Pokémon GO
reviews and complaints

If you're reading this review to decide if you should get the game, stop reading here, and get it. This game is awesome. I love running around everywhere and catching Pokémon. That is all I have been doing in the past 12 hours. But what this game needs is some updates to fix some of its biggest problems, and that is why I am rating it four stars. To be honest, it doesn't feel like a complete game yet.Then, without a doubt, this would be a five-star game.
One issue is the lack of any instruction or tutorial throughout the game. I'm sure plenty of people are wondering how to catch Pokémon, battle others, and what the heck Power Saving mode does to save power. Everything I know about the game (and I don't know much) is basically from my friend and IGN. Sometimes, I'll catch a Pokémon successfully, but then when it zooms up on the Pokéball, the game freezes, and I lose my Pokémon, even though it says I saw it in my stats. What the heck? Speaking of glitches, I do believe that the nearby system is somewhat messed up. Based on what I've heard, the closer you get to a nearby Pokémon, fewer footsteps will be displayed next to it. However, the nearby Pokémon always are displayed as three footsteps away, and this is a glitch that I believe everyone is experiencing. Furthermore, from my understanding of the game, if leaves pop up on your map, it means a Pokémon is at that location. While this sometimes works, and I'll find Pokémon where leaves were at, other times I could be standing directly on the leaves and there will be nothing there. These glitches are kind of annoying and I'm sure that you guys are capable of fixing them. Also, the battle mode is weird. I honestly think that it should be turn-based, just like all other Pokémon games. I understand that perhaps many people don't like turn-based games, but maybe you could make it to where they have an option to play either way, just so it feels like more classic Pokémon. Speaking of battling, you need to be able to battle your friends. Also, I paid a dollar so I could get twenty Pokéballs, but half of them went to waste because after I caught a Pokémon, my screen would freeze and I would lose the Pomémon and my Pokéball. I'm sure that as I continue playing the game I will update this review with things that must be added, but for right now, just work on updating the game.
:)
UPDATE: So a new update came out just recently, and I was so hyped. . . until I clicked on the details. They made "minor text fixes". I guess it was too soon to expect any big improvements. But on the bright side, at least we know that the developers of this game are working on updates and they are not just going to sit around and never make it better. So this update, especially considering how fast it came out, is a good sign for the game. Also, I just wanted to say something more about the battle mode in this game: I absolutely hate it. It is awful. From my understanding, it literally (and I mean LITERALLY) takes no skill whatsoever. This is basically the battle mode described in one sentence: you tap as fast as you can and the better Pokémon wins. That is it. I hate it. Maybe some of you know more about it than I do and there is more complexity to it. I'm sorry if I'm being ignorant about the combat system, but maybe if they actually explained to you how to fight then I wouldn't be so darn naïve about combat. Anyway, I still love running around and catching Pokémon, so I still give it four stars. BUT PLEASE: FIX THE GLITCHES AND COMBATThanks for making this awesome game guys. Keep up the good work.

UPDATE: I looked on the App Store this morning with hope that this game would finally have an update, and it did not disappoint. Thankfully, this update has more depth than the previous update, but it still seems that they've added several items that are relatively worthless when the game is in the condition it is right now. Niantic needs to fix the bug stuff first, then go back and work on the smaller things. There were a few things they added that were unimportant, such as animation changes and stuff. However, they added several improvements to the game. I believe that they fixed those darn Pokéball glitches once and for all. In fact, most of what they did included fixing several of the game's annoying bugs, which I am grateful for.
They also improved the Gyms and battlin calculations, but it is still not turn based, which I still hate. It's a shame that I still don't know what the heck I'm doing when I'm at a gym because Niantic doesn't take the time to explain how to play the game. . .
They also removed footprints of nearby Pokémon. Now, I was expecting that the developers at Niantic would actually man up and fix this to make it much easier to find nearby Pokémon, and I was honestly looking forward to this glitch being fixed. However, Niantic says "screw it," and they take the easy way out. This makes me mad. Also, it appears that they have removed the leaves that pop up at the location of a Pokémon. This also infuriates me. I still give it his game four stars, but this is what I ask for in the next update: please make battling turn based, add a specific and detailed tutorial about how to play the game, and bring back the footprints and leaves. Thanks.

Pokemon Go - A Revolutionary and Wonderful Game

I've played this game since it's release from a few of years ago. To see how far it's come with the new generations coming bit by bit, the various raids, field research, THE POKEMON GO LEAGUE, trading, etc. it's been quite the journey! Even so, I have a free concerns and i don't want to sound bratty with all of my wants. I completely trust the makers and i bet they've still got a ton of ideas for the future of Pokemon Go (like mega evolution, Z moves, etc.).

So overall, if you're new or you've played and are thinking about coming back, I'll say this game is worth it!

Speaking as a big fan, (and just to get my ideas out there) I really hope that we get more traditional features (besides pvp and trading) added to the game someday. For example, classic throwback gym leaders (like Brock and Misty and such) could visit gyms in events, and trainers can train with them and get special prizes and badges. It would give the game bigger goals/objectives and give the gyms even more purpose.

I'll just say now that it's awesome that we've got the Team leaders, the Rocket Leaders and Gionvani to battle in training and at pokestops now. It adds more depth and gives the game an actual story. It's definitely keeping us all busy! But another interesting idea is to add CPU POKEMON TRAINERS (Pokenerds, Ace trainers, Toddlers, etc.) to pop up like Pokemon on the map and we can tap on them to battle them, giving us ANOTHER WAY TO GET POKECOINS.

And I know we can get infinitie potions and revives from pokestops, but what's a Pokemon game without POKEMON CENTERS? Maybe we can heal a max of six Pokemon per day in a nearby Center, or it can give us some sort of minigame to earn special items. It could even provide another way to earn stardust and power up our Pokemon! This could easily be an introduction to POKEMON BREEDING too! (You must have added Pokemon genders for a reason!) This could also add more locations for Team Rocket to invade!

One of my biggest concerns are how all of our Trainer avatars (despite all of the wonderful clothes) still all look like clones. I think what would make a big difference is to add different HAIRCUTS, and maybe even giving the option to change the face shape (like a Mii).

I know Pokemon Go is supposed to be a game to bring friends together, but thank you again for considering especially the rural players by giving us the Pokemon league, online battling, and cheaper incense. But it would be nice to have online long-distance trading with friends too!

Another interesting idea would be to give us a BICYCLE PASS in the store (please hear me out). They could cost 200 coins each. If you activate it in the game, it will allow you to count travel distance faster than walking distance (basically allowing you to count travel distance even if you're "going too fast!") for no longer than 15 minutes. I think it would keep trainers from hacking the app and spoofing locations because these passes would be convenient for people who physically can't walk or bike (or for anybody who's just straight up lazy).

It would also be nice if we could somehow trade in our unused items for something else like pokecoins. Because I simply hate trashing several hundred pokeballs and potions for nothing. Maybe even being able to GIVE MY UNUSED ITEMS to other trainers who need them more than I do (like in an Animal Crossing market).

Also, with all due respect, I'm not a big fan of the new gym coin system. Why? As an example, let's say I've got 5 Pokemon in 5 different gyms. They are all in those gyms for a few weeks. Then suddenly, those five gyms are defeated and my Pokemon are kicked out all on the same day. What do I get as a reward? Only 50 pokecoins because I've reached the "max pokecoins i can receive in a day." What was the point of having 5 Pokemon in those gyms for that long when I could've received the same amount of coins with just one Pokemon in a gym for one day?! I'd be very grateful even if I could have the option of pulling my Pokemon out of a gym when I need him back on my team for battling. It's better than having him sit in a gym for no reason once he's received the max amount of coins. You could simply raise the max amount of coins per day, or we could have the old system back, where we could receive a moderate amount of pokecoins every day in the shop. Please fix this so defending multiple gyms for longer periods of time is more meaningful and valuable. We all work hard to fight and defend gyms!

On a technical note, please give us some way to edit what email address we're using for our Pokemon Go accounts. Embarrassing to say it, but I'm still using my parents' email for my Pokemon Go account and I would like to switch it over to my own email. Please help me if I'm missing anything!

On a totally separate note, thank you so much for the BUDDY SYSTEM! It makes me so happy to get to feed and play with my Venusaur now. I feel much more connected with my Pokemon.

I want to thank you for actually reading my review, Pokemon Company. Please know we appreciate your hard work to make this game as fun as possible for all players young and old. Don't give up on us, and don't let the haters get to you! GOTCHA CATCH EM ALL!

Sincerely,
BruderKetchup

P.S. Can't wait for the Alola generation!

Pokemon GO was a concept which I initially disliked when it was revealed. On launch day, I got the app as I am considered to be a sort of Pokemon veteran with a reputation to uphold. The love for the franchise was, and has always been, there. I had a change of heart as I played the game with my friends who also share that love for Pokemon. However, the issues that have plagued the app as of late have turned me away from the game and, given the way Niantic has chosen to operate, I am disappointed with them as well.

Those who point at critics of Pokemon GO as privileged ingrates are mistaken. Niantic introduced Pokemon GO (a concept with MASSIVE social influence) to the world, provided it for free, and even had the audacity to take money from certain people who support the concept. People only did what Niantic wanted: we downloaded and played the game that they made. Unfortunately for the community (and for Niantic), the game was not ready to be released. This was evident from the countless issues regarding fundamental functionality of the game, such as signing in, catching pokemon, using pokestops, etc. within the first week of launch.

The game was not made FOR Niantic, it was made BY Niantic FOR the general population, something else Niantic may not have been prepared to deal with. The majority of the players do not want a total collapse of the Niantic company. If we don’t get what we want (such as a precise tracking system, pokemon trading abilities, pokemon battles outside of gyms, etc.), most of us will delete the app and continue with our lives. The responsibility, therefore, lies on Niantic to take proper measures to encourage people to use its service for the sake of its own success by giving incentives to players that will actually yield positive opinions by the community regarding the app. And because Niantic has failed to fulfill this responsibility, Third-Party apps such as PokeVision and PokeWhere assuaged the anger of the population by allowing players to locate pokemon themselves, a concept which the community accepted with open arms. These third-party apps gave the community what Niantic either can’t or won’t. Therefore, by destroying the functionality of these third-party apps that the community began to embrace, Niantic antagonized itself, whether it plans to improve the tracking system in the future or not. Regarding the suspicion that people were using it for cheating, all I have to say is that the fact that certain people are going to cheat to do better in the game is as inherent as the fact that certain people are placed at an innate disadvantage in the game due to geography, given the obvious fact that Pokemon GO rewards travel.

Niantic had many satisfied customers until tracking, a part of the foundation of the game, became in issue and the company made certain decisions WITHOUT PROPERLY COMMUNICATING ITS INTENTIONS TO THE PUBLIC. The public relations part of Niantic’s business is so dysfunctional that it alone threatens to lose community support. Niantic addressed this lack of communication in a four-sentence long acknowledgement on the most recent update. The Pokemon GO team said that the reason the community has not heard from them is that they have “been heads down working on the game.” This implies that it has been out of the question for them to have hired any type of position(s) that would EXCLUSIVELY deal with public relations, which is absurd. Niantic’s reaction to not only poor decision-making, but poor communication is what shows either an embarrassing amateurity in business conduct or some secret that will explain and fix all the problems of Pokemon GO users. Because of this, in addition to gameplay that is a large disappointment to the community, players are being misled by bloggers, authors, and even the brief, vague comments that Niantic does decide to make public. For example, in the most recent statement put out by Niantic on the last update, Niantic implies that it will be reconstructing the tracking system by stating that the original feature didn’t meet their “underlying product goals.” This promises a pinpoint-style tracking system which was featured in the trailer for Pokemon GO, which would solve many critics’ problems with the current status of the game. This seems likely given the already voiced opinions of the community and the success of PokeVision. As a pokemon fan who wants to see Pokemon GO succeed, this would be a reality that I would embrace. However, Niantic’s failure lies with disclosing whether or not the above speculation is correct. Simply the acknowledgement, which is all some are asking for, could save the company countless ratings and even might make the game better than it was before.

If Niantic were to communicate through Twitter, email, news outlets, or through Nintendo or the Pokemon GO app itself, the community would feel more hopeful about what the company will give them in the future and Niantic could begin to seal a lasting success on this app. However, if the company continues to operate this way and continues to work without communicating with its community, the app will follow the damned path it seems to be on at the moment.

TL;DR: Niantic should tell us what they’re planning to do in future updates and let players use third-party apps since they’re clearly making players happier anyway.

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Dear Niantic,
This is an open letter from me and hopefully echoes the voice of many other fans of Pokemon Go. First of all, let me thank the Niantic team for creating Pokemon Go. It is impossible for me to express how much his game means for me, but I will try. It has gotten me to go out to enjoy the outdoors and exercise, connect and reconnect with others, and most importantly put Pokemon back into the spotlight. For once, I feel like the 15 years of Pokemon trivia and knowledge I have collected holds meaning for more than just me. Remembering what type the 700 some Pokemons are and what moves are super effective has never been so satisfying as when you are discussing what are the best Pokemons to take down a gym with a Dragonite with a girl (no sexism intended). And this is why I wish that Pokemon Go not only continue to have the success it has had, but become something and revitalize the entire Pokemon community.
To do that (this is where it gets a little ranty), I think what we need is better communication. Right now I think you are infinitely more troubled than I am about the recent events and declining popularity of your game. And am scrambling to fix the many understandable issues associated with the popularity of the game. So instead of harping on you about the tracker and how Pokevision was pressured into shutting down, I’m going to talk about more subtle things. The server side changes to attacks, the various mechanics change to capturing, and the removal of the battery save feature. These three things all have one thing in common, they all happened while leaving us in the dark. I know the changes to attacks were mentioned in the patch not long after, but the changes occurred server side long before the patch actually hit. Which was… confusing for a while since we had no idea what it meant, especially for those of us actually caring about battling. But whatever, you mentioned it in a patch that it was permanent and I think all and all it was a good balance change. The other two issues, however, was much worse. Let’s start with the battery save since I have much fewer things to say about it. It is no secret and pretty obvious that it has been removed. Now I understand that there might be many, many valid reasons why this was done. For one, all it did was turn the screen black, not turn it off, which doesn’t save all that much battery on Apple devices. Also, it has been causing periodic crashes where the game would not turn back on after and the app had to be restarted. It’s fine, but what bugs me is that there was no word of it in the patch notes. It would have taken one sentence to explain it: “the battery save option has been removed due to related crash issues until improvements can be made”. Done! Easy and no one would have had a second thought. But now it’s an issue constantly brought up when people talk about the patch, not because they wanted it that badly, but because it was a hidden change.
A similar issue has occurred with the catching mechanics. Curveball physics seems to have changed or Pokemon distances have been messed around with. The curveball bonus went away, and when that was fixed the “Nice”, “Great”, and “Excellence” changes are gone. Pokemons seems to run away more now and attack/dodge wayyyy more. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Is this a recent change or is it just because I’ve leveled more? I don’t know – and that is the problem, and what I think is the ultimate crutch of why the game has become less popular. We, the player base, just don’t know. It feels a little weird to mention the lack of tutorial given the hours I’ve already sunk into this game (a modest level 23), and yet, there are times where I have no idea what’s going on when it comes to capturing. Does getting a better throw mean better catch rate? Do curveballs improve catch rate? Did the physics and catch rates change or am I just sucking at throws/getting unlucky. More than the difficulty of finding Pokemons in the suburbs or unable to track down rare Pokemon spawns, the uncertainty is what frustrate me the most. I just graduated from my education degree, and something I learned from interning in schools is that people hate to be left out of the loop. A kid is much more likely to behave well if you give them a reason and explain to them the reasons and why things have to be a certain way instead of just telling them that’s how it is. What’s more, the solution is not to pretend something didn’t happen, because people will find out, especially now with the prevalence of internet. That is why I’m upset, not because things have changed, but because I have no idea whether they are changed for good or it’s a temporary bug, and because I have no idea why any of these changes occurred and what they mean for the game in the future.
I want you to know Niantic - I am not one of those people who will write in and threaten “I will quit your game”, or “I want a refund”. Instead, I really hope your game will continue to grow and that you will overcome this hurdle. I hope the community will forgive you over your recent decisions on many issues. But for any of that to happen, you have to talk to us, apologize for things YOU think YOU should apologize for and stand up for what YOU want to stand up for. I will stay of the game and hope that it continues to bring me more joy than frustration and believe that the Niantic team is there to create a game not just because of profit but because in their heart each and every one of them has an inner Pokemon Master wanting to make their childhood dream come true.
Sincerely,
Wen

Update: June 30:
1.) Pokémon should be levels 1 to 50 only.
2.) Trainers should travel to 8 Gyms in or around their hometown or state in order to defeat Gym Leaders and earn badges (Thunder Badge, Marsh Badge, etc.)
3.) Trainers should level up their Pokémon with battles from other Trainers and those who choose to be "Team Rocket" in the game.
4.) Trainers should be able to capture water-only, fire-only, grass-only etc and identify as "Bug Boy", "Lass", "Hiker", etc. Battles won/lost result in in-game currency being exchanged (or even real money - up to $50 a month that can be used for in-game purchases only) after a battle.
5.) Pokémon Center should be available at various points and heal ALL Pokémon. Trainers should be able to carry 6 to 10 Pokémon.
6.) The Shop should be available online in the game as well as Special Shops at certain spots to get Master Balls, Moonstones, Fire Stones, Water Stones, etc.
7.) Niantic, we want GBA Pokémon on a real-world scale. We want the same as the show. THAT'S Pokémon for me.
8.) You should have to meet a special person at a certain time of day to get a special Pokémon. (Virtual lady at local town flower shop gives you a level 50 Abra or guy at pizza shops gives you his Charmander or Pikachu.)

