By now, it’s well known that Pokémon Go sucks. My biggest problem with it is just how shallow it is. It’s like a minimum viable product with a vaguely addicting gameplay loop.
Here is a short list of ideas that could’ve made the game more interesting. Pretty much every problem boils down to “but implementing this would’ve made us lose money”
Pokestops could’ve been “typed”. Like “hospital” could’ve been a free heal or have better healing item rates. “Museum” could’ve been the place to get fossil Pokémon, or maybe revive fossils that you find from regular stops. Maybe a grocery store would’ve had better item rates. A school could’ve been a move relearner. Maybe some Pokémon only evolve at church, or at an amusement park. The lures could’ve done something similar, turning normal stops into typed stops. They had so much power at their disposal. They ran on Google maps, ffs.
The friend system is just so stupid. For some reason, it’s the best way to farm items? Why can I send a gift at no personal cost to someone else and they receive items? This caused communities to form where people just share friend codes. Also, the fact that theirs a limit to how many you can open a day, and that each one must be opened individually taking about 10 seconds is to cause you to form either habit or routine. Friends should be people you know or maybe people who live in your area, so you can get to know people.
The battle system is weird, but I don’t explicitly hate it. It’s more interactive than mainline, and that’s fine.
The shadow system is dumb, and designed to be extremely addictive. A small rotation of Pokémon with higher attack, lower defense isn’t a horrible idea. But the rates are so hard you’re encouraged to log on just to fight rocket balloons.
Why does trading randomize stats? I’m obviously trading because I want their Pokémon. Not just any Pokémon of that species.
Why is there no way to increase appraisal stats? This is what the buddy system should’ve been. Like raising stats of a Chao from Sonic Adventure 2. Work hard, and reset the Pokémon frequently to slowly increase their stats overtime. Maybe every 10 km as your buddy increased 1 IV by 1 point. This would’ve been great for Shiny Pokémon. Instead, having a good shiny just means you’re lucky.
I hate the limited time moves so much. If you evolve your Pokémon at the wrong time, it can be less than half as useful. The only fix is to pay a lot of money for an elite TM.
It’s like a minimum viable product with a vaguely addicting gameplay loop.
You could have just stopped there. Every mass-market mobile game ends up in this trap.
Lol. Yeah, pretty much
sad that we’re at this point. when I was young I loved Pokemon and imagined where it could go in the future. was SO EXCITED to hear pokemon go announced. apart from a week or two of social interactions when everyone had got the game all at once, it had no longevity and that was that. it could have been so beautiful!
Honestly, a minimum viable product is entirely what Pokemon Go was designed to be. It exists to extract behavioral surplus from users and convert it into valuable action by inviting users to go to certain places in a community through placement of Pokestops and Gyms. Basically a tool to drive foot traffic, which Niantic can (and does) sell to businesses that want to drive that foot traffic. It worked brilliantly for years and still is a somewhat effective method of driving advertising and sales for real world businesses.
The prequal, Ingress, was even simpler, but that probably made it better as a long run game. There were portals to harvest and a simple system to create triangles between portals to claim territories. Nothing overly complex, and no expectations to bring gameplay mechanics from an other game.
Ingress was obviously dead as soon as Niantic launched the much more popular Pokémon Go. Of course fantastic for Niantic, but I just feel like Ingress would have been a game I would have played for a lot longer if Pokémon Go didn’t happen.
My biggest gripe, although I can understand the reasoning behind it, is that the encounter rates are totally backwards. All the Pokémon, stops and gyms are in cities, and there are scarcely any in the wilderness, skewing the game in favour of those who live in or near cities.
Also, the Pokémon games contain all the elements to make a great ARG MMO. Why reinvent it? They could’ve easily put their paywalls and micro transactions in place while still keeping the traditional Pokémon formula.
It’s not a terrible game, and it obviously has a following and makes money, but it could’ve been so much better. They totally dropped the Pokéball.
I meant to write “AR MMO”. Phone autocorrected.
I played in 2016 and started playing again in 2023 and I was surprised at how little had changed but its par for the course for the pokemon franchise.
Almost all your other grievances are partly due to how mobile games are monetized and how much of it relies on fear of missing out (applies to regular pokemon events too). Pokemon Go is a constant stream of FOMO to try and get you to spend money when there’s barely any payoff. A pokemon you can catch in the wild can already be 87% of the way to a perfect pokemon you spend months (years?) getting stardust, candy and XL candy to max out.
I’ve noticed that. Early on, I caught a full on dragonite that had decent stats and a high level. He’s still viable to use even today.
