Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users | Hacker News Reader

Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users

arstechnica.com

209 pointsshawndumas241 comments

The loss and subsequent banning of maps and map users made nearly everyone I know stop playing, especially in the total absence of an official replacement or a compelling reason to continue.

Hearing my map ding was enough cause to make me leap out of my chair and run to the nearby park at midnight to catch something I wanted, and there'd usually be the usual lure-users and a few map-users out there at the same time. Once I was out, I'd play for a while, hit a gym or two, maybe finish an egg, and go home. This was still really fun when it was disabled.

Without the map, there's no reason for me to leave my house. There's no group of people at work who stand up when a Blastoise is announced into our #pokemon channel, sending us all on a brief Pokemon/coffee walk down the road.

That's all on top of the poor quality of the game, which the maps and community had overcome.

Niantic being selfish and not understanding their own game or the culture around it seems to have squandered one of the greatest opportunities a company has ever had.

(I get that the maps were spamming them, but that's a technical challenge. A bunch of well funded ex-googlers ought to be up to the challenge of scaling/handling unexpected load for a chance like this.)

This is on the money. Niantic made it harder and more frustrating to play their game, and people stopped playing it. They have utterly failed to understand what their playerbase wants, and people are falling off.

The maps really drove it into overdrive, especially with the presence of "nests", because it allowed people to figure out where they needed to be, and would then congregate there. By taking out the maps, Niantic has turned their scavenger hunt into a scratch-off lotto ticket - don't bother trying to plan or play with any strategy, just wander around aimlessly until your phone buzzes. Who wants to do that?

It's a shame, because at its core there is a compelling scavenger hunt that generated a truly unique social phenomenon, and it's very sad to see Niantic just piss that away. The game just isn't worth putting any effort into - they broke the effort-reward cycle.

It's particularly aggravating playing it in a large city (for us London) where, without the maps as a guide, you're stuck wasting balls on common Pokémon incessantly because that's the only thing around.

Add to that the fact that they made it, with a recent update, insanely likely for anything half-decent to simply run or be impossible to catch, and you have a recipe for declining interest in playing and paying to be bored.

But you are supposed to catch common pokemon, that's the quickest way to level up.

Assuming your goal is to level up. A lot of people were playing for the collection aspect.

True, "Gotta level up" is a far less compelling motto.

I don't think the motto is the 'foundation' for gameplay. Last I checked pokemon was also about battles.

Um yes, its called 'evolving' your pokemon. Commons evolve into new high CP pokemon which fill up your pokedex AND give you high XP in the process.

Yes, but there's only one evolution track per pokemon (except Eevee which has 3 in gen 1). The optimal strategy for grinding experience is to catch a million pidgeys and evolve them all into Pidgeottos for the experience and then transfer them because Pidgeot isn't that powerful of a pokemon. The optimal strategy for building the pokedex is to catch enough pidgeys to get a Pidgeot and then you don't need to catch any more pidgeys.

I think the game absolutely needs PVP / better gym mechanics and trading to survive. Right now the emphasis is 95% on collecting, which is why people are losing interest.

And it wasn't going fast enough for them?

But maybe they didn't want it to go fast. Maybe it was supposed to be unfeasible to get a full set in a reasonable amount of time. This doesn't seem too unlikely if they want to implement trading at some point.

That's nice and all, but it's not fun.

It is fun when those common pokemon evolve into high CP Pokemon.

They don't though. Evolving gives you, in my experience, +100, perhaps +200 CP.

All my 10-50CP Pidgeys don't magically get useful by evolving. Though they do give nice XP.

Power them up before evolving them.

Yes they do, my most powerful characters are all margikarp, psyduck, eevee, exeggcute evolutions. I have a 990 CP Pidgeot from pidgeys.

Evolving doubles the XP usually.

I found plenty of rare Pokemon walking around while I was visiting London in late July, including a Dragonite.

I was totally fine wandering around aimlessly until my phone buzzed, but they also took out battery saver mode. I never even found out about the existence of maps until they were banned. Removal of such a benign, yet helpful feature as battery saver mode is what made me quit.

Battery saver mode was added back in recently, FYI. Though it still seems buggy. The app occasionally fails to wake after raising your phone.

> By taking out the maps, Niantic has turned their scavenger hunt into a scratch-off lotto ticket ... they broke the effort-reward cycle

You're phrasing this almost as if Niantic wanted there to be third-party mapping apps in the first place, and then changed its mind.

The game Niantic released doesn't have mapping, and didn't intend to have an open API. This can be read as an implicit statement that the game design that Niantic thought people would enjoy playing, doesn't involve knowing where pokemon are.

Presuming there was at least one actual game designer involved in creating the game, there's likely already some sort of effort-reward cycle built into the game that doesn't involve mapping. It might not be one you like playing, but that probably means that you were not the audience Niantic designed (and playability-tested) the game for.

That's unfortunate for them, because while they may not have been the users they wanted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12306284) there were literally millions of them.

The game didn't have maps, but it did have the "footprints" features that would let you zero-in on nearby Pokemon. That's been broken almost since release, and a general replacement still hadn't shipped the last time I checked. The maps were a hack to deal with a broken game, and they eliminated them before addressing the root motivation.

The breaking of the feature was seemingly a response to try and break maps to begin with - the data used in the footprints is what the mapping applications used (along with millions of accounts giving off false coordinates) to triangulate 'mon.

The root motivation of the bug was the stressing of the servers by "headless" accounts that existed solely to make mapping software possible. It's unfortunate that they chose to try and combat that activity rather than just understand it's what people wanted and make it less taxing on their server (make a mapping endpoint on an alternate server).

They removed footprints to reduce server load and increase stability. It had nothing to do with stopping mapping software.

They broke footprints (always showing 3 footprints regardless of actual distance) shortly after PokeVision hit r/thesilphroad.

> almost as if Niantic wanted there to be third-party mapping apps in the first place, and then changed its mind.

Didn't they though? At the very beginning of the game, you had footprints you could track and use to "hunt" down nearby pokemon. They took it out because it was hurting their servers. Maps allowed similar hunting. I would say that Niantic did in fact, change its mind.

I see what you mean but that's partially true but not entirely correct. Yes maps were not part of the original design but neither was the current system. You see The beta users had a very good indication where Pokemon were. In fact they had a superior system to even the 3 step tracking. They had the distance away from a Pokemon displayed in METRES! That would have been amazing. So the audience Niantic designed and "playability tested" didn't have the piece of crap tracking we have today. Who needs a map if u got descent tracking. Dude WAKE UP from your delusion it had nothing to do with design and targeted audience. It was all about saving BAND WIDTH.

I agree with your point, but this isn't the forum for a post with a tone like that.

Your right-apologies The "wake up delusion" comment was not necessary. Does this forum have an edit function?

> there's likely already some sort of effort-reward cycle built into the game that doesn't involve mapping.

You would think that, but there really isn't. It's easier to see if you load up the game for yourself.

Sure, it's true that Niantic didn't plan or intend for usable maps to exist. But it's also true that the game is effectively unplayable without the maps.

The real winner in this whole situation is Nintendo. Niantic has effectively given their entire userbase over to Nintendo -- and even though Nintendo's doing very little to attract or keep them, they'll probably still get some extra 3DS + game sales as a result.

> The real winner in this whole situation is Nintendo. Niantic has effectively given their entire userbase over to Nintendo -- and even though Nintendo's doing very little to attract or keep them, they'll probably still get some extra 3DS + game sales as a result.

I don't understand how that follows. How did Niantic give any of its userbase over to Nintendo? Pokemon Go does very little to advance the Nintendo games - there's literally zero upsell involved (or even any cross-advertising).

You could say that the Pokemon Go brand might sell some extra copies of Sun & Moon in November, but I'd argue that the effect runs mostly in the other direction. Pokemon Go was successful because of Nintendo's Pokemon brand. And to at least a degree, that capital is finite (people's appetite for Pokemon-related games is a finite resource, and it's possible that overexposure to Pokemon Go could make them less excited about the upcoming 3DS games).

There have been a lot of Pokemon core game sales and 3DS sales. That's what he's talking about. People are interested in the original games again.

> How did Niantic give any of its userbase over to Nintendo?

Niantic's handling of Pokemon Go is driving demand for Pokemon, but not fulfilling it. And some of that unfulfilled demand is going to Nintendo, whose product does deliver a Pokemon experience, and is already sitting in thousands of stores all across America today.

"Sales of Pokémon X and Y, which were first released in October 2013, were up a huge 200 percent compared to their sales in July of last year." -- https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/18/nintendo-3ds-sales-up-80-y...

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> Pokemon Go does very little to advance the Nintendo games - there's literally zero upsell involved (or even any cross-advertising).

It doesn't have to advertise Nintendo's products, it only has to advertise the brand.

Coca-Cola ads drive demand and sales for Coke, even though they rarely upsell the actual product. Coke advertisements can drive sales without explicitly saying "12 packs are $3.99 at your local Wal*Mart".

They do seem to have a thing against unsanctioned map apps/enhancements. It was true in Ingress as well. I always assumed it was because they wanted to distance themselves from anything that could be construed as enabling some kind of stalking behavior - or at least construed as "too much" stalker-enabling (Ingress is already pretty stalker-enabling without map enhancements - but the map enhancements definitely make it many times more effective).

If that was at all a reason for their reticence to create capable ingress mapping tools, it must be doubly so for PGO - a game that will attract many more minor age children than Ingress.

> but that probably means that you were not the audience Niantic designed (and playability-tested) the game for.

And that's entirely the developer's fault, not the players'.

It's an artist's fault when someone they didn't make their art for, doesn't like their art?