Update: April 10: I hate this app so much. It makes no sense that I can't battle with my Pokémon to gain experience and evolve them that way. I can't choose the moves I want them to learn, and I'm unable to find enough Squirtel in my home town to evolve to a Worturtle. My Pokémon are weak, and can't gain XP in battles so they can't grow and evolve. The buddy walking system is a joke. I had to walk miles just get a single candy for my Bulbasaur. Fire Pokémon are almost non-existent, and there is still no Pokémon center for healing the Pokémon who's energy you exhausted in the gym battle (all for no XP and no real pay-off). I also don't understand why the opponent Pokémon at the gym can attack several times but my Pokémon has to hold for several seconds without being hit in order to deliver its special attack. This is crap. I thought all of this was being fixed? I don't even want to have to physically travel in the real world - it's distracting and having my face shoved in a phone in public is embarrassing. I want this kind of environment in a touch-screen Pokémon game. Let us roam the map freely and give us a virtual world within the app or let us use the mapping system that is in place. I drive to get around anyway, as my area literally has no Pokémon outside from normal and occasional water types. This isn't reflective of a traditional GameBoy game, as so many of us wish it was.

Update August 9th: I'm also fairly certain that Niantic is now paying people to post FIVE STAR reviews for this crap app. Most of the reviews don't even make sense. 1-3 Stars are usually people with real issues.

Update August 8th: Okay, so this is pathetic. They're so busy changing the game animations and the looks of the Pokéballs (which now look terrible, by the way - less shiny, dull, and with a HUGE ugly button on them, barely visible black locking bar going around the ball) that they've neglected to address the issue of only common Pokémon still spawning in rural areas, if any Pokémon spawn at all. It's incredibly annoying and frustrating knowing that just people some people live in larger cities they're now on level 24 and 25, because the have the appropriate resources to play the game. They can get PokéStop items with each and from that can level their Pokémon up even further without much effort. We literally have to DRIVE to play this game, there's no walking to it. We wouldn't see anything if we walked. I'm serious. I'm just frustrated that they're busy changing the look and the design when there are SERIOUS game flaws that aren't being addressed. Maybe it's taking longer to work out, and this was an easy fix, but really... the new Pokéballs have this cheap look to it. I'd downgrade if I could. :-/

Well, I was very disappointed with the initial release. The Pokémon are just treated as "throw aways" and there is no achievement in leveling them up with gym battles or wild Pokémon encounters. You want people to exercise with this app? Make it a requirement to battle down the Pokémon and catch them with a PokéBall (one to THREE maximum) and then allow them to walk with them around other trainers to battle and earn Gym badges within 8 Gyms in their area, about 1/2 hour within each other. Make the state Capitol the Pokémon League or offer an online access version to it and then use your trained and leveled-up Pokémon to battle against the Elite Four. Find Thunderstones, Moonstones, Waterstones, and Firestones in areas around town. Allow for them to appear on the map like Pokémon. Give users the ability to evolve their Pikachu if they want and allow for their Pollywhirl to evolve when they want to with a Waterstone. How cool would that be? Also, we need a Pokémon Center to heal them without using potions galore. Have Niantic even played the original games? I'm serious. This is NOT how Pokémon should be. But even more so, this app and game have just become a joke. No tracking, no excitement, and when your tracker when be zero you punished the players by taking away their online tracking maps. Do you know how exciting it was to find something other than a Pidgey or Zubat and hurry over to it? I live in a rural area, and got excited to go and drive 10 mins into town to get that Pokémon! It expired by then, but it was enough fun that I hung around to play for another three hours on my own. This game needs a lot of improvement. I've spent over $20 and right now I can't do anything but hunt aimlessly for Pokémon. That gets old after about the first week.

Pokemon GO should be an amazing and industry-standard setting application, but it isn’t because the pilots helming the ship are out of their depth.

For years, Niantic has steadily realized the cash cow that are older Pokemon fans and have utilized predatory tactics to milk green from the wallets of countless players. Loot Boxes masquerading as Pokemon Eggs, hints of rare pokemon and shiny pokemon hidden behind paywalls and minuscule capture rates, drawn-out content meant to create FOMO and drive engagement, and promotion of borderline (if not outright) pay-to-win strategies have become the staple of Pokemon GO over the last few years. With the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in late 2019, these practices have become more obvious. Much of this was ignored or given a blind-eye to by the player base, however, because Niantic implemented bonuses to help ease playing at home during the pandemic. Many of these bonuses, the player base came to discover, made the game more fun to play. Mechanics such as remote raiding, increased distance for interaction with vital landmarks, and removal of walking requirements for PvP came to the players and the community as impressive quality-of-life improvements that did nothing to take away from the core aspect of gameplay that, “One must GO to where the Pokemon are to catch them all”. This, because, Pokemon GO has never truly reconciled the fact that the game itself is not realistic to play in all situations and times, due to the realities of the world we live in.

Pokemon GO is a game meant to be played outside, at anytime, in the world, by people who can go anywhere they think of. Pokemon GO has never come to terms with the fact that the world itself oftentimes does not care one iota about what the players or developers think. You cannot safely play Pokemon GO if the ambient temperature is -10F with a windchill of -35F. You cannot safely play the game if the locations you need to access are dangerous to interact with for portions of the day. You cannot safely play the game if you have to trespass and/or break in to locations to interact with locations or capture pokemon. You cannot safely play the game if you are disabled or have limited mobility and cannot reach certain locations due to your circumstances. Many of the QOL improvements in the COVID bonuses rectified these issues, and players responded by handing Niantic their best financial year-to-date, DURING A PANDEMIC no less!

So, as the pandemic starts to wind down, these bonuses that the player base welcomed with open arms, made the base-game safer and easier to play, were announced to be removed by the developers, understandably, the community reacted with uproar. If it is not broke, why break it? Hundreds of thousands signed petitions, flocked to social media to protest these changes, but were met with radio silence. Worse, the pandemic has once again taken a turn for the worse with new strains emerging and lockdowns seem inevitable for parts of the world once more. Arguably, that Niantic has yet to respond to the community good, bad, or indifferent makes the entire situation worse. Had Niantic came out with an honest statement about their intentions and stuck to their guns, at least the arguments exists that the company stuck to their guns and the players need to come to terms with the changes. Instead, tone-deaf releases of content no-one asked for with further predatory practices of hiding content behind paywalls enraged the community further. Combine this with revelations from past employees of the company and it paints a brutal picture of the company producing this app.

Arrogance in the tech world can create empires, as the confidence and ego that comes with it can generate massive entities such as Amazon, Apple, and Google. However, arrogance in the video game industry destroys projects and sinks companies. Arrogance impedes player faith in the brand and erodes trust in developers to make the right decisions. Arrogance blinds developers and engineers to criticism and feedback, misconstruing it for toxic behavior and whining. Bioware fell into this trap with Mass Effect, conflating criticism with toxic trolls, to the point that they ignored feedback on Mass Effect 3 until the game released and players panned it everywhere for being a disappointment. Blizzard has ignored its player base for the better part of a decade, despite the fact that since WotLK released in 2008, they have had really only two expansions that players have spoken fondly of and that did not experience major decline in player-base size. Now, Bioware is a shell of its former self and likely to be cannibalized and shut down by EA in the next decade (if not sooner), and Blizzard, well, who hasn’t heard about Blizzard’s recent legal troubles. Former Niantic employees who worked on Pokemon GO describe the environment there as toxic, arrogant, and under-skilled to deal with the problems that they face. For a company making as much money as they do, with access to Nintendo resources, and whose core feature is interactability with the real world and real world location data, to struggle to code for this game. Bugs exist that should not exist, let alone for as long as the game is played. Pokemon still have not been added to the game long after they should have been, because the game company has no idea how to implement their mechanics into the game. It’s embarrassing. That the company so incompetent that they constantly screw up basic, time-based events that change over at the end of the month ALL THE TIME, thinks themselves above criticism and feedback from their player base highlights how awful the game is being managed by those higher ups.

I do not recommend this game to anyone looking to play casually, no happiness exists here, only pain and suffering.

Ok so I HATE THE BATTLEPART U CANNOT DO AS MUCH TAKE AWAY THE”u reach the amount of battles today” I HATE IT
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Note to reviewers: Guys. This app is SERIOUSLY the greatest thing IN THIS WHOLE FLIPPING WORLD. For real. So, get out your pokéPhone, or pokéComputer, or WHATEVER, and go crazy with this pokéApp. I mean, my life can’t get better, and if you have a phone like me, or your lazy and chill like me, then get up, do whatever you need to do to get this app, and then GET IT. I mean, you’ve got three teams to choose from. Valor, instinct, and mystic. (Secret? If you’re in Fitchburg, you should go with mystic. Verona? Instinct. The rest of the world? No idea.) Also, you can have a BUDDY! They are cute Pokémon you can choose to follow you around! My buddy? Thought you’d never ask. She’s a dratini! Oh, you don’t know about them? Well look it up. Oh, and you know about Pokémon evolution, right? Well, in the shows, after a while, a Pokémon will become and upgraded version of the one before it. Example? Caterpie! Evolution: Metapod. Also, your buddy will follow you around when you walk! And when you walk far enough, they/it will give you a candy of their species/the Pokémon before them! (Translation: candy are used in the Pokémon go app for evolving Pokémon. They are most often obtained by catching a certain Pokémon. All Pokémon have candy, though they cannot all evolve using that candy. If you catch a Pokémon that is evolved from the one before it, example: catch swellow, evolution of tailow. You would get five tailow candy. Candy are only named after the first evolution, therefore catching a swellow would give five tailow candy, NOT three swellow candy.) sometimes candy are a little bit specific, example: catch female nidoran, it will give female nidoran candy. When you catch the first evolution, example: tailow, it will most likely give three candy, while walking with your buddy gives one candy, and catching the second evolution would give five candy. I’m sorry, I can’t give information on third and higher evolved caught Pokémon, as I have been playing only about three weeks, and even just the second evolution Pokémon are rare. You can also have friends on Pokémon go, here is how: you will be near the person you want to friend. Click on your profile, then click “friends”, then press add friend. It will show you a bunch of numbers at the top, that is your trainer code. Get your friend to do the same. When your done, one of you will tell the other their code, then type it where it says: [protected]. You can also scan their QR code, by simply pressing: QR code. In the top right corner. The QR code to scan will be near your picture in the add friends tab. Once your friend presses their code, you can simply scan it to invite them to be your friend, and it will send them a friend request. This will work with either one of you. However, you cannot add a friend out of the add friend tab. After you are friends, you can click your profile and then press friends to see your current friends. It will also tell you their most recently caught Pokémon. If you click on one of your/ your friends, then it will tell you their nickname/what they are called in the game, and their buddy. If you scroll down while looking at their profile, you will see three things: Send gift. Battle. Swap Pokémon. As you can guess, battle let’s you choose three Pokémon to battle your friends chosen three Pokémon. However, your friend must also be willing to battle, or you can’t. Swap Pokémon let’s you exchange Pokémon with each other. Sadly, you will not get any candy of the Pokémon you are obtaining. Sending gifts, DONT WORRY, does not send away any items you currently have, and you can’t open them for yourself. They are meant specifically for sending to friends. You won’t know what you sent them, though. Of course, this means your friends can also send gifts to you. (send gifts to your friends unless you don’t have any, or unless they won’t give you any. You can send them if your friend doesn’t have any and they can’t send any because of that, though.) StarDust. You won’t know what you can do with it until you read this. Do you see a Pokémon’s “cp” ? That stands for: combat power, or, how good they are in battle. Do you see where is says: hp? That stands for “ health power”, or, how good at defense that Pokémon is. Well, turns out, when you have enough stardust and candy, you can actually upgrade a Pokémon of your choice to higher cp and hp. (Don’t upgrade till it is fully evolved.) as I type this, my strongest Pokémon, a pyroar, (evolved litleo) is at 1710 cp, and 129 hp. When you evolve Pokémon, it gives a large amount of added hp and cp, example: my litleo I evolved was 800 cp. I evolve to a pyroar, it’s 1710 cp. From just this, I would be convinced. There is also so much more to the game, like rare versions of Pokémon called shiny Pokémon, epic team battles, more than five-hundred Pokémon to discover, and more. Why are you still reading this? Go get that app!
Note to the makers of this wonderful app: you’ve seen this review, and it’s true. I love Pokémon go that much. Thank you for making such a fun and energetic app, you did a great job. Though, there is one thing... can you update the game so that people can chat with their friends? Like, me chatting a privat chat with my friend, a private chat for me and my other friend, and my other friend, and one big chat for us all, a chat for my friends to chat secretly to each other, and a chat like that. But only with the friends you have! Not with other people. Other than that, you did a great job on this game! My brother is literally OBSESSED and is playing as often as possible, me too. He will name all his Pokémon, like he named his throh/through/thoh or whatever, he named it god thoo LOL and his buddy, a seviper, srpentine. Meant to be Serpentine. Great work on this, I have three shiny so far, this game is great, and you did amazing.
Ps. What’s your favorite Pokémon?
-Echo4144

In their effort to squeeze out players who aren't playing the game "honestly", Niantic has squeezed out players like me.

Can't see Pokémon while riding in a car? Great. Winter has arrived. There's snow on the ground. I live in an extremely rural part of the state. I have to drive to a city to walk around in someone elses town to play this game now? And if I do I have to bundle up and freeze while I do it?

We get it. Some people are less than bright because they drive "distracted" by their cell phones, but that's a personal issue. You don't need to be policing your player base.

We used to load up our vehicle with 2 to 5 people and drive around every day. We visited local gas stations & coffee shops, spent an obscene amount of $$$ on this game buying incense, lures, and lucky eggs - and we communed with other players (strangers to us) all over the towns/cities we played in while we were out.

We would often stop a few times a night (almost every single night, mind you) to drop lures at clustered Pokestops - and that would attract hordes of people for a half hour at a time. One city had a lure party every week. Strings of 5 to 7 Pokestops lit for 3 hours minimum.

Know when we stopped playing? The update that made it all but impossible to play while we rode around in our vehicle.

We get it.

We All get it.

You don't like cheaters. NO ONE likes a cheater but the cheater themselves, likely. But people like it less when everyone has to suffer for the faults of those who simply won't ever respect rules or boundaries.

These coding solutions you've put in place to keep cheaters in check are so uninspiring it's sigh-worthy. Any one company that affects this many people should be directed by creative geniuses.

Instead, you might as well be hard hat wearing construction workers because bulldozing over the player base that offends you also flattens everyone around them - the honest players alike.

I played this game because I loved meeting new people, learning about new places, and getting out every day for hours on end. But you have to realize something Niantic ... the novelty wears off when we've been to the same places over and over and over again.

The same Pokestops.
The same spawn spots.

