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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

#171

Post by x1798DE »

They don't give raw numbers for engagement / time spent in app, but I sorta wonder if that's not a bigger factor than actual lost users. When I would walk around NYC, I would constantly see people playing this game, in the subway, on the streets, etc. I don't think I've seen anyone playing it at all in the past few weeks. Totally anecdotal, but it seems like way more than a 25% drop in people actually actively playing the game.

(Though I don't actually play it - maybe the "active" portion of the game mechanics has just changed character).

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

#172

Post by shkkmo »

khedoros wrote: post #143
ldjb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pokémon Go does have a competitive element to it (or you could say it's possible to play it competitively). You can compete over who can fill up their Pokédex first (okay, just the 145 that are currently available). You can play the game for longer to catch more Pokémon. You can go out of your way to catch rare Pokémon. Even when you and a friend are in the same place catching the same Pokémon, you're not guaranteed…

Fair points. I'll clarify: I don't play in a competitive way. I have no idea how many Pokemon any of my friends have caught. I don't know their levels. I've never tried to hold a gym. Honestly, I was never a heavy map user, either (I discovered them late, and my home apparently doesn't have many nests around it, so there wasn't anything interesting to see). It seems like a philosophical debate: If I'm playing a game…

> have I ruined someone else's game just by the perception that I could have?

You probably aren't ruining anyones game if you aren't competing, but you are still cheating.

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

#173

Post by mahranch »

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,…

Many other mobile games haven't had this kind of reaction.

Gungho's Puzzle and Dragons is one of the most profitable games of all time; it was the first mobile game to break 1 billion in revenue per year. It was released to the NA market 3 or 4 years ago and has continued to increase its player base month after month. Not only that, but they have unprecedented retention. People are still playing it 3 and 4 years later, you just don't get that with any other mobile game.

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

#174

Post by calsy »

ethbro wrote: post #164
bskap wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming your goal is to level up. A lot of people were playing for the collection aspect.

True, "Gotta level up" is a far less compelling motto.

I don't think the motto is the 'foundation' for gameplay. Last I checked pokemon was also about battles.

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

#175

Post by mahranch »

overgard wrote: post #165

I'm not an expert on this, but, those numbers don't seem awful to me. I realize not everyone started the game at the exact same time, but retaining 75% of your users a month later seems pretty good. Pretty much any mobile game is going to have some churn, and given their stratospheric launch it's not like they were realistically going to grow. Given the (MAJOR!) quality problems they've had, they can probably stem th…

Mobile games like puzzle and dragons have never had a month where they did not add to its player base. If it lost 10% of its players in a single month, everyone would be fired. I'm not joking.

Now before you or anyone says that Pokemon is larger, it's not. Puzzle and Dragons might not be as large in America (it's close though), but in Japan, 10% of their entire population plays the game. More people play that game, probably 3 times over, than play Pokemon Go.

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

#176

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

vacri wrote: post #159
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 difficu…

This is why they need a way for players to create this content somehow. Look at the success that Quake and Doom saw with people making maps, mods, full-blown total conversions, etc. I don't think going that extreme applies to Pokemon Go, but it's an example of how players can create the content that prolongs the life of the game.

What I'd like to see is ways for players to do things that have lasting effects on the map. Whether it's moving Pokestops, or making Gyms have some higher purpose, or something I can't think of, I'm not sure.

Right now it's a fairly shallow single-player game that has some extremely minor (Gyms and Lures) multiplayer mechanics.

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

#177

Post by maxsilver »

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…

> there's likely already some sort of effort-reward cycle built into the game that doesn't involve mapping.

You would think that, but there really isn't. It's easier to see if you load up the game for yourself.

Sure, it's true that Niantic didn't plan or intend for usable maps to exist. But it's also true that the game is effectively unplayable without the maps.

The real winner in this whole situation is Nintendo. Niantic has effectively given their entire userbase over to Nintendo -- and even though Nintendo's doing very little to attract or keep them, they'll probably still get some extra 3DS + game sales as a result.

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

#178

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

NDizzle wrote: post #28

They drastically changed some algorithms to (seemingly) make more money. They made the pokemon break free MUCH more often with the update about 10 days ago. You now have to use way more pokeballs to capture things. So much to the point that it's unfun. I don't live near a pokestop so I can't top up quickly. Another thing they did was make it so the pokemon disappear if a range check puts you far enough away from the…

I mainly play while on the bus and this has made it a lot more painful than it used to be. Now I mainly focus on it when the bus is in the downtown core (and basically moving at walking pace).

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

#179

Post by jaimex2 »

seangrogg wrote: post #137
JeremyBanks wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game didn't have maps, but it did have the "footprints" features that would let you zero-in on nearby Pokemon. That's been broken almost since release, and a general replacement still hadn't shipped the last time I checked. The maps were a hack to deal with a broken game, and they eliminated them before addressing the root motivation.

The breaking of the feature was seemingly a response to try and break maps to begin with - the data used in the footprints is what the mapping applications used (along with millions of accounts giving off false coordinates) to triangulate 'mon. The root motivation of the bug was the stressing of the servers by "headless" accounts that existed solely to make mapping software possible. It's unfortunate that they chose…

They removed footprints to reduce server load and increase stability. It had nothing to do with stopping mapping software.

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

#180

Post by Retra »

calsy wrote: post #149
wonder_er wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fascinating to me. Your assessment is entirely defendable, yet in this situation I end up with the opposite assessment: "this is a make believe world with arbitrary rules - bend them as much as you can, because why not" >No one gets to bend the rules of a game because of their circumstance Again, I come to the opposite conclusion, that _because the rules are there_ they are fun to push, modify, bend, break. I…

Its a matter of fair play. I can setup bots to create level 40 characters with high CP pokemon with just a few eggs, walking half as much as other users. Then I'll just take over gyms with my OP pokemon and say 'hey, bending the rules, all good'. In most people's eye that's just dirty play. Same with maps, they are third-party tools used to shortcut success. Yes, the tracking sucks in game (im sure it will improve so…

But someone else could say the same to you:

"But when people cry foul when their preferred method of 'following the rules' is removed, I don't have much pity for them."

...via 10M players leaving the game and putting the entire ecosystem at risk.

The thing is, you're looking at this activity like 'success' is measurable within the game's rules rather than how satisfied people feel about playing the game in real life.

This is a big difference between adults and children, by the way. All that prefrontal cortex development tends to push people into taking the value of their time into consideration even when they are playing games. They are not wrong to do so.

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