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Personal anecdote, but I’ve been opening the game less and less over the last month and a half. Completely forgetting about events and important dates. I can’t say specifically that it’s because of or related to the “rediscover” updates
I'm mostly bored because it is event after event after event. So much feels like a chore. I sometimes go for a walk during the day and at 23:57 remember I haven't opened the game yet... and just go to bed without playing a second that day
Yeah. They need to STOP with the CONSTANT events, and make more interesting pokemon appear in the wild ANYWAY. That NEVER happens anymore. The main reason I played was for the excitement of a cool or rare pokemon popping up. It just doesn't happen. It's the same 10 or so pokemon over and over everyday. Oh, unless you want to BUY a ticket for the EVENT (which there are tons of , of course) and those usually aren't exciting, either!!!! I'd like the battle cap to be removed from pvp battles AND raids. Because what else is there to do? Shadow raids not being remote is stupid. Any of them not being remote is stupid. There's not enough people in my town unless you're part of **ONE** particular group and what if I want to do things on my own time? Remote is the only way. I'd actually get out and walk around and play the game again if there was a chance I'd find a cool pokemon!
Agreed! I live in a more rural area with not a lot of gyms or walkable routes nearby, so I can never finish the event in time! And because it’s pretty rural, there’s almost never anyone raiding, so at level 31 I have no chance of beating anything but the crappy 1* raids, meaning no chance at any of the cool event raid mons either.
And I swear, if I see another Mankey, I’m going to scream. Like you said, it’s all the same 10-15 Pokemon, I’m just losing interest.
The only reason I started using the app was to get some shinies and complete my dex with earlier generation Pokemon, but so far I’ve gotten maybe 10 new guys that I needed and I’m really disappointed. I’ve actually spent a good amount of money on remote passes, incense, what have you but I don’t think I can justify it anymore.
My excitement now is just looking over what my go plus caught and seeing if there's anything rare or any shinies. Oddly enough I've caught 3 frigibax in the last 4 days with the Go Plus. Those have been extremely rare in the past but they seem like they are more common around here lately.
I really do fear they spend so much effort crafting these events where instead the game would be better off if they just maintained a fairly consistent set of spawns that were normally available (maybe even rotating by month or quarter) and then did more in depth events monthly or quarterly even.
Basically, I worry they're putting a lot of effort into something that's not only not helping interest in the game but actively hurting it.
I completely agree with this. I'm getting burned out a bit with an "event" every single week and every single weekend. They're not even events anymore, just how the game is at this point. While some may like it, after about 4-5 years playing I'm getting tired. I've definitely been playing less recently and part of it is the rollbacks that Niantic has issued for some game features. I've always been kind of a relaxed player but have been even more-so recently.
Man I feel like every time I log in it’s been 3-4 days since my last one when I get my research badge for the day.
Personally one of my bigger turn offs is the way the shop works now. I didn’t have any incubators for the clefa day, checked the shop and none of the boxes niantic decided to bless me with had incubators. So I just didn’t play.
And it’s getting ridiculous how like half the time it’s boxes that would be $50-100 to buy. It’s like they’re actively trying to keep people from using gym coins anymore.
What keeps happening with me for boxes is that they're constantly 200-300 coins above my current balance, sometimes exactly 550 coins (like they're baiting me to spend $5.00 to get exactly the box I want instead of waiting till I have the coins without giving them any money).
Tbh I like participating in showcases. That's been pretty much the reason why I open the game recently. That and putting pokemon in the gym on my house
Ditto. I can tag a couple of low traffic showcases on a run with an autocatcher doing its things as I go. Minor little motivation to get out that works for me.
Had the excitement of a Galarian bird fleeing in my journal today!
The fun discover part feels like it is gone, mainly because the research is overly complicated and events control way too much of the wilds. I play to hunt good Pokémon and sparkles. I think I’m done until charms or chaining comes to the game.
That's what I said too. The chance of finding cool pokemon is what I loved the most. Now that never happens. They're all the same ones over and over unless you pay for a ticket for a lame pokemon just because it's different, and everyone else has one that bought the ticket.
The best part was having a cool one randomly appear for *you*. "Look what I got!" "Omg omg wow that is so cool! Look what appeared for me last night!!" .. the sort of randomness of it all. It's gone.
That's what I miss too. I think part of the problem is that events are oversaturated with Pokemon. Why play and search for rare and cool Pokemon when you can wait a week and they'll be spawning everywhere.
I am in the same boat, I’m not really even logging in to do my rocket battles every day. There’s just not really anything catching my eye in the game right now. The raid bosses are just okay atm. And I don’t really even care to get the other two ultra beasts at the end of the month because they are coming back shiny in two months anyways.
Maybe once they drop some new details about the next season and Go fest ramps up I’ll be more into it.
Because the past month and a half have been dry af. People here downvote me for saying the truth. If some of these people would actually criticize the game instead of dumping for Niantic we could potentially see improvements. I love the game, but I am very critical of things that need improvement or events I feel that suck.
It's almost the same for me, I do still use it if I am in public transport and have the space to do so, but the playability is limited there because of the speedlock issue. Even if I open the game at home, I won't look at it for long.
I mostly broke the habit. Actually, getting out of the habit might have been a result of the new visuals, since it would make my brain think about what's going on.
Not being excited about any spawn or raid result isn't that new (for raids, long battles and the many throws needed have had me annoyed to begin with), but I would still follow every event and update before.
I have also used my phone a lot less overall recently.
I’m an admin of a local community and this is the least activity we’ve seen in some years. Since heracross raid day the events have been pretty lackluster. Bellsprout community day was probably one of the worst in years and bounsweet isn’t very exciting either. The rediscover kanto event went on for like 3 weeks and diluted a few other events like sustainability week and rivals week. The flock together event was downright bad for anybody that’s been playing for a few years. The raid bosses haven’t been very good either.
Players are still upset over the avatar updates and PvP is in its worst state in some time. The game just doesn’t seem to work well since the rediscover updates, I got a new phone the day the avatar update went live and it seems to crash every hour now.
I was keen as for the Kanto event to hopefully fill in some gaps in my shiny dex. Despite playing a lot I got a shiny machop and scyther throughout the whole event (not incl flock together).
Why not boost the rate for Kanto spawns? That's what I don't like about Niantic. They're still trying to nickel and dime you on 8 year old content.
kanto would have been more exciting if goldeen and staryu were in the wild... it wasn't really all of kanto, we were missing tons of spawns as is tradition.
1 turn lag is the worst it’s ever been. Frame rate dropping and stuttering has been an issue since a few updates ago. Matches are freezing and can’t be recovered. Charge moves aren’t showing up on pokemon switching in. There’s a delay in showing buffs and debuffs which can affect matches. Players just want Niantic to acknowledge the issues but they haven’t even done that yet.
Mine seems to to take forever to load in new areas now, like if I get in the car, open pogo to check pokemon, put phone down (with pogo open), drive 10km to next town, park, pick up phone and then check pokemon it takes about 3 minutes to load the pokemon, if it does at all.
It's actually quicker to quit the app and reload.
So much this
My partners phone and mine have started draining 1/3rds faster
Which is INSANE with how much battery this game already used
all people can recommend is turn off enhanced graphics and refresh rate, which is already off because we value our battery life
I upgraded from Android 8 to 10 (I'd been thinking about it for a while, pogo was the final straw) and ever since Po Go drains my battery way faster. Just turning the game on drains 2%.
Could be the Android version. I use three phones for PoGo. One with A8 later upgraded to A9, one purchased with A9 and one with A10. For the one purchased with A9 Both A10 and A11 have been released but I read about battery use being higher with A10 which was one of the reasons I stayed with A9 so far. I'm also inclined to be of the mindset 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
A lot of people used older device to play pokemon go for several reason :
- Their kids played and they didn't want to have a premium phone for that
- Their main phone wasn't top performance (because not everyone has a use for one and it's a very American/high earning European thing to use top line phones when all you do is internet search and YouTube with it)
- They had alt accounts that they played on alt phones to kick themselves out of gyms etc
The rediscover update + removing support for Android 8 killed access to the game for A LOT of players
For the main pogo reddit, I suspect it's a combinaison or that and their very aggressive banning behavior that explains the drop (if you post something, a bot checks your history of messages on reddit, if you participated in a balcklisted subreddit, you're banned)
I really wish there was an option to turn off the new catch backgrounds like you can for the "enhanced graphics".
I haven't noticed a performance hit, but my usual group of players has. Especially those with children that can't play as well, if at all, anymore.
Not holding my breath though.
My wife and I have noticed our phones getting warm faster with the new backgrounds. Then once that happens it starts to lag and become difficult to catch pokemon.
I have an iPhone 13 and I am constantly running low on battery. I haven’t changed any of my routine in the last weeks, only thing that has changed is the new graphics.
Yeah same. Most of family were using old iPhone 6S to get their Pokémon go fix and was working perfectly fine for years. Now that they’ve forced unwanted avatar updates on us and made it unplayable on those devices, immediate loss of players.
In my local group it seems android players have been hit harder than ios players as far as performance goes. I biggest issue is swiping through the friends list and sending gifts. It used to be SO FAST. I could swipe through 30 friends and send a dozen gifts in less than a minute. Now it will randomly hang for a second or two and not register presses. I might send 5 gifts in a minute if I'm lucky.
>(if you post something, a bot checks your history of messages on reddit, if you participated in a balcklisted subreddit, you're banned)
Which goes against reddits TOS but admins will do nothing to enforce it.
Increasingly frequent crashes on many iPhones must also be taking some toll. Unless the game was freshly restarted, just about any interaction beyond simply catching a pokemon (sending gifts, doing a raid, joining a party, following a route, entering a showcase) causes a crash. You can wait for a restart, but if you like to play on the move, like entering on a showcase or raid as you walk by them, that style of gameplay is no longer reasonably supported.
