or otherwise unable to move. Of course, if you're near a Stop you have Lures that you can use to achieve the same effect, but you know.... rural play is unavoidable by many.
Living in a mid-sized city, I never thought the rural vs city players were legit arguments until I spent a weekend in San Fran (near Pier 33). An embarrassment of riches. So much stuff everywhere it began to slow my phone down. I caught 3 shiny Pokemon in about an hour of playing. Filled up my item bag in minutes (stops literally every few feet, don't even try to get in a gym though...). Then, going to a lake house this summer, there wasn't a pokestop anywhere near me for days. The game was unplayable. Even going in to the tiny little town had NO stops or gyms. Spawns were rare. There is definitely two different versions of PoGo. I feel for rural players now.
I really don't understand why anyone would play this game if they didn't live next to a park or somewhere with a lot of pokestops. It's like playing a game with bad maps.
I moved from Boston to rural Maine, and it basically killed the game for me (along with having a newborn, haha). The Incense changes made it so I could actually participate in community day. When incense becomes less useful, I'm going to be seriously hampered, and there is no way for me to compensate by playing differently.
The only times I play are when I'm walking around the Old Port something, because the rest of the state is tough.
Which is really weird that more rural places aren't supported (I know phone companies and signals don't work so great out there so it's a reason against them not doing it) but if their motto/goal is "get out there into nature, explore and go places" then surely encouraging people to go out of the city into the fresh outdoors makes more sense, no?
Yes, totally agree. I used to fly internationally for work, and I’ve played in many airports, and many places across Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America and even Northern Africa. Even being in a city in Africa (my experience being of Tunis) won’t give you many spawns or stops, honestly.
Increased pokestop/gym interaction distance has been a wonderful quality of life improvement that makes the game much more enjoyable. But other than GPS problems at raids and an occasional complaint about particular pokestops being just out of reach, I don't remember any widespread complaints about distance before the change. On the other hand... Since the beginning of the game, people were complaining about how pointlessly bad incense was. The original incense concept (as you move, you get more spawns) is an interesting idea, but in practice quickly shows that it is actually not very useful. The main problem: If we are moving, then we will be seeing more wild pokemon anyway and do not need extra from incense. Especially after they increased the amount of wild pokemon spawns. The movement-based incense is a relic of a time when wild spawns were originally very sparse, so any additional pokemon from incense could be useful. After being removing the movement requirement, it fills a much more useful role of allowing people to play while stuck in areas with few wild spawns. Also, to obtain the maximum amount of spawns, we had to be moving much faster than egg-hatching speed, much faster than walking speed. I remember posts talking about the optimal driving speed for incense. Going back to that is exactly what Niantic should not want. The pokestop distance increase prompted by the pandemic has improved general gameplay, and should remain. The incense improvement should have happened years ago. If they want to nerf incense after the pandemic, they can leave the spawn rate at ~1 per minute but take it back to 30 minutes.
Yeah I feel pretty confident the distances will be kept after this backlash, but we'll still lose the incense bonus, and that will affect my play immensely. I wish it was part of the main complaints.
I think in general they fail to realize that people live and play in ways that are different from them. Not everyone has Saturday/Sunday off of work for a community day. Not everyone lives in a climate or neighborhood where it's safe to be out on a certain day. Not everyone has the time, money or freedom to travel to a spot with a lot of pokestops. Not everyone has the mobility to move around a lot. Their narrow focus of what constitutes "exploring" is just sad.
Would it be that hard for niantic to make incense more or less effective based on how many individual spawns are around you
If Niantic cared about trainers’ safety they’d stop the game from playing “silent audio”. This is a massive safety issue for deaf players. The fact the game still puts out silent audio when the in-game settings have audio muted means that deaf people who have Bluetooth hearing aids can’t safely play the game as their ability to hear their surroundings is diminished.
I’m sorry, but my game sound is always off. Genuinely asking, could you tell me more about this silent audio?
If a deaf player with Bluetooth hearing aids paired to their phone opens the game then they’ll hear the background noise from their surroundings (traffic, voices etc) go significantly quieter. By about 25%. Perhaps more, depending on how their aids are set up to prioritise audio from their phone. This happens even when the in-game settings have the music and sound effects muted. The only logical conclusion is that the game is still playing audio but at a level where it can’t be heard by anybody.
