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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

#151

Post by duaneb »

bskap wrote: post #133
duaneb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, what competitive play? I'm not competing against you or anyone else, by any reasonable metric. You are competing for valuable pokemon, which IS the point of the game.

Why do you think there's a competition for valuable pokemon? When a pokemon spawns in an area, it spawns for everyone in that area and everyone who stops by can catch it. You're not competing with everyone else to get there first.

> When a pokemon spawns in an area, it spawns for everyone in that area and everyone who stops by can catch it.

Well, until someone catches it. Then it disappears.

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

#152

Post by duaneb »

khedoros wrote: post #134
duaneb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, what competitive play? I'm not competing against you or anyone else, by any reasonable metric. You are competing for valuable pokemon, which IS the point of the game.

> You are competing for valuable pokemon, which IS the point of the game. I'm not. The coworker next to me and I routinely catch the same Pokemon at the same time. Watching it on the map made it clear: if someone catches it, it doesn't just disappear. It's there for a set amount of time. When the time is up, that's when it can't be caught by someone else.

Too bad I can't coordinate with every single person in my city to catch the pokemon I want in the same 30 second timeframe. I've been so silly trying to spend my time hunting down the pokemon I want just to see it vanish!

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

#153

Post by icefox »

tux1968 wrote: post #135
vlunkr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I mostly agree, I wouldn't say they are entirely a step backwards. Pokemon Go broke the mold and did something that would not really work on any past platform.

I have never played Pokemon Go, but i'm curious what mold it broke? Ingress was around a long time previously and as far as i've surmised contains essentially all the features of Go plus some more. What it lacked was the compelling and nostalgic branding that Pokemon has. Genuinely curious.

Shops paid to put lures out, it was a way to get advertisers to pay for the game, but without spam ads.

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

#154

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

I hope they add some more stuff to the game to keep it fresh and interesting. As it is, I've caught Pokemon, won Gym Battles, lost Gym Battles, evolved Pokemon, visited hundreds of Pokestops, and Hatched Eggs. I think I've touched on every game mechanic, though I haven't caught every Pokemon.

I'd like to see some things that allow the players more ways to change the map in a way that interacts with other players. Right now that's only done by Gym Battles and by placing Lures in Pokestops.

Some of the ideas I've got are:

- Some way for players to place markers on the map to indicate that Pokemon have seen, rally players to a spot, etc.

- A way for players to create new Pokestops.

- Some kind of quest mechanic where players could create quests and embark on quests created by others.

All of these could be tied to the in-game purchase system. They'd need some way to prevent abuse of it, of course.

The biggest problem I have is that it feels very much like a single-player game, and a fairly shallow one at that, with some very minor multiplayer elements.

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

#155

Post by mahranch »

derefr wrote: post #91
cheald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> By taking out the maps, Niantic has turned their scavenger hunt into a scratch-off lotto ticket ... they broke the effort-reward cycle You're phrasing this almost as if Niantic wanted there to be third-party mapping apps in the first place, and then changed its mind. The game Niantic released doesn't have mapping, and didn't intend to have an open API. This can be read as an implicit statement that the game design…

> almost as if Niantic wanted there to be third-party mapping apps in the first place, and then changed its mind.

Didn't they though? At the very beginning of the game, you had footprints you could track and use to "hunt" down nearby pokemon. They took it out because it was hurting their servers. Maps allowed similar hunting. I would say that Niantic did in fact, change its mind.

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

#156

Post by NamTaf »

The game consists of 2 mechanics: 1) Collect everything 2) Battle gyms for arbitrary cred

at the moment, both oppose each other because the maps people make to make #1 easier, make it easier for a subset of people to dominate #2 easier. By removing the maps that make #2 so unbalanced, #1 becomes a repetitive chore.

There's literally nothing more to the game than those two mechanics. There's no end goal like the other pokemon games. There's no higher goal to work towards from capturing gyms and holding areas.

