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Comment by t_mann | Hacker News Reader

It still pains me to think what a disappointment and missed opportunity Pokemon Go was imho. I don't get it why they ditched the signature Pokemon fighting system for something pretty arbitrary, and so many other strange decisions that only make sense if you know that they also built Ingress and probably approached Pokemon Go as another iteration of that instead of building on the - extremely well established - Pokemon games.

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It’s in a weird spot as one of the biggest successes in gaming history while also representing one of the biggest fumbles in gaming history.

Pokémon Go with a more aggressive turnaround time could have easily been Fortnite x10.

Exactly. Yes, it's a successful game by traditional standards, but the initial hype was the biggest in gaming ever, by a wide margin. I'd argue that it would not have been that hard to convert a much higher percentage of those initial players with a few simple features like a decent battle and levelling system (simply use the template they used for every other Pokemon game) and optional PvP action (just challenge someone in your vicinity). I'm pretty sure people would have opened cafes just to facilitate Pokemon Go PvP battles.

Ye ... the strange thing is that it would not even be that challenging to make.

Man, the first month after Pokemon Go got released was absolutely wild. Everyone everywhere catching Pokemon. Insane.

It was a disappointment for you maybe. It was a huge success and appealed to people outside the typical video game audience. You don’t get that by rehashing a 25 year old Game Boy game again.

I don't deny that Pokemon Go was a huge success and that it has a lot of players who love it for what it is. I just wish somebody was still going to build an actual location-based Pokemon game.

Could Niantic do a better job? Yes

> I just wish somebody was still going to build an actual location-based Pokemon game.

Pokemon Go is absolutely a "location-based Pokemon game" today. The mechanics are simplified from the mainline console games, but it's definitely location-based Pokemon.

The core mechanics of Pokemon are arguably the battles and catch'em'all. Pokemon Go is only a Pokemon game if you don't consider battles a core mechanic. The battle system in Pokemon Go had nothing to do with the Pokemon battle system, and not much strategy or tactics to it at all.

There was no need to simplify the battles, they were already as simple as it gets: select a Pokemon, select an attack, watch the result. Easy to learn, some tactical depth, works on mobile, accessible for all ages -> no need for changes. I'd say that the Pokemon Go battles were actually no simpler, they just lacked any depth and were less accessible.

> I don't get it why they ditched the signature Pokemon fighting system for something pretty arbitrary,

This is the biggest fumble and what cemented the death of the game to me. Here’s what I think should have happened:

* Used the regular fighting system (turn based fighting)

* Allow players to have 6 on-hand Pokémon with the ability to preset teams.

* Any Pokémon caught after all 6 slots are filled are stored in the PC.

* Utilize the nostalgia of the old Gameboy/DS System and allow players that are within a certain distance to start a battle.

* Allow the creation of local tournaments (no exp gained )

* Hold regional based Tournaments where the winner is named the champion of that region and is qualified to participate in a National tournament.

* Hold a Worldwide tournament crowning a Pokémon World Champion. Participants must be winners of their nation’s tournament. (World Cup but for Pokémon)

* After a quantifiable amount of World Champions are made have prestigious “Pokémon Master” Tournament where the winner is crowned a Pokémon Master. Participants must be winners and runner ups of the World championship. Pull out all the stops to make this a hyped event on the same standing as League of Legends/Valorant E-sports tournaments since your already suing an IP greater than it.

* Add Dual Battle’s with a friend

* Hold Safari Zones/Events that allow rare specific Pokémon to be captured with increase of shinies (should have made these rare)

* For non PVP-players add in a Pokémon Snap like competition where participants can submit Photos of their Pokémon or wild Pokémon.

So much potential squandered.

I also felt that it was very boring and not living up to the hype at all, as the "gameplay" was basically to walk around and tap your screen sometimes to collect something or make a gesture on your screen to catch random useless Pokémon xyz by making a gesture instead. Besides the lackluster gameplay I also didn't see any meaningful progression system, so it lost my interest very quickly. The AR features were very gimmicky.

It could have been so much more. However I may not be in the target audience and some people did seem to enjoy the casual style - or play a lot despite that.

It was also obvious from the second you started playing that you were expected to shell out lots of money to get any semblance of the "designed experience".

Also for some reason there were no poke stops or anything of note within many miles of my home. I live in a city of 60k people. But niantic originally populated their map based on the important locations in ingress, so if that game wasn't popular where you lived you basically got locked out of gameplay.

Ingress was much better about giving you a real reason to pick out specific places. You didn't HAVE to do it, but building large fields to cover big territory was (and may well still be) a huge part of what made the game fun for a lot of people, as was building blocking links in order to stop others from doing the same thing. And all of that actually made use of the map effectively.

Pokemon Go, on the other hand...never really did. Sure, you've got the gyms, and biomes...the raids turned into this whole weird activity of piling into cars to drive from raid to raid...but generally, a raid in one place was as good as a raid in another. And dear god, while I thought Ingress had you staring at your phone a bit too much, at least if you were out doing those fielding trips, you had it in your pocket in between portals (which, depending on your area, could have been miles). Not generally so with Pokemon Go (though I'm sure rural players will disagree with me here).

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