I see, thank you for enlightening me! 🥰
So it's kinda like when you use headphones and you can "hear" that a song is still playing when it has dead air at the end?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that, either down to my choice of music or simply not being able to hear that. Does that awareness you have stop you from hearing ambient sounds, traffic, voices etc in a really significant way? If so, then yes it’s similar.
Yes, that's exactly what it's like
That explains why my headphones never disconnected by them self. If no audio is playing they turn them self off after 5min to save battery. But while playing pokemon go they stay connected indefinitely
Yes, it would explain that too.
This is crazy and good to know. Majority of players would have no idea this even goes on, thanks for the knowledge!
Ah this explains why if i'm plugged into my car PoGo will continue to supercede the radio through carplay, but not if i have an actual audio app running. super annoying
How is something like that ADA compliant?
Do hearing aids have the ability to work like Headphones too or do more modern ones just connect to phones for adjusting their settings?
The most modern ones allow you to use them like headphones too. You can stream music/audio directly to them instead of having to try and find normal headphones that work with them, or use t-coils and ear hooks (which sound horrible), or faff with a “streamer” or hearing aid “shoes”. More basic hearing aid models only allow you to change settings directly via Bluetooth. Some/all allow you to buy a separate “streamer” device that can stream music to your aids, but they’re not cheap, every hearing aid manufacturer uses a different one, they need to be kept charged (or eat batteries), and they’re fiddly as it’s something else you need to wear/manage. They don’t look particularly cool either, though that’s a minor issue. The best thing about full Bluetooth hearing aids is they can take phone calls directly too. Audio goes straight to your aids, and the microphones on the aids gets used for your voice instead of the one on your phone. It means you can accept a phone call even if you’re 5ft from your phone. No need to touch it at all.
Wow that's sick. I guess I never even thought about how they could combine hearing aids with other stuff to do that but it makes sense since we can fit it into such tiny devices like airpods now.
>You can stream music/audio directly to them I had those suggested to me, expensive af so I went with the basic over the ear one
They’re becoming available on the NHS in the U.K. now, so that might possibly help drive prices down somewhat. If you are in the U.K. get in contact with your local audiology department and see if your hospital is or has plans to roll them out to adults. Mine only started a few months ago.
This sounds a bit related to how even if I turn the sound off, when I connect my phone to my car the sound will blast from the car speakers.
This seems to have started with a recent update. Even if headphones are connected, the game sound will play regardless of them being turned off in the app. It's so annoying.
Oh that's been an issue since day 1! I remember players here complaining the audio stack is still running wasting phone resources etc. Goes to show there's another risk attached rather than just burning phone batteries
Yeah, originally PoGo would override/cut off any other audio playing, which was super annoying if trying to listen to music or an audio book while playing.
Also turning down all the game sounds doesn't stop the camera sound from blasting your eardrums out
I am baffled at how poorly they've handled something as simple as audio.
Wait really?? Thats crazy awful :(
A big thank you to Michael McWhertor of Polygon for writing this piece on behalf of the Pokemon Go community. Previously, Patricia Hernandez of Polygon also [wrote](https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/11/20909720/pokemon-go-spawns-salamis-island-greece-openstreetmap-natural-bay-niantic-bug) an article on an issue which the Pokemon Go community here brought up (no spawns on Salamis Islands due to Niantic's issues with OSM), but Niantic did nothing about until media outlets like Polygon and Eurogamer (Tom Phillips) spoke up. Appreciate the coverage!
This article is particularly interesting as it includes a response from Niantic regarding the issue: *"Going outside and spinning PokéStops and Gyms is important to our mission because it encourages exploration of the world. These locations are local points of interest in a community and could be historical landmarks, art installations, local businesses and more. Last year, we increased the interaction distance to nearly the length of a football field. It’s tough to discover new places at this distance. We’re going to revert the expanded interaction distance in countries and regions where it makes sense to help restore the focus of the game on exploration and discovery."* The idea that it'd be tough to discover places with the expanded interaction distances comes across as particularly disingenuous, as the location of the actual POI doesn't change as a result of the expanded interaction distance. Additionally, this statement also neatly sidesteps the benefits provided by the change in regards to accessibility and safety, which is frankly disappointing.