I mean, I see what you're saying in the "the customer is always right" sense—it's Niantic's problem to solve if the majority of people playing their game want something other than their game.

But suppose Niantic don't care about making billions of dollars from an audience of "everyone", but only intended the game to be interesting to, say, 8-to-14 year olds with lots of time to kill wandering around in their small towns not finding much of anything. I don't think it's valid to criticize Niantic that another audience glommed onto the game that isn't that audience, and then is demanding an experience Niantic didn't intend.

A comparison: there are these cartoons in Japan about little girls being cute. They are marketed to little girls, who are intended to identify with the characters. But for some reason, a lot of grown men watch these shows, although nobody ever marketed the show to them. As you might guess, the grown men want different things from the shows than the intended audience does. And the grown men have a lot more money. But that doesn't mean that the show should change, does it?

Also remember, Pokemon Go is a franchise license. It was likely intended, in part, as a loss-leader marketing experiment for Nintendo to revive the Pokemon brand. Franchise licensees, before anything else, have to serve as good ambassadors for their franchise. Even if that means not making money. To do otherwise is to possibly get your license revoked, and for these franchise-licensed works, the licensed IP is usually 99% of the reason people (both in and out of the intended audience) are paying any attention. Making Pokemon's intended audience want to buy more Pokemon games, isn't necessarily more important a concern to Niantic's businesspeople than making a billion dollars from IAPs is; but it is certainly a more life-or-death concern. It's something that can't be traded away even for great benefit, like regulatory-compliance in a bank, or safety concern in an engineering project.

But Pokemon Go got popular before all the third party maps and tools came out.

Initially, there was half decent tracking available inside the game, which was then killed off. Third party maps filled the void (but was admittedly less fun), which were then killed off again without tracking being replaced. This is entirely on Niantic.

Before that move, half my office was playing. We'd often play together. Right after the banning of maps, I have only seen one person in the office play a single time. Interest died immediately.

Don't you think interest would have dropped off in any case? It doesn't really offer much in the way of captivating gameplay. Ingress at least had a social/LARP element.

I thought the maps were banned because of the stress they were putting on the server?

Noone cares 'why' they were banned. They did remove their killer feature.

I'd rather have a stable game rolling out into more countries that's harder than an unstable one that I can enhance with 3rd-party tools. The server problems made the game unplayable for me.

The client's inability to handle the most minor of server disruptions without a hard crash made it unplayable for me.

Also its hard dependency on fetching everything from the servers (it looks like that even includes the pokemon 3D models - sometimes you clicked on a Pokemon, and had the catch screen with only the shadow of the Pokemon shown for some seconds until the 3D model loaded), and almost zero caching, even of static content like pokestop pictures.

What they need to do is make the 'hunting' system more 4th dimensional.

If you 'hear' a Pokemon near by (maybe you don't know what it is, just that you haven't seen it before), you also know a vague direction it's in; maybe not distance but direction.

That should stay on your map.

You move to a different location so you can triangulate it.

You hear it again and another slice lays on your map.

You investigate, but it's taken too long to get there. All you find are some footprints. (location saved to client device)

Later that day, or another day, the same noise is heard near that area, the client shows the pie slice again, but also loads the local markers within it.

You go to investigate the marker and see (maybe even capture) the Pokemon you'd been hunting.

You need to be hired by Niantic, stat. That's brilliant.

Guarantee you've never made a game in your life.

Implementation of this feature wouldn't require much in terms of processing power or storage. It would just be a more interesting and engaging way of getting to pokemon beyond the current "click it on an overhead". Game programmers and designers could definitely work with this description to make a feature.

Sure. But it's not fun. Which is way more important than any of the things you mentioned. The first thing a game designer thinks of is fun, not system limitations.

What's not fun is the presently 'mapless' version of Pokemon GO we all have access to.

Sure I can see if I am near a Pokemon, but I can't actually go after most of them due to GPS jitter and the time it takes to walk/cross at lights in cities.

If I absolutely knew which direction to go there is a CHANCE I could get to a Pokemon before it despawns.

As things stand now I pretty much have to win a small lottery to capture one where I happen to be taking a scenic walk.

I am not talking about the current version about pokemon go. I am talking about the version suggested by the commenter above.

That's pretty funny, as I've actually worked on close to 20 released games now, for several different companies and independently.

If you mean they wouldn't hire him just for having ideas, then that's generally true, although I have seen someone hired as a consultant to design the economy of a game since he was a self-described 'free to play economy expert' with several articles posted on gamasutra (yeah, there was all sorts of problems with that project).

I was mostly just affirming that I thought his idea was a good one, not that I actually thought Niantic would hire him based on a forum post.

EDIT: Apparently you think the feature is not fun, well I think the rules for GPS games are not necessarily the same as static games, and the hunt and exploration and tracking could actually be fun when your movement actually matters. And it's a lot better than "you might get these pokemon if you run around in circles for the next ten minutes and get lucky!" that currently exists right now, which is shit and very unfun.

Or how about actually using the augmented reality (AR) portion of the game in a way that isn't just a gimmick: Make it so I can pan around my area with the camera to see where the Pokémon are (or at least provide a "rustling leaves" styled hint if you're looking in that direction). That'd be a great use of AR and would make the game more fun than staring down at a map all day.

This would be a killer feature. Currently the game is enhanced by turning the AR off in all instances, because even though it looks cool it makes battling and catching Pokemon more difficult

killer - as in battery killer

For those of us who didn't use maps--most everyone I know--it was this advantage others had that made it terribly non-fun to play. Why bother playing when everyone is cheating?

For those of us who did use maps--most everyone I know--we didn't consider it cheating. The original form of the game sucked, and the maps worked like a community-made patch to work around some of the shortcomings. Why bother playing when the entertaining part of the game is so diffuse?

With maps, I'd gather a few coworkers for a safari when something cool popped up. Now we sit at our desks, catching the occasional thing that spawns in the building, but not going anywhere, and not even really interacting with each other.

Why bother playing the way that Niantic wants you to when their way feels like a grind-y waste of time?

Well if everyone is playing a different game, it's no wonder nobody is having any fun. There is certainly no way for me to interact with you in a fair way if you're cheating past the limitations I'm enjoying.

I don't see a problem with that. Different strokes for different folks. What I'm enjoying is available to you, but you've chosen to limit yourself to a constricted set of abilities, because you (apparently) enjoy the limitations.

Let's ignore the maps; pretend they never existed. I can drive wherever I want, but my time is limited. A child's time is less limited, but their location is more limited. A college student might be a mix of the two: mobile, with some significant free time. Another variable: location. In a rural location, there might not be a pokestop within several miles. In an urban location, there might be three within range of your home's family room.

From my perspective, people are already playing a bunch of different games, based on available time, mobility, location, and density of other nearby players.

It's a competitive game, though. By "unlimiting" yourself you're changing the rules for competitive play for everyone. It's a very selfish way to play the game. It's a relief you've stopped.

> It's a competitive game, though.

Again, we're playing very different games ;-)

> By "unlimiting" yourself you're changing the rules for competitive play for everyone.

Again, what competitive play? I'm not competing against you or anyone else, by any reasonable metric.

> It's a very selfish way to play the game. It's a relief you've stopped.

No more selfish than being relieved that other people aren't having fun anymore.

> Again, what competitive play? I'm not competing against you or anyone else, by any reasonable metric.

You are competing for valuable pokemon, which IS the point of the game.

Why do you think there's a competition for valuable pokemon? When a pokemon spawns in an area, it spawns for everyone in that area and everyone who stops by can catch it. You're not competing with everyone else to get there first.

> When a pokemon spawns in an area, it spawns for everyone in that area and everyone who stops by can catch it.

Well, until someone catches it. Then it disappears.

Uh no. It doesn't disappear because it was caught.

Have you actually played the game? There is no competition for catching Pokemon. They spawn and disappears after a certain amount of time, which mapping apps by the way used to show you. Other people catching Pokemon has zero influence on your ability to catch the same Pokemon.

> You are competing for valuable pokemon, which IS the point of the game.

I'm not. The coworker next to me and I routinely catch the same Pokemon at the same time. Watching it on the map made it clear: if someone catches it, it doesn't just disappear. It's there for a set amount of time. When the time is up, that's when it can't be caught by someone else.

Too bad I can't coordinate with every single person in my city to catch the pokemon I want in the same 30 second timeframe. I've been so silly trying to spend my time hunting down the pokemon I want just to see it vanish!

If you've had fun, it's not silly. If you've just been aggravated by it, that would be silly. Personally, I'd just be aggravated...so I avoid trying to hunt down specific Pokemon, now.

Pokémon Go does have a competitive element to it (or you could say it's possible to play it competitively).

You can compete over who can fill up their Pokédex first (okay, just the 145 that are currently available). You can play the game for longer to catch more Pokémon. You can go out of your way to catch rare Pokémon. Even when you and a friend are in the same place catching the same Pokémon, you're not guaranteed to catch it — you can use Razz Berries and choose which Poké Ball to throw.

There's also Gyms. You can compete over who can control the most Gyms. If you're on opposing teams, you can compete over who will take control over a Gym. Or who will be Gym Leader.

There are many different aspects to this game. Whilst one particular aspect (Pokémon not disappearing when caught) may not be competitive, that doesn't mean the game as a whole can't be.

Fair points. I'll clarify: I don't play in a competitive way. I have no idea how many Pokemon any of my friends have caught. I don't know their levels. I've never tried to hold a gym. Honestly, I was never a heavy map user, either (I discovered them late, and my home apparently doesn't have many nests around it, so there wasn't anything interesting to see).

It seems like a philosophical debate: If I'm playing a game where players can optionally compete (but I don't), while using a tool that gives me a theoretical edge (even if I'm using it ineffectively), have I ruined someone else's game just by the perception that I could have?

