The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
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Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#2Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch.
First, the servers have been going up and down like a yoyo, which despite its unprecedented success should never have happened more than once.
Second the app on iOS crashes every few minutes - I've never seen a more buggy app. Using Unity no less. It's not due to some weird edge case, it's constant... log the damn errors and make sure it doesn't happen again. It's Monday, I should have had an update from the App Store by now, but nope.
Third, there's apparently no caching (which might explain their server problems). Every time the app starts (or more likely crashes and restarts), it hits the server to download all the local POI info again from scratch. God help you if you're in a spot with bad connectivity.
Fourth, what is it doing do drain the battery so badly?? I've driven for a couple hours with maps apps running without killing my device. It must have zero logic in the app to manage power drain because it'll kill my iPhone in an hour easily.
This game owes its success 100% to the popularity of Pokemon and nothing else, the app would never had any success if it had to stand on its own merits. As it is, Niantic is doing its utmost to kill the franchise with their ineptitude.
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#3Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…
Well, sounds a lot like Twitter in the early days.
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#4Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…
Personally I can deal with the other stuff but I can't stand looking at that silly looking character walking over a featureless flat blue map of every parkbench around my building.
As far as I can tell there are no "friends", "clans", or even any way to battle your pokemon. I think I've clicked through everything and after restarting the game 50 some times looking for the core features associated with pokemon and now I've given up.
In what way does this constitute a game? The technical issues can be fixed but I feel like there are some more fundamental features. What was the company even doing this entire time? Those spinners in the pokecenters couldn't have taken years to build, and it also couldn't have taken years to populate the map with zubats and wevils.
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#5Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…
Well apart from all this it sounds like a well designed app.
More seriously I think as tech people we overvalue product quality and undervalue market demand. If you create something people really want then they will tolerate very poor quality.
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#6Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…
Why is it so bad? I assume its the same team that built and runs Ingress. It's been around for years. Not as popular so I can excuse the server load issues, but shouldn't the app/gameplay be more solid?
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#7Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…
This is a reskinned Ingress, with simpler game mechanics.
Log the damn errors and make sure it doesn't happen again? Have you written software? That is the most simplistic advice in the world. By your thoughts, all software should have been updated in a few days to be bug free.
Had an update from the App Store? You realize that is gated by Apple and that you have to submit the update and wait an indeterminate amount of time for the update to be approved before appearing on the App Store?
No caching? How would you cache game state when at any time the board state can change without warning, due to the actions of another player? And cached game state would invalidate your game actions, which would cause inconsistencies.
With draining battery, it needs location services as well as constant internet connectivity. If you're looking for directions, you can make educated guesses when you're going to have to pull location again. Whereas now, you have to constantly be polling, because you yourself don't know where you're headed.
And re: Nianitic's "ineptitude", you don't have any ideas what problems they're trying to solve.
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#8Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…
Personally I can deal with the other stuff but I can't stand looking at that silly looking character walking over a featureless flat blue map of every parkbench around my building. As far as I can tell there are no "friends", "clans", or even any way to battle your pokemon. I think I've clicked through everything and after restarting the game 50 some times looking for the core features associated with pokemon and now…
GO has teams (Red, Blue, Yellow). You need to get to level 5 to join a team. Once you join a team you can battle at and take over gyms.
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I can deal with the other stuff but I can't stand looking at that silly looking character walking over a featureless flat blue map of every parkbench around my building. As far as I can tell there are no "friends", "clans", or even any way to battle your pokemon. I think I've clicked through everything and after restarting the game 50 some times looking for the core features associated with pokemon and now…
GO has teams (Red, Blue, Yellow). You need to get to level 5 to join a team. Once you join a team you can battle at and take over gyms.
Well that answers it. If I can get the app to work long enough to reach level 5 I'll try that.
It's a good thing they decided not to include that information from the start. They wouldn't want people to think there might actually be something fun to do.
Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
#10Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…
This is a reskinned Ingress, with simpler game mechanics. Log the damn errors and make sure it doesn't happen again? Have you written software? That is the most simplistic advice in the world. By your thoughts, all software should have been updated in a few days to be bug free. Had an update from the App Store? You realize that is gated by Apple and that you have to submit the update and wait an indeterminate amount…
> By your thoughts, all software should have been updated in a few days to be bug free.
Anyone who has used this app knows it is extremely crashy. It's not supposed to be bug-free, but releasing an app this crashy is fairly sloppy.