The following question was presented:
Almost a year from the public release of Pokemon Go, Niantic is finally updating the game. After admitting that they were pushed into rushing the game to market by Nintendo to get the game out there during the summer, which, in all honesty, was probably the right financial decision, left them behind in a lot of things they wanted to do. The game exploded with way more people picking it up than they anticipated. Nobody could log on as the servers were unable to take the loads. The in game tracking system was unable to cope with the demand and that had to be shut down in order to just allow people to log on. This list of disasters is endless. I've got to be honest, I played the ET game on the Atari which is touted as being the game that destroyed the company because it was so bad. However, Pokemon Go makes ET look like it was the best game ever made. The Pokemon game is absolutely atrocious. The coding in it is so bad it's not funny. And yet I still play it. And I don't really know why. There's kind of a therapeutic monotony about the game just catching little monsters. Anyway, the big change is happening this week. The gyms are closing down. All pokemon in gyms will be returned and then the new gym system will be released. And I'm worried. Worried that this update will not bring anything to the game and will cause it to die. Augmented Reality is here to stay. The company can make endless profits just getting royalties from that engine, so do they really need the pokemon game or not? Anyway, that's not the question. Will I like the new update to Pokemon Go releasing this week?
Results:
Yes was the clear winner with 75% of the votes selected from the following:
- Yes (75%)
- No (25%)
Graphic of Results:
Analysis:
I voted yes to give myself positive thoughts and indeed the answer is yes. So far I'm loving this new update and there's still more to come. It's completely changed the game and it's kind of funny. The existing game had basically got to a point where most players had their “safe” gyms that they just collected their 10 pokemon award for each day. There was then some gyms that folks just turned over because they wanted to. But generally what happened is that everyone knew who everyone else's name was, but hadn't met them. There's so many players local to where I live that I just hadn't met. This was typified in the first raid I did when I was sat on a wall with William and this girl asked my In Game Name (IGN) and when I told her, there were several folks that went “Oh! you're EastBayRag!”
So what then happened is that we all got talking. A few of the folks were doing this manual tracker thing posting rare spawns they saw and we got connected. (Side note - why is it that every time I meet a new group they use a different app to communicate? It's crazy the number of chat apps I've got that essentially do the same thing. I guess it's easy to keep the chats separate though). So, anyone that doesn't know there are raids that have a difficulty rating from 1 to 5. 5s are not out yet and are reserved for legendary cards (which really is going to send everyone crazy). 1s and 2s can be done by yourself, but 3s and 4s need a group of people. And, as you'd expect, the more coveted pokemon are in the level 4 raids. So Niantic has achieved their mission of getting everyone outside and being social. Score a win. But they've completed failed on the thing they tried to stop - people playing the game and driving. Now with folks all over the area on a chat app, we're just posting all the level 4 raids (you get a 2 hour notification) and then driving round them in a big group.
Not sure how long it will last. The hard core folks will obviously continue, but my guess is the novelty will wear off for many of the players at some point.
Bottom line though, I love the update!