> have I ruined someone else's game just by the perception that I could have?

You probably aren't ruining anyones game if you aren't competing, but you are still cheating.

...and? Sometimes the best part of a game is finding the most entertaining ways to break it, and if that doesn't directly harm someone else's enjoyment, then I frankly don't care what you wish to call it. Cheating without benefit against someone else just doesn't have the ethical zing that unfairly grinding someone into the mud would.

Oh, of course. Cheating at solitaire is not an ethical violation. But to say "I'm not cheating when I look at hidden cards in solitaire" is incorrect.

However, plenty of players that have cheated by using the map tools do place Pokemon in gyms. That is also unethical (even though I would consider it a pretty minor violation as far as ethics goes).

You realize that you're not actually fighting over a single Pokemon, right? If you catch one I can also catch it

Cheatings cheating doesn't matter who, what, where or how you play it. All games are bound by rules set for ALL players.

No one gets to bend the rules of a game because of their circumstance for e.g. 'I work all day, so I should have access to tools that give me an advantage over others'. Games are not an equal opportunity endeavour where everyone gets to be a winner.

Those who play by the rules and practice (or grind) should be rewarded, those who cheat should be penalised, simple.

This is fascinating to me. Your assessment is entirely defendable, yet in this situation I end up with the opposite assessment:

"this is a make believe world with arbitrary rules - bend them as much as you can, because why not"

>No one gets to bend the rules of a game because of their circumstance

Again, I come to the opposite conclusion, that _because the rules are there_ they are fun to push, modify, bend, break.

If you and I were having a conversation in just about any other context, most likely we would find so many areas in which we agree, and might even really enjoy the time spent.

So, it's so funny to me that we might disagree so completely on something so foundational as rule-following behavior.

Cheers!

Its a matter of fair play. I can setup bots to create level 40 characters with high CP pokemon with just a few eggs, walking half as much as other users. Then I'll just take over gyms with my OP pokemon and say 'hey, bending the rules, all good'. In most people's eye that's just dirty play.

Same with maps, they are third-party tools used to shortcut success. Yes, the tracking sucks in game (im sure it will improve soon), but that doesn't justify having tools that say 'rare pokemon over here' without performing the actual hunting aspect of the game. That is no different to bots. What's the fun in everyone having rare pokemon without earning them.

I'm not dissing maps, Niantic might even make their own official version in the future. But when people cry foul when their preferred method of 'bending the rules' is removed, I don't have much pity for them.

But someone else could say the same to you:

"But when people cry foul when their preferred method of 'following the rules' is removed, I don't have much pity for them."

...via 10M players leaving the game and putting the entire ecosystem at risk.

The thing is, you're looking at this activity like 'success' is measurable within the game's rules rather than how satisfied people feel about playing the game in real life.

This is a big difference between adults and children, by the way. All that prefrontal cortex development tends to push people into taking the value of their time into consideration even when they are playing games. They are not wrong to do so.

I don't know where you got the idea that 10M players left because maps were removed. Do you have proof of this?

The most reasonable explanation for the drop in users is simply a tapering off after one of the most hyped game releases of all time. Correct me if im wrong, but i'm pretty sure there are still some 30M+ users active in the game.

The difference here is that most games aren't absolutely awful without the cheats.

There's also:

-no way to get banned for using the cheat.

-a very very low barrier to entry.

-the cheat is directly replacing a bugged out, missing game mechanic.

-the PvP advantage is minimal, only affecting a small portion of the game.

Basically none of the classic problems with cheating are present here.

> No one gets to bend the rules of a game because of their circumstance

Sure they do, and for any other reason that they want to.

> Games are not an equal opportunity endeavour where everyone gets to be a winner.

My point exactly. I still don't get to be a winner, because I don't have the time to put into it. But at least I get to enjoy the time that I have.

> Those who play by the rules and practice (or grind) should be rewarded, those who cheat should be penalised, simple.

"Should" perhaps being the operative word. "If wishes were fishes..." and all that. If it makes you feel better, there've been a lot of stories recently about those nasty, nasty GPS spoofers getting their accounts banned.

I don't think breaking down someone's reply into bite sized snippets and responding to each out of context is a great way to do a rebuttal. Anyway,

'No one gets to bend the rules of a game' is the basic principle of fair play and sportsmanship. You dont have time so you want to circumvent progress quicker because you enjoy it more is not within the bounds of fair play.

The GPS spoofing is certainly bending the rules, but the game allowed you to do that without penalty. Ask most players though and they will say it's unfair as it's a shortcut to success. Now that Niantic has come down on those GPS hacks, do I feel sorry for those people caught out, of course not.

The maps issue is no different. It's like an athlete complaining that his favourite performance enhancing drug has recently be banned, well forgive me if I don't leap to his defence.

Its not like the game is unforgiving to new players, it's very easy to level up in early stages and make good progress.

"No one gets to bend the rules" is the basic principle of fair play, which is what allows competitions to exist.

But what I'm hearing is the people who are bending the rules are playing a completely different game, a noncompetetive game which is enabled by cheating, but good in its own right. And as opposed to multiplayer cheats, it's not good by making it worse for the other players; the cheats straight up enable an alternate playstyle that does not compete with the regular gameplay. It's like Tour de France players calling people with E-Bikes cheaters, even if they don't actually ride in the Tour de France.

So all I can say is "well played, cheaters".

They're not cheating anymore obviously, thats why they are complaining.

What's this completely different other games within a game you are referring to. Is it the 'catch rare pokemon without hunting for them' game. Well yeah of course that's noncompetitive.

You are aware this is a multiplayer game though, right? There are gyms where you have battles and those with rare pokemons with higher CP will take over gyms that earn them stardust and coins.

> They're not cheating anymore obviously, thats why they are complaining.

Personally, I'm complaining because the game is broken and no fun, and a method of fixing it has been disabled. I don't particularly care about any of the multiplayer aspects, except that it's sometimes fun to meet friends and run around playing it.

Im lvl 22 and don't use a map tool. I go for walks and catch pokemon with my wife. There are items such as incense and lures in game that help you catch more pokemon if you want. Common pokemon are easy to catch and quickly evolve into powerful pokemon. The tracking is working again (although not 3 steps).

How did I get to lvl 22 if the game is broken? How do 30 million people play if it is broken? Its not that the games broken, it just not the way you want to play it. Like it or not the games about grinding, as evident by the RPG lite gameplay mechanics, the 100s of pokeballs given to the player and high XP awarded for evolving common pokemon. You might want it to be a game simply about 'finding rare pokemon easy', but that's not the intend way of playing it.

Multiplayer... yeah no. It isn't in my experience.

There is a type of player that grinds and min-maxes and generally does a bunch of stuff I DON'T CONSIDER FUN to win a zero-sum game. That's the only currently existing multi-player aspect, and it isn't why I started using Pokemon GO (I use it as an excuse, to my self, to get out and exercise).

There is absolutely zero other 'multi player' aspect to the game as it is officially built. Anything else is a happy co-incidence.

There isn't anything within the game to turn the crowd of players in the local downtown park from a bunch of strangers in to friends. We all just happen to share one singular interest.

> I don't see a problem with that. Different strokes for different folks. What I'm enjoying is available to you, but you've chosen to limit yourself to a constricted set of abilities, because you (apparently) enjoy the limitations.

It matters if you then go on to hold gyms with your super pokemon and you're now out of the league of the non-maps players.

It certainly does, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'd rather play the game as a "catch 'em all". I generally avoid gyms.

Would you hold the same sentiment for GPS spoofers? Who jump around from gym to gym with their Dragonites and Snorlax that are far higher level than even a heavy map user would have?

Or people that use aim bots in fps? Maphacks?

Only to the degree that they don't damage other people's games. Jumping gym to gym isn't something I'd consider doing myself, but jumping to pokestops and avoiding gyms altogether? It's not my thing, but I don't see any harm.

I think it's a difference in perception. I consider the location-locked nature of the game to be a central feature that contributes to the entertainment value of the game. I don't consider the location of the Pokemon being hidden a central feature at all; it feels more like and unfair hobble that saps the entertainment.

> Or people that use aim bots in fps? Maphacks?

I'm not going to argue that cheating in competitive multiplayer games is a good thing any more than I'd argue that cheating in ways that don't affect other players is a bad thing.

Well sure, these people could technically play the game without affecting others. What's the point though? As a single player game Go is lacking and as a social game it's the hottest thing around. I'd be surprised to learn that there's people cheating and then not interacting with other players.

Does it matter if you considered it cheating or not? You augmented the main, core part of the game to make it easier to catch pokemon. That sounds like some form of cheating to me.

It matters to me, although probably not to anyone else.

> You augmented the main, core part of the game to make it easier to catch pokemon.

And it improved a flawed game (for me) without harming your experience.

> That sounds like some form of cheating to me.

In that I gained an advantage over what the game provides? Yes. In that I gained an advantage over you or any other player? No. I'm not in competition with anyone. I consider it a fairly solitary game (don't see the point of teams and gyms).

I lean towards agreeing with you, and I'd probably behave like you if I played the game. But one way in which you (in the aggregate, of "cheaters") do hurt others' experience is by artificially diluting the rarity of pokemon. That's a part of the experience for other players, which if you use tools to help yourself, indirectly is harmed. Not you personally, but the fact that such tools exist and people are using them.

I don't quite understand the impulse to "fix" the game, though. As much as it's a commercial product, it's also a piece of art. Would you "fix" a movie? Or would you just avoid seeing it? Or—if you happen to be in film yourself—would you get some people together and make your own?

