You’ll be able to trade and fight with friends in Pokémon Go... eventually

Long-promised features are still coming to fix the "local spawn issue"

Read the whole story

 

[flerchin]

We still play, and my kids would really enjoy battling and trading. Not sure if that puts me in the top or bottom 20%.

 

[Lycanos]

I still start the app every day, catch one 'mon and spin a stop and then leave it on while I drive to work (not playing or looking at it, just catching .2k egg distance on my 20k commute...). I certainly dont go out and hunt or anything like that.

 

[noodz]

I'm skeptic about PvP combat coming any time soon. It's obviously Niantic is chronically understaffed for the sheer size of the game. Implementing enhancements is a very slow and gradual affair, more radical changes such as raids might come maybe once a year.

And from a business standpoint, that's exactly what Niantic should do. Even if PoGo's considered past its prime at this point, it's still printing money for Nintendo and Google. From business standpoint it's best to add content in a very gradual manner, so you can get the most money from your development.

 

[nitePhyyre]

We’ve only accomplished 10 percent of what Pokémon and Niantic are trying to do

The game has been out for over a year already. Still only at 10%? You guys suck. Or your developers are doing cocaine and prostitutes instead of developing.

You should have been able to get to at least 17% at this point.

 

[seraphimcaduto]

Trading Pokémon and PvP are the two reasons I still check the app to see if they have been added yet. It would add a dimension to play that has existed on other electronic games for years (or decades is you count consoles/PCs/Arcade games).

 

[nitePhyyre]

I'm skeptic about PvP combat coming any time soon. It's obviously Niantic is chronically understaffed for the sheer size of the game. Implementing enhancements is a very slow and gradual affair, more radical changes such as raids might come maybe once a year.

And from a business standpoint, that's exactly what Niantic should do. Even if PoGo's considered past its prime at this point, it's still printing money for Nintendo and Google. From business standpoint it's best to add content in a very gradual manner, so you can get the most money from your development.

Adding features so slowly that you lose 80% of your player base probably isn't the best idea. You make more from 15 million people doing microtransactions than you can from 5.

 

[daneren2005]

I'm skeptic about PvP combat coming any time soon. It's obviously Niantic is chronically understaffed for the sheer size of the game. Implementing enhancements is a very slow and gradual affair, more radical changes such as raids might come maybe once a year.

And from a business standpoint, that's exactly what Niantic should do. Even if PoGo's considered past its prime at this point, it's still printing money for Nintendo and Google. From business standpoint it's best to add content in a very gradual manner, so you can get the most money from your development.

Adding features so slowly that you lose 80% of your player base probably isn't the best idea. You make more from 15 million people doing microtransactions than you can from 5.

Let's be fair. Losing 80% of their playerbase had little to do with features not being added quickly enough. At it's peak it was a buggy unusable mess and they constantly did everything in their power to make actually finding pokemon as unfun as possible until a few months ago. The mass exodus has more to do with taking too long to fix those core problems then with not adding trading or player battles.

 

[gmerrick]

I'm skeptic about PvP combat coming any time soon. It's obviously Niantic is chronically understaffed for the sheer size of the game. Implementing enhancements is a very slow and gradual affair, more radical changes such as raids might come maybe once a year.

And from a business standpoint, that's exactly what Niantic should do. Even if PoGo's considered past its prime at this point, it's still printing money for Nintendo and Google. From business standpoint it's best to add content in a very gradual manner, so you can get the most money from your development.

Adding features so slowly that you lose 80% of your player base probably isn't the best idea. You make more from 15 million people doing microtransactions than you can from 5.

Let's be fair. Losing 80% of their playerbase had little to do with features not being added quickly enough. At it's peak it was a buggy unusable mess and they constantly did everything in their power to make actually finding pokemon as unfun as possible until a few months ago. The mass exodus has more to do with taking too long to fix those core problems then with not adding trading or player battles.

That and there were absolutely no pokeymon anywhere in the area where I lived other than pidgies.... lots and lots of pidgies.

 

[Z1ggy]

right now, i use pokemon go as an incentive to get off my ass while im at work and take a walk.

 

[Entegy]

I actually don't think trading is a good idea for PoGo. Less incentive to go find Pokémon, although Niantic created the problem of being unable to complete the Pokédex itself with regional exclusives.

