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Speaking as someone who has helped develop two extremely successful mobile games "objective" goodness is pretty meaningless. People have more patience than you expect for a game that captures their imagination and will put up with buggyness. In the long run, if a game isn't polished it will lose because of retention. But pure technical polish is often overrated.

I can put up with a fair amount. There are some Z-buffering issues that don't really matter. I've seen occasional glitches with the way the background works in AR.

But how can you not remember if I've me that the sound? How can you not remember I logged in? With a handful of ultrabasic bugs it feels like they just didn't even try.

If they are network issues why do I get stuck in a try again later screen were the only thing I can do is force quit the app?

It's a lazy as hell and Nintendo should be ashamed that someone's dragging their name down like that.

I completely agree with this. The network issues, and the lack of tolerance for GPS issues would be frustrating but acceptable if they were handled properly. As it is they're absolutely infuriating when combined with the way the app just dies when it encounters them. It's incredible that an app that's been in beta for months still has 20 un-recoverable different freeze states that I've found in 72 hours. My girlfriend didn't even know how to kill an Android app before this app, now she can do it in seconds.

The real killer? I love the idea of this app. I'd probably end up spending a bunch of money on it if I kept it around for a couple months, because I don't have the time I need to play it the free way. It's fun (or it at least scratches that grindy type itch), and it's the only game I've ever been able to play with my partner. I'm on the verge of uninstalling right now though, because every time I get the chance to play, the app dies in my hands.

There is NO graceful handling of loss of network connection at all. Many times I've been out throwing Pokeballs at a Pidgy, then my phone catches the nearby Starbucks wifi and switches over. In the brief period of no connectivity during the switch, the game loses connection, and just... dies. All actions stop. The animations keep playing on loop, but it's impossible to throw another pokeball, impossible to leave the minigame, etc.

This doesn't just happen when in "catch a pokemon" minigame mode. This happens at all screens. The game was programming to expect full, 100% network connectivity, and if it loses that for even a brief moment, the whole thing comes crashing down, requiring a full kill and reset.

> I'd probably end up spending a bunch of money on it if I kept it around for a couple months, because I don't have the time I need to play it the free way.

Can someone explain this? Isn't the value of a game in the playing of it? If a millionaire could pay to have hundreds of Pokemons spawning in their living room so they can get more points than anyone without leaving the house, what would be the point? If you're having fun playing with your girlfriend, but don't have much free time, why would paying to catch up matter? Did they design it to be limited gameplay, where you only get a teaser if you don't play it all the time, requiring that you buy things in order to get any real gameplay time out of it?

your comment is gold

to it I'd add that this is also the difference between the $20/hour programmer and the $200/hour programmer -- speaking in broad strokes, knowingly, and if you'll indulge me charitably. Because the difference between the commodity "let's ship something!" programmer/engineer and the one who truly knows his/her stuff, and who truly thinks about and knows about and cares about the edge cases, the big picture, the total system, all possible states in the state machine space, is what justifies those differences in (ostensible) upfront cost.

If you only want "the user is in location X and so icon Y should be rendered on their screen at point P" then you can get that pretty cheap, at globalization-plus-crowdsourced-plus-cloud-reduced prices

But if you want that above but also, with good performance, correctness, stability, scale, all edge cases handled reasonably and gracefully, and in v1.0, and well documented, and with good English, and maturity, curtesy, legality, i18n, etc... well, then you're going to pay. Or you should expect to pay. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Ever. If you think you have a free lunch, or a reduced cost lunch, then all it means is that somebody else off-stage is paying for that difference. And that difference may come back to bite you.

> to it I'd add that this is also the difference between the $20/hour programmer and the $200/hour programmer

You could have a hundred "$200/hour programmers" on the team for this app, but if management says they need to ship three weeks early to catch the buzz, or something like that, it doesn't matter. We can't say the developers were bad. I mean it's possible, given how poorly the game handles network disconnections, among other bugs. But unfortunately we don't live in a utopia where the guys writing the code get to decide when they want to release. Or if features get added in the last minute. Etc.

so many HN replies say 'you're wrong and you implied <what-you-didn't> therefore should feel bad'. yet this did not. well said, agreed. you added signal.

in many situations, an owner/manager/lead is making decisions where, frankly, the company has no revenue so they know their ostensible default spending path is equivalent to a ticking time bomb.

or... they don't truly know whether or how well the engineer can deliver, yet they do know for sure definitively what their dollar spend will be. thus, the results we see.

We totally do get to say that in this case. This game inherits issues that have been present in Ingress for years. Years! Ingress gets away with it most of the time because it's not operating in a worst-case scenario where the backend has to suddenly scale from limited beta to millions of active users, so fewer of these bugs present. The actual architecture work underneath is poor; client code should not crash, softlock, or lose frames because of a temporary connectivity issue.

But TBH, that is probably not about how much the engineering team is paid, it's about what culture they have. Nintendo's console development teams would never ship something with this many catastophic bugs. Niantic has probably decided that the way they're doing things is "industry standard" (within the context of mobile and their particular silo) and does not need substantial improvement.