I'm serious on that last one: the people who made the pokemon mapping apps could all get together and have enough pooled mobile-fronted and realtime-GIS backend knowledge to make a full-on clone of the game. (Maybe not with the original's art assets, but those burn battery-life anyway. Use some cute 2D pixel-art like the first-gen games; people's nostalgia will override their aesthetics!)

> Would you "fix" a movie?

Have you ever heard of The Phantom Edit? Or A Phantom Edit?

Or the Despecialised Edition?

> Would you "fix" a movie?

Yes, if I had the time and artistic ability. I've enjoyed various unofficial re-cuttings of Star Wars, different edits of Blade Runner, and so on. I'd put other things in the same category: upscalers for emulated games, texture packs for N64 games and Minecraft, mods for Minecraft and every other game under the sun, re-implementations of game engines or whole games that introduce features not found in the originals, etc.

> to make a full-on clone of the game.

Nintendo shut down Pokemon Uranium within 9 days, after 9 years of fan development. If they'd only called it Rucksack Goblins and made up their own characters...

I think that ways to extend an existing system in unintended directions are more interesting than most of the existing systems. Reinterpreting art is an art-form of its own.

> I've enjoyed various unofficial re-cuttings of Star Wars, different edits of Blade Runner, and so on. I'd put other things in the same category: upscalers for emulated games, texture packs for N64 games and Minecraft, mods for Minecraft and every other game under the sun, re-implementations of game engines or whole games that introduce features not found in the originals, etc.

I would note that all of these fall either into the category of "creator encourages community involvement" or "creator has abandoned work and ignores community involvement." Yes, people participate when participation is a net-positive. What I was asking is why people would bother contributing their time and effort to effectively do software development for a company that actively tries to discourage them from doing so.

It'd be like people making Minecraft mods and then Microsoft suing them for doing so. Surely people would re-implement the engine and start modding that, to get away from the abuse?

> If they'd only called it Rucksack Goblins and made up their own characters...

Yes, that's more what I meant. Why not create a Fanny-pack Gremlins March app?

> I would note that all of these fall either into the category of "creator encourages community involvement" or "creator has abandoned work and ignores community involvement." Yes, people participate when participation is a net-positive. What I was asking is why people would bother contributing their time and effort to effectively do software development for a company that actively tries to discourage them from doing so.

Well...Pokemon Uranium and the community Metroid 2 Remake. Both actively discouraged, but both worthwhile creations, IMO (and the kind of thing I'd have fun doing). Presumably, they did those not just because they wanted to write an RPG or Metroidvania game, but because they're fans of those specific franchises. I read it as an expression of fandom.

I'm working on an engine re-implementation project for an old game, currently owned by a fairly litigious company, for a few reasons:

- I love the game itself, and writing my own in a similar genre+style misses the point

- I like to feel like I'm the first one to re-discover the file formats in a couple decades

- I like understanding the low-level details of "how the sausage gets made"

- I've seen similar projects with this same game crash and burn, and I'd like to be the different one (there've been half a dozen previous attempts at the same game).

- I want to make it possible to easily mod the game, maybe to get a community to build a remastered version.

> Why not create a Fanny-pack Gremlins March app?

It's a lot of work to attract people to a franchise, and it's easier to ride on the coattails of another one ;-) I also suspect that the driving force was Pokemon fandom, not only the desire to make a game. The legal issues involved clearly weren't a decisive factor during the development phase.

Minecraft's source is obfuscated; the obfuscation changes on every update. It's not very effective, but it's not exactly "encouraging modders" either.

For the first few days while the game was live (and a huge chunk of the beta period), the game worked as if you had a map. You could see Pokémon quite far away, and it would tell you how far away it was with a resolution of 20m. Once this got taken out of the game, and replaced with nothing, people who depended on that feature kept wanting it back so much that they re-made it.

> For those of us who didn't use maps--most everyone I know--it was this advantage others had that made it terribly non-fun to play. Why bother playing when everyone is cheating?

I didn't use maps. I also didn't feel like those who did were cheating, or that I was any worse off for them using maps.

The 'competition' in Pokemon Go was really minimal, and maps had very little effect on them. The only competitive aspect to Pokemon Go is gym battling. If you care only about collecting, you actually benefit from map users, because they're the ones likely to drop lures.

As for gym battling, yes, maps might have had a negative effect on the competitive landscape there. But the competitive mechanics for gym battling were so fundamentally broken from the start that it's not reasonable to blame it on map users for "cheating".

(How were they broken, might you ask? Well, the fact that moves have such a wide variance in DPS, combined with the fact that movesets are entirely random and randomized upon evolution makes obtaining strong Pokemon entirely a matter of luck. Couple that with the fact that leveling up rare Pokemon requires... finding lots of that same rare Pokemon to turn into candy means that obtaining the strongest Pokemon (which are usually rare) is a matter of repeated luck + time spent grinding. Next, battling is kind of pointless until you're around level 15-20, because you'll almost certainly lose, and the amount of XP you gain from beating a single Pokemon is insultingly small. And finally, the battling itself was highly dependent on the latency of your Internet connection. This was fixed in a recent update, but it was a huge annoyance in the first week or two).

I can understand why the maps were banned though. The way most of them worked was by sending hundreds of location requests to the servers in a wide grid meaning every map user had the same load as 100+ real users. Add in how popular they were (admittedly partially because of actions on Niantic's end of disabling tracking making them almost necessary) and they probably had a huge impact on the already stressed servers.

I don't get why they don't make their own pokemon map, they hear a lot of feedback and still they choose to act against it.

I made a map that scanned my whole city just for fun and leaning, released and showed to a couple of friends. The next day I was flooded with Facebook invites with people telling me how they got a rare pokemon or requesting for a expansion on their cities. People kept sending messages when it went down even late at night and saying they don't want to play without a map.

It only took 200 pokemon accounts to do it and scan a 3 km radius, so it was a drop in the ocean compared with the traffic they get, and sadly it will go down once the next update hits (they implemented a captcha[1] system).

[1] - https://twitter.com/FastPokeMapCom/status/768055037604036608...

What are you using to generate those charts on your twitter posts?

This is not my twitter account. I just was citing the tweet as source.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were but it takes some time to actually release a game feature.

I would hope so, but the CEO already said he was against it:

F: How do you feel about Poké Radar and things that tap into the code and show where Pokémon are spawning?

JH: Yeah, I don’t really like that. Not a fan. We have priorities right now but they might find in the future that those things may not work. People are only hurting themselves because it takes some fun out of the game

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/07/28/pokemon-go-cr...

>People are only hurting themselves because it takes some fun out of the game

Well it sounds like they were wrong about it.

I feel the opposite about that. To me it very much felt like cheating, atleast with the way the mapping apps were setup. In the real game even if you're using a guide, certain Pokemon appear in certain areas, but for most of them theres no real way to find all of the Pokemon in an area without wondering around until you find them, a feature I felt was necessary to recreate the actual game.

The feet feature being removed hurt the game, but those maps that posted the exact location of the Pokemon seemed to go counter to the actual game.

I mean, you feel like you want, but objectively you have to admit it clearly took the fun out for a lot of people.

Doing something like giving the users a poll to say "are you excited about the upcoming map feature that does X?" would be enough for them to inform the users of what they're working on and gauge interest at the same time.

If a feature can be developed within a day or two by a hobbyist developer who has to reverse-engineer your system (and they aren't that exceptional because there were multiple such projects built), then there aren't any technical reasons why your team can't release such a feature within a month.

this has nothing to do with 10m people stopping altogether, people are stopping because its a fad, and utterly retarded, this was predicted form its inception. Nintendo stock goes up, and now it will go down.

What is this maps you are talking about? Did they disable the map inside the pokemon game?

This kind of stuff https://pokevision.com/

This sounds pretty similar to Ingress. Niantic seems to be poor game designers, since they seemed to have learnt very little from Ingress. I always thought Ingress and now Pokemon Go are great concepts with some of the worst design to keep people interested for more than a few months. Additionally, for a company that built Ingress and are well funded ex-googlers, I thought their handling of technical issues seemed outright terrible.

After the ban-hammer fell, I enjoy playing a lot more, and I have managed to capture gyms.

That was impossible before, with all the bot-accounts at level 30 holding them.

I am a semi-active Pokemon Go player in the SF Bay Area and I can tell it's definitely died down over the last few weeks. In the beginning, every Friday/Saturday/Sunday night, the whole downtown area would be lured up and people would be out mingling and catching pokemon in the local park. This past weekend, there were only a few lures and a few diehards milling around the park. There's a few dynamics at play based on personal experience:

1) Many players don't care about the gym battling system and just wanted to "collect" Pokemon. Once you've collected most of the ones in your area, you're going to get bored catching the same pidgeys, weedles, and rats/bats. My SO and I have gone to different areas to catch other Pokemon but you just need to go a few times and now we both have "most" of the common Pokemon. We're not hardcore enough to want to spend more time hunting the last few missing in our deck.

2) The lack of support and response from Niantic when the game was badly broken turned off a lot of casual players. Hardcore players will forgive them but casual players especially on iOS expect a lot more polish and "it just works" from a top selling game. I wonder how much of a fit Nintendo threw when this happened given they are a partial owner/investor in "The Pokemon Company".

3) The gym battling system mechanics are not great. You basically can throw bodies at a gym until you knock them down. There's no P2P battling which would make it more exciting since the gym AI is predictable in their attack patterns and most players know the dodge, attack, dodge routine now. The whole premise is to take down a gym, revive your Pokemon, collect potions/revives, do it all over again.

I agree with everything you say, but I think it all boils down to "it's the PVP, stupid."

Imagine if the actual Pokemon games never had trainers outside of gyms. I don't know about you, but after a while it would start to feel like a repetitive chore.