 

[mmiller7]

Wonder if they'll fix the loading/crashing issues. I haven't played in months - I try now and then but after sitting at the loading screen for 3-5 minutes I usually get distracted by other things and forget about it. Sometimes after a few screen-timeouts (because they apparently can't make it keep your display on even though it requires the display be on to even count walking) sometimes it will log in and begin loading the map, other times it gives some cryptic useless error like "No internet connection" or "Login failed" and stops working.

I know I have working internet because other things work great, I can do speedtests 40+Mbps for cellular and I can browse the web or watch a video near-instantly without even buffering most of the time.

It's one of those things I *WANT* to like but every time I try I feel more and more disappointed.

 

[TK]

That and there were absolutely no pokeymon anywhere in the area where I lived other than pidgies.... lots and lots of pidgies.

You didn't try to cheat or get any nastygrams from them did you?

That's not an accusation - apparently when they detect a cheater, their account gets flagged so that they only see Pidgies and other really common ones from there on out. Maybe a false positive thing?

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/05/pokmo ... er-spawns/

 

[Munden]

I modded one of those pokemon go plus keychains to auto-catch and auto-spin pokestops for a friend, which in turn got me back into it. Now I'm toying with ideas involving GPS repeaters to automate walking.

 

[phoenix_rizzen]

Trading Pokémon and PvP are the two reasons I still check the app to see if they have been added yet. It would add a dimension to play that has existed on other electronic games for years (or decades is you count consoles/PCs/Arcade games).

Forget PvP. I'm still waiting to be able to train a Pokemon by battling it against wild Pokemon. You know, like they do in the TV shows, the movies, the Gameboy games, the card games, etc. Every freaking variation of Pokemon allows you to pick a Pokemon, and use that to battle wild Pokemon to either level up your Pokemon or weaken it enough to capture it.

The capture mechanics in PGo are the lamest part of it, and the part that's least like any other Pokemon game. And the stardust mechanism to "power up" your Pokemon is just dumb. Even my 6-year old keeps asking when she can use her Pokemon to properly battle other Pokemon (instead of just randomly tapping the screen).

 

[Bloodgod]

I've never played Pokemon Go, but I've been a player of Fire Emblem: Heroes since the US launch day. FEH should be the golden standard by which Nintendo proceeds with FTP mobile.

The game has received amazing support and listened quickly to player feedback. As far as content and features go, I'm almost worried they are adding new features too fast, if anything.

 

[+Griz]

That's not an accusation - apparently when they detect a cheater, their account gets flagged so that they only see Pidgies and other really common ones from there on out. Maybe a false positive thing?

it's also what happens if you try to play in a rural area. I quit because all I ever got at home and work was common trash spawns and I didn't care enough to drive downtown and deal with the parking nightmare just to play a phone game.

 

[Hack-n-Slash]

I actually don't think trading is a good idea for PoGo. Less incentive to go find Pokémon, although Niantic created the problem of being unable to complete the Pokédex itself with regional exclusives.

Agreed. PVP? Ok. Trading... eh.

I saw some raid fanatics who had a screen full of Articuno.
Obviously they have a couple for trade, so what do I care if I don't catch one?

 

[lumpia91791]

I actually don't think trading is a good idea for PoGo. Less incentive to go find Pokémon, although Niantic created the problem of being unable to complete the Pokédex itself with regional exclusives.

For some there's more! I can only see the future where there are people farming Pokémon just to "trade" to the highest bidder.

"Sure here's a magicarp for your Raikou, oh btw you dropped $40 right by my sneaker!"

 

[Greho]

The statements make no sense, when taken together.

Edit: I took Kyle's wording a bit literally. See his reply below.

* They only want PvP to happen over local networks, and not over the internet.

Ok.. What happens when I run into friends at a park while catching Pokémon. (You already can't catch Pokémon in indoor spaces.) Public WiFi normally will not allow you to see other clients on the local network for the sake of security. You're going to ask at least one of the players to turn on a WiFi hotspot, or ask them to deal with the vagaries of Bluetooth.

Since we're already playing a GPS-dependent, location-based game, could we not do PvP when our phones are within X meters, without trying to stand up a network?

* You live in a warm place. You have to meet someone from a cold place, to be able to trade for cold Pokémon. In person. On a local network.

Aside from the local network requirement, see above, This requirement just sounds ridiculous. We know how Nintendo already makes connecting to friends needlessly complex. Now it will be not only needlessly complex, but also have mandatory physical presence. This means it is just as unlikely for me to get a cold climate Pokémon, as nearly all of my family and friends live in the Sunbelt, and seldom travel to cold places, and only two of us (that I know of) even play Pokémon Go.