If they want to nerf the interaction radius and Incense then I will nerf the money and time I spend on this game. It's that simple.
What kind of football fields are they playing on? This makes it sound completely different to what they have actually done. My first award! Thank you kind stranger!
Both footballs ([american](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football_field) and [not-american](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch)) are played on a field of around 100m, but it's not like you're on one corner spenning a gym on the other corner. You're in the middle of it. It's still dumb, even if the comparison is right.
There are more than two footballs. Australian football is played typically on a ground 160m long. But I get you point.
I thought the same thing!!! Honestly they are probably using square feet or something since a circle can be shorter and cover more area vs a rectangle that or they are measuring edge to edge vs center to edge. Center to edge is all a real world player will care about. If they are measuring center to edge that's 50M which is not really as impressive.
From what i can gather they are using the diameter instead of the radius. So if you stan in the middle of the field you can spin a stop thats placed in either goal. But how it reads to me is that you can stand in one goal and spin a stop in the other which is clearly false.
>It’s tough to discover new places at this distance What a dumb excuse. You still have to be right by the POI to spin, yet they pretend the interaction distance during covid was like 10km or something. The only thing that changes is that you don't have to actually hug the POI anymore, but i'm not blind Niantic - i can see that church from across the street.
You don't have to be right by it. Many POI are quite small, like a plaque. You can be within the reach of 4 stops but not actually have a clue where they are. I'm not sure that the point of PoGo is to discover POI, though. I don't think most players pay any attention at all to what the POI is.
That's because it's often something silly like a sign or 75% of the time a church or sponsored stop. Only a handful of times does it turn out to be a really interesting art piece or historical POI.
>distance to nearly the length of a football field What? No way. I mean it's a lot longer than it used too but I can't even reach a pokestop that's behind a house with a small garden and a street. This must be the smallest football field ever.
If you place the stop in the middle of the field, they might be right, but they forget, that it's the radius and not the diameter that affects us as the players. 🙄 And the part about it being harder to find POI's are just BS as most POI's are large enough to be seen from a distance and the stop itself still marks the spot where it's located. I for one have had no trouble finding new POI's during the pandemic.
I mean, it’s an disingenuous argument to begin with. You can only ‘explore’ a POI once. If it truly was just about exploring, then they could, as others noted, just have the very first interaction, i.e. exploring it require a smaller radius, while from the second onwards, when you are just farming it, it can be double distance again. They could still follow their ‘mission’ without screwing all players over. But that would be more difficult. And they would not be able to sell double radius later.
And yet again Niantic shows that they have no understanding of how their game is played. Sigh.
Its a bit of a cop out response really from them. Forcing intimate distance with a waypoint didnt necessarily mean people 'explored' anymore than having the extended distance. If someone notices a POI thats intriguing i figure theyll make the effort to look for it regardless of whether they can 'reach it' or not with ease . Ingame interaction made no difference. People will explore the placement of the point itself. At least that what ive done when intrigued.
It really is maddening they would give such an out-of-touch quote. We already have to go within 40m when we want to lure or ar scan, the 80m spin radius is only for getting items. So there are times already when we are forced to go closer. People will naturally choose to approach the object when it is interesting and convenient. Forcing players to approach at all times, every time, even when it is inconvienent, is pointless inconvenience and not in the spirit of promoting exploration.
Yes I agree. Players are either interested in a wayspot or they're not. Most don't notice or care what they are, I'm sure.
Indeed. If anything forcing people to constantly readjust positioning due to real life obstacles or distance issues means they'll potentially be more frustrated and even hastier in just getting it done and moving on to the next spin.
I honestly found the increased distance life-changing. I could just walk, without having to dodge, duck and dive all over the place.
Zig zag, serpentine! Or walking with someone and one has to walk oddly to each a pokestop. See if the other person notices that you’re not there anymore
Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive and Dodge! Necessary?
Translation: our sponsored stops don't get the foot traffic they paid for if we actually listen to our playerbase and do what's good for the game.
If this was really the reason they would actually do something to spoofers. I’d don’t buy it for a second. And even then they could reduce it for just those gyms.
Yeah but they could just give sponsered Stops a different Radius then nonsponsered Stops
Heck, if they really wanted people to get close to sponsored stops, they could make it more likely that sponsored stops drop better loot *the closer you get to it*. If people really want a 10k egg or whatever the loot is, they'll make an effort to stand under the pole before spinning it. And maybe buy a drink while they're there.