Yep. I grew up with Pokemon and didn't even install Pokemon Go.. but if it had legit PvP battling and trading, I would definitely give it a spin.

How cool would it be if you were walking down the street with your phone in your pocket.. and all of a sudden it started vibrating, you pick it up - TRAINER BATTLE. You look around, and you see someone else with their phone out looking around too. Now all of a sudden you're in a pokemon battle with a total stranger!

So much potential for cool experiences.. and yet they're doing nothing of the sort.

> So much potential for liability

FTFY

Throw an 18+ limit on the IRL trainer battles and you essentially have Pokemon Tinder. Not too big of a deal.

Something like this actually exists on Nintendo 3DS: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/StreetPass

I also think interest has died down because users in suburban/rural areas (like myself) are getting tired of not having any Pokestops to refill on Pokeballs within walking distance. It was fun and interesting driving to the city/parks to pick up all the Pokestops and catch Pokemon we normally wouldn't at home, but a lot of people have grown tired of having to do that to continue playing.

> The gym battling system mechanics are not great.

That's a huge understatement. Initially the battling system was super confusing, but with enough trial-and-error we were able to figure it out. I even got into a couple fun battles with groups fighting over a gym, but every time it starts getting glitchy. The gym or the app become unresponsive - sometimes crashing or kicking people out mid-battle.

They need to make it more organized with a queue that blocks people out for a time if they lose. It would also be cool if they allowed people near the gym to actually watch other battles.

Your point #1 is spot on. The gyms killed it for me because it made Pokémon Go really competitive. The atmosphere of random people being friendly to each other & exploring their city together quickly changed to people insulting and taunting each other for being on opposing teams. I'm still refusing to join a team because of it.

What I enjoyed was the "Geocaching" aspects - going outside with friends, helping each other search together, visiting new places I normally wouldn't go to (ie new Pokéstops, catching a train to new suburbs to explore what's there). I also like the fitness aspect, ie tracking how far I've walked. But Pokéwalks with friends aren't fun when someone is more interested in defending a specific gym, rather than Pokémon being an excuse to hang out and go for a walk by the lake together.

I've spent more on this than any mobile game (probably $15 - $25, I kept needing to upgrade my Pokémon storage and bag storage). But I uninstalled the app earlier this week.

I feel like this is the aspect I enjoy the most too. It would be great if they added "Journeys" which are planned routes with Pokestops and tasks to complete or even like a scavenger hunt you can play with friends with medals/prizes for completion. The other thing that would make the game way more fun for me is global events for all players like a sea monster is attacking the waterfront, all trainers head there to defeat it for a special badge. It's brining in the dungeon raid co-op aspect into the game.

The 'global event' is a really interesting idea to me - it's easier to meet & chat to new people when you've just had a shared experience, more so if it's co-op rather than competitive.

Wow, if Niantic had an event on the waterfront, and they happened to get city permission so when the sea monster is defeated it triggers a local fireworks display, that could be really interesting - and newsworthy. And no doubt the local cafes and food vendors would be selling out again afterwards too if you can create an event like that....

These global events I think are key to keep things fresh. They just need background notifications to alert players who are in a specific area. The global events don't have to be a big new Pokemon monster but that would definitely be fun to show all the trainers who are currently battling the monster. There should be a time limit on when you have to defeat the monster to earn the prize which encourages people to get out there.

There could also be fun challenges like "Magikarp invasion!" - 400 Magikarp have invaded Fisherman's Wharf. They need to all be caught in the next hour or else they'll threaten native species.

Create some fun quests and challenges and randomize where they spawn and make them time limited.

Not everyone lives in SF.

Global events just need to be triggered based on their geodata. They can even use dynamic triggers like if a lot of players are online, find a central location to spawn a Quest/Challenge and alert everyone in the app.

Ingress did this with so-called "Anomalies".

I would expect Niantic to have a similar idea in mind for PoGo, but also think they've not fully figured out how they want the mechanics to play out long term, and that might need to happen first.

Ingress, Niantic's previous game, has a Missions mechanic very much like what you're describing (missions are player-created, even), and focused very heavily on global events tied to specific locations.

So it would not be at all surprising if similar stuff found its way into P:Go.

Completely agree on #1. It's turned into just blindly walking around and hoping you run into something. My SO and I played this past weekend and saw a porygon on the "sightings" list. We covered as much ground as fast as we could but never actually saw it. Where's the fun in that? I'm still playing for now, but catching new things was one of my favorite things about the game and now it seems to be almost entirely based on chance as "sightings" are pretty useless.

Another thing that bugs me is uneven catch rate. Having something break free 7 times in a row then running away (even when using razz berries, ultra balls etc.) seems to be in place purely to annoy you. Then other times I catch a stronger pokemon the first try with a regular pokeball. Why???

I assume its something atleast as complicated as what they use in the real games [1], but the system would be much better if you could actually fight the wild Pokemon in the game to lower their health instead of relying on the shrinking circle.

[1] - http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate

If you're on a bike or in a car, you can often home in on pokemon based on them appearing and disappearing on the nearby list, along with some knowledge of areas where pokemon tend to spawn. My SO and I have caught a couple of rare ones like this (one person drives, and the other operates both phones).

But I agree completely that it's more fun when you have a map or the long lost footprints to be able to zero in on foot.

I relate best with your third point, but more generally, the original Pokemon games were strategic--to win battles you had to pick a good moveset, understand the type system, and train your pokemon to high levels. In this game, battles are mostly just screen mashing, and leveling up is purely about catching (either by catching a high level or catching enough pokemon to have the stardust to level one up), and battles are still not a major component of the game. I've actually gone back to playing the original games for the first time in over a decade, and it's a lot more fun than Go. :/

I'm surprised that point #2 isn't more widely touted.

Even a month after release the game was still crashing regularly, gym battles only worked 50% of the time, constant server downtime, etc. No word from Niantic on the problems or what they were doing to resolve them.

I uninstalled the game at that point so I don't know whether or not it improved, but it's 2016 and I see scalability as a mostly solved problem. Persistent downtime a month after release is inexcusable.

I feel like this is a case, "No shit, what did you think would happen?" It is a free-to-play game after all.

I'd suggest watching the developer of Braid talk about free-to-play games. He compares them to 90's syndicated TV shows, each one being independent and leaving you with a cliffhanger prior to each commercial break. When HBO started producing long running series that would eventually be released on VHS and DVD, you saw much more long arching story.

Even though Pokemon Go has a lot more going for it than many other free-to-play games, it still works on a model that limits how far you can go without buying stuff. That's how those game companies make money.

I met a Pikpok dev once who said 80% of people delete their games once you can't really advance without buying stuff. A couple spend $80 ~ $200 (more than they would on a traditional title) and a few, the "Whales," would dump $2k upwards into these games. They depended on those players to make the games profitable.

Free-to-play are like quarter-based arcade games .. on your phone. They're a pretty big step backwards in gaming.

While I mostly agree, I wouldn't say they are entirely a step backwards. Pokemon Go broke the mold and did something that would not really work on any past platform.

I have never played Pokemon Go, but i'm curious what mold it broke? Ingress was around a long time previously and as far as i've surmised contains essentially all the features of Go plus some more. What it lacked was the compelling and nostalgic branding that Pokemon has. Genuinely curious.

Shops paid to put lures out, it was a way to get advertisers to pay for the game, but without spam ads.

Yes, in some ways PGo is a re-skin of Ingress, But I felt like it was much more accessible. It appeals to a massive demographic.

It's easy to complain about free to play games and the tactics they use. But it's just a response to the consumer base.

Developers tried the paid game model and, other than a small number of niche games, the mobile market just doesn't want to pay for them.

There is a huge game market, with people who really play games and buy their games for their PC, PS4, WiiU etc.

Than there is an even bigger audience who own a smartphone/tablet and consider themself casual players. That's the crowd that are catered by Free2Play games. They are often more like casino games or Farmville clones than real games - real games are fun, casual Free2Play are often created to be addictive and are based on grinding (= boring(?)). Some of them find out there a whole other world of real games, many will be in the impression that they are playing real games just because they know no better, and others ... etc.

To each audience their own. The negative side was that for years several Triple-A companies went down the Free2Play road while their audience all wanted just the next Trle-A installment. Several franchises like MS Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, Dungeon Keeper were destroyed/burned by dumb decisions. Even whole companies like Crytek, Zynga, etc almost lost everything.

Despite your opinions hundreds of millions of people are being entertained by free to play games right at this moment. Most of them for free. Braid was a good puzzle game but its reach is tiny in comparison. You can blame it on abusing psychology or marketing dollars, or you can meet and talk with the people that play and enjoy these games every day.

Many other mobile games haven't had this kind of reaction.

Gungho's Puzzle and Dragons is one of the most profitable games of all time; it was the first mobile game to break 1 billion in revenue per year. It was released to the NA market 3 or 4 years ago and has continued to increase its player base month after month. Not only that, but they have unprecedented retention. People are still playing it 3 and 4 years later, you just don't get that with any other mobile game.

Note: still the top grossing app in the iOS App Store.

As always, don't forget to put the scary raw numbers into context. 12 million out of 45 million means they've retained 73% of their user base month over month. We can't derive actual retention numbers from that because new users, etc. but 15% is great month over month retention for a F2P mobile game. Assume Pokemon Go is doing that. That would mean 6.5M of their current user base stuck around since the beginning of August, and they picked up just under 25M new users in one month.

I dunno about you, but I'd be really pleased if my new game got 25M new users in the second month after release. Not as good as the 45M I got in the first month, but that's not rationally sustainable.