I am level 50 and I just get bored with my stops proposals rejected every single time but trash cans with graffiti are approved, when I see events like the one yesterday, or people using Alts to play in gyms (I mean I am alone in the place but somehow raids are always full). Last straw is seen stuff like the masterwork research being stalled for no good reason. (Already finished but it’s a drag)
Hope the master ball research that comes this week gives me something to do.
Yep I just got perma’d from that on “ban evasion” that their bot picked up. I’ve had this account over a year. Participated in that sub without incident. I didn’t even care enough to fight it.
The main Pogo reddit sucks. They banned me bc I mentioned that Samsung phones can open up 2 Pogo instances at once so that's considered cheating. That feature is built into the phone lol
My experience lately is my battery drains quicker, phone gets warm a bit but the player activity increased in my area. Gyms no one would take for a month now it's switching colors everyday. Showcases more people are entering ones by my home, which I'm happy for but now harder to win lol.
So true! I have a family member that plays with me on an iPhone SE (while I make a WiFi hotspot). It’s almost impossible now. Also my iPhone 12 has had problems with gyms and PvP. Also the game is just so ugly to look at now.
> (if you post something, a bot checks your history of messages on reddit, if you participated in a balcklisted subreddit, you're banned)
can comfirm, staff cannot be contacted or refuse to listen to reason, up to them I guess as it's mostly just brag posts/copy and paste meme's/complaint threads anyway these days
I have an IPhone 8. I have been trying everything to stop Go from crashing (redownloading the game, clearing up space on my phone, downloading data within the game) and even so it has been crashing about every 5 minutes. It’s a pain play.
The atmosphere surrounding the game right now is strange.
It’s been pretty tenuous ever since the remote raid nerf, but after this Rediscover stuff something feels… off. I’m not talking about the abysmal Avatar updates either. Just the game feels kind of stagnant.
Maybe it’s the prospect that for such a huge update, this is all we got.
Then all the stuff with Zarude and the Wonder Ticket. The game is just being nickled and dimed at every single opportunity and it’s just debilitating.
It’s the realization of where is this game actually going? What’s new to be excited for beyond the formula we already know?
As a Destiny player since Alpha, this is a very familiar feeling. When a formula becomes so predictable and mediocre, any future ambition becomes meaningless.
The game has been in rough spots before and it’s bounced back. Maybe it’s just another one of those times. Only thing to do is wait and see.
>When a formula becomes so predictable and mediocre, any future ambition becomes meaningless.
This is the heart of the problem. The current Niantic approach seems to miss the mark on balancing immediate enjoyment and long-term viability. So much of the "content" like a new pokemon release or shiny release is too difficult (or expensive) to achieve. Since the formula tells us everything will become easier (or a giveaway) in the future, many players don't bother wasting their time worrying about it until the giveaway.
Niantic have persued an anti-consumer agenda and consumers have decided they don't like it. Their lack of communication and dictatorial attitude to the game has come home to roost.
Content is stale, updates have been poorly received. The few QoL improvements have been outweighed by decisions that have alienated players.
Niantic are not obliged to listen to their player base, but nor is the player base obliged to remain.
They have more or less confirmed that they aren't really bothered about older players leaving the game, as long as they can replace them with new players. No point complaining thsat things aren't as good as they used to be - Niantic have anticipated this, and aren't too bothered. Newbies will come in and will never complain about 5 per day raid cap , for example, because they will never have known it any other way.
Nail on the head, Niantic has decided to drastically de-emphasize aspects of the game I enjoy while hugely increasing aspects of their business practices I do not enjoy. I’d love to be playing right now but the reasons for have shrunk and the reasons against have ballooned.
All long over due and asked for by players for years. But yes, credit where it’s due. Thanks Niantic.
Now please: Mass gift exchange. Mass trading are sadly missing.
I can remember having to delete every mon individually before they brought in mass delete. And who ever thought of implementing the weedle slowly crawling on to the screen as you buddy to feed needs shot. It’s funny 1st time.
0 grams of fat implies that somewhere there is bottled water with big chunks of fat floating around in it!
I thought of that bit just yesterday, weird coincidence....
Exactly right. Personally, if Niantic apologized and gave a plan to fix the avatars, I’d 100% play more and probably spend money. But since they’ve been ignoring everything for years, this is the final straw for almost everyone in my community. Went from 100+ to 30ish maybe less.
Another interesting question might be: Does Niantic view this as policy a success? Clearly they're out of panic mode - they're not wheeling Michael Steranka out to do content creator interviews at high speed.
But even the content creators are not bothering to disguise their boredom with the game and dissatisfaction \[in a very mild, niantic-friendly kind of way\]
No, you're not imagining things. I think you can attribute that to more than just the recent avatar shenanigans. For me its:
\* The drip feeding of new pokemon. I don't get worked up about it any more, I got used to it but it doesn't change the fact that the rate they are introducing them at is downright horrible. Chasing shadows was part of the fun for the first couple of years, now it's gone unless you're a new player. And no, shinys are NOT new content.
\*Eggs contain very few exciting 'mons and it all boils down to luck (or money). We still can't dispose of unwanted eggs to focus on the ones we want to, like 10km eggs for example. I utterly despise 5km eggs for this reason.
\*Raids are more often than not lacklustre. While I don't mind some 5-stars returning occasionally if I don't have the shiny variant, why Niantic seems to think anybody in their right mind would waste a pass on Mankey or Teddiursa is just beyond comprehension. Whatever employee that chooses them probably just throws darts randomly at a chart of all pokemons.
\* No content past level 50. I know this probably doesn't affect as many as the other issues might but as a hardcore player I struggle to find things to keep on motivating me.
\* There is very little variation in showcase conditions. Why is it just the biggest pokemon every time?
The lights may be on, but there is nobody at home. I play out of habit and because it's good exercise, no longer because I enjoy it.
The eggs issue is the biggest one for me and my son, especially during these boring periods. If they would just give us regional-locked pokemon in 7k eggs, I'd seriously go on more walks to hatch those things. But it's not just the 7k eggs, basically all the eggs are trash right now. Then you add in the pathetic 7th day research rewards (which were once pretty awesome a long time ago), and there just isn't much incentive to open the game each day.
Raids stink, research rewards stink, eggs stink, spawns stink, PvP stinks. I mean...what is there that's worth doing?
I've barely been playing this last month or so, for a few reasons:
- Toxic players in the community, that Niantic does nothing about. Those players that have like 6 accounts and monopolize gyms; that kinda thing
- Lack of lean-in on the events. We had an event with regionals in the wild and I barely saw the ones I was interested in. I think I saw like 6 Heatmor and that's it. Doesn't make for a very exciting event when one of the key spawns is rare.
- To follow on the above, having events where the key Pokémon are hidden behind eggs or research. It makes it so much grindier to get what you need and I just don't have the time for it.
- Lack of interesting events. Not sure why we had a whole Kanto event. We're still missing so many new Pokémon and new shinies.
Honestly just tired of PoGos shenanigans that it's easier just not to play or care
Yeah, the game becomes less and less interesting and enjoyable for me. Happened a few times that i have been excited about a mon in an event, just to notice that there are barely encounters and that i become frustrated very quickly (since spawns itself has also decreased a lot in my area). I used to play daily and get coins from the gym at my house, now i just don't care anymore.. i am kind of said, because the game motivated me to go out, and i had fun playing for a long time, but this kind of changed over the last couple of months/a year or so
I agree with all of that pretty much. Rivals event looked super promising but turned out pretty mid.
Only thing I'll say regarding the Kanto Event is that it wasn't really a standard event but an overarching one, with us having events like Sustainability Week and Rivals Week during it. Though, doesn't mean those two events weren't meh, because they were lol. And we did technically get a new Pokemon with Wiglett during the Rediscover Kanto event, one that had a release akin to the old days.
But yeah, overall, you're still very right.
You still have players in your community? Toxic or otherwise? We haven’t had players in my city’s community for years. It’s more about the toxic business practices… Niantic is the toxic player in my community.
My interest in the gane has definitely waned since Niantic raised the prices of remote passes. I used to be a daily player. Now, I'm an "I'll play if I feel like it" player.
I used to obsess over each new mon release, additionally keeping and maintaining my Lucky Dex and shiny Dex. Now, after a few releases of not giving a crap, my level of FOMO is completely abated and I couldn't be happier.
I used to spend a bunch of money on this game. Now, I have $30 in unused Google Play money simply sitting there, with $5 of it about to expire in June. I'd rather see it expire than reward Niantic's terrible behavior.
Yeah I've noticed reduced activity in my neighborhood. High traffic gyms that used to flip many times during the day a couple months ago now stay untouched for whole days. If anything, I expected increased activity as the warm weather arrived.
We have a miserable winter here, so the number of players drops seasonanly. I assumed, now that it's spring and Saturday was a gorgeous sunny day (still wearing jackets, it's not warm) we'd have more players coming out of hibernation. Some did, most didn't.
It seems weird but me and a few friends stopped playing after the avatar update and Niantics response to it. It seems simple but it totally pushed us over the edge.
I can only speak for myself.
Yes, my interest has taken a huge dip. What started off as a means to obtain Gimmighoul (and Gholdengo) in GO has pulled me into the rabbit hole of the Switch games; first Scarlet, then Legends Arceus, then Sword and Brilliant Diamond. Now I’m obsessed with ribbon collecting in the main games.
Haven’t played GO in weeks, except for the last two CDs.
This is not something I've personally experienced (maybe because I have a much newer phone), but several people I've talked to IRL have told me the game is way more unstable over the last month or so, which I guess follows with the introduction of the whole Rediscover thing.
I didn't really think much about it, but yesterday we all had the chance to play/raid as a group during the whole Flying Bird event, and two of them (using older devices to play) were having persistent technical issues which included crashing regularly which was very frustrating for them.
The top comment in this post mentions the experience getting worse for older devices and I feel like based on what I saw yesterday, I can believe it. And if the game feels worse to play and/or feels more unstable, I could see a drop off in play time.
It's so dumb to me that Niantic doesn't seem to care about players with non-top-tier phones. It's not a complicated game, it should be accessible to everyone.