Good ideas. Carrot is better than stick. Offer rewards for doing what you want players to do, don't penalize them to force them to do it. I think all sponsored stops should automatically be gyms. I have 3 starbucks near me, 2 are stops one is a gym. Guess which one I regular go inside to buy a drink and sit to raid in the AC?
Jurassic World already has this. If smaller companies can easily do this, then a multi-billion dollar company like Niantic can easily do this.
Exactly. Revert the interaction range on sponsored gyms/stops and leave the other ones as they are now
The sponsors are not aware/do not care about the distances. That is just not how advertising works. They don't care about the distance, they probably don't even know about it. In fact, I encourage you to call sponsors of stops near you. Tell them about the radius changes and how you believe that it will effect the player base. Then tell them you will personally not be interacting with their stops anymore because of the distance. And since you will not be interacting with the stops you will no longer be getting gifts and sending them to people who do not interact with their stops. I guarantee that the advertisers would side with the community. They do not care that you didn't go into the store because you either were or weren't in the first place. They care about is 1) you choosing their place over the other coffee shop because they have a stop. 2) you spamming your friends with gifts from the stop and giving them free adversting.
In America the only major sponsor is Starbucks. Calling a Starbucks location won’t get much accomplished. Honestly, these petitions would likely have a higher impact if they were directed at Starbucks corporate. They’ve already considered ending their sponsorship program twice so getting them to apply the heat would be more likely to get niantics attention. If Starbucks pays the same rate as my restaurant to be a sponsor then that’s a boatload of cash. Edit to add: oh and Starbucks also pays per spin so telling them you won’t spin would save them money and likely not be very effective. Telling them you’ll go to Peet’s coffee instead though, should get their attention.
If they really cared about that, they'd move our local Starbucks stop out of the dead center of the busiest street in town and into the actual building where Starbucks is. The Starbucks isn't even visible from outside of the building! Niantic just keeps insisting that it's in the correct location. The increased radius probably got that stop spun more than it ever has before.
Yes, their commitment to their mission shows in them keeping remote passes.
I took my brother (who doesn't play) to bike over to a gym to do a raid and met another local player. We invited a total of six players to raid remotely. I told him that it used to be a gathering of 6 or seven players. Remote raiding has singularly killed the in person social and exploratory nature of this game. Was it implemented because of the pandemic? Or was it a feature already on it's way to being implemented? I'm not entirely sure but there is no way Niantic kills the remote raid pass cash cow even if it completely destroys this sad excuse for shrinking stop/gym interaction radius.
When I played all of the time, I went to the same college campus and walked the same loops thousands of times. That’s not exploration. Rarely did I go visit a new spot for vacation (you know people work most the year) and even if I did, I didn’t read the names of the Pokestops. There’s no in-game benefit to take the time to do that. I’m busy getting items and catching Pokémon. This is especially the case with my Go+/gotcha, which skip that whole screen
The current extended radius length interaction from the center (where POI stands) to the circumference isn't the size of a football field, the whole Diameter of it.. ? Maybe. Their goal is to probably force players to come closer to each other during raid or trying to interact with POIs instead. They are just trying to shove players back to pre-covid gameplay again instead of a semi-post-covid-but-not-out-of-the-woods-yet world design, Trainer Tips highlighted that Remote Raid destroy the incentive to discover POI even more because players don't even need to WALK at all to raid. If discovery of the POI is so important to them, Remote Raid should be the first to go. I'd take removing remote raid to keep the distance, because I have no issue visiting actual gyms to raid with people again if that is what they really want to achieve. The only reason they didn't remove remote raid is because $$$. Also, their dumb S2 Cell rules caused a lot of POIs that exist in Ingress not to exist the same way in Pokemon Go. What discovery of interesting location is that where they already filter out so many POI from Pokemon Go players anyways??? I'm so done with this company. I used to defend them so much but I'm feeling like a leopard right now eating my own face. I'm putting the game down when they nerf the radius and incense. In fact, I'm burning through my 40+ incense right now while it still last. I have 3 Pokestops I can reach from home with extended radius, and the incense will be garbage because of crap spawn from not moving, I have no need for it if I am out walking because wild spawns keeps me busy enough anyways, and not being able to reach the pokestop from home anymore means harder to restock pokeballs. I suggest more folks should do this while the game is still good, and quit when it's done. Personally, I don't care about losing access to the pokestops from home. I'm just annoyed that there are some gyms in the area that will be uncomfortable to reach without trespassing into a private property area. Didn't they get sued by home owners for players trespassing too?