And that experience in repetition won't change because we're all only going to Pokémon within a certain bit of milage, or minutes(hours) drive from our home base(s).

I can't justify working all day, then driving 30-40 minutes to the city so I can park somewhere and freeze my fingers off while I walk aimlessly around looking for Pokémon.

I can, however, justify driving to that same town to pick up friends, drive to the local coffee shop, then hit the road and nab Pokémon we see from our vehicle. Dropping lures at cluster spots and meeting up with PoGo enthusiasts we had no idea even played until we meet them that very day...

Creative coding, Niantic.

You can do WAY better than this.

We all asked for help with stopping spoofers and what we got was... worse.

We regret complaining and asking for help to make your game more enjoyable. I knew ... SO many dedicated players before these changes. And now I know 2. I'm not just writing that because of this review. It's the honest truth of the matter. I now only know 2. And the only reason a majority of the rest of us don't play anymore is because we can't scan the streets from our vehicle(s).

We can't have someone drive us around while we be-bop to music, sharing stories and shooting the breeze while we all celebrate our latest finds and occasionally take over gyms together.

You wanted your game to be about one thing but the community of players experienced it as something (almost) completely different - but still entirely relevant.

You wanted your game to be about places, and public spaces, and maybe even the physical benefits of going to these spots. But your player base personalized it far more than you ever anticipated and instead of embracing that unforeseen focus you're trying your damndest to force the players to appreciate the game for the reasons YOU envisioned its greatness.

I'm sure you've been sent the message loud and clear already but.. that's not how that works. People can't be forced to appreciate something. They either do, or they don't. And in an effort to make your game great... or pure... or some version of "Niantic" perfection... you've achieved the complete antithesis.

You've frustrated your player base.
You've caused animosity - aimed at you, Niantic - in your player base.
You've frozen out and made your player base feel unimportant, unappreciated, and misunderstood. It's more than that - you really send a message you don't care to understand what the players want, and you're not listening to what affects them (us) and the player experience. The only time you listen is when it affects you, your 'bottom line'($$), or your vision of how Pokémon Go is supposed to be played and enjoyed.

There are still players out there loving the game for what it is. I know there are. But I also know this - there are a lot less than there were before. And there are a lot less spending $$$ on this game than there were before, and if you think you can get away with saying it's because those people who aren't playing anymore are the ones who would have stopped after the novelty wore off anyway... you are mistaken, at best... lying to yourselves, at worst. Because that's not the case at all.

They were (me included) frustrated away from enjoying Pokémon Go. They were shunned from having fun while playing it - by the game itself. They were, literally, forced into a reasoning of "is this game worth my efforts anymore?" and they came up empty for reasons why it was.

Do better, Niantic.
Do better by your players.
Put your player (consumer) base first.
We need leadership, not a dictatorial exhibition of power and brute force.

We NEED you to DO BETTER.

I love Pokémon. Even when I was no older than five years of age, I was playing the games, buying figures and trading cards, and watching the cartoons and movies. It was inarguably one of the nearest and dearest franchises of my childhood, and I still love it to this day. So when I heard a few years ago that there was a mobile Pokemon game that had you explore the world around you, I was absolutely thrilled. I followed it for months before its US release, and I even downloaded the app on the very first day of its American release. For over two months, I was going for walks and exploring my city as I caught Pokémon and battled at gyms. I was having so much fun.

After a while, though, I began to lose interest in the game. People stopped playing it in mass, the community-driven radar sites were shut down, and eventually the game went from something that everyone and their sister played to just another niche Pokémon title for nerds. Only recently have I reinstalled the game out of boredom.

I won’t deny that I still enjoy the game today. There is innate fun in hunting down and catching Pokémon in the real world, and it’s rewarding to spin landmark Poké Stops around your local area and get some goodies. Tragically, though, this game had and still has too many rough patches for me to say that it’s a really good game.

Pokémon Go is haunted by inconsistency in almost every aspect of its features. Sometimes throwing a Poké Ball feels accurate and responsive, sometimes it goes flying in a direction you didn’t intend at all. Sometimes Pokémon and Poké Stops work on the map just fine, other times they take too long to load or break entirely. In the case of Pokémon, I’ve had several instances where I’d tap a Pokémon on the map only for it to spend a full minute loading before the Pokémon vanishes and I get an error popup. With Poké Stops, I will quite often run into a problem where it says ‘Try again later.’ when I’ve only just spun it, and when I try to do it again, it turns purple and gives me no reward for interacting with it. For every epic moment of discovery or achievement, there are several more moments of frustration and being cheated out of something due to the game’s many existing bugs and glitches.

Perhaps even worse than how it performs at a technical level, though, is how it performs at a basic gameplay level. Like I said before, Pokémon Go is at its best when you’ve finally achieved something great, like fully evolving a Pokémon, catching a new species, hatching an egg, and completing Field Research, among other things. However, these moments of glory are greatly overshadowed by how tedious the process to getting to those moments is. Even with plenty of Poké Stops around and having Field Research to do, resources you get from them are randomly generated not just in item type, but in quantity. You’re constantly having to hop from place to place just hoping you can scrape together what you need through the RNG. Even those who do have time to play the game can struggle with allocating needed materials because of their rarity. Look at evolution materials like Sun Stones, Metal Coats, King’s Rocks, and the like. There are two ways you can obtain these items: complete a Field Research mission once a day for seven days (which, again, randomly generates an item for you rather than letting you choose), or bank on a 0.3% chance of getting one from a Poké Stop. Everything takes too long to acquire, be it because of actual length of time or because of random generation. Not even throwing real money at the game gets you these items.

Returning to the topic of glitches and bugs for a moment, one of the most consistent annoyances I encounter when playing is glitches with the GPS of your game. Depending on your connection strength, your avatar might stay rooted in place even after you move to a completely different place, or even spastically jump across the map as it tries to pinpoint where you are. This aligning of your position with the GPS wouldn’t be a huge issue if it wasn’t a constant occurrance, but it is. Briefly close the app? GPS realigns. Slide up a notification screen or control panel? GPS realigns. Move from Wi-Fi connection to cellular connection? GPS realigns.

Nowhere is this exemplified worse, though, than when you’re playing the game indoors. I attend a college campus, which is where I’ve played the game since redownloading last week, and the entire time I’m indoors my character is lagging in place or glitching around the map, showing up in places where I’m not presently at. My avatar will even go jumping across campus and stay there for extended periods of time, all the while I’m missing out on Pokémon and Poké Stops near my ACTUAL location.

My harshest criticisms about what’s currently in the game, however, are entirely reserved for the Gyms and the combat system in general. In every single Pokémon game, the combat has been at the core of the game’s entertainment value, and for the most part it’s been consistent across the years and generations of the franchise. In Pokémon Go, however, they have dumbed down the combat to the point where a literal toddler could do just as good as a seasoned player in battle. When fighting in a gym, the only things you can do in a battle is tap the screen over and over and over again to attack and dodge. You’re just slamming your fingers against the screen until everything is dead or until time runs out, and it is sinfully boring and unintuitive. And I haven’t even touched on the lack of trading and player vs player combat, which was literally promised from the first trailer.

Ultimately, Pokémon Go is only at its best as a silly time-killer. It isn’t complex enough to be a hook for hardcore players, and it’s too sprawling and time-consuming to appeal to casual players. It’s just a sad example of a huge missed opportunity by Niantic, and I am very sad that it isn’t everything an open-world Pokémon title could be.

Oh Niantic, I never, EVER, write reviews (especially negative ones) because I am very generous with my ratings. But you have successfully provoked me into action with this current update.

First, let me start by reviewing the main game. Yes it is a novel idea to use physical activity as the main engine of a mobile game. But after a week or two, that aspect quickly becomes stale and the only driving force in place for playing the game is to collect pokemon and get stronger ones. That being said, the game basically ends when you reach level 20. Everything becomes a repetitive grind at that point. No seriously, everything single thing you do in the game requires grinding.

Want to level up? Grind experience, which will take you 190,000 exp just to go from level 24 to 25. Keep in mind that catching a pokemon yields only 100 exp points. Leveling up ONCE requires the equivalent of catching 1,900 pokemon. Then again, you could do what all the power levelers do and farm Pidgeys for evolution, which yields 500 exp per evolution. A quick conversion will yield 350 pidgeys required, but note that each pidgey requires for 12 pidgey candies for evolution, so all together you are looking at around 1000 pidgeys here.

What about trying to complete your pokedex? You need to grind eggs. There are certain pokemon not everyone has access to and thus, must be obtained by hatching eggs. The only problem is that most rarer pokemon only come from 5km or 10km eggs. 5 km eggs are easy to obtain, but the probability of hatching any specific pokemon is so low that you would conceivable have to grind through hundreds of them just to obtain a Kangaskhan, or Tauros, or Mr. Mime, or Farfetch'd. Finally comes the 10km eggs, these are rare and you only get these once in a long while. They usually hatch rare pokemon like Snorlax or Lapras. The only problem? You can only hold up to 9 eggs at a time. And you can only get a new egg after hatching one of your current eggs. This means not only does it take grinding to obtain a 10km egg, it takes more grinding to hatch a 10km egg with a specific pokemon inside.

What about powering up pokemon? That requires grinding stardust. Higher level pokemon usually require [protected] stardust per power up, which isn't that bad until you consider the main (and usually only) way to obtain stardust is by catching pokemon... which yields a whopping 100 stardust per catch. That means you will spend your time catching 30-40 pokemon just power up ONE of your pokemon ONCE. And it's not like powering up makes your pokemon that much stronger. On average the CP goes up by around +35 which might seem cool until you realize everyone else is at roughly 2000 cp and dinky power up barely made a difference.

Of course all this grinding would be much more bearable if we had proper motivation for it. A reward for our labors, so to speak. Enter the gym battles, which you can summarize as "Tap Tap Revenge" but without any rhythm necessary. Every pokemon gets one fast attack and one charge attack. However you tap the screen to fast attack, and once you've charged up the meter you can unleash a charged attack. The only problem is that the battle mechanics are so shallow that they aren't fun. They feel more like a chore than an actually game. The main reason really is because battling requires no cognitive ability what-so-ever, other than the motor neural skill to move a single finger. Thus, if the game does not require me to strategize, then I can already predict when I will win and when I will lose, even before I start the battle. Therefore, having to go through the action of tapping on the screen feels like a chore, because I'm not actually doing anything engaging or stimulating. As a result, getting stronger pokemon is somewhat pointless, because you wouldn't really care about gym battling anyways.

So if there is no point in getting strong pokemon, whats the point of grinding? If there is no point to grinding, then what is the point of playing? There is literally nothing to do other than grinding. You may think I mean "figuratively", but no I actually mean "literally". Want to collect new pokemon? Grind eggs. Want to power up pokemon? Grind stardust. Want to level up yourself? Grind exp. There is nothing you can do in this game that does not eventually lead back to grinding.

Now, all of the above was not even the reason I am giving this game a 1-star review. I was willing to put up with the grindy progression and the shallow battle mechanics. Chiefly, this was because Niantic kept promising to improve the game. However, after 3 weeks of the pokemon footprint system being broken, not only did they not fix it, they removed it from the game completely. But the main cause for anger was that they sent out cease-and-desist orders to third party apps that tried to help players deal with the broken system. I understand Niantic has a right to protect their intellectual property, but as a consumer this behavior is the prototypical case of monopoly power -a company trying to force an inferior product down the throats of it's consumers, leading to dead weight loss in the market.

On top of all this, Niantic has had ZERO communication with its players and customers. If you try to send them a complaint or contact them in anyway, you get forwarded to an UNMONITORED inbox. I'm not making this up; they respond to you with an automated message telling you the inbox is unmonitored. I encourage you all to try for yourself.

But the final straw comes from the fact that myself and others have lost in game purchases because of server crashes. If you use a purchased item and the servers crash, too bad you just lost your item.

Now some people are defending Niantic, saying "the game is only 10% done!" Well then, I am only giving them 10% of the credit. Can you imagine turning in an essay that is 10% complete and demanding not to fail? Even if the game was 5/5 stars when complete, 10% of that is 0.5/5 stars.

The game, despite how long it's been out, is plagued with glitches and issues that shouldn't continue to be problems, but the company is so focused on isolating players who don't live in major cities and pushing P2P content that they can't be bothered to fix them.

The game, which encourages players to go out and about in the world which ultimately leads to connecting to public wifi sources, even included a fun new update that makes you unable to log in at all if you use a VPN- you know, the thing you're encouraged to use if you might be connecting to public wifi because it protects all your data from being stolen? Yeah. Either at best a poorly implimented attempt at addressing bots and hackers in the game, or at worst a way to force users to stop using VPNs so the company can continue easily harvesting their information and data for their own back-end use the way Tim Hortons did.

It has many other issues as well, some of them being easy to shrug off and other being straight up scummy or neglectful towards the playerbase. Some examples, both minor and major, include:
1. Having a frequent problem where after throwing a ball in an encounter, the ball will freeze onscreen until you get a notification saying the Pokemon escaped and fled
2. Raids being way too difficult unless you either live in a large city where it's more likely for other people to be joining a raid, or unless you have friends who also play and are either local or are willing to pay for remote battle passes. Unsurprisingly, a large portion of people fit into neither of these scenarios, meaning these players are essentially locked out from a big part of the game simply because they live too rurally or because their friends don't play/want to pay.
3. 5+ years and NO chat system is available in game, either because Niantic doesn't care that this game requires some sort of communication among players in order for them to coordinate, or because they assume it's a safety issue despite the fact you're encouraged to send people postcards giving the locations of Pokestops you've visited so that everyone can eventually learn the habits of your routine because you'll end up with a bunch of postcards from the places you most frequently visit! Very safe and definitely not at all a much larger risk than putting in a chat system.
4. Niantic's refusal to remove the softban on doing anything when going over a certain speed to discourage people from playing when driving, even though people who would use their phones while driving will do that regardless, and all this softban does is prevent the people with the least amount of access to Pokestops or with the lowest ability to get around from being able to play. Why can't I spin stops while on the bus? If I'm getting a ride from a rideshare or a friend, why can't I play? I, and many others, don't live in walkable cities, so when am I supposed to play? People choosing to use their phones when driving is absolutely dangerous and wrong, but they choose to do something they know is dangerous and they're going to do it with or without Pokemon Go, but refusing to allow people to play the game while on rides that they are passengers of despite knowing how many players it isolates (players without cars ((which is usually the poor and desperate unless you live in a big city where this wouldn't be a problem anyway)), players still stuck at home, players who live rurally, players with disabilities that make walking and other forms of transportation difficult)) is also a conscious decision. What a cute useless decoration the "I'm a passenger!" button makes.
5. No way to add other players except by knowing their code. Most games with an aspect of community or multiplayer offer other ways to add players to your friends list than knowing their codes, and that's because the purpose is to make new friends and teammates and not just stick in your own bubble (and No you can't say it's a safety reason because like I previously said, the game encourages you and sometimes makes it an aspect of the game to get rewards to send people on your postcards that detail exactly which locations you go about which is quite literally leagues more dangerous than letting you add a random to your list), but Pokemon Go is apparently not actually a community game unless you go the extra mile to look up forums and sites where people are sharing their codes. It wouldn't be that hard to add an option to add people, for example when you view a gym and the pokemon in it and you see the player to the side- why not let people just click a button that brings up the option to send them a friend request? It's the bare minimum...
6. I guess the seasonal encounters are fine-ish, and after a bit of playing each season you figure out which 'mon are available now and you can go "okay I need to prioritize these catches now" because once the next season starts, your odds of seeing most of those pokemon again are stupid low. This however creates more problems than it solves. It means if you don't catch enough of a certain Pokemon in that time period to evolve it with 50-100 candies on average with some goin up to multiple hundreds, you can pretty much give up on it in my experience. However it makes playing boring because the encounters around you are always the same, so why bother?
7. The reward percentages for finishing a week of field work is way too low- I love the Unova Stone. Would love to see it some day since a billion Pokemon need it to evolve. And you're not even guaranteed any evolution item at ALL. Enjoy almost no EXP and a twiddlydink of stardust for each week of dedication, loser.