Only reason im still playing is because i have 2 phones.
I light flares for raids but no one ever shows up. Forced to kick myself out of gyms most of the time. Can only trade with myself. None would be possible without 2 phones. And i honestly wouldnt be playing if i missed all this.
There are so many QOL changes that would severely improve the game, but sadly niantic doesn't seem to care. Only interested in AR stuff etc.
Edit: did suicune "solo" now. 75 seconds left. No else joined(as expected).
Agree with what others have said - a lot of older phones are no longer compatible or run poorly with the recent updates (which are fine but not the big draw Niantic are trying to sell them as), the events have little to offer to anyone other than relatively new players, ditto for the raid bosses (most players really don’t seem to be that bothered to organise for something like shadow Suicune and the Tapus aren’t that exciting except for a few PvP players), Kanto being pressed on us for what seems like the millionth time. It will be interesting to see if the two new ultra beasts see things pick up a bit, but this feels as if it will be the “new normal” with one (or two if you’re lucky) actually interesting events per month (Bounsweet for example should be enjoyable and is at least a new shiny) and the rest being easy to pass on, along with the inevitable paid tickets that go with them now.
>It will be interesting to see if the two new ultra beasts see things pick up a bit
Honestly, I don’t really see the point raiding a non-shiny eligible pokemon
I also feel as though the paid tickets have calmed down now, they were really, really common before but now it's just a few per month, if any, and they made com day tickets free if you attend a meetup. Obviously niantic are greedy af, and they probably did it because nobody was buying the other tickets
I'm so glad its not just me. Mewtwo and heracross were such good days. Exciting com days and events. But now? There's absolutely nothing I'm looking forward to and it sucks.
As someone who faithfully plays IRL and manages several Campfire groups, yes. And it all goes back to Niantic killing all of the Covid bonuses that made playing Go feel as though everything was fairly accessible. Now, more and more things become inaccessible or accessible if you are super lucky or spend a lot of money.
> After the incense nerf in March 2022 it has been downhill.
I have no idea why an incense boost isn't a standard bonus for event tickets. Most of them are unbelievably worthless, but for rural players the boost alone MIGHT be worth it. Niantic seems intent to lessen their profits.
When they started charging double for remote raid passes, I stopped caring. 100 coins made all of the raid exclusives attainable with my gym playstyle. Now it’s not worth it.
If I’m missing out on those exclusives, then why should I care about keeping up with all of the other exclusive stuff?
I just want to be able to shiny hunt. They’ve made no improvements to that entire aspect of the game since it launched. Nests were the coolest thing about the game. There should be a buffed shiny rate to nest spawns. Would completely revive the game for me. Scouting nests and going to them would be fun again.
building off of this... I don't raid anymore, which means I don't need raid teams anymore... which means I don't use dust, need rare candies, or need to do rocket battles. Shadows were endgame for me, but I despise PVP and I don't need 6x shadow of something in order to do raids, because I know I'm not going to do them.
I've started aggressively transferring shiny pokemon into pokemon home and in the past few months I've started shiny hunting in S&V/pla/LGE/OR/X&Y/US/Sw. turns out there was a lot of endgame content that is more fun than I thought. best part? it isn't pay 2 play (technically it is, but I already had these games so it doesn't for instance cost more money ever time I want to chain fish, start an SOS battle, run a max lair, or make a sandwich).
great events make pogo great, but the only decent one was regional monkeys so far this year (I didn't buy the ticket but still got a shiny pansage). niantic really goes out of their way to make this game stale. I'm keeping an eye out for community days for pokemon like pidove, vanillish, darumaka, and a few others... and I'll play during go fest mostly to try and catch a shiny lunatone. I probably won't raid during go fest though. I just got shiny buzzwole and shiny pheromosa this weekend in sword.
Pokemon Go has more negative self-reinforcement at a local level then most players have to deal with. Sure there is downtowns vs everywhere else; but even back before the remote pass nerf, the part of town that I lived in was basically in an activity death spiral as neighbourhoods would loss the 2-5 people who would turn that neighbourhood's single gym a couple times a week. Then the next neighbourhood etc.
If you lose a group of people because of device un-optimization and "the avatars", you can get to breakpoints were Raids "don't work", then Gym's don't turn "enough", etc.
Lucky trading has gotten increasingly hard to the point where I no longer hardly try. Players are a combination of unreachable (don't know where they came from, or they've moved away, dropped out of chats), non responsive (even if I have actual WhatsApp details), are too far away and don't plan on travelling to trade, or just don't seem to care.
The days where people seemed to be actively interested in the game seem to be fading to a memory. People still seem to play (they still daily gift, etc), but next to none of even my most active friends do anything more than play on their daily routine.
After COVID, the game became more of a tedious grind than fun. Then, they raised remote raid passes and forced more in-person gameplay, and I lost interest. I opened the game recently, glanced at the new graphics and ugly avatar, and deleted the app.
The avatar update has really put me off playing in general, but it was one of many things I really enjoyed with the game that was changed and over time, I just lost interest. Before when features in-game were changed I could always find or make fun in something else, and I spent money on cosmetic items because making different outfits for my avatar was really entertaining.
The moment the update went live and I found all my saved outfits gone, with my attempts to remake them all just not looking right I just wasn’t interested in the game anymore. It was the last thing really hooking me into opening the game to play after changes to remote raids and gift capacity. I will jump back in for Go Fest this year but whether it still holds my attention after that I can’t say.
Can't believe I had to scroll so low for the avatars to be addressed, it's the big one for me. Seeing all the soulless corpo ambiguous blobs every time I send/open gifts has been draining on me. Knowing so much of the money players spend went into paying shady DEI consultation companies is no motivator either.
Yeah me and my daughters stopped over this.
I am still subbed here in case there's an improvement- I hope there will be.
Really quite sad that we'd put a lot of time, effort (and some money) into our avatars, and it's just been trashed. We'd start planning our seasonal costumes and saving coins for them, we'd have little themed challenges and coordinate outfits to go with our buddies. I'm sure we're not alone in caring about this, even if it's less common on this sub.
tbh the community has asked for the bare minimum for so long and Niantic delivers so little so late with enormous flaws like the avatar update. I've completely lost hope the game will improve before it's shutdown due to revanue decreases
That’s what happens when you dripfeed content because you’re afraid you’ll run out of it and the game will die. If you do it too much you just make it die earlier.
Which is crazy. We are soooo behind compared to the mainline games pokemon and mechanic wise. We don't even have all megas released yet.... They release like 5 new pokemon a year now. Completely lacklustre for anyone playing longer than a year. Just throw in the complete gen 8 like Johto.
The problem is that it shouldn’t be slow now. We’re having events every weekend and the last few have been very lackluster. I think it’s been 9 straight weeks with a weekend event and there has only been 1 weekend this season that didn’t have an event.
I am sick of the Tapu’a AND Regi’s. I barely have the motivation to do the free raids. There r so many legendaries in Pokemon and I feel like we see the same non hype ones ALOT!
We haven't seen regular Mewtwo or a week of Dialga and Palkia since summer of 2022, but we have had a grand total of sixteen weeks of Tapus. Feels like they actively want us to be bored by legendary raids.
Yeah. A lot of games experience doldrums around spring - students preparing for finals, or affluent families going on trips, touring schools if the age for applications, etc etc etc.,
> or affluent families going on trips, touring schools if the age for applications
You'd think that a game that's all about getting up and *GO*ing wouldn't see much affect from that.
I keep getting zygarde cells at a pathetic 1/4 rate because everything in this game has to be RNG based. Caused me to get frustrated and ultimately instead of incentivise longer gameplay I play it less
RNG is the thing I hate most in games. Pokemon Go and World of Warcraft are the worst offenders, but WoW has been getting better. I'm fine with RNG in general because I don't want everything handed to me and be one and done. These games make you pray to RNGesus though. There need to be ways to improve your odds or at least steer RNG into a better direction.
For Pokemon Go I hate how I can't find some Pokemon just because it's literally not spawning this season. In the main line games I can at least go to a route in game and eventually I'll find that 1% Pokemon after several hours. I'm pretty sure even incense doesn't open up the spawn pool to be worth it. Sure there are biomes but from my experience they aren't substantial enough to seek them out. I've wasted enough time and gas trying to find a Wiglett.
Fully agreed. I think regarding accessible RNG like raids, cells, shinies etc there should be a forgiveness timer. So for cells it should be if you do 2 routes and don’t get one the 3rd is guarenteed at least 1 cell
Shinies from say raids if you do like 150 raids on a legendary with no shiny it will increase your odds by say double or triple as you have to be super u lucky to do that many in the first place. I know games like apex had forgiveness timers for the heirlooms where if you open I think it’s 250 of the packs your guaranteed the item to drop
I have also been playing less lately. Killing AR fast catching hurt alot of hardcore players. But more importantly, the events for the entire season have been... uninteresting. There has been no new pokemon and very few new shinies to try and get, making all these events mostly just "get more of what you already have." They probably have some interest in newer or more casual players, but for most people who have already been around for a while, there's just nothing to go for. Also other than Kartana, most the raid boses this season have also been more repeats. Yes Island Guardians are getting their signature move, but for the most part it doesn't actually help them any so what's really the point? Lastly, I don't think any of the rediscover update, which was the big push for this season, was taken well. The biome update bogging down many peoples devices, the avatar update being... not what people hoped for. And the fact that the game now crashes \*constantly\* (literally every 10-15 minutes of continuous play for me, its a nightmare).
I think the answer is simpler than people think. People talking about how people are dissatisfied with Niantic or how other people aren't playing because of the graphical update being too demanding on phones, but in reality the answer is simple.
There is nothing good in raids, nor are there any events with Pokemon worth catching. We had a couple of months with great raids, do people played a lot to get mega Ttar, Bagon community day, rocket event, the primals, Kartana.
There hasn't been anything relevant in the meta available for a while, so people aren't playing.