Time spent in game dropping is bad. DAU dropping is bad. I wouldn't spin this as good news. Niantic could absolutely be managing live operations much better. But click bait is click bait.

If you're sitting here saying that it's failing because everyone you know stopped playing, you need to figure out how to make your mental model explain why it's still top grossing.

And some casual players, myself included, just haven't been keeping up on the constant app updates so it won't let me connect. I usually collect the little monsters on my evening walk or errands. It's amusing and I think they still have a great opportunity. Also amusing is visiting a certain message board to read posts that complain about a new application's features while most are doing agile development and releasing MVPs themselves.

In august the game became available in Thailand, a potential huge new user base. Perhaps the game opened up in other parts of the world as well. This could mean the percentage of users playing dropped by a much bigger amount in existing countries.

Thailand is not a big mobile game marketplace in comparison to the US, China, Japan, or Europe.

However, you make a good point -- the numbers lose even more context when they're not broken down by country, particularly when the launch was staggered. E.g., Pokemon Go launched in Japan on July 21st, which means any numbers captured at the beginning of August reflect initial launch volumes.

Anecdotal, but I'm still playing pretty regularly and still greatly enjoy the game.

I like having the app open when I'm on a run. I can hatch eggs, take a breather at gyms, and pick up a lot of Pokemon. Tracking was never an integral part of my game experience, which is maybe why I didn't feel as affected by the changes.

I never completely understood the complaints. Niantic has a right to make a (free-to-play!) game and don't owe us anything. And since this is a dev-centric community, many of us can appreciate how stressed out Niantic engineers probably are right now after a difficult launch. I get that maps were cool - I have a nice Dragonite to show for it, but it always felt like a hack that was going to go away. The old tracking system was better, but I'd rather have the performance of August than the tracking system of July.

Losing users was probably inevitable. This game was everywhere in the news, so I'm sure plenty of people tried it out and realized it wasn't for them. Combine that with people who miss their maps as well as maybe adjusting the numbers after catching bots, and that probably covers most of the numbers.

You say tracking was never an integral part of your game experience and then say you don't understand the complaints. Heh. That's what a vast majority of people are complaining about because tracking was an integral part of their game experience. That's the reason so many of us liked the game to begin with.

Imagine if a game like Soul Caliber or Street Fighter took away the fighting aspect of their game. You may think the main fun part of soul caliber is unlocking stronger/hidden weapons, or selecting the right match-up in street fighter, but a majority of people enjoy the combat aspect.

I continued to play after they took out tracking because I thought it was only temporary. Now I finally realize it's permanent so I haven't logged in to Pokemon Go in 7 days now.

They drastically changed some algorithms to (seemingly) make more money.

They made the pokemon break free MUCH more often with the update about 10 days ago. You now have to use way more pokeballs to capture things. So much to the point that it's unfun. I don't live near a pokestop so I can't top up quickly.

Another thing they did was make it so the pokemon disappear if a range check puts you far enough away from the point of initial contact. Combine that together and nobody can play the game in the car anymore, even if you're not driving!

So they spent a bunch of time changing existing features to be less fun without adding any new features that are fun. Not a good idea.

I have been playing with my wife and two of my kids. We all stopped playing because it's simply not fun anymore.

The update also (at least on my Nexus 6P) made GPS related issues dramatically worse; it's like they don't comprehend that in a place with a lot of tall buildings or trees you're not going to get a 'solid' GPS lock a majority of the time.

Combine that with a UI popup (mid capture interaction no less) that steels input focus (it stops your ball toss), telling the user something they LITERALLY have no control over fixing, and quite possibly ruining your chance at capturing a more rare Pokemon and it is insanely frustrating.

The GPS issues have nothing to do with getting a GPS fix. It's just a plain ol' bug. My GPS is spot-on when using any app other than Pokémon Go which pretty regularly states that the GPS isn't working when I'm holding my phone in my hands to an open sky with no clouds.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing or what device I'm using it always shows that GPS error message every 30 seconds to 1 minute.

> The GPS issues have nothing to do with getting a GPS fix. It's just a plain ol' bug.

GPS on phones aren't that accurate, especially downtown, but most applications will filter the data because of that. Ever use Google Maps for directions and make a turn different from what the app is telling you to do? Your car icon will continue down the "correct" path for 15-30 seconds before re-adjusting to the new route. This actually happens all the time, it's just more likely that your GPS is misreporting you as 20m east instead of you taking a different turn, so the app holds off on updating the display until it is more sure.

So it's a combination of the two factors. But most apps handle it muuuuch better than P:GO does.

Here's a link I was able to find on running apps specifically. Apps that deal with you being on foot will obviously have a harder time determining exactly where you are, as opposed to apps for driving where you're moving faster, in a straight line, and down a grid of streets.

http://radianttap.com/blog/2012/comparing-accuracy-of-the-gp...

May be Niantic&co decided to disable google optimized gps location services to not give them such data?

Possibly had more to do with blocking GPS cheaters?

I mainly play while on the bus and this has made it a lot more painful than it used to be. Now I mainly focus on it when the bus is in the downtown core (and basically moving at walking pace).

maybe they want to start to sell more pokeballs? In the end most games makes their money off a small percentage of power users (aka heavy addicts) who are ready to shell out money for in game purchases - a game does not need a massive following, they need to hook a small circle of friends (015% according to [1]) who are ready to pay.

[1] http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/26/only-0-15-of-mobile-gamers...

I hope they add some more stuff to the game to keep it fresh and interesting. As it is, I've caught Pokemon, won Gym Battles, lost Gym Battles, evolved Pokemon, visited hundreds of Pokestops, and Hatched Eggs. I think I've touched on every game mechanic, though I haven't caught every Pokemon.

I'd like to see some things that allow the players more ways to change the map in a way that interacts with other players. Right now that's only done by Gym Battles and by placing Lures in Pokestops.

Some of the ideas I've got are:

- Some way for players to place markers on the map to indicate that Pokemon have seen, rally players to a spot, etc.

- A way for players to create new Pokestops.

- Some kind of quest mechanic where players could create quests and embark on quests created by others.

All of these could be tied to the in-game purchase system. They'd need some way to prevent abuse of it, of course.

The biggest problem I have is that it feels very much like a single-player game, and a fairly shallow one at that, with some very minor multiplayer elements.

With winter, and the colder weather, approaching, they really better figure out some game mechanics that you can do inside at home, or that user number is going to drop like crazy.

I've been saying this for a while -- it was fun to play for a few days, but I live in a suburb. I have to walk at least .5 miles to get to a Pokestop and they never spawn near my house.

I'll still play when I go to new places, but that's about it.

Now, if there were some way for my wife and I to battle each other at home, that would be whole different ball game.

The weather is going to get warmer on the opposite side of the world from you.

Depending on how the battles with his wife go, it could get a whole lot colder!

But that's only about 12% of the world's population. And even less are below the tropics.

True but there are a lot fewer people on that side of the world, and even fewer still who would be considered "1st world" enough to have the spare time and the smartphones with data plans necessary to play.

Your stereotypes are disgusting. My working class relatives in Brazil are playing it. We don't live in huts.

I think it just comes down to the game being not very good. It's not really designed for retention. Once you've caught the Pokemons you care about, there's not much left to do. Gyms are not an interesting mechanic, and there's no other way to interact with other players in the game. Basically, Niantic put out a half-baked game, which was rapidly successful only because it built on the combination of a fantastic idea (AR gaming) and a cherished IP (Pokemon).

I still play regular but it is getting pretty mundane. But that is not because pokevision and other 3rd party was banned. In fact they were supposed to be banned a lot earlier. The map users (myself included) will never pay for pokemongo but might pay for the map. This is not a good business model for them and in fact it defeats the purpose. Instead of hunting or seeking you are basically shopping.

The reason why it is getting boring is actually something else... it is in the flaw of their game design. This game is extremely biased toward people who live around water with high density such as Santa Monica and San Francisco. You can catch Dragonite and bunch of starters there. But most people instead will catch eevee and growlithe at the best. Basically after a while you finish catching every pokemon around you and there is nothing else to do other than fight gyms. But gyms are so easy to beat that you don't have much incentive to defend it.

Agreed. The process by which you fortify gyms is broken. Leveling up your gym is very time-consuming and can too easily be undone, especially by other players nearby. There needs to be a better way to handle gyms and battles that scales with local user activity... perhaps a shunt to a PvP mode that grants the winner or the winner's color a certain amount of exclusive access time to fortify.

The game is not similar enough to Ingress for the existing tit-for-tat ideas to work. Fire XMPs <=> Gym Battle; Add Resonators to Portal <=> Put Champion on Gym. Where's the equivalent of shields or key-based recharging at a distance? Why can't I buff my pokemon stationed on a gym (or the gym itself) with items after an alert that the gym is being battled?

This is a great idea. They should have an item that buffs the gym for 24hr. This will create a nice mechanics where you want to put your pokemon on these buffed gym (more incentive to train) and it will be challenging to beat in general. Players that beats the gym also gets more XP.

No matter what happens to Pokemon Go, Nintendo has proved to the world that its IP is immensely powerful and valuable in the mobile age.

That's a nice weapon to have to shut up "analysts" who always want them to take the path to short term gains.

I remain bearish on Pokemon go and bullish on Nintendo.

Its not their IP though, is it?

Its the Pokemon Company, and nintendo only gets a small percentage of the licensing...

Nintendo owns 33% of TPC. But they also own some amount of Creatures Inc, which owns 33% of TPC (Gamefreak is the other third share). So it's not clear how much control they have over pokemon, but it may in fact be a controlling interest. Never mind that not all shares are voting shares.

I'd be pretty surprised if Nintendo weren't at least de facto in control of Pokemon, personally.