There's more issues and I could go on and on, but overall... the game is STILL pretty fun if you enjoy catching pokemon and filling out your dex- and I don't really battle but my friend has said that's fun if you enjoy battling, too! But unless you live in a big city with lots of cultural landmarks, just know the game will be much less rewarding to you.

I’ll preface by saying I have been playing this game on and off since it was released. I originally downloaded the game immediately when it came out and have been back and forth from quitting to returning due to an unbelievable amount of issues that they constantly discuss are “fixed”. I will provide a detailed review of all the issues that I know for a fact they will never fix and have no interest in fixing. However, these result in a 1-star recommendation to any individual that they should never start this game.

So where do I begin. I will start that the game is fun and allows you to ‘adventure’ to catch versions pokemon. But the game is so broken in the fact that it limits how many Pokémon you can hold, it limits how many items you can hold, it limits how many eggs you can hold, limits the amount of eggs you can incubate, and you’re always out of poke balls...

But wait, there is one common solution to this all! You can pour money into the game to overcome each and every issue. You can spend a countless amount of money to ATTEMPT to overcome these problems until you are back in the same situation of needing more of something. They have made this game into the perfect black hole for money and the only way to not actually spend money is to basically spend 24/7 playing. But idk about you, but most people actually have lives (or at least other games to play) and cant spend every waking hour playing the game.

Then to add on, the Pokémon that pop up at spots is completely broken. One specific example is that you would think that water Pokémon appear near beaches and ponds but that’s rarely the case. I’ll be at a beach and see 0 magikarp the whole day but then I’ll be at the local mall and see 10 magikarp... makes sense. Unless there was a river or a pond under the mall I did not know about.

The whole concept of how you catch Pokémon is ridiculous. It’s all statistics and it’s all broken statistics. The game will never fully release every detail into deciding the catch statistics, but has provided some details on how to increase your chances of catching a Pokémon. You can make a Nice, Great, or Excellent throw; you can throw a curve ball; you can give the Pokémon a berry to increase your chances of catching it; and most frustratingly you can give Pokémon a berry to decrease the chances it will flee. However, NOTHING IS A GUARANTEE in this broken game. I have had situations where I have given a berry to increase chances to catch while throwing a curve ball with an excellent throw (which no joke, all those combined should basically be a 100% catch) and it failed.

Next, is the trading mechanisms. You have a random, arbitrary limit of 100 trades total per day. As they finally added the ability for you to discover statistics (IV’s) of your Pokémon, you will begin to spend a lot of time appraising Pokémon to try and find those perfect 100% IV stats. However, you may think huh, I can trade and try and get better Pokémon or trade my good Pokémon for good Pokémon and maybe increas chances to get better IV stats? Doubtful and misleading. The stats are randomized and it is so frustrating. The rarity alone is baffling and you can have an increased chances by trading and having Pokémon become lucky, but even that is rare.

In addition, the whole system of getting Lucky Pokémon is so broken and frustrating to players who have played a long time. The game adds arbitrary hidden technicalities to acquiring lucky Pokémon by putting a limit on guarantees. What am I talking about, you may ask? Pokémon that were caught during the first few months the game was released (July-August ) were labeled with a gold tag that had the specific date they were caught. Trainers were told that these Pokémon who were traded to other individuals would have a guaranteed result of a Lucky Pokémon with whoever they traded. However, a hidden caveat is that if said trainer happens to have more than 10 Lucky Pokemon (fairly common as most people have well over 200-300 Pokémon in general) then the opportunity of a lucky Pokémon is no longer guaranteed. It is so frustrating to players and especially discourages any real dedication to this game or even keeping Pokémon for that long.

Lastly, but certainly not least, the game is full of bugs. You will lose countless poke balls, berries, incense (for trying to lure Pokémon, which is also a broken tactic, don’t get me started) and other items from the companies OWN PROBLEMS. Such as network errors, Pokémon vanishing for no reason and various other bugs. However, all you can do is submit a bug report with no response from anyone or any assistance in ever getting anything in return. Don’t worry that you may have put money into the game to get said items, they don’t care enough to even have a human contact you. But in the actual chance you contact a real support person (after constantly meandering your way around the annoying, unhelpful bots), the support persons are unhelpful, rude, and you can’t even respond. You are only given the option if they satisfied your request and if they don’t they you have to go through the whole process again. This is just another company that has turned into a money hungry disgraceful corporation that doesn’t actually care about users; just as long as they can take your money that is fine with them.

In summation, don’t start this game. There is plenty of other, better ways for you to spend your time. Just stop now, forget you opened up reviews because you are actually concerned if this game is too good to be true. That is because it is! Whatever benefits and fun you think you will get out of this game are a lie. Don’t waste your money and time allowing this game to constantly frustrate you.

Hope this reviews helps shed the truth on this game and this company. Even if 1 person reads this review I’ll call it a victory. Thank you for your time and give yourself a pat on the back if you made it all the way through this review haha. Best of luck.

New: 1 star for me I really don't understand why you just keep the botters just how you keep the spoofers such hypocrite niantic. All I see in updates are pointless and useless just like how you put Pokémon go on Apple Watch it's really dumb when mostly of players which I know you know there's more spoofers and some botters since you like banning botters than spoofers. So your point of the Apple Watch was worthless because I don't know but it's rare to see a legit player.

Old: I give it a 2 because the game is cool in some aspects not everything is cool. Also if your not spoofing your missing out and pretty much you wouldn't get all the Pokémons or best pokemons. If you max your item bag and Pokémon storage well hope that niantic will give us more space since is dumb on not expanding the stores on both bags. The gyms are too easy to take over if again you got best Pokémons and a lot of potions, but it's boring since swipe and tap it's like I can do it while one eye sleep, for the iv that need to be perfect don't really need it since I use low iv to destroy a ten level gym full of high cp more than mine since dodging is easy. Pokestops are really just not surprising since mostly you only get three items and sometimes six items. Egg hatching it's okay but could be better performed since it takes awhile to get ten kilometer walking. Funny how you guys boost some of the move sets but you guys didn't boost thunder and mega horn some of the moves I seen not changed. Give us master ball or some type of better ball as well berries because I throw my ultra balls on a dragonite low cp or high cp and still with berries and it takes like thirty balls and twenty berries that's pretty unequal as well dumb I though ultra balls would be easy but no so please boost the ball percentage or do something because I have more fun catching snorlax rather than a dragonite or tyranitar and blissey. It's funny how you guys downgraded lapras cp when his one of the best Pokémon, so mess up in a lot of ways but it's funny how his low cp and still can kill a dragonite that has high cp so sad but funny. I wish you guys made the game like the original game was meaning why you guys don't keep the old move sets pretty sad that the more you guys do updates the more it looks like you guys take things away like dragon claw and dragon breath for dragonite or body slam on snorlax or dragon pulse for gyaurados, like what are you guys doing seriously probably next year all the move sets we have now will be legend moves which is sad. Evolve is stupid last time I check when you evolve you pick what you wanted to keep and delete but here it's like random which is cool but just dumb because you put all your work to get not great movesets and your like wow now start all over again that's just sad that's why I don't evolve unless you guys made it more better like Pokémon original. I wish rather than an upgrade item for the seven day straight you make it to get a powerful Pokémon for the people that rarely got any powerful Pokémon like: snorlax, dragonite, blissey, tyranitar and maybe gyaraudos, vaporeon and rhyhorn. Legends I hope when legends come would be generation one and two because if your going to just give generation one well you guys are doing something. I hope the babies can be caught on the wild because its irritating me that my third account I only got no babies out of ten eggs that I hatch. The upgrading your Pokémons with the stardust it's like not appealing to me, wish we can do it like the better Pokémon battle them and then defeat to upgrade or battle and catch the Pokémon. If Pokémon Nintendo made the old original version something like how you guys niantic are doing I would gladly go with Nintendo Pokémon because they at least will keep some of the original Pokémon aspects because if I had a chance to have millions of batteries I would totally still play my Pokémon red blue yellow. I was wondering I don't know why you guys ban botters which probably some are handicap that can't walk or etc. the reason why I gave a two stars because I mean I love Pokémon in general but I mean if you guys don't do anything if you guys are reading then that stars will be declining slowly just how slowly the game is fading out because not to be mean but I don't thing it will make it to generation four why because I myself only know generation one and second somewhat and third rarely and beyond that nothing. One last thing I have three accounts and I see that your guys made it more harsh on my third account by changing something when I first made my first account meaning on the lure, lucky eggs and incense. What I really don't like it's that I have a life and I know many people that play this have life's too but if you think level forty is not a lot well it's a lot I hope you guys don't upgrade the level to fifty or else I might just stop playing or just keep myself to level thirty because thirty is where the game actually is starting which is pretty sad. Experience points really give us a lot because some people live in rural areas that barely get a lot so you guys should boost the experience for everyone because I don't see myself getting to level forty by walking around or driving or etc the only way I think is cheating and if not cheating than give us more experience I'm seriously because I'm sick of just been bored when I play this game I actually ask myself "why I'm playing this game, only because is Pokémon but only if it was a better than this one I would totally change it with a heartbeat." Please niantic you guys could make the game super great but I don't know why you guys are slacking if you guys can't do a great game let Nintendo take over and they will make it better like how the original Pokémon games were. So niantic I hope you are reading this as well the reviewers if you want fun on the game but I guess fun boring just cheat at least you will be happy by catching powerful Pokémons. Hope you guys look at the feedback.

I love this app. So much. Despite it being slow or crashing at times (which is not why I gave it an imperfect review, that should be expected when it hasn't even been out for a week) this is literally every Pokémon enthusiast's dream. Even people who aren't familiar or who aren't super fond of Pokémon, still are loving this game! There is no doubt that this game has made a huge impact on culture. No matter what the technical issues are this is still a fantastic game and I'm going to be playing this game for a long time.

That being said, I did give it less than five stars. (So close too!) Here's why: the current system for like, almost everything. It's not horrible, but it's not why I love Pokémon so much. I don't think there's anything wrong with the current battle system where you can swipe and tap and such. That's actually amazing, I love that so much and it gives a more interactive feeling than just tapping "Hyper Beam", you know? However, I was disappointed when I found out that I can't use my Pokémon to capture others. Basically, I have to play a game of basketball where the ball is a Pokéball and the hoop is the Pokémon. Like, I said it's enjoyable, but there's no fun in it.

Catching Pokémon in and of itself is fun in this game. The moment when your phone buzzes is a great surge of euphoria. One thing I would change is for there be an indicator below the 'Nearby Pokémon' of which direction it's in, rather than the distance. All I know is the Pikachu is two feet away from me, but not what direction. Maybe for the arrows they could look like >, >>, >>>, for the distance as well, but the arrows could face in a certain direction to indicate where said Pokémon is. (Now, I don't know if this is a feature that I'm unfamiliar with that is currently installed and in which case I will redact that statement, but I haven't found that out yet.)

Also, the leveling up and evolving system is not desirable. I do like the CP, it's interesting and I am open to it, however, let me give you three example of why the leveling system where it is at now is inconvenient.

1. My favorite Pokémon is Oddish. Yeah, I know it's kind of an odd-ish (hahaha... I'm lonely) Pokémon to be my favorite, but it is okay! No judgement. Anyways, Oddish can only go up to a certain amount of CP and in the DS installments of the game I would get an Oddish to Lv. 100 and love it. However, having an Oddish is not viable in this game when he caps out and is made obsolete by his other superior in power associates. So, there's not really a reason to use him, but I want to! Which is the complaint here and the overall issue. This may be a case for others, but the idea that a Pokémon cannot level up as a Basic evolution is kind of messed up.

2. I chose Charmander as my starter. (His name is Charmie). I was super excited because my starter is always my best Pokémon, I remember in the first Pokémon game I ever had I would tear apart the Elite Four with just one move. Even if the attack "wasn't very effective". So, it now saddens me to see my Charmander with 52 CP and have Pokémon three to four times that amount. All because I can't find a Charmander in the wild. And if I did it would probably be way more powerful than my starter now, but I don't want to take that new one in who wasn't with me since the beginning instead of my starter! That's messed up. I understand you can level up Pokémon at gyms, but I live in a suburban area and well, I don't even know where the closest gym is to me. To make matters worse, I cannot drive so that's sort of difficult. I think it would be beneficial to be able to level up from wild Pokémon.

3. Today I evolved my Eevee. I got a Jolteon and it is now my most powerful Pokémon. However, I didn't want a Jolteon. I really love Leafeon, but that was not really an option for me to have that Pokémon since I had no control over the evolution. Which is kind of lame, I love the Jolteon, but it's unfortunate that I couldn't get the one I wanted. I think it would be cool for you to be able to find stones just at random places. Imagine making your way to a crystal blue lake and gazing at the vast ripples. Your phone buzzes and you see a water stone right on the shore of the lake. I think that could be super cool.

Another minor problem is that the tutorial was not very specific about a lot of stuff. Lots of info that was just not there. Revamping the tutorial would be fantastic.

It would also be wonderful to have trainer battles and trading (although I, myself am not a fan of trading. I'm a sentimental guy, so trading away a Pokémon seems wrong. I do know others are monst- I mean open to and like trading. And also it's kind of a big thing in the games, too.) in the game. However, that had no impact on my rating, because let's face it, everyone. This game has been out for LESS THAN A WEEK. And I've had it for about four days. This game is not finished yet and I understand that.

Which is why, after reading this review (I mean if you're still reading congratulations it took me a really long time for me to type this all out on my smart phone. And it's super long and it's one out of, like a lot of ratings. Good for you.) you may be slightly confused why I gave it such a good rating after I pretty much ripped the game apart. Well, this is why: do I enjoy the game? Ohhh yeah. I love it. I'm kind of addicted. It is a great game, what can I say? Regardless of my personal distaste of the the candy and stardust system and, I think that everybody has enjoyed this game a lot. Are there flaws, yes, of course. Every game has them and especially when it's such a new game. I guess I may be kind of a traditionalist when it comes to playing Pokémon. I like leveling up my Pokémon through battles. I am open to the candy and stardust system, it's just, kind of inconvenient. Is the catching of Pokémon mundane and has some stuff left to be desired, yeah. But! I am willing to wait and see what the future holds for Pokémon GO.

TL;DR: Niantic only wants your location data and money, even if it means ruining the experience for rural or disabled players.

I started playing this game in early July when it was first released. I played hard for over a year, but had to stop mostly due to the lag and battery drain this game had on both my old iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S I picked up to replace it. The game was in its infancy then, with only Kanto and some Johto Pokémon being featured, and no appraisal or PVP or PVE of any kind. The game was new and exciting and the community response was immaculate. Many of my minor issues with the game stemmed from my youth or lack of mobility (all I had was my bike and no disposable income, which fit in with the lore and games nicely), but being able to use the third party map tools made it possible for me to still enjoyably play. I ended up taking a long break after the spawn maps were disabled (by Niantics request, the third party app devs were fans and obviously respected the devs and the IP enough to listen). The concept of riding my bike around hoping for new Pokémon before my phones battery gave up was unattractive, mostly because I had 45 minutes to play as soon as I took it off the charger.

After the pandemic I began playing again after hearing about/seeing all the new features that had been added in my absence. Initially I was enthralled by all the new Pokémon, the quests, the raids, the gyms, and other things that had been added. I was disappointed at the visible apprehension the developers seemed to have at allowing coordination with other trainers for things like raids, but I quickly discovered all the new third party apps that allowed you to coordinate with trainers worldwide to finally have a chance to catch those highly sought after legendary Pokémon. Between that, having a job, owning a car, and a competent phone, I became a hardcore daily player. I was walking and driving for at least 8 hours a week SPECIFICALLY for Pokémon Go. I loved this game, spent ample time and money on it every week, and didn’t have a huge amount of complaints other than getting horrible RNG on every single trade (spending 80k stardust to give a friend a Pokémon they don’t have AND getting absolute garbage stats on both of them after the trade was depressing).

Everything was acceptable and understandable for a while until I started participating in events like community days. Forcing players to only catch the designated Pokémon for THREE hours doesn’t really feel like a community DAY, it feels more like community hours.

My complaint was validated when I found out these Pay To Play events used to be twice as long when they first came out. That was frustrating to find out, but only slightly more frustrating than the 50 coin limit across all gyms per day. At least you still get to keep the missions until you complete them (hope you like staring at your “Catch 15 of this Pokémon (that won’t be in the active spawn rotation for awhile until Niantic decides to throw it back in on a whim).