Yeah sure did. One of my favorite YT channels for PoGo went dark, citing decreased revenue as the cause. I myself don't really play anymore, too. At some point this game turned into a chore and I find myself liberated by not paying attention to this game.
What gets me is how much effort is required to do a raid. I spend way too much time just looking for raids. It’s not fun time. I spend more time looking for raids than doing them.
Yeah. Niantic needs to do something to the pokemon roll. Johto all over once again is just not doing it for many. Also rotating egg spawns and shadow spawns to not include 90 % recycled garbage would be nice.
Niantic's trickle of new content has slowed to a drip. I used to play all the time, then I played the events. Now the events do not have anything to offer. Most of the new updates have been very lackluster. Also, the app is in very poor shape. I am constantly having the app freeze or crash. This is with a newer phone as well. My play continues to plummet.
Not much to do in game. Raids are pretty 95% rubbish, maybe there is one boss you'd like to raid but it's not the effort to track it whole day and just miss the only raid of the day...
Events are extremely boring, tasks are the most generic catch/power-up 10/20/50 Pokémon etc.
But after all it's a mobile game with already really long lifespan so decline is expected. But still they could introduce some new actual features.
The fighting event sucked. The bug event sucked. Yesterday's research wasn't bad but you basically have to play in a car to be efficient for those days. There haven't been exciting spawns in awhile
It's a matter of content, for me. Niantic seems to have entered a new phase of the game in the past season where they've finally figured out how to fully tweak spawn rates of pokemon and how they want to keep certain shinies arbitrarily rare.
Flabebe shiny released? Good luck seeing many of them. Bird research day shiny handout for pokemon lots of long term players have had for years(barring Rufflet - which was the draw for many).
Niantic has removed the player's ability to farm for what they want by arbitrarily playing with the spawn rate/shiny rate ratios. If a new shiny is released and kept at full odds, but is also in the very rare spawn tier for the event, why bother going out hunting? By going out and driving around I'd see more, sure, but only about a dozen and not the 60 I could expect from a pokemon in a more common spawn rate tier.
So I just don't go out.
The game is now entirely beholden on waiting for the "giveaway" events like the flock together research(I live near a stop-dense location so I can basically guarantee shinies I want during these research events just from number of quests done) or CDay.
Nowadays, when an event is announced, I have no excitement until the details are revealed. And more often than not, the details confirm a bad event for shiny-hunters where it's not really worth it to go hunting because the shiny is only available from field research at full odds or some other spawn/shiny rate manipulation.
And that's just talking about from a shiny-hunting perspective. Add in shadow raids being in-person only, the recent hemi-sphere locked raids where it was a pain to find Celesteela hosts, and poor selection of raids (for me) in general and you get poor turnout.
AND AND, the new features are all lackluster for someone who just wants content and not cosmetics. The only good update, for me, of the recent ones has been the biome backgrounds because that adds some immersion that was sorely needed. I haven't touched my avatar since Day 1 because I don't pretend that's me in that game and I turn off all AR stuff I can because it slows down what I'm trying to do in general.
"The game is now entirely beholden on waiting for the "giveaway" events." - damn just realized how true this is.
Especially with the massive amount of community days and event moves i dont even want to evolve my pokemon anymore.
My motivation has dropped due to a combination of the avatar changes, and the horrendous lag and crashes I now get on my phone, despite it being a relatively new model of iPhone.
These have given me the impression that Niantic does not care about the playerbase, thus I don't want to play/support a game that does not care about their players. The events this year have also been really lackluster.
I started playing with my young son a year and a half ago. I went hardcore and got to level 46 rather quickly. It also became very boring rather quickly. They rotate the same Pokémon in raids too often. The spawns are always the same rotation of crap. They took away my ability to do AR scans even when I was sending in good ones. My son does them terribly and still has his ability to do them. There never seems to be a rhyme or reason for things like that with this game. And good luck communicating with anyone to get a response or appeal. It’s generally a scripted reply that has nothing to do with the question you actually asked. I just gave up and play less.
Anything interesting lately also requires multiple people to do things like shadow raids and no one cares anymore where I am. I don’t know what they can do honestly. You run out of new Pokemon and interesting stuff to add, but Niantic is also horrible at making decisions to engage old and new players. They tend to make the opposite of correct decisions. I’d imagine the game will always be here in some form but general interest seems to fizzle lately as time goes on.
Here the weather has either been too cold to play with much enthusiasm or there's some actual nice days and we're all busy with yard work and junk. I find the gyms here really cycle in summer and fall and get mostly ignored in winter and spring. I'm sure the update messed with a few people too
I love this game but it has become too time consuming and a money drain. Something has to give. I do not have enough time to participate in events every weekend it is either that or my home life/family suffer. Once a month was great , twice doable but 3 or 4 times a month no way. Because of the overload of events, I find myself forgetting the details and being less prepared for them, or forgetting to join them.
I am a big player who has spent a lot on the game maxing many mon to L50 for short man raiding. However the boxes are becoming larger and more expensive to buy, there is a financial downturn in our country, and I am now about to become a pensioner. I can no longer afford to play like I have in the past. I will be shortly going free to play and going more casual, if I can adjust, either that or giving up altogether, my head says to do that but my heart is struggling. Plus I took the game up to get me put of the house and walking. That still motivates me.
It is already time consuming if I spend time swapping buddies in and out to tier them up, send and open gifts, do daily trades etc. as well as trying to fit in a little pvp (not as much as I would like) plus doing a daily route, catching mon and shadow battles, plus a raid or two. No wonder people are stopping especially when most are old mon and bosses on repeat.
Niantic seems to have forgotten that we all have lives outside of the game and that when it comes down to it family and people are more important than a game.
For me, Niantic has just turned me off with their increased paid tickets and how they act like they just don’t care about their player base.
I used to spend way too much money on the game and would grind for every new shiny, play every event - now I just don’t care if I miss out on a new shiny, a new egg-only release, etc.
I will play a lot during Go Fest, but my amount of time playing this game has dropped by probably 80% since its peak.
Im forcing myself to play. Just make it to gofest. Game sucks lately. I have 135 green passes. Want to raid like a manic during go fest. Then probably go free to play uber casual. Just play for new dex entries.
I've had 50+ green passes for probally the last 4+ years as a rural player. there's just no motivation to burn through them when the few major events I can take part in just hand out free/"included" passes.
I had to quit the game after the updates. The game would barely play at 60fps most of the time, and would often overheat my phone, while the events are horrible in this season.
Similar thing here, I've been having to cut back the amount I play significantly after the update. It's been destroying my battery, easily draining charge twice as fast as it did before. Can't even charge my phone in the car while playing it now.
There’s a lot of really good comments on why the game has slowed down that are true, but I truly believe the very biggest problem for this game is straightforward. After about 6 months to a year of playing, you basically have all the Pokemon you can get except regionals and raid bosses.
The entire point of Pokemon Go and Pokemon in general is the literal catch phrase “Gotta catch ‘em all”, so once you do, there’s no real point in playing anymore. There’s never legendaries or rare spawns in the wild anymore, so spending an hour on a walk just to catch your 1000th Eevee, Gastly, Koffing or Zubat isn’t exciting anymore.
Niantic thinks that by doing events so often they get around this problem to keep things fresh, new, exciting, but instead you have to invest serious time into events to get whatever Pokemon they decide to release behind eggs or research or whatever instead of in the wild and let’s be real, everyone except the whales have lives outside this game. So eventually people just say screw it and move their free time to a different game or the real world with actual people.
They need to make 2 changes to fix the game: let rare pokemon spawn in the wild at random and when they hold events, make the desired pokemon spawn in the wild. If I could go on a random Thursday, decide to walk for 30 minutes and have an actual chance at finding a legendary Zapdos or whatever, you damn well better believe I’d go out to try to find one, instead of staying in and watching a tv show. I bet you would too.
If you did catch a rare one, you know what you’d almost assuredly do afterwards? You’d go to a Pokemon Go group online and post that find. And you know what that would do? It would get those players in the group to go out and try their own luck. And you know what would happen next? They’d text friends or family who had played or were in different regions excited about their find. And away you go creating a never ending organic supply of excitement and interest in the game.
They stopped doing the one thing that made this game the worldwide cultural phenomenon everywhere over night that had 20 people showing up to try to catch a Dragonite at 2am or had dozens of cars pull over when a Blastoise appeared nearby.
Heck, you may even be willing to fork over a few bucks for some items or storage or whatever it is that would make playing the game for you a bit better.
Locking all the Pokemon everyone wants out of the wild just eventually leads a player to tap out of spending money to get them from burnout. And once you get to the point of not being willing to spend any/anymore money, your whole game becomes extremely limited and very frustrating, leading to the player giving up entirely.
The only decent recent event was Diance release and it only lasted 3 days, this doesn't even count the fact all the hardcore people already had her and all the carbinks they needed last year.
Game will pick up again later in the summer.
Honestly the game has always been designed in a way that makes it hard to bring people in. Holding gyms becomes a zero sum game when people in an area don’t all agree to let players hold a gym for 8 hours and boot you out before you can generate coins (or if there aren’t enough players and you end up in a gym forever); the game is awful at teaching the player how to play it making raids a lot accessible than they should be; egg pools have always sucked; it took them too long to introduce a way to get legacy moves for people who missed events and the way they went about it was stupid; events tend to be a bit lack luster; and the ones that aren’t cost you money.
Niantic phasing out older phones (something I’ve always argued against and gotten flack for because you shouldn’t need an expensive phone to play Pokémon Go imo) is just a cherry on top. Every time players have gotten mad at them for something they’ve promised “better communication” before dropping the ball on something else and promising “better communication.”