Edit to add: So, since I misread the intent of the local proximity requirement, a lot of my complaint got nuked. (Ahhhh.. that explains those down votes..) But my beef about not being able to complete the Pokedex still stands.

Actually, these statements do make sense together.

It's Nintendo doing what Nintendo does. They promise features, having not thought through how complex those features will be in real life, while at the same time wanting to layer their own needless control freak complexity onto the game.

 

[LordOfThePigs]

I've never played Pokemon Go, but I've been a player of Fire Emblem: Heroes since the US launch day. FEH should be the golden standard by which Nintendo proceeds with FTP mobile.

The game has received amazing support and listened quickly to player feedback. As far as content and features go, I'm almost worried they are adding new features too fast, if anything.

I was about to login to post exactly the same thing.

Sorry niantic. You lost me 6 months ago. I've had enough of your technical incompetence, and of your lacking gameplay. I've moved on to Fire Emblem Heroes.

Intelligent systems are so good the comparison isn't even funny. Not a single technical glitch. Servers always up. New features every single month that actually improve gameplay. A game that actually has a good depth to begin with.

That's how you do it! I'm not going back.

 

[bobbie424242]

Is it 2016 or what ?

 

[Kyle Orland]

The statements make no sense, when taken together.

* They only want PvP to happen over local networks, and not over the internet.

Ok.. What happens when I run into friends at a park while catching Pokémon. (You already can't catch Pokémon in indoor spaces.) Public WiFi normally will not allow you to see other clients on the local network for the sake of security. You're going to ask at least one of the players to turn on a WiFi hotspot, or ask them to deal with the vagaries of Bluetooth.

Since we're already playing a GPS-dependent, location-based game, could we not do PvP when our phones are within X meters, without trying to stand up a network?

* You live in a warm place. You have to meet someone from a cold place, to be able to trade for cold Pokémon. In person. On a local network.

Aside from the local network requirement, see above, this requirement just sounds ridiculous. We know how Nintendo already makes connecting to friends needlessly complex. Now it will be not only needlessly complex, but also have mandatory physical presence. This means it is just as unlikely for me to get a cold climate Pokémon, as nearly all of my family and friends live in the Sunbelt, and seldom travel to cold places, and only two of us (that I know of) even play Pokémon Go.

Actually, these statements do make sense together.

It's Nintendo doing what Nintendo does. They promise features, having not thought through how complex those features will be in real life, while at the same time wanting to layer their own needless control freak complexity onto the game.

When I said "local connections," what I meant was that you will only be able to battle/trade with people in physical proximity, measured via GPS. I don't think you'll need to be on the same WiFi or anything.

I realize this was badly worded in the original piece. It has been fixed.

 

[greevar]

Using your Pokemon to battle and capture wild Pokemon should be in the game. Why even have starter Pokemon otherwise?

Stardust/candy sucks. Battling for XP is better.

Raid lobby should not use up your raid pass. Collect passes at start of battle.

Separate "Nearby" and "Sightings" windows.

The Silph Road has a rather clever concept for a tracker, which Niantic should implement.

 

[JDinKC]

If they do implement trading, they need to find a way to crack down on multi-account players.

I'm primarily an Ingress player, but I have found out about a local PoGo player that has an account on each color team. For Ingress that is a big no-no and will get you banned. (There are few enough players, that you know when someone is dual-teaming, and usually these get reported and blocked in fairly short order.)

For PoGo, other than having an unfair advantage on gyms close to that bad player, there is little harm yet with multiplayer. If they enable trading though, that person has easily built up a small army that they can trade to a master playing account, or as mentioned above, trade for a lot of real world cash. (trading gear for cash has also been a major problem in Ingress, but the most common automated farming abuse is finally getting addressed.)

 

[the_frakker]

Trading and other new features sound great, but I'm just wanting a stable environment to play in. Most weekdays I play at least a little bit between my car and work. I frequently run into issues it the app.

Since the major Gym overhaul and introduction of Raids, there have been even more problems in the app.

Issues have been the biggest downside to PoGo since it launched with the Chicago 1-year event epitomizing these issues.

Niantic needs to put out the 3rd gen Pokemon soon. Other than that I want them to focus on stability because that's a huge hurdle that gets higher every time they add something new to the game. Until stability comes to the app, all other features are just added frustrations.