The developers ignored pleas to make these events more accessible, introducing more location-locked events and spawns (beyond the original regional spawns that at least sorta made sense, kinda). The developers also ignored pleas to make the game more accessible for rural or disabled players, leaving whatever mediocre spaghetti code for focusing spawns near PokeStops and Gyms, AND THEN making spawn incense and other helpful features worse to encourage people to travel to cities and other densely populated areas.

Niantic claims they’re “committed to the in-person experience” and have done all the wrong things to prove that point. And this brings me to my ultimate dealbreaker; Elite Raids and Remote Raids. Niantic recently DOUBLED the price of remote raid passes AND have taken to locking new legendary Pokémon behind Elite Raids that are local in-person only. Instead of improving/buffing and supporting the in-person experience to encourage people to get out and play, Niantic is instead making the remote experience worse, punishing those who rely on the remote feature to have the experience they desire. Any experienced player will tell you even in big cities there is no coordination, the only chance you have to do in-person raids is RIGHT when the raid egg hatches. If you miss that boat, you might as well go home. Doesn’t matter if you’re in your nearest city, your states biggest city, or a huge city like NYC, this fact remains. Niantic is trying to push its Campfire app to allow coordination, but it’s a separate invite-only app that they’ve only JUST NOW started to widely release to US players, and the sudden rush on their ends seems to only be based on the massive community outcry due to them doubling the price of remote raids. Niantic has tried a bunch of damage control to maintain its player base, but seems to be trying everything EXCEPT reverting the many changes they’ve made that caused the outrage in the first place.

If you’ve been to any of the Pokémon Go community-ran forums (like the Pokémon Go subreddits) you’ll see just how bad it’s gotten. Longtime players who’ve spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars on this game have given up on it, watching their effort go down the drain because Niantic is more interested in your data and micro-transaction money than anything else. The only time they listen to the community is when the entire community bands together to protest, and every time the community has to band together, people quit because they’re sick of watching their time and money be squandered and belittled by a company who does not listen to the community it’s inherited, but not earned.

The doubled cost of remote raid passes and limit of 5 raids per day has been the final straw for many longtime players and fans of Pokemon. The list of things Niantic has done to drive away their original player base in genuinely too long to list and explain.

Google it, you’ll see what I mean.

I've been playing Pokémon Go for a year and I love it--it brings my love of Pokémon with me wherever I go. The new gym system fixes many of the problems the old gyms created, making the game much more fun now that battling and defending gyms is accessible to a wider range of players. Raid Battles are fun mechanic as well, and the bonus items they've introduced add to the gameplay and the experience for winning a raid is very appreciated.

However, as a longtime fan and "veteran" player, I also recognize a number of improvements that are needed to keep the game enjoyable. So far Niantic has been responsive to player needs, and I hope they keep it up.

SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION - Magikarp Jump inundates players with opportunities to share their progress on social media, and I wish Pokémon Go would do this too. It's annoying needing to take screenshots to share pictures on Instagram, even though there's a camera in the game that should allow me to do this. It would also be cool to be able to share moments such as winning a raid battle, defeating a gym, or catching a new Pokémon directly from the app. Even better would be if you could earn in-game rewards for sharing on social media, especially since this can help introduce new players and reach the players who've abandoned the game because of earlier frustrations or boredom. Of course, not everyone is excited about social media pushes, so if such a feature were implemented, ideally it would be able to be turned on and off as a player wishes.

FRIEND GROUPS - Playing together has always been one of the best parts of Pokémon, but Go makes it hard to do this, even with the new raid battle system that all but requires cooperative play for some of the encounters. In particular, I should be able to add other players to a friends list (that shouldn't be limited in size) so I can see at an instant who's online, what teams people play for, and when they were last playing; other interesting points would be able to see their PokeDex completion rates and maybe even their gym badges and medals. Of course, an ideal system would also allow me to directly message other players to invite them to join me in a raid battle, help me tackle a gym, or even challenge them to a battle in the future. Even better would be if Pokémon Go could sync with my social media accounts--such as Facebook--and give me the option to add my friends who play directly from my friends on Facebook.

GYM REWARDS - The 50 coin daily cap for defending gyms is frustrating and discourages honest play; instead it creates a system in which getting your Pokémon out of a gym is as important as holding one. I understand the need to keep coins scarce to encourage people to purchase them, but consider this situation from a few days ago: I had a Snorlax get kicked out of a gym after 8 or 9 hours and I received my 50 coins, and then 20 minutes later, my Blastoise--who had been defending a gym for over two days!--was kicked out and I earned nothing. For over two days I hadn't been able to use Blastoise in gym or raid battles, and I received nothing despite the time and effort I put into keeping all the Pokémon at the gym motivated. A similar situation happened with my Espeon: I had already met my coin reward limit for the day, and literally 12 minutes before midnight, Espeon was knocked out after over 24 hours to no reward. It's frustrating and discouraging.

Thankfully, there is an easy solution: either remove the cap entirely, or after the 50 coin daily max has been reached, award a player 100 Stardust for every additional ten minutes defending gyms that day. After all, Stardust is just as valuable as coins and arguably a lot scarcer.

On a similar note, there should be some sort of reward for winning a battle against opposing team's gyms, especially if you take out all six Pokémon in a row (even if you don't defeat the gym and claim it for your team). A fair reward would be an amount of Stardust or trainer experience points for each Pokémon defeated and perhaps a random item if you take down all six (and the rarity of said item can decrease with multiple wins to prevent rare items from becoming too common).

GYM TRAINING - I've got 91 Trainings for that medal and I'm sure I'm not the only who doesn't want that one medal to be the only one I can't improve because training was removed from the game. So training at gyms should be brought back, and since you can't earn prestige anymore, you should earn Stardust for every Pokémon you defeat while training (this would also parallel the main series games, since battling is how Pokémon earn EXP to level up and Stardust is necessary to power up and evolve Pokémon). If for some reason the amount of Stardust a player can earn needs to be limited, it wouldn't be difficult to require a Training Pass to train at a friendly gym. Training Passes could work identically to Raid Passes: you can only hold one at a time and you can only receive one per day, and in order to train more, you have to purchase a Premium Training Pass. In fact, if training earned Stardust and you could buy Premium Training Passes, I know more than a few people who would be all too eager to spend their money to "buy" Stardust.

RAID DELAYS - Ideally we'd face every Raid Battle with friends, but the reality is that sometimes every Pokémon Trainer has to go at it alone--and Raid Battles are no different. The two-minute delay to join the battle is useful on the rare occasion you end up battling with random players you don't know, but when you're taking on a raid by yourself or with a group of friends, the wait is annoying. Players should be able to enter the fray as soon as they're ready; the two-minute limit should be a maximum wait-time, not a mandatory minimum.

While I could mention more (like the lack of preset parties or the inequitable distribution of PokeStops and gyms), I feel this has been a fair critique of the latest version and I look forward to each of these issues being resolved.

Pokemon Go had the potential to be the greatest mobile game and most popular global game ever seen, and Niantic, unfortunately, has blew it. The CEO of Overwatch, and the staff at League of Legends, for example, communicate with their fanbase about upcoming updates and bugs. A major flaw with Niantic is its extreme lack of communication. Players have no information regarding details of upcoming updates. Also, there are no specific details about updates that are released, such as the massive changes to move damages on Pokemon. To players who did not play this prior to around July 14, Pokemon Go utilized a tracking system in which each nearby Pokemon was displayed with 1-3 steps. Each step represented that the Pokemon was around 100meters away. This feature stopped working, and ever since, all we have received was a "yes we are aware" from the CEO about the issue at ComicCon. First and foremost, a company must listen and communicate the player base to keep the game fresh and engaging. After all, without their support, the game would be nothing. Instead of fixing the bug, Niantic simply chose to remove it. We understand if it is temporarily removed simply because all Pokemon were marked as 3 steps away and, as a result, players who were unaware of the bug were confused. However, we have no idea if this core feature will be implemented again. This feature is exactly what separates Pokemon Go from handheld Pokemon games. It creates socialization and a reason to get out of the house and enjoy the game with friends or even strangers. All Niantic needs to do is simply reach out to the community and state their future plans. If it's a bug which is difficult so fix, at least admit that your team is having trouble fixing it. There is nothing wrong with admitting a mistake. To have the chance to manage a game with such potential is an opportunity that should not be scoffed at. Pokemon Go's popularity has been declining rapidly, ever since the 3 step bug occurred. After the recent update was released in which the steps were removed altogether, the popularity of the game plummeted once again. The proof of the decline of this game is obvious, Niantic. There are statistics all over the internet. Reddit is blowing up with disappointment, and players around the globe are quitting. It is honestly disheartening to see the decline in players recently around my city. Such a large number of players are asking for in game purchase refunds that Apple Customer Service has become overwhelmed. Simply consider the community's recommendations and proceed from there. You do not need to do EVERYTHING the community asks, just keep an open mind. A common recommendation is to implement training your Pokemon and PVP gameplay. There currently is no player to Pokemon bond that is so prevalent in the handheld games. The tap to battle system currently is quite stale as well. Gyms are AI controlled, but that does not mean they have to be. 4 moves on a Pokemon could or could not work out. Do not be afraid to make drastic changes to the game to keep it entertaining. Think outside the box and work with the community. There is infinite potential for this game, and recommendations in this post are minimal. At this point in time, Niantic clearly is not taking its job seriously. To the CEO: you can choose to ignore the issues at hand, most notably and importantly the lack of communication and effort -- other improvements can come later. Sure, Pokemon Go players will still pay for In-App Purchases, but the decline of this game is obvious. There is a GOLD MINE at your feet, and potential for this game to surge in popularity again. Please, put in more effort into making this game the best game that it can possibly be. I guarantee that taking a stubborn approach into thinking that the community's ideas hold no value will continue to sink this game. There is still an opportunity to take a more professional approach to this problem at hand, but the clock is ticking. I, personally, will be quitting this game until I believe Niantic is committed to giving the player base the best gaming experience possible.

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When Pokemon Go first came out, it was very exciting and I became addicted. It was so much fun! Then the tracker functionality tanked and still has not been fixed. Then came the annoying "I'm a passenger message". And even worse now with the new update, we get cut off from the game, banned from seeing anything in my sightings and anything spawning. While intentions for these may be good, this concept is completely flawed for a few reasons.

Reason 1. When my GPS doesn't know where I am (which happens frequently since I work in downtown Chicago surrounded by tall buildings), I get the "I'm a passenger" message when I am really just sitting at my desk. I get it at home, when I am in my kitchen. I get it almost everywhere, when I am just standing still. It's annoying, but I can click the message and continue playing. Now however, with your new update, it changes the game drastically. I can no longer play under this same scenario, because if my character is running around like crazy because my GPS can't figure out where I really am, I not only get the I'm a passenger message, I get cut off. So I cannot just click the annoying message and continue playing. I get cut off, just for sitting at my desk, or in my kitchen. Cut off from a game I have already spent over a hundred dollars on.

Reason 2. HUNTING! This game is about hunting pokemon. We are supposed to go outside and explore the world and hunt. You don't have functioning tracking. You have shut down any third party apps or sites that aid in tracking and yet you still want us to play the game. We just have to hope we get lucky and are in the right place at the right time to get any pokemon other than rats or pidgys. Right? That is what you expect? My family and I use the car to drive around and see what is around us in the sightings. Then we can try and find the pokemon in that area. Now mind you, I do not drive and play the game. The passengers in the car guide me where to go. And now you are taking that capability away? Are you kidding? What about people that live in rural areas where walking is not feasible? They should just drive to town and walk around and hope for the best?

Reason 3. ACTUAL PASSENGERS Um hello, you are punishing your players because a few people lack common sense. What about the people that are not driving, aka the passengers? SO now just riding in a car or bus or train is off limits? Basically what you are saying is that because some people drive while playing the game, no one can now be in a vehicle and play. To me this is like saying that because some people drink and drive, everyone that gets in a vehicle, whether driving or as a passenger, must pass a breathalyzer test before the car will turn on. Or since people text and drive, what if all phones cut off texting when GPS speeds reach 30 MPH. Then no one can text, including passengers. Crazy right? Yet this is what you are doing. Honestly, people do all kinds of stupid things while driving, put on makeup, read newspapers, shave, text, play games other than pokemon go. So why punish the rest of us because some people are dumb? I understand you want to save lives, but soon there aren't going to be many people left playing your game and those stupid people will be playing some other game and driving. You cannot save people from themselves.

Reason 4. WINTER The weather has been cooling down now. And living in Chicago, winter is coming and winters are frigid. There are plenty of states, and countries for that matter, that have freezing weather. We all don't live in California. So when the snow flies and icicles are hanging off the trees, you are wanting us to continue walking around and hoping we get lucky right? Without being able to ride in a car to hunt (as a passenger!), I don't see many people playing your game in cold weather. I'm surely not freezing my butt off to catch a pidgey. Think about it please.

Instead of punishing your user base, how about make it easier for us to play? Stop limiting functionality based off of GPS speeds. It's wrong and does more harm than good. If you want your game to stay popular, stop destroying it. And give us some tracking functionality!

Edit:Ok still no shining but after the legendary raids have started loving the fact I see them, and yes I catch them after beating them 1 out of every 4 usually, I'd say which is a little annoying since I spend gas and miles on the car for sometimes nothing but truly enjoy them although the raid times are bad still not up at 6 am because of work and there done before 8pm which again "work" they need to do 6am to 11pm that's perfect for all people I believe ADULTS PLAY MORE THAN KIDS AND WE BUY THE ITEMS IN GAME NOT KIDS!
•The catch rates are insane small and only have a pokeball up to 8 usually to even catch it at least make the catch rate better at 10% not 2% we have no candies to power them up it would make us all happy!
•With power up and raids in mind Niantic needs to make raid passes less money or something that's to much needed when you only give us 1 pass a day seriously at least 3 a day or something or allow them to stack daily!
•And my final point is stardust in this game make it a way for more, no one can power all these Pokémon up no more make a catch give 500 dust and spins 100 and feeding 100 dust something can help us out here power these amazing Pokémon up!
I HEAR THIS EVERYDAY FROM MANY PLAYERS PLAYING "no more raid passes" OR "not enough stardust to power up things to battle better" LISTEN TO US OUT HERE FOR ONCE!

Original: This review is as straight forward as I can be and may sound like complaining but it's the truth about this game and company. I been playing since day one and spent hundreds of dollars playing in the game hoping it would get better and reward its real players, but NOPE this company is bad at everything it does. I played thru the bad laggy beginning and duked it out thru the system crashes, but than it's like where I live never once in the last "almost" year have I had one rare spawn near me never once. Second off the magikarp event to get a Shiny magikarp for me and my girlfriend at the time we were level 35 and 36 nevergot a Shiny Karp and till this day we still have not gotten a Shiny magikarp and we spent days at nest over 100 hours every 3 weeks looking for the Karp and Nope nothing yet level 10 and 14 accounts my friends have that never play get it just turning on the game at the house what's that about?
3rd off you can't find unown unless you cheat and since I want to play the game correct and not cheat I can't find a single unown which never lets me finish the non regional pokedex!
4th off the Pokémon go feat event they did was so badly organized the site for tickets kept crashing and sold out to people only trying to make money off the event which is unfair to real players in not willing to spend $260 on one ticket that was $20 and they never restricted the amount you could buy.
5th thing the new gyms are amazing but you can't collect enough coins the new coins are restricted to 50 a day(which buys nothing in game)and on top you can't always hold down gyms long enough to get 1 coin and the raids are during work hours which by 8pm there all gone, on top of it all the game shuts off so much costing me my losses against the raid bosses and catching the raid Pokémon and by shutting off I mean the game shuts off ever 10 minuets or less it's bad!
6th and final thing is you can't get ahold of the company at all what so ever I contacted them about the game having my Pokémon always fled in the game and questioning why I can't find any rare Pokémon unless I'm in Long Beach and two weeks later I get a respond about how the items may not display when you spin the stops like what the really what's that about?
I respond saying that was not my question yet no reply since and it's been months.
My final opinion is if your new to this game DO NOT waste your time with this game. Unfortunately I spent so much time and money supporting a bad company I just play casually now but again newcomers honestly don't waste your time or effort in this game. I hope my random complaining shows some sort of help to someone by these bad things have happened to me and my girlfriend and some of our friends as well and thought the reviewers should know a real look at the game from a long time player that never gets rewarded for playing so long and supporting the game yet fandoms do.