It's no surprise that the game is dying. Either you collect the 80% that are easy to find and then it just becomes a huge chore without the necessary tools to find the last 20%, or you powerlevel up to fight in gyms for a bit and then... what exactly?

Niantic should've taken another 3-6 months of heavy dev time to really polish it and add more depth to it. Create a higher purpose for holding gyms. Create a more compelling search mechanism that doesn't allow maps but then doesn't make the last 20% of the search such a huge, completely random-chance chore.

There needs to be more to the game than those two mechanics and every moment it's released but there's not, it just withers. No amount of patching in an IV% calculator by visiting your 'trainer' will help that, because it still just relies on those two very broken pillars.

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

#157

Post by justinhj »

djsumdog wrote: post #23

I feel like this is a case, "No shit, what did you think would happen?" It is a free-to-play game after all. I'd suggest watching the developer of Braid talk about free-to-play games. He compares them to 90's syndicated TV shows, each one being independent and leaving you with a cliffhanger prior to each commercial break. When HBO started producing long running series that would eventually be released on VHS and DVD,…

Despite your opinions hundreds of millions of people are being entertained by free to play games right at this moment. Most of them for free. Braid was a good puzzle game but its reach is tiny in comparison. You can blame it on abusing psychology or marketing dollars, or you can meet and talk with the people that play and enjoy these games every day.

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

#158

Post by calsy »

khedoros wrote: post #146
calsy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheatings cheating doesn't matter who, what, where or how you play it. All games are bound by rules set for ALL players. No one gets to bend the rules of a game because of their circumstance for e.g. 'I work all day, so I should have access to tools that give me an advantage over others'. Games are not an equal opportunity endeavour where everyone gets to be a winner. Those who play by the rules and practice (or grin…

> No one gets to bend the rules of a game because of their circumstance Sure they do, and for any other reason that they want to. > Games are not an equal opportunity endeavour where everyone gets to be a winner. My point exactly. I still don't get to be a winner, because I don't have the time to put into it. But at least I get to enjoy the time that I have. > Those who play by the rules and practice (or grind) shoul…

I don't think breaking down someone's reply into bite sized snippets and responding to each out of context is a great way to do a rebuttal. Anyway,

'No one gets to bend the rules of a game' is the basic principle of fair play and sportsmanship. You dont have time so you want to circumvent progress quicker because you enjoy it more is not within the bounds of fair play.

The GPS spoofing is certainly bending the rules, but the game allowed you to do that without penalty. Ask most players though and they will say it's unfair as it's a shortcut to success. Now that Niantic has come down on those GPS hacks, do I feel sorry for those people caught out, of course not.

The maps issue is no different. It's like an athlete complaining that his favourite performance enhancing drug has recently be banned, well forgive me if I don't leap to his defence.

Its not like the game is unforgiving to new players, it's very easy to level up in early stages and make good progress.

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

#159

Post by vacri »

NamTaf wrote: post #156

The game consists of 2 mechanics: 1) Collect everything 2) Battle gyms for arbitrary cred at the moment, both oppose each other because the maps people make to make #1 easier, make it easier for a subset of people to dominate #2 easier. By removing the maps that make #2 so unbalanced, #1 becomes a repetitive chore. There's literally nothing more to the game than those two mechanics. There's no end goal like the other…

This was the problem with Niantic's earlier game Ingress. It was fun to play while levelling up, which masked some of the repetitive nature of the game, but once you reached the highest level, there was nothing else to do except keep doing what you were already doing.

The problem with all of these kinds of games (MMOs in particular) is that people consume content far faster than it can be created. It's quite difficult to create self-sustaining content.

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

#160

Post by greedo »

duaneb wrote: post #151
bskap wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think there's a competition for valuable pokemon? When a pokemon spawns in an area, it spawns for everyone in that area and everyone who stops by can catch it. You're not competing with everyone else to get there first.

> When a pokemon spawns in an area, it spawns for everyone in that area and everyone who stops by can catch it. Well, until someone catches it. Then it disappears.

Uh no. It doesn't disappear because it was caught.
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