In addition, Pokemon is not the only strong IP that Nintendo has in its arsenal.

I was in the audience at a Hironobu Sakaguchi interview recently, and one of the things that has stayed with me was that Nintendo told the FF team back in the 90's, "You need to take better care of your characters." Nintendo has certainly done that for itself over the course of many decades, and it's always paid off for them despite many short term troubles they've encountered.

As with with any other dopamine-jerking drug -- first there's a rush; then a plateau; then a refactory period. And just like the more familiar (street-level) drug dealers, the creators are going to have to think of something stronger, longer-lasting or at least more novel-seaming in order to maintain market share. Or cede their turf.

I thought the spike in usage from the beginning was a contrarian indicator for long term popularity. The rapid viral growth clearly saturated the potential playerbase within the first week.

Rapid market saturation means you do not have time to test and optimize for long term user retention. Hypothetically you could get all of the variables correct on day one, but unlikely.

Didn't they have a beta though? They should have expanded that.

The game consists of 2 mechanics: 1) Collect everything 2) Battle gyms for arbitrary cred

at the moment, both oppose each other because the maps people make to make #1 easier, make it easier for a subset of people to dominate #2 easier. By removing the maps that make #2 so unbalanced, #1 becomes a repetitive chore.

There's literally nothing more to the game than those two mechanics. There's no end goal like the other pokemon games. There's no higher goal to work towards from capturing gyms and holding areas.

It's no surprise that the game is dying. Either you collect the 80% that are easy to find and then it just becomes a huge chore without the necessary tools to find the last 20%, or you powerlevel up to fight in gyms for a bit and then... what exactly?

Niantic should've taken another 3-6 months of heavy dev time to really polish it and add more depth to it. Create a higher purpose for holding gyms. Create a more compelling search mechanism that doesn't allow maps but then doesn't make the last 20% of the search such a huge, completely random-chance chore.

There needs to be more to the game than those two mechanics and every moment it's released but there's not, it just withers. No amount of patching in an IV% calculator by visiting your 'trainer' will help that, because it still just relies on those two very broken pillars.

This was the problem with Niantic's earlier game Ingress. It was fun to play while levelling up, which masked some of the repetitive nature of the game, but once you reached the highest level, there was nothing else to do except keep doing what you were already doing.

The problem with all of these kinds of games (MMOs in particular) is that people consume content far faster than it can be created. It's quite difficult to create self-sustaining content.

This is why they need a way for players to create this content somehow. Look at the success that Quake and Doom saw with people making maps, mods, full-blown total conversions, etc. I don't think going that extreme applies to Pokemon Go, but it's an example of how players can create the content that prolongs the life of the game.

What I'd like to see is ways for players to do things that have lasting effects on the map. Whether it's moving Pokestops, or making Gyms have some higher purpose, or something I can't think of, I'm not sure.

Right now it's a fairly shallow single-player game that has some extremely minor (Gyms and Lures) multiplayer mechanics.

MMOs, and to an extent all multiplayer games, gain their complexity and replayability through PvP interaction (when I say 'v' I don't mean necessarily through conflict interaction, I mean also through cooperative interaction). Ultima Online is still paraded as one of the best of the genre because it had such high freedom in how players interacted with each other. WoW gained a huge level of depth from how it was set up for big, complex groups of players working togther with the whole raid boss thing.

Even Dota and LoL gain their complexity not through the game (I mean they both have 1 map) but through the interaction that happens with 5v5 gameplay. Quake and CS are the same.

The problem with Pokemon Go is that there's no player interaction beyond gym battles, which are just about as minimial as player interaction can get and could almost be replaced by NPC trainers that you periodically have to beat to kick them out before they reset again.

Had they had more emphasis on player encounters, Pokemon Go would not be burning out. Trading of pokemon, player vs player battles outside of gyms, a more meaningful gym possession metagame (think Planetside). An item meta-economy where you can find and trade items that you can pick up around the place randomly and which give you bonuses (to catch rates, to pokemon power, etc. etc. - there's heaps of scope here). This is all roughly mapped out in MMOs, so it's a case of implementation not invention.

Patching this in now is far less effective since they've burnt much of the goodwill that players give them when they first start playing. For every player that'll return, 10 won't bother no matter what you do to the game.

I'm not an expert on this, but, those numbers don't seem awful to me. I realize not everyone started the game at the exact same time, but retaining 75% of your users a month later seems pretty good. Pretty much any mobile game is going to have some churn, and given their stratospheric launch it's not like they were realistically going to grow. Given the (MAJOR!) quality problems they've had, they can probably stem the bleeding quite a bit if they just fix those things.

Mobile games like puzzle and dragons have never had a month where they did not add to its player base. If it lost 10% of its players in a single month, everyone would be fired. I'm not joking.

Now before you or anyone says that Pokemon is larger, it's not. Puzzle and Dragons might not be as large in America (it's close though), but in Japan, 10% of their entire population plays the game. More people play that game, probably 3 times over, than play Pokemon Go.

The article mentions a drop in Daily users of about 10M (specifies around 12M). This also include any launches that occurred over the last month, which means the retention over this time is likely much worse than just 75% but I don't have numbers on that.

Anyone remember "Drawing with Friends"? It was all the rage for about 15 minutes.

It is Foursquare on steroids.

Nice metaphor.

And before that Words with Friends.

I've been saying that Pokemon Go is going to go the same way as the Kinect and the Wii. Fun for the novelty, but beyond that the fundamentals are very bad. Therefore, once the novelty starts to wear off....

I thought the Wii had great fundamentals. I loved playing a lot of the core Wii games.

How many of the core wii games used motion controls? Even the big Nintendo IP games used primarily a classical control scheme if not exclusively.

Both Mario Galaxies (arguably the best two games on Wii) used motion controls along with buttons+analog stick. It was wonderful and not overdone.

The top-selling Wii games were the Wii Sports games + spinoffs, almost all of which were primarily motion-control: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_vid...

I think those sales numbers are skewed in favor of Wii Sports because it was bundled with the console the same way The Lab is for the Vive.

True; the others were not, though. (Except there may have been a SKU with Wii Sports Resort)

Err, what?

The first Zelda for Wii (Twilight Princess) made some use of the controller. It's how you aimed ranged weapons, and how you did special sword swings. This game was also released for the Gamecube, so they couldn't do too much with pure wiimote controls.

The second Zelda for Wii did more, including using wiimote movement for flapping when flying, and more intricate sword control.

Mario Kart shipped with a wheel attachment so you could steer using that.

Metroid games for the Wii make extensive use of the wiimote pointer for aiming.

The Wario games are all about utilizing different control schemes, as are the Mario Party games.

The 2D Mario games did not make much use of the wiimote, but that's a good thing. Forcing weird controls onto a game type that doesn't fundamentally support them well is not a good thing.

As can be expected, Nintendo was one of the biggest users of the new functionality on their system. I'm not sure where you're getting this idea they didn't use the new functionality, unless you mean they didn't use only the new functionality, but why would they do something as stupid as that?

The Kinect is goddamn amazing. Using a system without a Kinect makes me feel like Scotty in Star Trek 4.

Eh.. Kinect GAMES are kinda weak...

The most useful features of the kinect only need a mic to work, but of course MS wont let you just use a mic for those features... they want you to buy a ridiculously expensive gadget to collect dust while waiting for a voice command...

Auto login with my face needs the camera.

Controlling my tv with my hand needs a camera.

But yes, overall the Kinect games are not numerous - what does exist tho was, when good, really good.

Also Xbox Fitness would not work well at all without it - and that's fantastic

Autologin doesn't really matter for me, with a single primary account, autologin can be enabled anyway. Controlling the TV with the hand, while I haven't used it long term, was a rather annoying experience IMO, since it twice did things at a friends house while we were talking... Even the voice features... its become a thing to troll people by yelling xbox commands over chat, if they have chat on the TV, you can really screw people up... I would probably disable that anyway.

It was an awesome phenomena to witness while it lasted. Sadly this is how it is with most games. People get bored if there's no stream of content to keep them engaged. Other games stay on top for so long by continuing to have in-game specials, events, and deals as well as DLC. Everything from Niantic since release has honestly just been catch-up and bug fixes.

Unlike the predecessor app there's no strategy to Go and just like the predecessor app lots of lazy people want to ruin the game for everyone else by cheating through GPS spoofing, automated game play and data scraping. Not to mention both games share Niantic's less-than-stellar customer service which means issues are addressed haphazardly if at all.

The good news is I think the market's broken wide open for another AR app, hopefully one with more compelling gameplay that isn't structured to be the next Farmville/Game Of War/whatever in app purchase digital cash cow.

Makes me wonder if some of this was disillusionment after people realised how unbalanced the game was.

Because at the moment, it's a game that seems designed specifically to reward city dwellers and punish countryside and suburban folk. If you're in a city, lots of Pokemon seem to appear because it uses mobile signals to place them. In the country where you'd expect Pokemon? Nothing. You can have tall grass for miles, yet get less Pokemon than in a Walmart parking lot.

As a result, a lot of people spent ages wandering around and encountering nothing. Or maybe just common Pokemon.

The maps helped with this a bit, by giving these people the knowledge to find the few interesting Pokemon that would spawn before they vanish. But without them? There's not really a point for most people in these areas to keep playing. It's a lot of hassle for very little reward.

Niantic didn't seem to want to improve this either. They simply said something like 'well, you'll just have to move to where the Pokemon are'.

So I wonder if some of the drop may be people living in more remote regions saying 'sod this' and giving up on the game.

If there's one thing The Pokemon Company and Gamefreak can do well it's to iterate. There will always be an opportunity for Nintendo to make an in-house sequel. Niantic can and should be cut out of the picture in the future.