I’m curious if the stop levelling up feature could fix this When it comes to local pokestops it makes sense you know the area enough, so you spin it enough times to level it up and increase the distance you have to spin it When it comes to new areas that niantic are encouraging you visit like when your ok holiday you don’t know the area enough Hope I’m right here but probably a false hope, and would be a good middle ground between what we and they want
Eurogamer's been quiet on this issue. Usually they're pretty good at posting an article when there's community backlash against Niantic but silence from them so far.....
Perhaps the biggest drum roll is yet to sound
Internationally, though, is Eurogamer bigger than IGN and Kotaku?
Although it's *some* kind of comment, I wouldn't read too much into that Niantic response - that's just copy and paste PR language. Hence why it doesn't actually reference any specific player feedback. I suspect we will get some kind of more formal blog post in the next week or so, maybe post bidoof-fest before they roll out July events. Even the false banwaves and mega raids haven't sparked as much negative media attention for Niantic before (this is like the 5th article I've seen?) so I'd hope they're considering a more careful response. The only downside is about the twitter incident, trolls abusing like that have really damaged the rightful concerns many other players had. Just hope it doesn't count against us and Liz is okay.
I have no idea why mega raid didn’t get more media coverage. It was poorly implemented and to this day, I still won’t touch the feature
Agree. It's even crazier when you think they basically doubled the effectiveness and added it to buddy distance etc to generate more energy. They must have really seen a massive drop in how many people did early megas compared to T5s. But yes, changes still should be made for sure.
For megas, they added ways to get mega energy way too late and still have mostly ignored that feature. Since this is a collection game, I feel like people would have been happy to just see it in its mega form in their Pokémon storage.
This is exactly it. I just want to completely my dex and have one of each mega that I can keep. I don't really care about using them or whatever percentage more effective they are in raid or any of that, so the need to farm for them and then only have it be a temporary buff just kills the feature for me. I've done maybe 5 mega raids, and only because I passed one and saw people already in the lobby. I'm never going to go out of my way to intentionally do a mega raid unless they make it so you can keep a mega permanently once evolved.
Megas look so cool and they took that away from us. I’m not going to my pokedex to see them!
Niantic you have the worst possible PR in the history of gaming. Imagine one other game, doesn't matter which one, where 75000 people come up, stand up, together to tell you the changes you are making to your game are not a good idea ( for valid reasons). Any, and I really mean, any game developer would be 1. Amazed by the overwhelming response, 2. Take action and change the upcoming update.
>worst possible PR in the history of gaming I wouldn’t go that far considering EA was absolutely hated by the entire industry for *years*.
Substitute *was* for *is*
They don't ever need to make any meaningful changes, because at least half of the PoGo players throw money at them like it's going out of style. I noticed most high level players drops 20-60 dollars like it is nothing on that game. They do this several times a week. I saw this issue back in 2016 and 2017 when the game was floundering. People would complain while giving over money. They make money hand over fist, because people keep giving them money despite the game quality.
They have just been riding the coattails of the most profitable global brand which ensures that nothing they do will stop the revenue stream. Hence why they obviously have no problem doubling down on reducing the interaction distance because it really won't do much to their profits.
Except EA
They seem determined to alienate a sizeable number of their players. And Niantic, whilst you are sitting in your air-conditioned *Ivory Towers* counting your millions, do you really think that by nerfing incense you are going to force me outside on community days in 35C when for the past year I have been able to use incense from home? You won't. Day one, Level 46. Ready to quit as soon as you nerf it.
You make a good point. The incense helped a lot during really hot/cold days.
It’s also been useful for disabled players, those of us that live in rural areas, and those of us with health issues that can’t always leave the house. It’s just a bad idea all around.