Edit: How poor is this code, you ask? It does not let me rename my Pokemon. A race condition occurs where it tries to pop up the Android keyboard and close it at the same time.

Agree, just look at DayZ. Players stuck with that through extreme buggyness. Sure it might not have the same number of players as it once did but there were periods during which players were putting up with a lot of bugs.

Because we're believers! And there's no subscription cost and we've already paid, and all our friends play it too, I guess...

I don't really 'get' DayZ, but I also know that it was a pay-once game, not free to play. Once you've paid the money you might as well get your fun out of it. But if you're constantly losing items and getting frustrated by bugs what's the incentive to keep playing and possibly giving Niantic money?

To be fair, mostly anybody would hit server issues hitting Twitter/tinder-like scales in 3 days. It's impressive that they're staying up as well as they are

It's not just the server issues, it's that the app logic is terrible. When you hit a Pokemon with your Pokeball, if there is a network error, the app just freezes. The ball drifts to the ground without blinking, and the loading indicator appears periodically, but it never progresses past that point. It just flat out cannot recover from dropping packets, no matter how long you wait. And it's not like the network is down; if you kill the app and reopen it, it is able to load the information it needs.

In many places, this happens with at least 50% probability on a mobile connection. It literally fails more often than not. The advice people are giving is to turn off LTE, which seems to help for some reason. But come on.

Yep, the hitting-with-Pokeball into a freeze is by FAR the most frustrating thing ever. But at least you successfully catch a decent amount of the time >.>

Have to kill and relaunch the app, and the app launches really slowly. it feels like the initial loading bar is also reliant of their servers, as I've had it take upwards of 30 seconds, or a few times even hang indefinitely.

Once you get in it'll still have to download locations of nearby pokestops and gyms, which is another chance to hang and require a relaunch. Network glitches are not handled gracefully.

On the hang while catching a Pokemon: my guess is it's trying to ask the server if the Pokemon breaks free of the ball. Sometimes when you exit and relaunch you'll have gotten the Pokemon, other times it's totally gone. When the game works properly you get to keep trying, but if it locked up on network issues and made you quit, you don't get the chance. People are understandably annoyed at server issues screwing them out of rare captures.

If you eliminate all the server issues, the game isn't "objectively bad".

In fact, I quite enjoy it. It's a little simple for the first few levels, but that's how Pokemon games have always been!

Once you level up your character, you'll start getting harder Pokemon to catch and you can start trying to take and hold gyms. And you'll get enough candies to start upgrading and evolving your Pokemon as well.

To put it plainly, this is the first mobile game in years to get me really excited about getting out there and doing things. Ingress was okay for a while, but never amazing. Zombies Run! had issues that I never got over, and I just quit... And it wasn't really compelling anyhow.

But this? My wife and I repaired the tires on our bikes after years of saying we'd do that, and we've been on multiple bike rides already. I'm quite looking forward to continuing that trend, and without the Pokemon aspect, I know it wouldn't happen as often, if at all.

So no, it's not "objectively bad". It's quite clearly compelling and enjoyable for a lot of people, just maybe not for you. And that's perfectly okay on all accounts.

Agreed, I like the simplicity of the game. I've tried ingress a few times and I didn't have patience going through the wall of text to understand the game. Pokemon has a lower barrier.

For those who don't want to invest too much time, they can occasionally boot up the app when they walk around and catch a few pokemon. Those who are more hardcore will probably stick around at gyms and battle away.

But there's no depth to the game. Yes it has a very low learning curve, but there's really very little progression. Even casual players get sick of a game that doesn't progress. At least candy crush gets a bit harder and introduces new mechanics.

How can I try to hold a gym? I can't interact with the players from "my" team and I don't get attack notifications to be able to react. So suddenly my gym switched color which I can actively check after the fact. In good old Ingress I got an attack notification and (remote) recharge or (locally) refill with resonators or emergency switch it using a virus, thus prevent the attack. I reached Level 14 in Go and uninstalled it. Will probably try in a few versions, again. But for now this wasn't much fun.

It's bad because it can be. Mobile apps are easily updated, so they don't feel the need to do as much testing. There's no way an actual Pokemon release would be that buggy, because they couldn't fix bugs later.

This game has been in Beta for several months, with several long standing issues not being fixed. Plus the game is built off a 5+ year old engine. If that's not enough testing, I don't know what is.

Also the 3DS has patching/software updates. The Pokemon Company could release games as buggy as they want. They have the good sense not to do that, since it devalues their product.

I know that's an excuse that lots of developer seem to use these days.

It's fucking bullshit.

I'm so tired of people releasing utter crap and claiming it's OK to fix it later. You know what happens when you do that? You turn off a huge number of people and poison the brand.

It's not like if they waited an extra months to actually fix the issues (which were apparently well known in Beta) the Pokémon brand would've been dead no one would've cared. This isn't tied to some new property that no one knows if it will succeed.