 

[harathan]

(You already can't catch Pokémon in indoor spaces.)

Err, yes you can. They don't *spawn* in indoor spaces, but you can catch them there. I do it at work all the time. I've shown my kids photographic evidence of an Onyx blocking my office door, a Cubone hiding under my desk, a Kobuto in a toilet cubicle and a Magma standing at the reception desk.

 

[Entegy]

(You already can't catch Pokémon in indoor spaces.)

Err, yes you can. They don't *spawn* in indoor spaces, but you can catch them there. I do it at work all the time. I've shown my kids photographic evidence of an Onyx blocking my office door, a Cubone hiding under my desk, a Kobuto in a toilet cubicle and a Magma standing at the reception desk.

Yup, my apartment gets a metric buttload of Pokémon in it. It's a shame the stop nearby isn't a few metres closer to me, I could spin and catch without ever leaving my place.

Pokémon spawn on top of the building objects on the map all the time.

 

[Death_wish01]

I still start the app every day, catch one 'mon and spin a stop and then leave it on while I drive to work (not playing or looking at it, just catching .2k egg distance on my 20k commute...). I certainly dont go out and hunt or anything like that.

wow. you must drive really slow just to hatch that egg.

 

[Death_wish01]

I'm not sure about others. but, I'm not going to hold my breath with this. time and time again, niantic implements really half-assed features that get fixed months later. we seen it with raids, servers and catching pokemon. this game is so bad, I really wish someone will just make another AR game to replace the quality that PoGO brings.

 

[got2bereal]

Trading will be a gold mine for botters and people who spoof and cheat their way around Niantic's poorly implemented GPS - Server based design.

As long as the Pokemon spawns are based on location and server spawn people will be able to cheat easily with GPS spoofing and mapping service.

Soon you'll see sites offering to sell you rare Pokemon just like any MMO game.

 

[gmerrick]

That and there were absolutely no pokeymon anywhere in the area where I lived other than pidgies.... lots and lots of pidgies.

You didn't try to cheat or get any nastygrams from them did you?

That's not an accusation - apparently when they detect a cheater, their account gets flagged so that they only see Pidgies and other really common ones from there on out. Maybe a false positive thing?

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/05/pokmo ... er-spawns/

Nope. This is when the game first came out and then about 6mos later. Niantic is relying on the database from their other game and there were simply few if any players in my area so there's nothing here for Pokeymon players

 

[GaidinBDJ]

Have the fixed the walking distance recording yet? The thing that got me frustrated enough to give it up was the fact that I walk 10-15km every day at work. My phone records it just fine, but the actual Pokemon Go app would *maybe* record 1km. Walking 50km for yet another damn Pidgey is not terribly entertaining.

The poor tracking, odd "geo-typing" (for example, walking completely around a lake, right along the shore, and *zero* water types appeared), and penalties if you don't live near/can't afford to travel to other climates just suck.

They should make the ones you find on the map region-appropriate and have the eggs be ones from random other regions.

 

[Sir Christopher Ducksworth]

If they do implement trading, they need to find a way to crack down on multi-account players.

I'm primarily an Ingress player, but I have found out about a local PoGo player that has an account on each color team. For Ingress that is a big no-no and will get you banned. (There are few enough players, that you know when someone is dual-teaming, and usually these get reported and blocked in fairly short order.)

For PoGo, other than having an unfair advantage on gyms close to that bad player, there is little harm yet with multiplayer. If they enable trading though, that person has easily built up a small army that they can trade to a master playing account, or as mentioned above, trade for a lot of real world cash. (trading gear for cash has also been a major problem in Ingress, but the most common automated farming abuse is finally getting addressed.)

90% of people I see with multiple phones at raids are people playing their main account plus their children or wife's account long after their wife and children stopped playing. I wonder how those will end up cracked down on.

I'm skeptic about PvP combat coming any time soon. It's obviously Niantic is chronically understaffed for the sheer size of the game. Implementing enhancements is a very slow and gradual affair, more radical changes such as raids might come maybe once a year.

And from a business standpoint, that's exactly what Niantic should do. Even if PoGo's considered past its prime at this point, it's still printing money for Nintendo and Google. From business standpoint it's best to add content in a very gradual manner, so you can get the most money from your development.

Adding features so slowly that you lose 80% of your player base probably isn't the best idea. You make more from 15 million people doing microtransactions than you can from 5.