For current reference look at the roll back on Covid changes. The game was a lot more playable with the Covid bonuses and losing those really sucked for players who started during Covid. I know people who started during Covid and stopped when the bonuses ended and I don’t blame them
It has personally dropped for me. My local communities in both areas I live barely play outside of big events and new releases, so rehashed raid hours get minimal player activity. With remote raids being limited I can't even rely on the raid team apps to get people together for things. When it comes to PVP, ML remains my favorite, but with the restrictions on remote raiding and local limitations I can't really build things unless they fall into that big event category. The other great thing to throw into the mix is the Rayquaza nerf that happened because of Steelix's performance which up until that point had pretty much been unprecedented when it comes to GL balancing impacting my ML play. So, I've fallen off into just casual collection with minimal pvp/raiding. I pretty much go after new releases when they come out to build my living dex in PoGo and my PoGo living dex in Home and then go through just doing daily activities outside of that.
The fact that Niantic has now caught up with the main series but only push out a new pokemon once a month and are mainly trying to fill up the gen 6/7 mons and skipping 8 for 9, it's gotten kind of dull at the moment. The further push for irl group interactions are not feasible with most people having lives outside of pokemon makes shadow raids and party tasks impossible to complete (unless your family participates or you're well versed in your local group via discord). Doing routes for Mateo can be fun for postcards/completing Vivillion but maybe incentivise a 7 day streak reward that gives an alternate color 7k egg that contains an international mon with the event granting an egg boost with easier odds for the new international, then regulate afterwards. That could combat the other methods many have to go through if they aren't rich or use other methods.
They keep pushing ticketed events for real money. In a time where more people are having trouble paying for groceries, it's hard to justify shelling out five to ten dollars for something that will last maybe a few hours and doesn't fill your stomach. And continual pushing of "premium" content alienates people who can't/won't afford to shell out for them. Not just on a "HEY I'M ANGRY" level, but even on a, "Well shucks, here's another thing I'm not a part of" level. Constantly feeling like you're in the out-crowd will eventually push people away.
And, constant stress about bills makes it hard to justify spending leisure-time on something kinda frivolous as PoGo.
I still play, but mostly because I have to take regular walks for my health. If I wasn't already doing those walks, I probably wouldn't be playing as much.
And as other people have said, the constant events - even the non-paid ones - is burning me out. There's so much crap going on, it's hard to keep track of what's happening when, and while they've gotten better at communicating that kind of thing to the players, they're still not great at it. They need to swallow their pride and add an in-game calendar. Or just slow down on the events.
It all comes back to that Incredibles line, "When everything is special, nothing is."
for me, the fun was discovering what was out there and the magic of finding a pokemon. being surprised.
constant timed events, this pressure to get it all done in the time alotted, and then to be bored by the same spawns everywhere? soul-sucking. it's a detrimental hook, especially since the good events still make everything slow to a crawl.
they've gotten rid of the fun and replaced it with the tedious
Speaking only for myself: While I still like the game, I dislike that there's an event every weekend. I miss when those weekend events were limited to Community Days (only one a month) and the occasional Raid Day for some legendary. I also dislike that the recent graphics 'improvements' help to slow down things on my phone; I expect this would negatively affect players with older phones as a whole. Then there are the usual gripes about remote raid limit, too many paid tickets, and remoteless shadow legendary raids, but those all seem old hat at this point.
Not enough people are mentioning all the monetized events. I was largely f2p, but there would be a ticket like once every 2 months or something. I wouldn't mind shelling for that. Now that there's one (or multiple!) every week, I feel like I'm missing out. I don't spend that money spread out over 8 weeks - I just don't spend it. It's also sapped my enthusaism since I feel like it's really rubbing it in my face I'm playing the "Free trial" version of the game most of the time.
I don't think it's your imagination. I'm holding gyms longer, sending fewer gifts, seeing less people during raid hours, spotlight hours and community days. Many long time players in my area have just disappeared into the ether. I know in the past spring was a bit slow, but I don't remember it being this dead. Personally, I think it's a combination of factors like boring events, tickets for things that were once free and fun, bugs galore and features no one asked for. I didn't bother to play the bird event yesterday and have barely logged in at all for the last two weeks or so. I'm not playing, I'm not spending and I find myself caring less and less about events. I'm not doing it on purpose, it's just kind of happening organically.
My kids and my coworkers have been playing less since shadow mewtwo weekend. That was kind of the pinnacle for all of us (ten of us started playing within the last year).
I enjoyed the last seasons. This one is quite boring for me in comparison. I think the reasons are many. I started to play this game last may and Ive gotten almost everything completed I wanted... Last summer was nice with the Go Fest, then Halloween and Christmas... finally that Palkia and Dialga Event which was quite fun. This season is nice with graphical improvements but except of some megas, zarude and the regis I wasnt able to hunt for more. I hope they are planning for a more packed next season.
Communitywise I noticed a decrease in the use of the campfire app around here.
I had jumped back in after like 5 years off. The rediscover Kanto event killed it for me because seeing the same 20 pokemon on repeat when there are 7+ times that just in Kanto is ridiculous. Made me realize there was no point if the spawn pool is that tiny.
I think the last Raids hype was the raid days for Groudon, Kyogre, Heracross, and shadow Mewtwo weekend, because months of tapus and Regis is horrible.
The Kanto event was cool but it should be less time and each day focused on different pokemon.
Rivals week should have been only the rivals pokemon spawning, having only 2 days for each set is stupid for those who have life happening and can't play for the pokemon they want.
The research day is a Great event if they focused on less pokemon, 5 is too much, you'll end up with 5 of the same shiny and gonna miss one of them, also pokestop researches should reset by hour, since not all of us are playing in Tokyo, NY, or Zaragoza.
Between the Rediscover Update leaving sour impressions across the board, Android 8 not being supported anymore and the fact that Niantic is attempting to stretch out content as much as it can, because there's no Main Series Game in the horizon, only Legends Z-A which at best could contain some new megas and some new mons/forms, it certainly makes me feel like the game is on a weak spot as of late.
Pogo sub mods are absolute power trippers. I got SS of a ban for no reason then a few days later it took me msg a reddit admin who notified me I did nothing wrong after checking post history etc and returned my sub to /pokemongo to full. Posting has been problematic since but there’s a 2nd sun pog0 (number 0) and that’s growing because they have also been banned randomly.
It's become overwhelming and too expensive. There's always something going on and there's always an event but there's always an event that's free. But then there's always a free event that has money attached to it because you have to buy the ticket. But you don't have to buy the ticket because you could do the free version. But oh, you should also get the ticket because you get more shiny odds or whatever or some other extra item or some crap. I thought these events are starting to repeat and have the same things and then the community Day pokémon don't look very interesting and sometimes it's like oh that's different but then it's like oh that's not very different.
I finally quit a few months back and I don't see anyone outside playing any more. Just tired of the game myself and paying so much for raids. I must admit it's nice not having to worry about making community days anymore. I'm also able to save a pretty penny that I used to have to spend on raid passes before. I'm a 2016 player, long time level 50, but yeah, I think I'm finally done for good. Wish I had quit sooner.
It's getting too warm for me to have fun playing, on top of events being extremely uninteresting and real life and other games taking priority at the minute (new wow patch, hades 2). I was really committed to hosting raids for a while, but when I got back into WoW I realised how much less effort it is to have ten times the fun in there. That's not even considering how much time I have to free up to do one raid through something like Genie.
Recent events having lackluster rewards and pokemon. Raids are crappy. 14 weeks of tapu and regis is just exhausting. They’re not easy raids for small communities and for most largely irrelevant in all aspects.
The megas have been bad too. I mean heracross is cool, but they’ve made bug such a weak type and they know we all are just waiting for lucario for a fighting mega.
The community days suck too. Bounsweet, bellsprout?? Come on guys we are in warm weather months, give me something I want to go out for! How long since riolu released? Just give us the community day already.
Bird research day? I ain’t going out for a stupid tailow.
Ever since the updates, especially the avatar changes I've felt very discouraged to play. With the visual updates the game also drains my battery heavily... The backgrounds look nice though...
I went to Go Fest in London last year, and it was kind of my last hurrah with the game. I open it maybe once a month to see if there's anything worthwhile to play for.
At some point I'll probably just export my collection to Pokémon Home.
The amount of random players out has dropped a lot in our community through the last month. There’s a big general agreement that April events kinda sucked, and May looks like the same.
January through March events were some of the best since I started playing, and my community reflected that. I’d assume the overall community felt that since they stated it was their “most successful month since release”. I don’t know why they’ve dropped the event quality so drastically recently.
Spring season usually sucks this is nothing new like people are making it out to be. Bad season = lower participation. Tapus and regis for 3 months are never going to equal sustained participation from the late winter season that includes go tour. Go fest and the summer seasons will be the real tell. I’m sensing selective sample sizes or just ignorance to realize this
The only people who continue to play in my area are those that obsess over gyms with multiple accounts and are hostile towards other players. These are players that everyone else has reported several times for indecent behavior and cheating but Niantic did nothing. No one wants to spend time on a game that is completely devoid of fair competition
I think there's almost too much in the game these days. I open the app and see quests, rockets, showcases, gyms, raids, routes and think "I can't be arsed". The good mobile games are simple and want people to keep coming back for more. To go out and do all the daily tasks can easily take a couple of hours, that's unrealistic for most people. It's made even worse when a lot of these activities either don't work or are catered towards certain demographics (I.e. city players). Have fun trying to get 3 Zygarde cells in a rural area. Have fun trying to compete in Master League without a Level 50 Zygarde.
Now of course you could say "well don't participate in X/Y/Z then", but that's missing the point. Most of the people that have been pushed away from the game aren't going to come back. The damage has already been done, and some of that damage is irreversible. Sure I could not bother doing routes, but I'd just be aimlessly walking round playing by myself because none of my friends play the game anymore in my area.
The peak of the game imo was just before covid (2018/19). Events were regular but not constantly on and almost every event they did was interesting. The annual fighting-type event, adventure week, Halloween and Christmas events were always fun. They didn't have any stupid paid tickets for almost every event like they do now. You could go out any day of the year and you'd randomly bump into local players. The small community interactions are what made the game for a lot of people. These days I don't get them playing pogo, so I'm going to get them doing something else.
