Comment by SyneRyder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SyneRyder | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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