Same here. I played in 2016, dropped it for ages because there wasn’t much too it (especially for those of us who don’t live in cities), and picked it up again in 2023. That was largely because friends were playing it. I got bored and dropped it again in less than a week. Apparently my Pokemon from 2016 are quite valuable because of… something that was added to the game that makes them very desirable? But given I didn’t want to keep playing, what would I trade them for that I’d actually want?
I mostly picked it back up to have access to the PoGo exclusive shinies (Mew, Jirachi, Meltan/Melmetal, Genesect and Deoxys) but I just spoof instead (trying to play in negative temps outside of a city is no fun) and just trade cool stuff to friends (who live in different places so I can’t even trade with them legitimately if I wanted to).
Another example of bullshit is the PAID shiny Mew ticket. Even after you pay for it you still need to complete a potentially ridiculous requirement of completing the kanto dex. Which would be fine if they didn’t geolock Kangaskhan to Australia (outside of events in the past?) so you would be shit out of luck if you didn’t either already have one or knew someone you can meet up with in real life that did.
As for your 2016 mons, the first 9 or so you trade will be guaranteed to be lucky meaning an IV floor of 12/12/12 or 80% (and half stardust cost) so you would ideally trade them for something strong and/or shiny like a shiny legendary or strong mega/dragon/top within its type pokemon. All 2016 pokemon have like a 75% of making a trade lucky so they’re all valuable. Another trick to get people to nag their friends and family to start playing again.
I hate the dumbed down battling system. Why can’t CP be a function of level and stats found in a regular pokemon game instead of one number to rule them all, and have the battles be like the mainline games?
That’s a great point. CP is hugely flawed.
Niantic would need to retroactively add the speed stat to every pokemon. Considering their spaghetti code is held on by duct tape and bailing wire.
There are numbers behind the scenes that correspond to attack, defense, speed, and hp which when weighted create CP. The weights are favoring attack and hp.
It’s very frustrating thinking of how great this game could have been. It was barely a game at release and hardly anything has been added to it. I haven’t been following for a few years but I wouldn’t be surprised if Niantic removed all pokemon and just added a “give us money for no reason” button.
Pretty much. Wouldn’t surprise me at all
I dunno. I have friends who just seem to enjoy the game without stressing themselves too much…
Pretty much every problem boils down to “but implementing this would’ve made us lose money”
Pokestops could’ve been “typed”. Like “hospital” could’ve been a free heal or have better healing item rates. “Museum” could’ve been the place to get fossil Pokémon, or maybe revive fossils that you find from regular stops. Maybe a grocery store would’ve had better item rates. A school could’ve been a move relearner. Maybe some Pokémon only evolve at church, or at an amusement park. The lures could’ve done something similar, turning normal stops into typed stops
I’m glad they didn’t, but they could have definitely done ad deals with some large franchises and small businesses to make their locations have special features.
They did that though. You got a reward for visiting, I think it was Sprint?
I meant sticking core functionality like the suggestions I responded to. “Oh, it’s so sad your pokemon got injured and will be out of commission for 6 weeks. Luckily for you, if you get in line at a Starbucks then stay in the shop for 10 minutes, or go through the drive through, he’ll be feeling good as new.” “Your pokemon laid an egg. It will hatch in 9 months, or you can spend an hour inside this concert venue to get it now.”
I’m still playing. It’s fun for a few minutes a day.
It’s addicting. I play it all the time, and I wouldn’t describe my experience as fun. That does change when I’m with friends
I have major issues with this game’s battling system. The original game’s combat is pretty complex but it is well balanced with 6 different stats, types, abilities, etc. Pokemon go simplifies it into type advantages and a number (CP). CP is more affected by atk than def and hp. This (amongst other things) trivializes def and hp stats.
I was hopeful that they would rework this with pvp but they didn’t. Instead they tried to copy the Smogon tiers (the different leagues) but somehow made the original combat which requires a lot of strategy to a dumb tap fast to win combat.
I used to play Pokemon Go a lot till covid and I kept hoping for better updates and new mechanics (I even theorized how they could translate the turn based combat to real time) but it seemwd they didn’t want to make it anymore than what it was so I quit.
Yeah, it’s sad but not surprising that they ended up being like any other “free” mobile game.
But I always thought that this type of game has a lot of potential, and I’d like to see someone give it a try again, especially if instead of a corporation it was a community project inspired on the fediverse, it would help split costs by having the load be split on many different servers that would cover each a different part of the world, and each region could have its own monsters inspired from the local folklore (this is a feature I really wanted in Pokemon Go, imagine if only Hawaii had the Alola versions of pokemons, and people could trade for them).