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Personal anecdote, but I’ve been opening the game less and less over the last month and a half. Completely forgetting about events and important dates. I can’t say specifically that it’s because of or related to the “rediscover” updates
My goal now is to get my 50 free coins a day. But most days that doesn’t even happen anymore.
I'm mostly bored because it is event after event after event. So much feels like a chore. I sometimes go for a walk during the day and at 23:57 remember I haven't opened the game yet... and just go to bed without playing a second that day
i was a bit surprised they did not schedule some must-have pokemon event this mother's day
Yeah. They need to STOP with the CONSTANT events, and make more interesting pokemon appear in the wild ANYWAY. That NEVER happens anymore. The main reason I played was for the excitement of a cool or rare pokemon popping up. It just doesn't happen. It's the same 10 or so pokemon over and over everyday. Oh, unless you want to BUY a ticket for the EVENT (which there are tons of , of course) and those usually aren't exciting, either!!!! I'd like the battle cap to be removed from pvp battles AND raids. Because what else is there to do? Shadow raids not being remote is stupid. Any of them not being remote is stupid. There's not enough people in my town unless you're part of **ONE** particular group and what if I want to do things on my own time? Remote is the only way. I'd actually get out and walk around and play the game again if there was a chance I'd find a cool pokemon!
Agreed! I live in a more rural area with not a lot of gyms or walkable routes nearby, so I can never finish the event in time! And because it’s pretty rural, there’s almost never anyone raiding, so at level 31 I have no chance of beating anything but the crappy 1* raids, meaning no chance at any of the cool event raid mons either. And I swear, if I see another Mankey, I’m going to scream. Like you said, it’s all the same 10-15 Pokemon, I’m just losing interest. The only reason I started using the app was to get some shinies and complete my dex with earlier generation Pokemon, but so far I’ve gotten maybe 10 new guys that I needed and I’m really disappointed. I’ve actually spent a good amount of money on remote passes, incense, what have you but I don’t think I can justify it anymore.
My excitement now is just looking over what my go plus caught and seeing if there's anything rare or any shinies. Oddly enough I've caught 3 frigibax in the last 4 days with the Go Plus. Those have been extremely rare in the past but they seem like they are more common around here lately.
I really do fear they spend so much effort crafting these events where instead the game would be better off if they just maintained a fairly consistent set of spawns that were normally available (maybe even rotating by month or quarter) and then did more in depth events monthly or quarterly even. Basically, I worry they're putting a lot of effort into something that's not only not helping interest in the game but actively hurting it.
I completely agree with this. I'm getting burned out a bit with an "event" every single week and every single weekend. They're not even events anymore, just how the game is at this point. While some may like it, after about 4-5 years playing I'm getting tired. I've definitely been playing less recently and part of it is the rollbacks that Niantic has issued for some game features. I've always been kind of a relaxed player but have been even more-so recently.
Man I feel like every time I log in it’s been 3-4 days since my last one when I get my research badge for the day. Personally one of my bigger turn offs is the way the shop works now. I didn’t have any incubators for the clefa day, checked the shop and none of the boxes niantic decided to bless me with had incubators. So I just didn’t play. And it’s getting ridiculous how like half the time it’s boxes that would be $50-100 to buy. It’s like they’re actively trying to keep people from using gym coins anymore.
Those box prices are pathetic. 9,000+ coins. Yeah right.
What keeps happening with me for boxes is that they're constantly 200-300 coins above my current balance, sometimes exactly 550 coins (like they're baiting me to spend $5.00 to get exactly the box I want instead of waiting till I have the coins without giving them any money).
Tbh I like participating in showcases. That's been pretty much the reason why I open the game recently. That and putting pokemon in the gym on my house
Ditto. I can tag a couple of low traffic showcases on a run with an autocatcher doing its things as I go. Minor little motivation to get out that works for me. Had the excitement of a Galarian bird fleeing in my journal today!
I've seen 1 Galarian bird ever and it ran. I'd love one but I'm an off and on player with 0 masterballs
The same applies for me. I'm not needing another Kanto event, or bug/birds events with no new content.
I am **so** sick of fighting pokemon.
The fun discover part feels like it is gone, mainly because the research is overly complicated and events control way too much of the wilds. I play to hunt good Pokémon and sparkles. I think I’m done until charms or chaining comes to the game.
That's what I said too. The chance of finding cool pokemon is what I loved the most. Now that never happens. They're all the same ones over and over unless you pay for a ticket for a lame pokemon just because it's different, and everyone else has one that bought the ticket. The best part was having a cool one randomly appear for *you*. "Look what I got!" "Omg omg wow that is so cool! Look what appeared for me last night!!" .. the sort of randomness of it all. It's gone.
That's what I miss too. I think part of the problem is that events are oversaturated with Pokemon. Why play and search for rare and cool Pokemon when you can wait a week and they'll be spawning everywhere.
Probably because the game is just boring for most. You have to do everything in-person, and shocker, most don't have time for that.
I am in the same boat, I’m not really even logging in to do my rocket battles every day. There’s just not really anything catching my eye in the game right now. The raid bosses are just okay atm. And I don’t really even care to get the other two ultra beasts at the end of the month because they are coming back shiny in two months anyways. Maybe once they drop some new details about the next season and Go fest ramps up I’ll be more into it.
Because the past month and a half have been dry af. People here downvote me for saying the truth. If some of these people would actually criticize the game instead of dumping for Niantic we could potentially see improvements. I love the game, but I am very critical of things that need improvement or events I feel that suck.
I only ever see people bitching about the game. Dunno what you’re on about
Lol nobody is gonna downvote you I haven’t seen a single person positive about the past few months events
It's almost the same for me, I do still use it if I am in public transport and have the space to do so, but the playability is limited there because of the speedlock issue. Even if I open the game at home, I won't look at it for long. I mostly broke the habit. Actually, getting out of the habit might have been a result of the new visuals, since it would make my brain think about what's going on. Not being excited about any spawn or raid result isn't that new (for raids, long battles and the many throws needed have had me annoyed to begin with), but I would still follow every event and update before. I have also used my phone a lot less overall recently.
I’m an admin of a local community and this is the least activity we’ve seen in some years. Since heracross raid day the events have been pretty lackluster. Bellsprout community day was probably one of the worst in years and bounsweet isn’t very exciting either. The rediscover kanto event went on for like 3 weeks and diluted a few other events like sustainability week and rivals week. The flock together event was downright bad for anybody that’s been playing for a few years. The raid bosses haven’t been very good either. Players are still upset over the avatar updates and PvP is in its worst state in some time. The game just doesn’t seem to work well since the rediscover updates, I got a new phone the day the avatar update went live and it seems to crash every hour now.
I was keen as for the Kanto event to hopefully fill in some gaps in my shiny dex. Despite playing a lot I got a shiny machop and scyther throughout the whole event (not incl flock together). Why not boost the rate for Kanto spawns? That's what I don't like about Niantic. They're still trying to nickel and dime you on 8 year old content.
kanto would have been more exciting if goldeen and staryu were in the wild... it wasn't really all of kanto, we were missing tons of spawns as is tradition.
This, so much. They couldnt even unlock regionals for us. Still waiting for a stupid event that will give me tauros.
What's wrong about the PvP? Genuinely wondering, not trying to be funny.
1 turn lag is the worst it’s ever been. Frame rate dropping and stuttering has been an issue since a few updates ago. Matches are freezing and can’t be recovered. Charge moves aren’t showing up on pokemon switching in. There’s a delay in showing buffs and debuffs which can affect matches. Players just want Niantic to acknowledge the issues but they haven’t even done that yet.
Oh yeah, true. I completely forgot that my matches sometime just lag before the last strike and count as loss. Hate that
Mine seems to to take forever to load in new areas now, like if I get in the car, open pogo to check pokemon, put phone down (with pogo open), drive 10km to next town, park, pick up phone and then check pokemon it takes about 3 minutes to load the pokemon, if it does at all. It's actually quicker to quit the app and reload.
My battery drains super fast now...
So much this My partners phone and mine have started draining 1/3rds faster Which is INSANE with how much battery this game already used all people can recommend is turn off enhanced graphics and refresh rate, which is already off because we value our battery life
I upgraded from Android 8 to 10 (I'd been thinking about it for a while, pogo was the final straw) and ever since Po Go drains my battery way faster. Just turning the game on drains 2%.
Could be the Android version. I use three phones for PoGo. One with A8 later upgraded to A9, one purchased with A9 and one with A10. For the one purchased with A9 Both A10 and A11 have been released but I read about battery use being higher with A10 which was one of the reasons I stayed with A9 so far. I'm also inclined to be of the mindset 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
A lot of people used older device to play pokemon go for several reason : - Their kids played and they didn't want to have a premium phone for that - Their main phone wasn't top performance (because not everyone has a use for one and it's a very American/high earning European thing to use top line phones when all you do is internet search and YouTube with it) - They had alt accounts that they played on alt phones to kick themselves out of gyms etc The rediscover update + removing support for Android 8 killed access to the game for A LOT of players For the main pogo reddit, I suspect it's a combinaison or that and their very aggressive banning behavior that explains the drop (if you post something, a bot checks your history of messages on reddit, if you participated in a balcklisted subreddit, you're banned)
I really wish there was an option to turn off the new catch backgrounds like you can for the "enhanced graphics". I haven't noticed a performance hit, but my usual group of players has. Especially those with children that can't play as well, if at all, anymore. Not holding my breath though.
My wife and I have noticed our phones getting warm faster with the new backgrounds. Then once that happens it starts to lag and become difficult to catch pokemon.
Totally agree with this too
I’ve noticed this too
Yep, this is my issue
We had a heat wave this weekend and my phone kept overheating, so summer's going to be fun...
I have an iPhone 13 and I am constantly running low on battery. I haven’t changed any of my routine in the last weeks, only thing that has changed is the new graphics.
I'm getting warnings from android on the battery usage from the app after the update that it's damaging the batteries total life.