Let's be fair. Losing 80% of their playerbase had little to do with features not being added quickly enough. At it's peak it was a buggy unusable mess and they constantly did everything in their power to make actually finding pokemon as unfun as possible until a few months ago. The mass exodus has more to do with taking too long to fix those core problems then with not adding trading or player battles.

That and there were absolutely no pokeymon anywhere in the area where I lived other than pidgies.... lots and lots of pidgies.

That means you can do faster level grinding.

 

[SlyWalker]

I'm still a player, and honestly believe that keeping that big of a userbase was not *sustainable*. You don't see a Twitter-worth of engagement sprouting in a week, sure thing folks at Niantic had no idea what to do with that. The simple fact that it didn't melt, crash, burn and freeze, all at the same time, is a win for them.

I'm still waiting for a scalable ad system targeting small business owners instead of custom ad-hoc partnerships like the Starbucks one. The ability to entice people to walk to your store in exchange for a pet monster is leagues ahead of any other ads. Ofc, by then they would need a sales team, support agents, and wouldn't be "just a game" anymore... But there's just too much money in the table not to consider it.

 

[fivemack]

GaidinBDJ[/url]":21u5dqka]Have the fixed the walking distance recording yet? The thing that got me frustrated enough to give it up was the fact that I walk 10-15km every day at work. My phone records it just fine, but the actual Pokemon Go app would *maybe* record 1km.

Are you basically walking round and round a warehouse? The game records walking distance by sampling your position every several-minutes and scoring your straight-line distance moved since last sample (provided it's small enough that you're actually walking), so if you're moving a lot but not changing location much you won't hatch eggs.

 

[fivemack]

Death_wish01[/url]":kx7vzidw]

I still start the app every day, catch one 'mon and spin a stop and then leave it on while I drive to work (not playing or looking at it, just catching .2k egg distance on my 20k commute...). I certainly dont go out and hunt or anything like that.

wow. you must drive really slow just to hatch that egg.

As he says, in 20k commute he gets 0.2k egg distance - presumably there's one reliable queue at a traffic light.

 

[punksmurph]

We’ve only accomplished 10 percent of what Pokémon and Niantic are trying to do

The game has been out for over a year already. Still only at 10%? You guys suck. Or your developers are doing cocaine and prostitutes instead of developing.

You should have been able to get to at least 17% at this point.

Well since the game is printing money for them I can see why they are still at 10%. All that money for cocaine and escorts, thank you for solving the riddle on that one.

Note: Prostitutes work street corners, escorts get ordered, if you have cocaine money they are coming to you.

 

[GaidinBDJ]

GaidinBDJ[/url]":2tn10dz9]Have the fixed the walking distance recording yet? The thing that got me frustrated enough to give it up was the fact that I walk 10-15km every day at work. My phone records it just fine, but the actual Pokemon Go app would *maybe* record 1km.

Are you basically walking round and round a warehouse? The game records walking distance by sampling your position every several-minutes and scoring your straight-line distance moved since last sample (provided it's small enough that you're actually walking), so if you're moving a lot but not changing location much you won't hatch eggs.

It's requesting a fine location every few seconds. It's just not actually using that information, for some reason. There's no issues with the phone recording my position accurately, it's simply the app discarding the valid information it gets from the phone. I'm walking long, straight-line distances outside and there are quite a few location requests while I'm doing it.

 

[phoenix_rizzen]

GaidinBDJ[/url]":3of25qdk]Have the fixed the walking distance recording yet? The thing that got me frustrated enough to give it up was the fact that I walk 10-15km every day at work. My phone records it just fine, but the actual Pokemon Go app would *maybe* record 1km.

Are you basically walking round and round a warehouse? The game records walking distance by sampling your position every several-minutes and scoring your straight-line distance moved since last sample (provided it's small enough that you're actually walking), so if you're moving a lot but not changing location much you won't hatch eggs.

It's requesting a fine location every few seconds. It's just not actually using that information, for some reason. There's no issues with the phone recording my position accurately, it's simply the app discarding the valid information it gets from the phone. I'm walking long, straight-line distances outside and there are quite a few location requests while I'm doing it.

It's always irritated me that there's a step counter API in Android, with most phones including a hardware step counter, and PGo doesn't use it. There's really no reason for requiring the game to be running in order to "count distance". It really should just query the step counter and compare the previous value to the current value and derive the distance from that. Would save a lot of battery life as well.