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?
Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
31–40 of 250 posts
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#32I 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 o…
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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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?
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#34The 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.…
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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#35Note: 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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#36It'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).
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#37I 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 o…
> 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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#38I 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 o…
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Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#39I 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 o…
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.
Re: Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10M users
#40The 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.…
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, Nia…
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.