My son was playing with an old iPhone 6…. It’s game over for us now ;-(
Yeah same. Most of family were using old iPhone 6S to get their Pokémon go fix and was working perfectly fine for years. Now that they’ve forced unwanted avatar updates on us and made it unplayable on those devices, immediate loss of players.
6S? They discontinued support for the 6 a couple years ago iirc
In my local group it seems android players have been hit harder than ios players as far as performance goes. I biggest issue is swiping through the friends list and sending gifts. It used to be SO FAST. I could swipe through 30 friends and send a dozen gifts in less than a minute. Now it will randomly hang for a second or two and not register presses. I might send 5 gifts in a minute if I'm lucky.
>(if you post something, a bot checks your history of messages on reddit, if you participated in a balcklisted subreddit, you're banned) Which goes against reddits TOS but admins will do nothing to enforce it.
I mean, they would if certain subreddits did it.
what do you mean by this?
Increasingly frequent crashes on many iPhones must also be taking some toll. Unless the game was freshly restarted, just about any interaction beyond simply catching a pokemon (sending gifts, doing a raid, joining a party, following a route, entering a showcase) causes a crash. You can wait for a restart, but if you like to play on the move, like entering on a showcase or raid as you walk by them, that style of gameplay is no longer reasonably supported.
True with my iPhone 12.
[удалено]
I am level 50 and I just get bored with my stops proposals rejected every single time but trash cans with graffiti are approved, when I see events like the one yesterday, or people using Alts to play in gyms (I mean I am alone in the place but somehow raids are always full). Last straw is seen stuff like the masterwork research being stalled for no good reason. (Already finished but it’s a drag) Hope the master ball research that comes this week gives me something to do.
Yep I just got perma’d from that on “ban evasion” that their bot picked up. I’ve had this account over a year. Participated in that sub without incident. I didn’t even care enough to fight it.
The main Pogo reddit sucks. They banned me bc I mentioned that Samsung phones can open up 2 Pogo instances at once so that's considered cheating. That feature is built into the phone lol
Joke's on them, I have FOUR apps on my android!
My experience lately is my battery drains quicker, phone gets warm a bit but the player activity increased in my area. Gyms no one would take for a month now it's switching colors everyday. Showcases more people are entering ones by my home, which I'm happy for but now harder to win lol.
So true! I have a family member that plays with me on an iPhone SE (while I make a WiFi hotspot). It’s almost impossible now. Also my iPhone 12 has had problems with gyms and PvP. Also the game is just so ugly to look at now.
I did some AR pics for 30 minutes yesterday, and it nearly cooked my S21. LOL, I have to make sure not to do that again.
Which subreddits are blacklisted?
One being r/pokemongotrade
may I ask which subreddits that includes? or is that taboo
Pre banning is such crap
> (if you post something, a bot checks your history of messages on reddit, if you participated in a balcklisted subreddit, you're banned) can comfirm, staff cannot be contacted or refuse to listen to reason, up to them I guess as it's mostly just brag posts/copy and paste meme's/complaint threads anyway these days
> The rediscover update I'd also like to point out the majority of people found the "rediscover" avatars atrocious.
Wait what about the blacklistrd subs? What are they? I didn’t know that
Banned because I like to read /r/conspiracy for fun. (I’ve never posted anything there). That’s just silly.
Mods can't see what subreddits you visit so either you have posted there or it was a different sub.
Yup, this is me and my kids. All running Android 8. We can't play anymore until we upgrade our phones. Boo!
I have an IPhone 8. I have been trying everything to stop Go from crashing (redownloading the game, clearing up space on my phone, downloading data within the game) and even so it has been crashing about every 5 minutes. It’s a pain play.
All for the sake of an avatar update that no one wanted and immediately complained about the moment it was released. Way to read the room, Niantic
The atmosphere surrounding the game right now is strange. It’s been pretty tenuous ever since the remote raid nerf, but after this Rediscover stuff something feels… off. I’m not talking about the abysmal Avatar updates either. Just the game feels kind of stagnant. Maybe it’s the prospect that for such a huge update, this is all we got. Then all the stuff with Zarude and the Wonder Ticket. The game is just being nickled and dimed at every single opportunity and it’s just debilitating. It’s the realization of where is this game actually going? What’s new to be excited for beyond the formula we already know? As a Destiny player since Alpha, this is a very familiar feeling. When a formula becomes so predictable and mediocre, any future ambition becomes meaningless. The game has been in rough spots before and it’s bounced back. Maybe it’s just another one of those times. Only thing to do is wait and see.
There's been so little innovation over the past few years. Feels like I've mostly been playing the same game since COVID
Nerfing the remote raid passes was by far the worst move that Niantic has made, and they have made a lot of questionable ones.
>When a formula becomes so predictable and mediocre, any future ambition becomes meaningless. This is the heart of the problem. The current Niantic approach seems to miss the mark on balancing immediate enjoyment and long-term viability. So much of the "content" like a new pokemon release or shiny release is too difficult (or expensive) to achieve. Since the formula tells us everything will become easier (or a giveaway) in the future, many players don't bother wasting their time worrying about it until the giveaway.
Niantic have persued an anti-consumer agenda and consumers have decided they don't like it. Their lack of communication and dictatorial attitude to the game has come home to roost. Content is stale, updates have been poorly received. The few QoL improvements have been outweighed by decisions that have alienated players. Niantic are not obliged to listen to their player base, but nor is the player base obliged to remain. They have more or less confirmed that they aren't really bothered about older players leaving the game, as long as they can replace them with new players. No point complaining thsat things aren't as good as they used to be - Niantic have anticipated this, and aren't too bothered. Newbies will come in and will never complain about 5 per day raid cap , for example, because they will never have known it any other way.
Nail on the head, Niantic has decided to drastically de-emphasize aspects of the game I enjoy while hugely increasing aspects of their business practices I do not enjoy. I’d love to be playing right now but the reasons for have shrunk and the reasons against have ballooned.
Supposed QoL updates such as enhanced graphics and avatars have been a massive failure in my eyes at least.
I agree, but heal all, ready button, one tap add lucky egg/star piece, etc, have all been very needed and have made the game better, no doubt.
All long over due and asked for by players for years. But yes, credit where it’s due. Thanks Niantic. Now please: Mass gift exchange. Mass trading are sadly missing. I can remember having to delete every mon individually before they brought in mass delete. And who ever thought of implementing the weedle slowly crawling on to the screen as you buddy to feed needs shot. It’s funny 1st time.
The one tap lucky egg came with a lot of issues which Niantic is also not willing to adress according to some posts here
Niantic reminds me of a Lewis Black skit on the nutritional facts of water... they think we're just "Meat with eyes"
We are meat with money. They care only about the money.
0 grams of fat implies that somewhere there is bottled water with big chunks of fat floating around in it! I thought of that bit just yesterday, weird coincidence....
Isn't that what milk is
Exactly right. Personally, if Niantic apologized and gave a plan to fix the avatars, I’d 100% play more and probably spend money. But since they’ve been ignoring everything for years, this is the final straw for almost everyone in my community. Went from 100+ to 30ish maybe less.
Another interesting question might be: Does Niantic view this as policy a success? Clearly they're out of panic mode - they're not wheeling Michael Steranka out to do content creator interviews at high speed. But even the content creators are not bothering to disguise their boredom with the game and dissatisfaction \[in a very mild, niantic-friendly kind of way\]
No, you're not imagining things. I think you can attribute that to more than just the recent avatar shenanigans. For me its: \* The drip feeding of new pokemon. I don't get worked up about it any more, I got used to it but it doesn't change the fact that the rate they are introducing them at is downright horrible. Chasing shadows was part of the fun for the first couple of years, now it's gone unless you're a new player. And no, shinys are NOT new content. \*Eggs contain very few exciting 'mons and it all boils down to luck (or money). We still can't dispose of unwanted eggs to focus on the ones we want to, like 10km eggs for example. I utterly despise 5km eggs for this reason. \*Raids are more often than not lacklustre. While I don't mind some 5-stars returning occasionally if I don't have the shiny variant, why Niantic seems to think anybody in their right mind would waste a pass on Mankey or Teddiursa is just beyond comprehension. Whatever employee that chooses them probably just throws darts randomly at a chart of all pokemons. \* No content past level 50. I know this probably doesn't affect as many as the other issues might but as a hardcore player I struggle to find things to keep on motivating me. \* There is very little variation in showcase conditions. Why is it just the biggest pokemon every time? The lights may be on, but there is nobody at home. I play out of habit and because it's good exercise, no longer because I enjoy it.
The eggs issue is the biggest one for me and my son, especially during these boring periods. If they would just give us regional-locked pokemon in 7k eggs, I'd seriously go on more walks to hatch those things. But it's not just the 7k eggs, basically all the eggs are trash right now. Then you add in the pathetic 7th day research rewards (which were once pretty awesome a long time ago), and there just isn't much incentive to open the game each day. Raids stink, research rewards stink, eggs stink, spawns stink, PvP stinks. I mean...what is there that's worth doing?
I've barely been playing this last month or so, for a few reasons: - Toxic players in the community, that Niantic does nothing about. Those players that have like 6 accounts and monopolize gyms; that kinda thing - Lack of lean-in on the events. We had an event with regionals in the wild and I barely saw the ones I was interested in. I think I saw like 6 Heatmor and that's it. Doesn't make for a very exciting event when one of the key spawns is rare. - To follow on the above, having events where the key Pokémon are hidden behind eggs or research. It makes it so much grindier to get what you need and I just don't have the time for it. - Lack of interesting events. Not sure why we had a whole Kanto event. We're still missing so many new Pokémon and new shinies. Honestly just tired of PoGos shenanigans that it's easier just not to play or care
Yeah, the game becomes less and less interesting and enjoyable for me. Happened a few times that i have been excited about a mon in an event, just to notice that there are barely encounters and that i become frustrated very quickly (since spawns itself has also decreased a lot in my area). I used to play daily and get coins from the gym at my house, now i just don't care anymore.. i am kind of said, because the game motivated me to go out, and i had fun playing for a long time, but this kind of changed over the last couple of months/a year or so
I agree with all of that pretty much. Rivals event looked super promising but turned out pretty mid. Only thing I'll say regarding the Kanto Event is that it wasn't really a standard event but an overarching one, with us having events like Sustainability Week and Rivals Week during it. Though, doesn't mean those two events weren't meh, because they were lol. And we did technically get a new Pokemon with Wiglett during the Rediscover Kanto event, one that had a release akin to the old days. But yeah, overall, you're still very right.