This is tarnishing a major brand and ruining a fantastic opportunity.

All because a bunch of developers don't care enough about what they're making. They don't have enough pride in their products because "people will buy crap, we can fix it later."

You sir are 100% correct. Glad you made this comment. It's all about the first impression.

>I'm so tired of people releasing utter crap and claiming it's OK to fix it later. You know what happens when you do that?

Apparently what happens is your app becomes one of the most downloaded in history.

The truth is, those "lazy developers" are right. They can release utter crap and fix it later. People will put up with it simply because of their emotional investment in the brand, and it will make money regardless of its issues.

> The truth is, those "lazy developers" are right.

I don't understand why this discussion is about the developers. Do you think Tim, who writes network code for the iOS version, gets to say when they launch?

No. Some top dog at Niantic says "We're launching early to catch the summer buzz while kids are out of school." And Tim says "But we don't handle network disconnects gracefully yet." And top-dog man says "Can you still catch Pokemon and battle at gyms?" And Tim admits, "Yes, you can." And top-dog says: "We launch tomorrow, then."

Surely they can release and fix later because Nintendo (or whoever?) built up the Pokémon brand over time. They've built consumer trust but they can easily destroy that do the point that such moves will fail in the future.

I think the game would have to be unplayable for Niantic to really destroy their credibility, and it doesn't seem to be. Consumers have been trained by now to expect a poor initial offering from AAA publishers that might improve over time.

> Don't care enough

I wouldn't blame this too much on laziness but on incompetence.

"the game is pretty objectively bad. ...I am having fun."

Doesn't that mean the game is good? Lots of people enjoy Uno, not every game can be Go (nor should it). If you're having fun, you're doing it right.

I've had issues where I definitely successfully capture a pokemon, but either lose connection due to being underground on transit or the servers 'crashing', so I wind up not having the pokemon saved to my record. Makes me think they aren't doing much, or any, local caching.

It's happened a few times that after catching a pokemon the pokeball just lays there and I can't click on it to register

Don't think it'd be solved by local caching. All that logic should be remote anyway. The local client shouldn't decide if a Pokemon was caught or not, the server should.

What the client should be doing is gracefully reconnecting and picking up at the state it left off in... which it certainly is NOT doing right now.

If you look at Imgur for example you'll see two observations by users: 1) It's amazing and 2) They have server issues. Notice that #2 is incredibly vague and almost hand-waved as a joke. We as developers see the minor flaws but most people just seem to see the good of it.

EDIT: I'm not talking about Imgur. I'm talking about Imgur's posts about Pokemon Go. My bad for the ambiguity.

I've used Imgur for years (though not wittingly anymore, due to their growingly shady practices) and have never known them to have a reputation for poor uptime. Reddit's stability issues seemed to be 100x worse.

When I think of Imgur, I think of 1) first 'decent' image host in a dark time, 2) terrible policies/management.

You mean "decent" as in "can't even show a plain image file without javascript"? Puh-lease.

I mean "decent" as in "It was better than the other options at the time" - Photobucket, etc.

You know it's bad because the previous incarnation, Ingress, had no where near as many players.

Ingress ultimately hard more complicated gameplay and less brand appeal

It's too bad in a way, Pokemon Go is a way better idea, Ingress always felt like some cool ideas thrown together in search of a unifying theme. It is the only AR game with any real lasting appeal that I'm aware of, until perhaps Pokemon Go, but a lot of the choices made in building Ingress are less than ideal for Pokemon, and yet they form its foundation. I was never really clear what kept Niantic afloat, I always figured they were nothing more than a cost center at Google. Perhaps Pokemon will have enough success to prompt them to evolve the gameplay, and fix some of the common bugs with Ingress.

I thought the purpose of Ingress was to crowdsource location data and photographs of points of interest for Google Maps.

A common speculation, but I can't fathom how much value this adds to Google Maps, if any, what with street view and other 360 degree content they have at their disposal. I suppose that the crowd-sourcing aspect of it could serve to identify small sites of interest off the beaten path? Again though, what possible value does this provide to Google maps? Plus, a lot of the sites are already well known locations (churches) or are bunk (the "big red ball" out front of a local target)

Ingress also had an invite-only launch, which meant that by the time lots of people got into the game, the portals were all super high level and playing the game was difficult.

Pokemon Go is already showing signs of the same problem at Gyms, where newer players are going to have to grind for days to take on a gym that their team doesn't already own.

Yeah I can see that. It would be good to be able to build your own gym up, so you could place a gym at your house after acquiring some kind of resource, and people could try and take you down.

It would help to add to the density of the map in less populated areas, though that might make the trespassing issue a lot worse.

Please submit this as a support request - this seems to be the only way to get Niantic to see anything as they don't seem to use Twitter, Facebook or HackerNews.

Wasn't high level portals a good thing for ingress? It made the social aspect more important. New players would meet experienced ones and quickly level up.