Why should Niantic be cut out? Nintendo owns a (large?) share of them. They could become a second party, like Retro Studios.

If Niantic management is responsible (I mean they are but did they make wrong decisions, or did they make ok decisions in bad circumstances?) you can argue that keeping that same management involved in a sequel could be detrimental to the evolution of the game. It also makes it harder to shed the failures of the first iteration.

Personally I think Niantic's entire team was plain overwhelmed and failed to adapt. Some decisions were made for money, and you can argue that they were unnecessary, but their is also no doubt a lot of people worked really hard and tried their best to make it work. There is of course value in that experience that can be applied to future iterations.

The future looks great for AR at least.

There were so many other ways they could have made money with the scaling issue they had.

If their servers can not handled the amount of users using the map function to track pokemon, set this feature as an item. Once a day a user can track pokemon for 1-2 30min session a day.

Then if users want an extra session to track pokemon, they would only have to pay a few pokecoins. This way they can please the userbase and easy the resources used.

Some of it is undoubtedly a craze shedding the least-engaged, but I wonder how much of that could be due to it being August and people not wanting to traipse around in the height of summer.

I got interested in the game, but I decided to wait a bit as daily high temperatures hovered at the century mark.

In other places, August is a comfortable time to traipse around compared to the rest of the year. You want get outdoors when the sun is out and it's warm.

August is turning out to be downright pleasant compared to the hellacious July we had, but that didn't stop people from mobbing the local Pokestop clusters.

There's a spot downtown here that's so bad they're debating putting up a fence to contain the players and keep them from interfering with a ferry terminal that's close by: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-ferry-terminal...

> You want get outdoors when the sun is out and it's warm.

Many people, no doubt, but I'd prefer to get outdoors when it's grey and snow is falling. When the sun's out, it burns my skin; when it's above freezing, there can be rain. Cold & snowy is easy to deal with: throw on a coat, a hat and a scarf.

Hot is impossible to deal with: cool or die. Actually, even if one cools down, the sun will give one skin cancer. So, really, it's cool and die.

This is what I have noticed in just my friend circle.

I was never an active Pokemon Go player, but few of my friends were really into the game. Every Friday we would go out for a walk, in near by park and they will have their phone out and be catching Pokemons. I guess it was just how much more I can catch thing. They always wanted to get the rares ones. Who doesn't right? Last 2 weekends I have noticed 2 of my friends didn't care much. And, slowly, the interest faded away. Now we all going for paint ball.

I don't know if it's Ninatic not coming up with good updates or its just a common thing with every mobile game. Angry birds, Candy crush and now Pokemon Go?

> I was never

> Every Friday we would

> They always wanted

> Last 2 weekends I have noticed 2 of my friends didn't care much. And, slowly, the interest faded away.

"Every", "always", "slowly", and the overall feeling of a long tradition.

Er... guys... can you remind us how long this fad lasted? When was it introduced? 6 years ago? 6 months ago? No, that's 6 weeks ago, men! So, 2 weeks ago was just 4 weeks after the beginning...

Is it the CADT at work, describing an extremely short, transient fling about a lousy game as a tradition?

I was amazed by people pretending this was (another) revolution in gaming and life, that allowed them to socialize (ever heard of walking down to your local bar? apparently not) and to take a walk (wow). And now, just one month after all that fuss, it's already scrapped and life goes on as it was before that was a thing. Or was it never a thing and people rushed into making theories about it without thinking further than their nose? That would be surprising. Ahem.

I think I was more focusing on the rise and fall of famous "mobile gaming" in general. There was time everyone I knew was into Angry Birds. Every guy I meet tells me how their wife or gf are into candy crush and just addicted to it. And now everyone has jumped on the Pokemon go bandwagon. Hence, the interest fading away eventually. This is just what I have noticed among the people I know.

So, to be clear, you think the basic mechanic of geography based gaming (there must be a better name for it) is a fad and it's already fading?

I strongly disagree. In my opinion what we just saw was the initial burst of public enjoyment of that game mechanic, and now that the concept has very widespread familiarity, the ground is set for better games to come along and dwarf Pokemon Go.

It actually was a revolutionary moment, but it seems many want to assume the initial burst was the big bang. I think that's very wrong.

I only started playing because my friends did, and the only way for me to stomach the boring game was to write a bot for it. I enjoyed going around and getting levels with a bot, trying to figure out how to best evolve my Pokemon automatically, write inventory management scripts, etc.

After they deleted my account for that (fair enough), I uninstalled the app. I wasn't going to run around catching and releasing Rattatas all the time, as the game is one of the most grindy games I've ever seen, but there's pretty much nothing else to do in the game either.

As a developer it was the fact that they were so close to the chest with their API that ruined it for me. The game had a lot of cool potential and I really enjoyed it for a while, but eventually it hit the point where there was backlash from the company for doing anything with their (admittedly non-public) API.

They should have spent time celebrating what the public was making or even possibly trying to produce an alternative API optimized for consumption (instead of blasting their servers with hundreds of fake accounts to get the necessary data).

I must admit i played Pokemon Go a little bit, I am sure maybe they could add more elements as time goes, including player vs player tournaments and lobbies. Single player mode with a pokemon of your choice with story line gyms. They just need to re-engage players.

On release day, the app itself was great. It had a warmer/colder system with 0-3 paw prints to track down the Pokémons in your vicinity. Hunting down things you missed was a game in itself. When the servers weren't dying, the game was quite responsive too.

Fast forward a week, and the warmer/colder system is broken. All the Pokémons are always 3 steps away, which means somewhere within 1km radius. And you have 15 minutes to find that one you're missing. You can still see them from 100 meters away, and the app is quite responsive when you get close to them. The downtime is unbearable at times, and people are losing items they paid real money for due to this.

Then we fast forward two weeks. People have started reverse-engineering the internal API and are using it to create maps over nearby Pokémons. The brokenness of the tracking system is acknowledged at some convention (not publicly on their site), but no promises are made on fixing it. Niantic starts sending out C&Ds to projects using their APIs, trying to remove bots and tracking websites. Despite their own tracker being broken. The app is now limited to communicating once per 10 seconds, and you can only see Pokémons 70m around you.

After successfully hiring a PR manager, Niantic breaks their deafening silence and tells us that the tracking system will not be fixed. They will replace it with something better. A new app rolls out, now with request signing to combat tracking websites. This takes about 5 days to crack before business returns to usual. People really want to be able to track their Pokémons, and having no ways to do so put a lot of people off. Closing Pokevision made many of my friends quit, because to them, Niantic didn't share their concerns at all.

Finally, the tracking system is replaced with a new one. You can now detect nearby Pokémons up to 200m (vs 1000m before). You still need to get within 70m of them to actually see them though. Niantic also activate an extra tracking system in certain American states, as a beta test. This has been active for about two weeks now without hitting the rest of the player base. Unfortunately, it is based on Pokestops, which are user-submitted landmarks from their previous game, Ingress. A lot of places do not have these at all, or extremely few. This makes the game basically unplayable in rural areas, where you'll rapidly run out of items or never find anything interesting.

For me, personally, I feel this game has great potential, but I really miss more openness from Niantic. What are their plans for the future? Which concerns are they acknowledging? Which are intentional features of the game, and thus ignored? I think this game basically blew up in their faces, and they weren't ready to handle the interest. It's sad that they let this chance go, because I think it will be extremely hard for them to redeem themselves after this.

They don't give raw numbers for engagement / time spent in app, but I sorta wonder if that's not a bigger factor than actual lost users. When I would walk around NYC, I would constantly see people playing this game, in the subway, on the streets, etc. I don't think I've seen anyone playing it at all in the past few weeks. Totally anecdotal, but it seems like way more than a 25% drop in people actually actively playing the game.

(Though I don't actually play it - maybe the "active" portion of the game mechanics has just changed character).

I played a lot when Pokemon first came out. But it slowly lost its hold - I found myself gradually playing less and less, and I've pretty much stopped.

I think the problem is that there isn't much keeping people around other than catching new Pokemon and leveling up. Both of those things get progressively harder as you go along, removing the incentives to keep playing. Maybe if there were some sort of quest system (and not the achievements) or real social mechanic, people would stick around for longer.

The sad part is that this is going to be used as a case study in the future on what not to do. I can guarantee it. Every step Niantec has made has been backwards. From removing tracking to making Pokemon harder to catch. The moves they have made are frustrating their players and they're jumping ship as a result.

Persistent Game Without Endgame Content Loses Users

Film at 11

It's still pretty big in Taiwan. All this for a Snorlax! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoYjVTbLWyo

[EDIT: Removed pvp mention because I couldn't find a source]

Also huge in Bangkok still. I see people with matching Pokemon Go tshirts, there are loads of lures around Siam in the afternoon, and hundreds of people camped out all over the malls playing for hours (particularly outside Siam Paragon).

Then again the game was only introduced in Thailand at the start of august.

I'm honestly surprised that there is still 30M users playing. The original tracking system they had in the game was fine, it worked well and I mostly enjoyed playing the game with it. Can anybody shed some light as to why they removed it?

As predicted. The content was too thin, and they're adding more too slowly to keep up with demand. See also: World of Warcraft as an example of a product with a similar problem, albeit a much longer lifecycle.

Wait until school starts...

I'm sure the ban wave of legitimate players interest has died down.

I was banned for using a 'map' as this violated the terms of service. And this left me with no other way to play the game but to violate the terms of service. So you know what - I don't play anymore and Niantic created that situation; not me.

What did they think I would do if they left me without a way to play without violating the 'ToS?'

They released too early with too few low value features.

Pokemon Go used luster purge!

Not everyone is going to be a master

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