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

arstechnica.com

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

#61

Post by SyneRyder »

calbear81 wrote: post #56
SyneRyder wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oth…

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 de…

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....

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

#62

Post by calbear81 »

SyneRyder wrote: post #61
calbear81 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

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 lo…

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.

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

#63

Post by wott »

120bits wrote: post #20

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 frien…

> 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.

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

#64

Post by take_it_online »

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.

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

#65

Post by 120bits »

wott wrote: post #63
120bits wrote: post #20

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 frien…

> 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 b…

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.

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

#67

Post by stanmancan »

jampa wrote: post #60
wcarss wrote: post #16

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.…

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 we…

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

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

#68

Post by riskable »

mjevans wrote: post #44
wcarss wrote: post #16

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.…

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'…

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.

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

#69

Post by shreve »

cheald wrote: post #30
wcarss wrote: post #16

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.…

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…

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.

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

#70

Post by Larrikin »

stephaniepier wrote: post #47
calbear81 wrote: post #3

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 o…

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 bas…

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

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