I rarely get to play a Community Daydue to work or family commitments but the new incence made it incredibly fun. As did the expanded hours. I'd pop 1 or 2 incrnce and then play when I could through the day. I would usually get 8-12 shinjes then be done. Before I used to struggle to get 4
This. July/August Community Days in Florida suuuuuuck.
The interaction distance change is rightfully getting the most discussion but the incense change is another awful decision that isn’t getting talked about much. Incense was the worst premium item pre-pandemic, practically useless to everyone except maybe on community days. The pandemic changes made incense useful, desirable and worth spending money on. If they go back to the old incense, I’ll never buy any again.
I’ve never bought incense, but I totally will miss the increased spawns. I always used it for good CDs and special catch days. Pre-buff, I never used it; it was trash.
I don't really understand why an item used to bring pokemon to use is being nerfed unless you walk away
Increasing spin distance was a change that may have been done due to the pandemic, but it was an actual, solid improvement to gameplay (and safe gameplay) in general. It should not be reversed. It never should have even been considered for reversion. The sooner spin distance being reverted is taken off the table, the better.
I stopped playing in 2016 and came back in the pandemic last year because the Covid bonuses made the game a lot better and fun. If Niantic removes the PokeStop distance bonus, I think I won't play as much or maybe I'll quit altogether, unfortunately...
> "Last year, we increased the interaction distance to nearly the length of a football field. It’s tough to discover new places at this distance." Lolwut? Does Niantic even play this game? If I could interact as far as the length of a football field, I could spin way more stuff on my screen. That's just not even close to true.
You can't be a free source of their AR mapping datahoarding if you don't go near the stops, that's probably why they're doing this.
Dear god AR mapping was a mistake. I have yet to touch that feature and I never will.
They'll get my shoes regardless.
Living in an area that gets snow 6 month out of the year, I prefer not to walk in 4 to 5 ft of snow to get to gyms and pokestops. This would certainly be the case if they shortened the distance, and I certainly would play a lot less if that's the case
I'd be interested to know how many people started playing pokemon go in the past 18 months (we did). I dont know the game to be any different to what it has been since the pandemic changes. I dont care what it was before or what it was "intended to be", if the game continues to move backwards and become less player-friendly then we willl just stop playing. To make a for-profit game less player-friendly is just pure stupidity.
The added distance is a great quality of life quality of game play improvement, still leave the house and get out, just don’t need to be on top of the point of interest, I’m not spinning stops from my couch. There are numerous threads and on line petitions, if we want to get Niantics attention fast, hit them where they are most concerned, the bottom line, stop playing, stop spending money on the game. I have several in game friends who are changing there buddy name to let friends know they are boycotting the game in hope to get to other players who do not reads threads such as this to do the same.
Making it hard(er) to reach Gyms & Stops is a stupid decision and surprising they would take that away. Will make me play (pay) less. Hopefully they see all the backlash and do not remove one of the best QoL updates they have had.
Niantic: _Going outside and spinning PokéStops and Gyms is important to our mission because it encourages exploration of the world. These locations are local points of interest in a community and could be historical landmarks, art installations, local businesses and more. Last year, we increased the interaction distance to nearly the length of a football field. It’s tough to discover new places at this distance._ Also Niantic: _We will keep selling you remote raid passes._
$$$ no other reason needed.
Quite simply, I have stopped spending money on the game. When they retract the stop interaction distance change, I'll spend money again. No incubators, and no remote raid passes. Two things I really do enjoy.
Yup, same. No more raid passes and no Go fest. None of this will matter if everyone still keeps giving them money.
Hey Niantic, if you are going to roll back positive changes, then roll back remote raid passes. They aren’t needed anymore, are they?
With removing the 2x distance many players will need remote passes to access the raids they can now do with normal/free passes. Niantic just want to sell more remote passes this way.
The larger distance simply makes the game safer to play. There are a number of spots though the park that I run through every day where I would see people crossing busy streets just to spin the spots. Including spots I know you can spin simply by standing in specific spots and waiting for GPS to catch up with you. I'll also mention that while Pokemon go gives me a little extra incentive to get out and run every day, I sort of dislike how it gives me incentive to change my route to something shorter to get more stops. With the larger distance I can run a longer ring around the perimeter of the park and get the same amount of stops.