A lot of things in Pokémon go have changed in the past few years and mainly for the worse - higher priced boxes with less content, not as good of rewards from raids or weekly breakthroughs, the major decline in Pokémon go events and increased prices, etc. and Niantic seems to never care about the input of their consumers. Though the thing that brought me here to leave such a low review is the new update about remote raids. They’ve already nerfed remote raids damage and upped the prices of remote raid passes in a past update but it’s now being almost doubled in price for remote raid passes and there is a low daily limit in an effort to get players to play raids in person. Why you may ask? Because they sell gel-tracking data to companies and get more money that way than through consumers buying through the game itself because it’s gotten so expensive and not worth it.

Here are some big issues I see with this update:

-Ableism. Not accounting for the amount of disabled players who cannot get around easily. Whether that is physically disabled or mentally disabled. In need of a wheelchair? Debilitating anxiety? Doesn’t matter, Apparently Niantic has no regard for their disabled consumers. Remote raids are some of the only way for these people to regularly participate in raids and receive the rewards. So I ask, why are you assuming everyone can easily get out and about? And you’re punishing these players by making raid passes more inaccessible and putting a low cap on it.

-Rural players. So many of the people that enjoy Pokémon go are not in areas where it is densely populated with poke stops or gyms. It’s hard enough to get Pokémon spawns. I used to live in a rural area and played Pokémon go so I understand how frustrating it can be. They might have to travel 20, 30, 40 mins or even over an hour away to get to a place that has multiple gyms, and chances are they’re not all going to have raids going, have the type of raid you want to participate in, or be able to spend multiple hours in the same place to be able to play in multiple raids if there isn’t a spot densely populated with gyms. This is also an inconvenience because it’s so much harder to get pokecoins from keeping your Pokémon in so few gyms that you really can’t save enough to get remote raid passes so these players may rely on purchasing items from the store to participate. It’s an inconvenience to these players who already have to rely on purchasing remote raid passes.

-Poor consumers. Most of us are not able to drop 10 dollars a week on pokecoins for remote raid passes. I’d rather have that go towards my food and bills so I can survive. Right now it’s challenging but still possible to get enough pokecoins from keeping your Pokémon in gyms to purchase remote raid passes semi-regularly for most people. Racking up the prices is putting these people at such a disadvantage. Many cannot afford cars or bus fare to get around to raids, and this is especially frustrating for those who do not live close to gyms.

Those are some of the main takeaways from this new update. Things have been going downhill but this is especially upsetting with the new update. So, how do you promote players to get out in person without nerfing it by increasing prices and putting a cap on it for everyone? I’ll tell you:

-Fix it by making rewards higher for in person raids instead of making it harder for everyone remote raiding. Make it so that it’s worth it to go outside and be in person, so that it’s hard to resist - ESPECIALLY during raid hour. Stop making it harder for people to actually enjoy and be able to play the game. What about egg incubators as well? Making those more accessible for people to go out and walk around to hatch eggs while enjoying catching Pokémon and maybe even doing some raids.

-Actually listen to your consumers. So many people are uninstalling because of how unhappy they are with this game and it’s such a shame. Pokémon has brought a lot of joy to many people, but it’s getting harder and harder to enjoy the game. Especially for veteran players who have been here since the beginning or at least a few years. Niantic has proven time and time again that it does not care for the players that make their game successful. I have two words for you Niantic: do better.

[[[11/20 update***
Still sucking. I have contacted Noantic about incense not working. A feature I PAID FOR. Yet no one replies or fixes the problem. Rip offs and thieves make decisions here and are likely manipulating the entire game imho.]]]

When the app works im happy. I remember the days of being on level 8-2 in Super Mario world circa 1991 when my NES would freeze. I was right there about to close in on saving the princess, having major bragging rights, and the feeling of major significant achievement when all of a sudden, Mario is frozen mid air and the system just blips out.

I'm feeling that way again. I'm just about to catch my last, ever elusive dratini when bam, the Pokeball infinitely spinneths. And I know, because it happens all the time, that my dratini will likely be a "network error" or he will pop out of the ball and run. My frustration is the effort I put it in is not equally as rewarded by the game. In my suburban farm town locale, I'm bombarded with weedle, pidgey, rats. I never see charmander, bulbasaur, squirtle, and other key Pokemon.

I'm the mom and a level 27... My kids and I love getting out and doing this together. It would be nice to enjoy our home town more instead of have to drive an hour and spend a lot of money just to play the game. Food, parking, traveling, all add up. Why can we have more Pokemon diversely spawn at home? This is frustrating.

The app erroring out is frustrating.

Having to log out of the app and shut down my phone and log in again is frustrating.

Downtown Aurora is a great spot to go but it doesn't even work because the phone glitches out.

Even in downtown Aurora and Naperville, we still see the same Pokemon spawning all the time. It's getting boring.

Lastly, the app would be even better if there was more to do while at home. When the kids are home sick, it would be nice to be able to battle gyms or earn candy by doing something stationary. I know the point is to get up and go, but something to kill stationary time would be nice.

Also the incense and lure modules are ridiculous. I've spent money on this game and bought a lot of these things. They're pretty useless and should garner more since you pay for them in many cases.

Update 9/24...
I had a blast at navy pier and Adler planetarium in Chicago where there are a ton of pokestops and diverse and numerous Pokemon spawning all the time. It's fun when the parks are loaded with trainers. But I don't have the gas money, parking fee, lunch money, or time do drive an hour to Chicago with my kids. Can you please enhance the game for us neglected suburban and rural players. You ban cheaters for trying to do better but people in big cities have no reason to cheat... They sit back and have rare Pokemon come to them! Totally not fair.

INCENSE AND LURE MODULES ARE A JOKE. For the love of God... I paid for these things thinking there'd be an incentive to spending money. My incense results in pidgey, rat, and weedles? Is this a twisted joke? I'm not spending one more dime.

***Update***
Now level 29
Games getting less enjoyable. Nothing good spawns in the suburbs. Now they've taken away Pokémon mapping sites. Which has taken 50% of the enjoyment out of the game. We like being home and checking out what's spawning an hour away. We'd plan day trips around the radar information. We'd verify if nests were actually nests or just spawn sites and save time money and gas.

Also, I'm irritated that I spend money on timed features such as incense and special eggs, only to have the app constantly error out.

I want to play this game but there simply isn't enough happening to keep my interest. My 9 year old already lost interest. Kids can't drive to locations and absolutely nothing pops up locally except stupid weedles, pidgys, rats, and caterpies.

Stop spending time shutting down websites and start spending time implementing what these radar websites do for your customers and users. Obviously it makes the game better because the more you take away and the more this app glitches out, the more users are disappearing.

11/20 update***
Still sucking. I have contacted Noantic about incense not working. A feature I PAID FOR. Yet no one replies or fixes the problem. Rip offs and thieves make decisions here and are likely manipulating the entire game imho.

I enjoy playing the game, it has a person who likes to walk for several miles, it’s nice to be rewarded for walking. I love the end of the week items you get for covering so many kilometers per week, and I like using adventure sync to get credit for miles walked without the game actively open. I like the battle leagues and raids as well. However, there are so many major issues with the game that make it where I wish I had never download it and had so much hope in it being a fun game: First of all, if you live in a rule area, Pokémon spans are extremely rare. In over a 2 mile walk, I see maybe four or five Pokémon spawn…and most were when I would loop around back to my house. team rocket occasionally spawns out here, but it’s maybe twice a day at best. And you can use the daily incense to get 15 minutes of spawns if you are moving fast enough to get a lot of Pokémon in that timeframe, which is cool. However, any time I’ve ever had a legendary bird spawn, I get to excellent throws, using ultra ball, and use an orange razz only to have it fly away. And I have only ever seen two of them, despite the fact that I move very briskly while playing. It’s just not worth it if the chance of seeing it is already super rare for the catch if it to be even rarer. It’s just disappointing. The micro transactions are extremely annoying. I like that the daily incense will give you some Poké balls, but if you have any balls in storage already, it just doesn’t. That makes it impossible to travel to a neighboring city to stock up on them for the week because you are penalized for saving them by not getting the daily ones. The closest city that actually has multiple PokéStops in gyms within a reasonable walking distance of one another is about 45 minutes away. And the same thing goes for things that heal your Pokémon. If you decide to do a research task that day that requires you to catch 15 Pokémon to get the prize, you use balls in your stash, but if you have one too many, you won’t get the 30 balls for the daily incense. It’s pretty dumb. There is no incentive to take multiple gyms at one time and no incentive to actually put good Pokémon in the gym to defend it since there is a cap of 50 coins. 50 coins is not even enough to buy a single item from the store. I can understand there being a cap, but 50 coins for a Pokémon that has been held hostage at the gym for two weeks is pretty lame. - And the thing that is making me leave this review has been your disregard for your user base. There’s no incentive to play unless you can actively play every single day, but if you live in a rural area, you can’t. Increasing the price of the remote raid passes, limiting the number of them you can use in a day, and possibly reducing the benefits of those in a raid remotely is offensive. It’s a slap in the face to people who are already willing to buy a few of them to do some of the raids (also which do not have a guaranteed catch at the end of the raid). The raids are already buggy at times with game freezes, so getting to the end and it being able to just run away makes you just not want to participate. Increasing the costs of the raids doesn’t really “return to the spirit of the game” or whatever little phrase Niantic used to justify it. The spirit of the game was supposed to be connecting with other people, and you can do that remotely. In fact we forced the nation to do it remotely for at least a year (with good reason). I not only does it make it hard for those that live in rule areas with small player basis, but it’s also ablest in nature. Some people cannot just get up and walk to the closest gym. Not to mention, the age range of people who play this game is probably pretty large, ranging from kids all the way to older millennials. It’s too hard to find other people to play with without it being extremely awkward and borderline dangerous. I guess people can just play the game without doing the raids though. It’s just sad to take something that the base like and upcharging it, when it’s already pricy for often little payoff anyway. I like the game, the potential, the nostalgia, and the overall spirit of it. And the community events and stuff have been great, and I’ll miss the game. But I’m not going to keep supporting a company that doesn’t factor it’s customers into their business choices at all.

Update -- So Niantic actually released a few statements on FB and they told us nothing we didn't already suspect. I know people are giving them credit for saying something but saying something after thousands of people yell at you to say something isn't exactly praise worthy.

What did they tell us? First they claimed they removed features for stability and didn't outline when those features would be back. They very lawyerly told us "sometime". Now they've "heard us loud and clear" and are bringing Battery Saver Mode back in the next few days.

Loud and Clear? Okay. So what about tracking? What about relay time increase? What about difficulty and Pokemon escaping so much more?

Let's look at that last issue. I'm level 21 (my son and I walked a lot with this game). Should a cp10 Pidgey be able to get away from me? Really? I don't know much about the show but I assume Ash didn't find it harder to catch weaker Season1 Pokemon as he got better. Higher CP stuff getting away? Sure. Rarer stuff? Fine. Generic Pokemon that I've caught dozens of? That makes no sense whatsoever except as a way to use up my pokeballs so maybe I have to buy them. No thanks.

Did they tell us when new features such as trading were coming? No. They said they're working crazy hours.

They actually blamed server load on third party tracking sites in their first real response when their servers were pooched before those sites came online.

About the servers. If the servers are over utilized to the point that they have to disable features and add lag time to users then shouldn't they wait to roll out the game to more countries until it's stable? Won't adding more users, more pokestops, more Pokemon & more everything make it less stable? Wouldn't it be more prudent to have a stable release for everybody than a crippled game fewer people in more places want to play?

So far they have said nothing useful and gave us no indication of when things would get realistically better or even back to the glitchy but enjoyable way it was two weeks ago. That's pathetic. I've never seen a company flame out their own product so quickly with bad PR. If Apple would let me I would take the last star away for this slap in the face.

I'm actually rather shocked Apple hasn't put the screws to Niantic over the potential for lost revenue. Who knows, maybe they have.

Original review below.
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My wife and 5yo got me to play this game and at first it was fun. Niantic made a game with micro-transactions that didn't require said transactions which is rare in the App Store. Normally when you see "In Game Purchases" you just know that you can't get "X" or "Y" or past level #whatever without throwing real money at the game devs. Niantic didn't do that and I was stoked by that aspect. It's not that I won't spend money on a game, I just won't spend it on a game that requires it for usability as opposed to enjoyment.

It was fun to walk around with my son and catch Pokemon.

However.

It seems Niantic didn't anticipate the popularity, and really how could they have considering the way it blew up, and they've managed to make the game worse with subsequent updates.

They got rid of battery saver mode instead of fixing the problems. They got rid of the footprints feature that was broken instead of fixing it. I realize that last issue was likely a server load problem but when you're expected to make 7 Billion(!?) dollars over a year one would imagine that fixing problems would be of a higher priority than Niantic seems to be making it.

The game now is as one commenter said "No longer Pokemon Go but instead Pokemon Lure Module Grinder".

I'm not likely to buy eggs or lures or incense when the Devs keep removing features and that's the only way to get cool stuff.

It's also not a social game. I've been to several parks and areas with my son and he's super excited to catch Pokemon and everybody seems too caught up with their lures to look up or say hello to the 5 year old who just asked if they wanted help with catching things.

I know "trading is coming" and that will perhaps fix that issue but if past is prologue then it'll break Niantic's servers and they'll remove the feature after a week or two.

We just updated the app and we had, no joke, 8 of 10 Pokemkn escape and run away after being raspberried and caught with Great or Ultra balls. That's not fun or worth our time.

I'm done playing until the next update and if there aren't actual improvements then we're done forever.

First off the game does give you tons of Pokémon, not all the Pokémon out there, but a good 80% of them.

On the outside you can catch all types of Pokémon at different values (3 stars is the best value which means they have the best attack, health, and defense for their type and size). The game cycles events so that way everyone can get a chance at catching different Pokémon and collecting them all. So on the outside, just collecting Pokémon for fun is worth it.

However if you want to battle, fight Team Rocket, fight in Gym Raids against massive Pokémon, or catch Pokémon repeatedly, that’s when you’re gonna have a hard time.

Firstly if you fight anyone in a gym, a “boss” Pokémon, or Team Rocket, your Pokémon’s health will obviously go down. However it’ll stay down until you use a potion to heal them, there are no pokecenters to help heal your Pokémon. The only way to get potions without paying for it, is to spin pokestops and gyms to get them. Use them sparingly...

Fighting Gym Pokémon “bosses” is another hard feat. A 1x star boss can be easily handled by a single person and maybe 1x Pokémon, however a 5x star boss will require no less then 20 people to fight it. You can’t take on these Pokémon yourself, it’s impossible. What makes it worse is the game has side missions you can’t complete until you somehow beat these 5c Star Pokémon, so hopefully you have a lot of friends or that mission line is never going to get done. On top of all that, if you manage to beat the boss Pokémon, you get “rescue balls” to throw for a chance to catch these rare Pokémon, you only get a small limited supply based on how well you did in the fight and how many Pokémon you have left standing, so good luck because while some people walk away from several boss fights with several of the boss Pokémon, most walk away with nothing.

Team Rocket fights are a chore. You need to fight them because sometimes they have rare Pokémon you can win, they have missions, as well as their leaders and bosses too. However when you go to fight a Team Rocket member, the game will not tell you what type of Pokémon the Rocket personnel are using. Actually the game will “recommend” a 3x set of Pokémon to fight with. I have no idea why the recommended is a factor when it’s failed me so many times, obviously a fire type can’t beat a water or rock type, so why would the game push for me to use that as my starting Pokémon in the fight? You just have to guess, start the fight, leave the fight, then reselect your Pokémon again so you can win. Again fighting team Rocket is a chore.

Fighting other players. You can do this in the game, playing in the Pokémon Go League. You can fight in 3x different type when you start, the beginner levels, the selective levels, and the normal/hard levels. They all have power caps so no one can use overpowering Pokémon to beat up smaller ones. However there is a MASSIVE issue with League fights that I explain below...

