Let's give it a minute.
Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
71–80 of 144 posts
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#72I don't have the game, but it sounds like GPS power drain is the big problem. Is there not some way to improve that? Maybe only turn on GPS intermittently and use accelerometers, wireless signals or the camera to track your position from the last known point and any landmarks?
Get a mobile power bank.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#73A few thoughts: 1. I tried playing this game, but really don't enjoy it. It feels to me it's not about strategy as much as it's "the one who puts in the most hours of playing wins". Felt actually like work to me. 2. I don't see this game being a long term super success, as it is now. I'd imagine cohort analysis would show the first cohorts waning in usage in the next several weeks. I imagine as more people begin play…
1. Many successful computer games are this. Did you ever play a MMORPG?
2. Sure, many players will play less as time goes on, but with the kinds of numbers they're seeing now they'll be massively popular for a long time.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just not economically viable to scale your architecture to day-one or week-one traffic requirements. Look at Blizzard games for comparison, a new release every year or so and they're NEVER equipped to handle it. They know that by the end of the month, user count will drop sharply before stabilizing at a much more manageable level.
Another good example of this are the Steam sales, especially the big ones (summer and christmas sales render the store completely unusable for the first day or so) It's "good enough" for the week of the sale, upgrading all the servers for a week of super heavy traffic just to see them idle the rest of the year isn't a great business plan
The calculus has to be how much it would cost to temporarily bring in, run, maintain e.g. AWS boxes versus how much revenue is left on the table by the slow store. I presume Blizzard has run those numbers and decided it wasn't worth it.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#75I would be very happy if Niantec releases an in-depth write up on the how the backend was implemented and what measures they took to make it scale to handle this kind of traffic. I don't care much for the game, but details of why the servers weren't (aren't?) able to handle the traffic interests me immensely.
I look forward to what they can further do to improve things. For instance they don't cache pokestop images, my phone keeps redownloading the same images from pokestops and gyms, if it just cached the top 10 most visited pokestops and gyms that would be a decent reduction in data use. Also it would help if they offloaded some of the work of the GPS onto the local phone steptracking/direction trackers it would help. I…
FWIW I'm in the US and I get the laggy/soft locking up experience you mentioned all the time. I think they just didn't write the app to be very reselient to and RPC failures.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just not economically viable to scale your architecture to day-one or week-one traffic requirements. Look at Blizzard games for comparison, a new release every year or so and they're NEVER equipped to handle it. They know that by the end of the month, user count will drop sharply before stabilizing at a much more manageable level.
Another good example of this are the Steam sales, especially the big ones (summer and christmas sales render the store completely unusable for the first day or so) It's "good enough" for the week of the sale, upgrading all the servers for a week of super heavy traffic just to see them idle the rest of the year isn't a great business plan
There are several firms that offer computing capacity online, at much more granular terms than "the rest of the year". It seems these "cloud" computing services are common topics of discussion here on HN.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, I used AR mode for the first few days but I turned it off eventually. It had bugs on my Nexus 5x where it would do some weird stuff to the live preview from the camera, like stretching the video and other artifacts. It also drained my battery significantly faster. Finally, it's just plain easier to catch Pokemon with AR mode turned off, which kind of sucks since that's the killer feature. I'd like to kn…
Th 'AR' mode is terrible . I had hoped for at least an attempt at registration and tracking. It's not AR, it's just a gyro based 3D app that happens to use the camera feed as a background.
>Gyro-based 3D with camera feed background
Isn't that how augmented reality works? I can't think of any other way to do it, unless you are tracking specific objects and overlay something on top of it.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#78I would be very happy if Niantec releases an in-depth write up on the how the backend was implemented and what measures they took to make it scale to handle this kind of traffic. I don't care much for the game, but details of why the servers weren't (aren't?) able to handle the traffic interests me immensely.
I look forward to what they can further do to improve things. For instance they don't cache pokestop images, my phone keeps redownloading the same images from pokestops and gyms, if it just cached the top 10 most visited pokestops and gyms that would be a decent reduction in data use. Also it would help if they offloaded some of the work of the GPS onto the local phone steptracking/direction trackers it would help. I…
Offloading the GPS work to the step/direction trackers in the phone would also be great for those of us that work in big old buildings that do a great job of blocking my GPS position.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, it seems just like any other fad. The technology involved has been around for a while, and nobody paid much attention to it before. I'd be interested to see articles detailing technical difficulties that they may have overcome, but I've seen way too many articles just saying "Pokemon GO now has more X than Y".
I'm curious about the social consequences of mass adoption. I'm already seeing groups of random people gathering around gyms when they see they are taken by their team/in the process of being taken away. The meta-game that might develop is interesting, and only possible due to wide adoption.
Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook
#80The success of Pokémon Go as the first breakout AR "belief circle" certainly seems like a victory for the Scooch-a-mouti. I wonder how the Librarians Militant will respond?