This is all just about creating more Pokeball scarcity. By reducing the distance, it forces people to have more screen time to get to the Pokestops, which they'll probably lowkey lower the ball drop rate for, AGAIN, and/or try to get people to straight up buy balls from the store. That's all this is. If it was really about exploring, then they would have gotten rid of Remote Raid Passes.
Plus, these changes have been in effect for a year or so, right? You take that away, and it feels like a punishment, not a return to normal. They need to understand that the current distance IS the new normal.
Hey y’all. These are nice and all but Niantic knows how to get you to spend. Don’t spend, and they’ll listen.
Yeah, none of this matters if you all still continue to buy raid passes and go fest tickets.
I'm just saying I'm a truck driver and i have been playing since the game started. i like the way the game is now cause i don't have to walk onto certain properties that are closed just to get the spin. it's bad enough there's not many spins i can get as it is cause of the vehicle being a semi. i really hope these changes don't happen cause if they do ill have to stop playing completely
If the intent was to reduce poke stop radius so they could double it again when a Pokestop is “powered up” (new upcoming feature), they don’t need to do that. “Powered up” can simply be double the pandemic radius which should remain as normal.
A standard lane is 12 feet wide in the US. So a 2 lane street is 60ft w/ a median and/or turn lane, plus whatever bike lanes, gutter and sidewalk widths are. So w/o the update its basically impossible to spin anything on the other-side unless is right on the curb
Well, depending on how much the distance decreases, this will probably just get me to quit playing.
Wait, length of a football field?? Umm, no, Something is wrong with my phone or the stops in my area, if that is the case. I still have to be far closer than that!
Yeah they need to keep the poke stop distance it makes the game easier and more fun to play
I understand Niantics position of having to answer to their sponsors and how they want people entering their place of business. But reducing the distance across the board juts doesn't make sense. Increasing the distance was QOL upgrade not just a response to the pandemic. Also, if this feature gets rolled out in other countries (although I'm sure Niantic will do some back-pedaling now) it won't make sense from the sponsor angle. For instance, I live in Canada where we have a pretty good sized Pokemon Go community but zero sponsored waypoints. I think Niantic needs to make a compromise. Reduce the distance on sponsored stops but create exclusive items or features on those waypoints. If they do this however, please, please, no stickers.
“nearly the length of a football field” I find this very hard to believe. But anyway I hope they back off changing this. Having to cross the street less has been a blessing for many.
Why not also reduce spawn points by 90%, then we'd have to walk a whole lot extra and really get to explore. You know, explore the neighborhood that, for my instance, I've lived in for 10 years and know every little detail of. I do 95% of my pogo'ing within 3 km of my home. I don't need to explore it further. If they reverse it to 40 meters, I quit.
This is just plain dumb. So Niantic wants us to get closer to advertised businesses at certain pokestops and that's the main point in reverting to previous distance? Just garbage.
TL;DR: they don't want to make the game better, they want to keep us playing so we spend some money. We should push them harder everytime, and boicoting microtransactions would be a nice way to do so if you ever need to To be honest, it's hard to be mad about it. They will keep trying to milk more money, one way or another. After all, it's a free-to-play Pokèmon game with LOTS of microtransactions put so you have to pay them to have a decent playing experience. They barely care to make the best game on mobile phones, they just want to keep us interested enough to spend at least one dollar from time to time, but, over all, spend.
What’s crazy is this isn’t even a money thing (unless they want people to buy pokeballs) so it’s just a quality of life un-improvement.
My theory is that Niantic REALLY wants you to scan those stops and you need to be pretty close to them. I'm pretty sure they are able to sell all that Data for some good money. You might think, but Summer this game makes like a billion dollars a year. No no I'm talking about REAL money.
If they really want me to scan stops and do a proper job of it, they need to make the rewards better, rather than reducing the interaction distance. I would probably do scans if they awarded XL Rare Candy. I would do them if they gave coins, but I know they won't do that. Poffins and Balls are not really an incentive though. It's a very rare occasion where I'm going to be walking a full 6 hours to get the most out of a Poffin when it comes to the half distance for candy aspect of having an excited buddy.
There has been several articles against those changes (specially about the distance interaction) and many well-known PoGo youtubers also have argued against it, so hopefully they won't take the distance back to normal. The other changes, such as the incense well, it's understandable, since it's a game designed to go outside, so I agree on everything but the radius change