Other nuances are the fact that when you throw a pokeball to catch a Pokémon; and miss; that ball is lost forever, you need to go visit more pokestops to spin them and gets couple more balls to use. When using pokeballs to catch Pokémon, there are 3x types of balls, normal, great balls, and Ultra Balls. Each ball has a higher catch rate then the other with a ultra being the highest. However this sometimes doesn’t matter, why? Because the game will code that a certain Pokémon you haven encountered will run away from you, it just depends on the turns. When this happens, no matter what you do, you’ll never know it’s going to run because the game doesn’t tell you or hint at it, you’ll waste your balls and the Pokémon will run. Even Pokémon with lower power levels will bust open an ultra ball, and run. Either let us catch the Pokémon or just give us a hint that the Pokémon doesn’t want to stay or is being set to run so we don’t waste balls that we can’t get back...

The biggest and most condemning factor of the game: hackers. Are we surprised? No. How do they ruin the game? They play in the league battles, and you know when you’re fighting a hacker when the game suddenly becomes very difficult to fight, win, and or starts to favor them and gives them the priority attack over your faster Pokémon... hackers can also catch boss Pokémon on a single throw, and sneak overpowering Pokémon into the league fights. Why the devs don’t address these issues I don’t know.

So overall it’s great for catching Pokémon, but not really anything else. 2/5 stars.

Update: game unplayable

Gym battles = pointless - not spending hours killing myself in order to make 1 dollar (10 gyms).

No in game friends list or being able to make a custom team within your color with 3 -10 friends.

No tracking.

Taken away my ability to play on my subway commute with the stupid speed restrictions.

Why the hell am I going to waste more time searching for 100 IV pokemon when EVERY single 100% I have evolved has got the worst moveset. I've evolved 3 perfect garadoses and they all got twister. TWISTER?!Forget that noise.

I'm level 35 and having a major issue finding a reason to log on and adding more "freemium" features like daily catch isn't gonna do it.

A week ago I would have given this app a 5 star rating. Despite no tracking and a silly tapping combat system I have remained engaged with Pokemon Go.

I believe that with the coming of Harry Potter Go and other market competition that it is incumbent upon you Niantic, to listen to the vast community that want this game to succeed. Look, not listening to the economic concerns of poor people gave us Trump. Don't Trump us Niantic. Please.

First:

Please redesign combat.

You have a wonderful buddy system.

He should be on the screen with me though.

Then I should be able to pinch the screen to pick my buddy up and throw my Pokémon in the bushes or random shrubs within a decent radius of my map site.

Then, My buddy Pokémon enters a turn based combat.

I can choose to have the outcome automated or engage the fight myself.

Once the fight is over, the screen shifts and we enter the standard catch phase. Depending on how the fight went I am assigned a catch bonus of 3% - 15% on top of the catch bonus.

Second:

Each Pokemon should have access to all move sets.

Simply to different degrees based upon IV.

With perfect 95- 100 IV Pokemon being able to allocate 5 points in every skill and lower IVs being able to max out a lower number of skills.

They can learn all the moves but depending upon the IV it should determine how many points each Pokemon move can get. Scale the moves from 1 - 5 with Pokemon being able to allocate more points at higher levels till they reach their cap.

At level 10 Pokemon know 2 moves.

At level 25 Pokemon know 4 moves.

At level 35 Pokemon know 6 moves.

At level 40 Pokemon gain random move.

Obviously this means that each individual Pokemon are going to be at different levels.

Use the catching battles to have Pokemon gain experience points.

Change the function of stardust to being able to buy perks at gyms such as

+5% defense bonus to defending Pokemon.

Extra output to any pokestops in an extended radius

+5% catch rate of any Pokemon within a radius.

Or purchase potions/revives.

You need more in game purchases that do not require Pokemon coins. Especially since you make the game currency extraordinarily difficult to gather.

100 poke coins is about 1 dollar right? It took me 12 hours of work and 3 hours of work weekly to be able to maintain at least 10 gyms..

To maintain being able to generate 1 dollar a day.
Now, for the same amount of work I'm generating 30 cents of coins. Highly aggravating. There is little incentive to go miles out of my way to build up gyms when you can't hold them for longer than 30 minutes.

People want more to do in this game. It's great you're adding so many freemium features like catch of the day and hitting your first Pokestop but you are missing a huge opportunity to continue to have a large share of the market.

Pokémon can learn all the move sets for each one, building up levels, skills, and exp.

However, the algorithm for Gym battles is completely out of whack now.

I'm level 34 and every Gym has been reduced to level 1 and seldom surpasses 3 now. It takes 30 minutes to build up [protected] prestige for one player and takes an opponent 2 minutes to knock a gym down 4000 + prestige.

You had a great system. I play in NYC and was having a fantastic time traveling to remote places to build up gyms to level 10 and see players work together in their neighborhoods to establish turf. Finally, after months of work I thought I was getting somewhere. I set the goal of maintaining 12 gyms and every day or so I'd have to go out and hunt new ones instead of hardly being able to maintain 3 gyms for longer than 1 hour.

It's killing any desire to play and that is overlooking many missteps and functionalities that are not currently in Pokemon Go.

Niantic, you have a chance to create a truly great game that can transcend your basic Facebook app. Don't squander that potential. Please don't Trump us.

Pokemon Go had one of the biggest launches of mobile gaming history. Now not even a month later, it's most avid fans are dropping the app left and right. This could stem from the fading of nostalgia, Pokemon is one of the nostalgic greats, but I think it's because this game has no soul.

It has Pokemon and a kind of glossy veneer and good music and art ripped from X and Y but under that, there are some very poor choices of game design. All of that other stuff? It's polish and that's cool, it's even the second most important part of which games I try, but it isn't much of why anyone stays. People stay because the game is fun and it flows together and makes sense. They transport us. Not Pokemon Go, it's gameplay clashes with its very IP in several ways. What ends up happening is that the players transport Pokemon Go... Literally.

Pokemon is about an exciting new world, making interesting friends in your Pokemon, growing bonds, facing challenges together, and discovering the new things other have so you can find them for yourself. Pokemon Go incentivizes finding slews of Pokemon and weeding out the weak for the strong. The Pokemon you find early are never worth keeping. The cool Pokemon others have are almost impossible to find or far away from where you live. There's also a clear divide in the opportunities given to players based on their proximity to cities, the best place to catch more Pokemon, more interesting Pokemon, and collect items necessary to play.

Leveling up should feel rewarding but it's actual very frustrating because Pokemon become harder to catch and not just the cool or strong ones. The same strength and breed you encounter at the beginning can now take 3 or more times the resources to catch. It makes you want to give up. Pokemon can only be engaged with in battle, but battles are so mindless you end up almost ever engaging with your Pokemon at all. You just amass a collection for collections sake. It doesn't feel right. It looks like Pokemon, but it's so far from the soul of Pokemon that it loses its appeal rapidly.

What makes things worse are the glitches and missing features. Most important of these is the inability to track Pokemon. Pokemon show up on a list of nearby creatures and they used to also be identifiable by distance. This allowed you to see a Pokemon you wanted or hadn't encountered was nearby, walk and track it down, and catch it. Maybe you'd see another was nearby after that! This meant you could have an afternoon of fun, chaining interesting Pokemon. This feature was broken two weeks ago and as of a recent update was entirely removed.

Niantic, the developer, has also made it difficult for third party sites to help users find where Pokemon are around them. Now you're in the dark. Find a Gengar on your radar? Now you have the knowledge one was nearby but likely never to be found because you don't know which direction to walk or how far. There's a huge radius it could be within, probably something like 1000sq. meters and in order to encounter it you have to be very close, within about 50m or less. It's nearly pointless to see the radar and more often than not its demoralizing.

The main features are broken. The developer is silent about this fact- well it's an opinion now that that feature is removed. Silence though is never the answer. Games die on silence, especially when there are so many grievances. Niantic has not learned from its past with Ingress and I fear the player base is going to suffer and fall to similar levels. Yes Ingress is still around, but it's not even on the same cosmic scale as Pokemon Go. Ingress is comparatively a speck and Pokemon Go is headed in that direction because the developers won't speak to their player base.

One of the only things the game has going for it is the player base. They are active, dedicated, intelligent, passionate about Pokemon, helpful to each other, and at times hilarious. I particularly enjoy any meme surrounding Spark, the Instinct team leader. That's entirely made up by the community though. Spark had one line of characterization in the game. The community makes things interesting in this shelol of a game. If only they could unite somewhere else when this dies.

I hope it doesn't die, I really do. That hope is small though. There's a lot to improve, a lot to learn, and a lot to appease. If Niantic can do it, if they make it through, they'll be getting a worthy applause from me. Until then, encourage them to change and encourage your friends not to play until this game gets changed because, as it is, this game will disappoint you in a few weeks and that joy you felt at the start will be more haunting than cherished.

This game is a complete insult to the Pokemon franchise! There's so many problems with the game it's just not even fun to play anymore, I just get aggravated! Here's my top complaints...
1 - 3 step glitch, oh I mean no steps now so you now walk around aimlessly...
2 - you say 3rd party sites like pokevision break your game when in reality it brought MORE people to your game because we actually know where to go. Your game seriously makes no sense with where stuff is...
3 - rural areas, including forests (where animals are lol) have 0 Pokemon... YES ZERO! Oh wait maybe a pidgy or ratata that nobody wants! Meanwhile in Central Park, New York there's 10 billion! WHY? Just make it simple and put random Pokemon everywhere in the world!
4 - your attacking system is complete spam and it feels like a lame mobile game... I want it to be and feel like Pokemon stadium! The use of items in battle and having agility actually work would be nice... Also having more moves than two... It should be a you attack, then I attack game, not spam tap till something dies...
5 - better items! Where is repel? I don't want to see ratata and pidgy, repel that now! Where are the items that can give your Pokemon moves? I remember you could teach your Pokemon moves... Currently it's cross your fingers and hope you get the 2 moves that are the best to spam...
6 - hoping you get the right moves... A magikarp takes 400 candies... That took forever, (actually I'm at like 47... So still working on that)(actually I won't be because your game is broke and I have no clue where to find magikarp anymore because you switched everything and took away pokevision...) BUT back to what I was saying 400 candies and bam a gyarados with crap moves that can't be trained to have better moves... WHY?!
7 - Pokemon have their own specific candy? What?! And WHY? WHERE IS JUST THE SINGLE RARE CANDY? That's all we want is RARE CANDY!
8 - why does my city, and I live in Phoenix Az, barely seem to have pokestops? You would think every store would be a pokestop... Instead there's like one at a fountain, one at a basketball hoop, and the max being 15 at a huge park we have... Yet I go to the mall and there's maybe 1... On the outside by a fountain... Smh... Seriously stupid! Oh and then let's not forget the rural areas with ZERO but California and New York have 10 billion everywhere and most are lured...
9 - attacking is seriously broken! How can vaporeon beat jolteon? I don't care if I'm 300 cp under or not, jolteon is fast(oh wait agility doesn't matter in this game...) which means he would always attack first and I'm shooting electric into a water Pokemon... Barely effective compared to ALL OTHER POKEMON GAMES...
10 - considering you took away pokevision you now HAVE TO implement a serious radar into the game. One that shows direction and distance! We all used Pokevision because one night (before pokevision) I walked over 6 miles one night to catch ratatas and pidgy's...THAT I DIDNT WANT! I only collected 4 pokestops, ran out of pokeballs and the pikachu I WAS looking for I never could find because of your current broken system!
11 - I'm in AMERICA, I don't read meters! Change to miles and feet!
12 - allow me to change teams and ALL my cloths... ADD more cloths and hairstyles! Crap man old gamboy games have more customization!
13 - FALSE ADVERTISING! I understand mewtwo will be in the future but where's trainer vs trainer battles (not like I'd want to spam attack anyways...) and where's Pokemon trading? THIS IS STUFF YOU COULD DO ON EVERY OLDER POKEMON GAME!
14 - why are hospitals not in this game to heal your Pokemon?
15 - why is the trainer (you) battling the Pokemon? Every game before you battle a Pokemon with yours, get them to about 30% hp and then throw your pokeball to catch... This current system is just ridiculous! Plus! Why is it that when my pokeball misses and I try to snatch it back up I can't? What it breaks? Stupid!
16 - you need to refund everyone pokeballs due to your laggy game allowing Pokemon to show up and not get caught but instead just run away... Even 10cp does this crap... Or the pokeball gets thrown on to their head and instead of hitting the Pokemon just disappears... Really?! Also yesterday I tried catching a growlith... [censored] took 14 balls! 7 razzberries... I'm 20 trying to catch a 135cp, not that high, and I was using great balls, ultra balls, and pokeballs... I caught him finally not using a razzberry and using just the pokeball... WHAT?! Makes absolutely no sense!
17 - so I give up! Nice try on a Pokemon game BUT ITS BROKE ALTOGETHER! And since you killed pokevision I definitely won't be wasting gasoline looking aimlessly for imaginary creatures... GOODBUY NIANTIC... I'll go back to other games that I use to play!

Niantic created a global phenomenon based around the Pokemon brand name and the freshness of the augmented reality concept, but did absolutely nothing to maximize or even approach Pokemon Go’s earth shattering potential for sustained growth and success.
The issues started in the opening week, when server uptime was about 50/50. When the game actually functioned, players faced an unending litany of bugs that forced repeat restarts. All the while, the game was rolled out to more and more countries, with each addition all but guaranteeing a server crash.
In game, players dealt with freezing Pokeballs, Razzberries causing Pokeballs to curve at random, constantly lagging or restarting gym battles, and a battery-saver function that did nothing but make the game unresponsive. Each update seemed to make a fix but introduce one or two more errors, before Niantic apparently decided the best solution was to disable Pokemon tracking altogether. At first, the stopgap seemed like an acceptable compromise, as server performance improved tremendously. But as weeks wore on, it became impossible to ignore that the game’s singularly most exciting and rewarding feature — the thrill of having to hunt and track down rare Pokemon in your area in a limited time window using only a hot-cold style search system — had been removed without warning or even acknowledgement from Niantic. When players turned to third-party tracking sites to revisit just a sniff of what that hunting experience felt like, Niantic worked to render those tools useless by inhibiting access to the data rather than devoting those resources to actually fixing the problem that drove users to third-party sites in the first place.
Pokemon Go also features a combat system in which every victory feels trivial and fleeting. Assuming a player can enter a gym battle without a crash and complete it without the enemy being stuck at 1 HP — neither is a given — the reward is the opportunity to attempt to place a Pokemon in said gym before it is inevitably poached by an enemy team, as Niantic never implemented a feature to prevent this. Even functional gym battles are stale and monotonous, as Pokemon strengths are heavily imbalanced. Clearly, Niantic never did basic math to determine that certain moves were doing up to 10 times the damage per second of other moves that should be similarly powerful. The notion that Niantic thoroughly tested the combat system to ensure playability and balance prior to release is laughable. Before an update nearly a month after the game’s launch, charged up attacks were a mathematical waste of time compared to their quick counterpart, and enemy attacks remain so blatantly telegraphed that a 100 percent dodge rate is feasible. Combat is also horribly imbalanced in favor of the aggressor, removing any sense of accomplishment or reward from the inevitable win.
The scaling of the game’s leveling system ensures that advancing any further than 20 is a monotonous and potentially costly grind. Rather than rewarding players for moving deeper into the game, most users anecdotally find that completing tasks that were once easy becomes more difficult. Relatively weak and common Pokemon will regularly escape five or more pokeballs before running away. The only logical explanation for this behavior is that Niantic is hoping to force micro transactions upon users by ensuring that they need to purchase more pokeballs to continue playing, knowing that players who have reached this stage are likely hooked and willing to spend to justify the considerable time investment they’ve already made.
Each issue or development with the game came with an air of ambiguity, as Niantic outright refused to communicate with its user base. Fans wanted only a reassurance that Niantic was aware of and working to resolve the game’s issues. Rather than placating the fan base with a message that would take at most 30 seconds to post to Twitter, Niantic used its account to send a tweet to Soulja Boy to ask him about his game experience. In the space of just a month, Pokemon Go’s community exploded, rapidly rising to challenge League of Legends as the largest Subreddit devoted to a single title. Each of the more than 746,000 subscribers (at the time of this writing) was hungry for feedback but received nothing.
What makes Niantic’s actions most disappointing is what this game could’ve been. Pokemon Go gave introverted and obese gamers an easy way to get out and socialize. I personally explored areas of my community I never would have seen and met people I never would have met, most of the time walking with my 350-plus pound friend, who I had rarely seen outside. But for all of the game’s benefits, there is no way to overlook the multitude of gaping flaws in performance and game design that ultimately make Pokemon Go no longer worth playing.

Hi,

As many of you are experiencing or may have heard from your friends, Pokemon go is a lot of fun.

Catching Pokemon and raising them to be the very best is a dream Nintendo and Game Freak took years to refine, bringing everyone along for the journey. This however spits on that dream.

I understand that those are some pretty harsh words I've written, but to be honest it's the truth. Aside from the failures in managing their servers and the many bugs in their UI and I mean many. The core design of the game is just plain broken.

Anyone, Pokemon fan or not can look up the recent data the community has worked tirelessly to scavenge can see how fundamentally broken this game is.

Experience points the player accumulates is broken making it a daily grind to capture as many low level or just any Pokemon just to raise your player level. Especially those that live outside big cities.

The random cp levels Pokemon in the wild have is so varied it completely eliminates the idea of raising your own pokemon. After a few player levels it'll just boil down to what Pokemon can I use my stardust on and whom can I send to Professor Willow.

For those of you reading, stardust is a single in game item that replaces the traditional experience each Pokemon receives. Aside from this mechanic Pokemon have specific candy for their species. Making it difficult to raise Pokemon.

That kabuto you just hatched, well bad news is you may not have enough candy to evolve into a kabutops, making it unusable in any of the gyms.

Speaking of hatching pokemon. Eggs are the only other way to get more pokemon in the game. This is an important feature in the game since many pokemon in this generation are geo-locked to certain places. There are talks of a trading feature, but seeing how the updates are coming it's going to be a while since we see it live.

Your inventory can only carry a total of 9 eggs at any given time. To hatch an egg you need use an item, called an egg incubator. The game gives you one with infinite uses for free and a limited(x3) use one once you reach a certain level. But if you don't buy them from the shop then you won't be able to hatch these eggs. Not only that but this item is very rare and unless you farm and grind gyms for coins or happen to get a lucky drop from a poke stop. Your are going to have to spend real money to purchase this item. Unlike in the traditional games you can't sell items to the shop. Making gym battles the only way to get coins.

The game introduces a team system where at player level 5, you can choose a team to align with when you fight gyms. Gym battles are also broken. Pokemon in this game have two moves and only two.

One is a regular move and the other is a special move that consumes a blue bar that is displayed below your health bar during gym battles. I say this mechanic has a broken design because you can not change the move set the Pokemon has. So if you caught a high level Pidgeot but it knows moves that aren't effective then you either have to try and catch a another Pidgeot of that same level with better moves or evolve a Pidgey into a Pidgeot. Your taking a gamble when you do this because moves learned from evolution is random. If your Pidgey has a strong move it may not keep when you evolve it.

If your still reading then you can start to piece together how catching Pokemon can affect how you raise and use them in gym battles. If you want to raise your pokemon through the use of candy and stardust then your going to have to transfer Pokemon you don't need to Professor Willow. However despite how powerful of a Pokemon you transfer you will always get one candy for that species. This is purely an unfair business transaction from Willow. Oh I forgot to mention that once you transfer that Pokemon you can never get it back.

Code can always be fixed as bugs come about. We have to understand that building apps is an evolving process, but that process should be communicated effectively to us the people who will use and most importantly enjoy using it.

Niantic labs had a previous game called ingress which engaged the community, although the community here is bigger, Niantic has not as been as successfully as with their previous product.

They wouldn't even have to hire people, ideally they would just need to give more ability for the community. This could be be form of Open Sourcing their technology or maybe even creating a more structured way to receive feature requests or bugs discovered by players.

I don't mean just submitting an email or have them manually go through the features requested by people on the Internet. A little transparency in what they are doing and if our voice are actually heard, would be nice.

Thanks for reading and I hope I didn't deter anyone from the game. The game has been a joy to play when the servers are stable. I wanted to review the design and provide some suggestions for Niantic to consider

Be the very best,
nostalgicGrownup

Any fun features you’d want to try will ruin your fun in an instant. Go Battle leagues are full of people using high CP shiny legendaries caught from the dozens of raids they have access to daily, hackers are also frequent in GO League Battles, and you need to have a strong pokemon with a fast charge attack if you want to break your opponents barriers before you're forced to use yours because completely you’re out of luck otherwise. You can’t even tell what fast move the enemy is using so it’s a on the spot guessing game hoping your pokemon switch was the right choice.

No pokestops or gyms in walking distance means not being able to spin for 7 days straight so no EXP there, and the only way you can get items is through purchasing or hoping the gifts your friends give will give you more than just 200 stardust and a sticker once per day. You could drive to a pokestop, but then whats the point of wasting gas when the whole point of the app is to go outside and WALK. I don’t exactly feel like sitting in a church parking lot just to have access to the only Gym in town within reasonable driving distance.

Barely any interesting pokemon spawn, its always the same low level cp pidgeys or rattatas daily while city players get to find rarer, stronger pokemon that they can evolve after a day or two.

Don’t even think about trying to trade because it’s nothing like the mainline games. You not only have to be close to the other person to trade, but you CANNOT get that pokemon back and THERE IS NO WARNING that comes up to inform you of this, meaning your first discovery of this idiotic roadblock is essentially a punishment and it makes for trading pokemon that require it or 200-400 candies in order to evolve absolutely POINTLESS.

I lost a full 3 star’d Shelmet, something that rarely spawns and I was excited to have found, thinking my sibling and I could help one another given the rarity these pokemon spawn for candy collecting, only to find out NEITHER of us could trade those pokemon we wanted to evolve back. Oh and the full 3 star’d Shelmet changed to 0 stars upon being received. It was very mood killing and I’ve long since given up trying to get any interesting or decently strong pokemon now.

Good luck trying to beat Giovanni when you need highly specific 3K CP 3-stars fully evolved pokemon because you're not going to get anywhere. And good luck trying to power up your pokemon because Stardust takes forever to collect as the only possible way you can if you’re a rural player is through the 100-350 cap various pokemon that you catch give or the potential 100-300 gift cap. But hey 50+ extra for weather boosted ones. Hooray!

Trying to request pokestops is impossible because you need to be at level 40 in order to unlock it, and as someone who has played since launch, its impossible to hit as it took me 4 years just to get to level 36.

Raids are now accessible through invites, but you can only hold 3 remote raid passes and you do not get a daily one like you would a regular raid pass through visiting a gym, so if you want to have even the slimmest chance of being able to catch a legendary (because they are no longer a reward for completing your weekly stamp collection), you have to purchase passes and hope the game doesn’t crash on you mid fight and steal it essentially by locking you out from the raid upon reopening the app.

Gaining currency is ridiculous as city players can hog gyms for their daily 50 pokecoins, meaning they do not need to spend real currency in order to get items in the shop unless they really want to allowing them access to a plethora of various in game cosmetics or large gift boxes that give a surplus amount of items at a high pokecoin price. Lures and Insence are pointless unless its a community day because without pokestops, lures cant be used, and even then you’re just going to get the same 5 low CP pokemon you would everywhere else spawn in once every 5 minutes.

Rural players are punished since we do not have any gyms around, so your only chance of restocking on pokeballs or raid passes is through giving up real money for pokecoins just to have 1/4 as much fun as city players have.

A lot of features disabled and rural players have been asking for for years was only just now implemented because of the pandemic even though we were told it “couldn’t be done”.

This app was incredible at the start, and I was absolutely hooked and in love with it as a die hard Pokemon fan since RED/BLUE, but now it is a buggy, rural player punishing, hacker infested, boring cluster of a forced AR/battery killing waste of phone space. 4 years of wasted potential in favor of milking rural players of all their funds to have fun.

The only positive thing I can say about it anymore is that it is ad free. That’s it. So if you like apps with no ads then here you go! Just have fun trying to figure out what you can do after catching the 5 pidgeys on your lawn.

Oh and customer support does nothing so good luck if you ever encounter a problem. You’re on your own.

Let me open by saying this is a lot of fun. I have already invested a lot of hours. Anything that gets this many people up and walking is a positive step.

One thing I find strongly worthy of praise is there a handle of micro transactions. They are not game breaking imbalanced or unfair; almost everything you can buy, you can acquire in game. Almost.

That said, it is far from perfect, and I am about to list my complaints, but, anything I do not attack can be assumed to be either just fine or actually very good.

First of all, strategy has always been a huge part of the Pokémon franchise. Well, go decides that we don't want any of that crap, and decides that for moves is way too many. All Pokémon have two. And you don't get to choose them. These are assigned randomly when captured/evolved, and as far as I'm aware, the only thing you can do about it is go catch another and another until you get one with the attacks you want. I understand the need to streamline and simplify, but start combat, select option, wait for the round to finish, then repeat is not that complicated. It did not need to be reduced to tap or tap and hold.

Next, the game is as buggy as can be. I know it just came out last week, but it can be very frustrating when a crash or freeze up happens, costing you a capture. Or a battle victory.

The capture mechanic is not something I would've chosen, as finger-flick is not the most delicately controlled way to accomplish something. It's not fun to see your supply of capture balls Wendell because you didn't play enough Angry Birds to develop touch-flick mastery to know where it's going to go.

This next one is a bit petty and small, but it annoys me, so it's on the list: a day/night mechanic is nice, but thanks to the night sky, it makes reading the display at the top of the screen nearly impossible. You know, where the battery remaining is displayed? And with a game that drains the battery as heavily as this one does, that is a bad thing.

Balance seems to be an issue as well, as in the real Pokémon games, you tend to get access to new items when or a little before you will need them. At my current level, I have not unlocked upgraded heal potions yet, but anytime I get in a battle, I already know afterwards, I'm going to need to use three or four crap, basic healing potions on each Pokémon in my roster, which eats through the supply very quickly.

Also, for a game that is so marketed to the children, it doesn't seem very kid-friendly. Adults can walk around or drive to new places. Children are limited, depending on age, possibly to their own yard; not many kids are even allowed to wander their neighborhood in some cities/some parts of cities. And, even if mom or dad drive them to a new location to collect some new Pokémon, they are going to sit where they were when they were captured, as you have to have many of the same type to level one of that type up, and if you have no way to get more of them, then they stay at the same level they were when you caught them.

Also, the more I play, the more impressed I am. Not necessarily in a positive way; more along the lines of expressing amazement that something this buggy not only got released, but is so insanely popular; I have just had three lock ups in a row, all on capturing a Pokémon, and all three did not unfreeze, and required resetting the phone. It is a testament to how much love fans have for Pokémon, myself included, because if other companies released a game with this many blatant defects and bugs, they would be raked over the coals.

Seriously, they had to know how defective this was when they released it; I have dropped my review by two stars, until they get it to function properly. There are the bare-bones of a good game here, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I have had a very frustrating few days since the last update, with the game locking up over and over Dan, often immediately after the previous phone reboot. I am being polite, and not filling my review with cursing or angry talk, but this is not good. This is unacceptable.

Let's add a new facet of dysfunction to this game. It is the dead of summer, not the smartest time to be out walking, but I had to go to the store. After I make my little outing, I find out that my eggs have not moved any closer to hatching, despite walking a little over a mile and a half when you sum up going to and from. Even love and fandom cannot overcome a garbage release that was clearly not tested. I still think they got a lot of things right, but it's hard to enjoy them when so much doesn't even function. UPDATE : rebooted phone, steps now being updated. The nice long trip to the store is lost time, but it functions again.

Actually, everything else may have just been considered Nolan void, because I just got the most recent update installed, and now I can't access my account. It seems to start over from the beginning as soon as I tap the app. For someone who would literally just reached level 20 earlier today, that's enough to make me want to throw the entire thing out.

I cannot drive; I don’t have a driving permit. I don’t plan on getting one as of now either. As a result, I AM ALWAYS A PASSENGER. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Thanks to the app not giving me the option of permanently marking myself as a passenger, when I’m driving and have the app open for Pokémon and Pokéstops, it will randomly say I shouldn’t be driving and make me mark I’m a passenger...even though the driving pattern hasn’t changed at all.

As a result, I can risk missing new Pokémon, getting things from Pokéstops, and can cause the app to crash from the lag the pop-up causes on my phone.

Another difficulty in addition to this is the app REFUSING to let me spin Pokéstops if I’m being driven; it will say “Try again later.” despite my speed being slowed or not even moving and the ring around me SHOWING I CAN GET THE POKÉSTOPS’ ITEMS. Same goes for gyms; my driver will be near a stoplight and slowing down and despite the Pokéstop being in my radius it refuses to let me spin the disc; when I’m inevitably out of the radius (because if I’m being driven then obviously I’m going somewhere) it will show that instead and close back into a cube.

When I DO manage to find Pokémon on the highway, I have to be extremely careful for quite a few reasons:
- Pokémon may randomly disappear or appear when I’m moving, usually when I slow down and my cellular can zone in on my location more accurately.
- Pokémon when I’m being driven tend to move more (jumping, attacking, moving to the sides or floating upwards) and tend to pop out of the Pokéball more.
- Pokémon also have a far higher flee rate on the road than if I were just walking.

I already uninstalled the app once out of frustration and rage for wasting my Pokéballs on fidgetier than normal Pokémon who’d flee after the catch rate that would succeed if I were stationary fails; I only reinstalled for the egg I need to complete a quest to hatch.

I’m tired of having an app that only works for a demograph I CANNOT fufill; I live in a suburban area surrounded by houses, ONE gym, and Pokéstops that could be if more attention was paid to the area (example; the Walgreens near me could easily be a Pokéstop...but instead, the fountains near an elderly home I’m unsure if I can go near is? Really? Doesn’t help they have a “No trespassing” sign outside of the premises.).

The app’s performance, besides a few crashes and servers randomly not working, seem to be server issues instead of the app itself; they happen once every 1-2 weeks and usually within 5-10 minutes my app loads and works properly again.

A big glitch i was hoping was fixed as well with the bug fix update around one day ago (1/1) was Pokémon being caught and not moving at ALL in the Pokéball despite the music playing due to movement of the player. Never lost Pokémon from this happening, but it never left my mind as a possibility.

Suggestions:
- Increase the amount of random Pokémon found when walking; suburban areas with less Pokéstops/less accessible Pokéstops would definitely benefit from this and it would make the app get opened more.

- Maybe have something like chests of loot, especially on highways where Pokéstops are for the most part inaccessible. They would pop up like a Pokéstop and need to be tapped to be accessed/stored in the inventory; they would output the same loot as Pokéstops to prevent stationary/driven players from having an advantage over the other.

- If a Pokéstop is in the radius, change it so the ring around the trainer DOES NOT have to hit the stop so it can open up; this would improve rates for driven trainers like myself and help people get items easier.

- If Pokémon are found on the (VERY EASILY RECOGNIZABLE) highway areas, make their flee rate low; it is impossible to stop on the highway, and just to catch a Pokémon or swipe a Pokéstop is a waste of time and could possible cause a player to be arrested for obstruction of the highway. I JUST NOW lost a 638 CP growlithe because after ONE Pokéball it broke out and fled like nothing.

- Decrease the speed needed for Pokémon to spawn; for Pokémon to even potentially spawn near me the car has to come to a FULL STOP and it has to be recognized by the game (it doesn’t half the time).

- PLEASE add in an option (in Settings) to PERMANENTLY mark someone as a passenger; I won’t have my license for years and for the game to not understand my consistent speed rate of a car’s (around 30-60 MPH) and being marked as a passenger 20 minutes beforehand to randomly forget and make me reassure it again is a disappointing oversight.

I love the game, it helps me track my exercise and I can still keep up with my interest in Pokémon games...but again and again the game is having the most simplistic and fixable of problems being overlooked for months.

Nobody is going to catch new Pokémon if they can’t even access Pokéballs to catch them with or Gyms to get Pokécoins to buy the balls with, and especially not if every Pokémon they see ends up fleeing right after they throw a ball/is constantly moving around.

UPDATE (3/6): Got logged out of the app yesterday when trying to check a hatching egg; it won’t let me log back in. Wish me luck.