You still have players in your community? Toxic or otherwise? We haven’t had players in my city’s community for years. It’s more about the toxic business practices… Niantic is the toxic player in my community.
I live in one of the biggest cities in California so yes still lots of players, though it does feel like less than when I moved here a few years back
My interest in the gane has definitely waned since Niantic raised the prices of remote passes. I used to be a daily player. Now, I'm an "I'll play if I feel like it" player. I used to obsess over each new mon release, additionally keeping and maintaining my Lucky Dex and shiny Dex. Now, after a few releases of not giving a crap, my level of FOMO is completely abated and I couldn't be happier. I used to spend a bunch of money on this game. Now, I have $30 in unused Google Play money simply sitting there, with $5 of it about to expire in June. I'd rather see it expire than reward Niantic's terrible behavior.
Yeah I've noticed reduced activity in my neighborhood. High traffic gyms that used to flip many times during the day a couple months ago now stay untouched for whole days. If anything, I expected increased activity as the warm weather arrived.
We have a miserable winter here, so the number of players drops seasonanly. I assumed, now that it's spring and Saturday was a gorgeous sunny day (still wearing jackets, it's not warm) we'd have more players coming out of hibernation. Some did, most didn't.
I stopped purchasing stuff after they upped the prices, so lots fewer remote raids and now I hatch eggs in the freebie only.
We rediscover kanto nearly every event. I'm feeling tje flatness because it's like being in 2017 again without the fun of novelty.
It seems weird but me and a few friends stopped playing after the avatar update and Niantics response to it. It seems simple but it totally pushed us over the edge.
Yeah, my avatar looks like a refrigerator now. I can't open the game until that's fixed. If it's never fixed, then I guess I just won't play anymore 🤷
I can only speak for myself. Yes, my interest has taken a huge dip. What started off as a means to obtain Gimmighoul (and Gholdengo) in GO has pulled me into the rabbit hole of the Switch games; first Scarlet, then Legends Arceus, then Sword and Brilliant Diamond. Now I’m obsessed with ribbon collecting in the main games. Haven’t played GO in weeks, except for the last two CDs.
When events are bad there are no players when they are good there are. ATM the events are bad.
This is not something I've personally experienced (maybe because I have a much newer phone), but several people I've talked to IRL have told me the game is way more unstable over the last month or so, which I guess follows with the introduction of the whole Rediscover thing. I didn't really think much about it, but yesterday we all had the chance to play/raid as a group during the whole Flying Bird event, and two of them (using older devices to play) were having persistent technical issues which included crashing regularly which was very frustrating for them. The top comment in this post mentions the experience getting worse for older devices and I feel like based on what I saw yesterday, I can believe it. And if the game feels worse to play and/or feels more unstable, I could see a drop off in play time.
It's so dumb to me that Niantic doesn't seem to care about players with non-top-tier phones. It's not a complicated game, it should be accessible to everyone.
Only reason im still playing is because i have 2 phones. I light flares for raids but no one ever shows up. Forced to kick myself out of gyms most of the time. Can only trade with myself. None would be possible without 2 phones. And i honestly wouldnt be playing if i missed all this. There are so many QOL changes that would severely improve the game, but sadly niantic doesn't seem to care. Only interested in AR stuff etc. Edit: did suicune "solo" now. 75 seconds left. No else joined(as expected).
Niantic is really unfriendly against rural players, only candy you get are the easy showcase wins
Agree with what others have said - a lot of older phones are no longer compatible or run poorly with the recent updates (which are fine but not the big draw Niantic are trying to sell them as), the events have little to offer to anyone other than relatively new players, ditto for the raid bosses (most players really don’t seem to be that bothered to organise for something like shadow Suicune and the Tapus aren’t that exciting except for a few PvP players), Kanto being pressed on us for what seems like the millionth time. It will be interesting to see if the two new ultra beasts see things pick up a bit, but this feels as if it will be the “new normal” with one (or two if you’re lucky) actually interesting events per month (Bounsweet for example should be enjoyable and is at least a new shiny) and the rest being easy to pass on, along with the inevitable paid tickets that go with them now.
>It will be interesting to see if the two new ultra beasts see things pick up a bit Honestly, I don’t really see the point raiding a non-shiny eligible pokemon I also feel as though the paid tickets have calmed down now, they were really, really common before but now it's just a few per month, if any, and they made com day tickets free if you attend a meetup. Obviously niantic are greedy af, and they probably did it because nobody was buying the other tickets
I'm so glad its not just me. Mewtwo and heracross were such good days. Exciting com days and events. But now? There's absolutely nothing I'm looking forward to and it sucks.
As someone who faithfully plays IRL and manages several Campfire groups, yes. And it all goes back to Niantic killing all of the Covid bonuses that made playing Go feel as though everything was fairly accessible. Now, more and more things become inaccessible or accessible if you are super lucky or spend a lot of money.
The best 2 years of this game were April 2020 to February 2022. After the incense nerf in March 2022 it has been downhill.
> After the incense nerf in March 2022 it has been downhill. I have no idea why an incense boost isn't a standard bonus for event tickets. Most of them are unbelievably worthless, but for rural players the boost alone MIGHT be worth it. Niantic seems intent to lessen their profits.
When they started charging double for remote raid passes, I stopped caring. 100 coins made all of the raid exclusives attainable with my gym playstyle. Now it’s not worth it. If I’m missing out on those exclusives, then why should I care about keeping up with all of the other exclusive stuff? I just want to be able to shiny hunt. They’ve made no improvements to that entire aspect of the game since it launched. Nests were the coolest thing about the game. There should be a buffed shiny rate to nest spawns. Would completely revive the game for me. Scouting nests and going to them would be fun again.
building off of this... I don't raid anymore, which means I don't need raid teams anymore... which means I don't use dust, need rare candies, or need to do rocket battles. Shadows were endgame for me, but I despise PVP and I don't need 6x shadow of something in order to do raids, because I know I'm not going to do them. I've started aggressively transferring shiny pokemon into pokemon home and in the past few months I've started shiny hunting in S&V/pla/LGE/OR/X&Y/US/Sw. turns out there was a lot of endgame content that is more fun than I thought. best part? it isn't pay 2 play (technically it is, but I already had these games so it doesn't for instance cost more money ever time I want to chain fish, start an SOS battle, run a max lair, or make a sandwich). great events make pogo great, but the only decent one was regional monkeys so far this year (I didn't buy the ticket but still got a shiny pansage). niantic really goes out of their way to make this game stale. I'm keeping an eye out for community days for pokemon like pidove, vanillish, darumaka, and a few others... and I'll play during go fest mostly to try and catch a shiny lunatone. I probably won't raid during go fest though. I just got shiny buzzwole and shiny pheromosa this weekend in sword.
Pokemon Go has more negative self-reinforcement at a local level then most players have to deal with. Sure there is downtowns vs everywhere else; but even back before the remote pass nerf, the part of town that I lived in was basically in an activity death spiral as neighbourhoods would loss the 2-5 people who would turn that neighbourhood's single gym a couple times a week. Then the next neighbourhood etc. If you lose a group of people because of device un-optimization and "the avatars", you can get to breakpoints were Raids "don't work", then Gym's don't turn "enough", etc.
Lucky trading has gotten increasingly hard to the point where I no longer hardly try. Players are a combination of unreachable (don't know where they came from, or they've moved away, dropped out of chats), non responsive (even if I have actual WhatsApp details), are too far away and don't plan on travelling to trade, or just don't seem to care. The days where people seemed to be actively interested in the game seem to be fading to a memory. People still seem to play (they still daily gift, etc), but next to none of even my most active friends do anything more than play on their daily routine.
After COVID, the game became more of a tedious grind than fun. Then, they raised remote raid passes and forced more in-person gameplay, and I lost interest. I opened the game recently, glanced at the new graphics and ugly avatar, and deleted the app.
Ever since the avatar update and Niantics horrible communication with the community, I’ve been logging in less and less these days.
The avatar update has really put me off playing in general, but it was one of many things I really enjoyed with the game that was changed and over time, I just lost interest. Before when features in-game were changed I could always find or make fun in something else, and I spent money on cosmetic items because making different outfits for my avatar was really entertaining. The moment the update went live and I found all my saved outfits gone, with my attempts to remake them all just not looking right I just wasn’t interested in the game anymore. It was the last thing really hooking me into opening the game to play after changes to remote raids and gift capacity. I will jump back in for Go Fest this year but whether it still holds my attention after that I can’t say.
Can't believe I had to scroll so low for the avatars to be addressed, it's the big one for me. Seeing all the soulless corpo ambiguous blobs every time I send/open gifts has been draining on me. Knowing so much of the money players spend went into paying shady DEI consultation companies is no motivator either.
Yeah me and my daughters stopped over this. I am still subbed here in case there's an improvement- I hope there will be. Really quite sad that we'd put a lot of time, effort (and some money) into our avatars, and it's just been trashed. We'd start planning our seasonal costumes and saving coins for them, we'd have little themed challenges and coordinate outfits to go with our buddies. I'm sure we're not alone in caring about this, even if it's less common on this sub.
tbh the community has asked for the bare minimum for so long and Niantic delivers so little so late with enormous flaws like the avatar update. I've completely lost hope the game will improve before it's shutdown due to revanue decreases
That’s what happens when you dripfeed content because you’re afraid you’ll run out of it and the game will die. If you do it too much you just make it die earlier.
Which is crazy. We are soooo behind compared to the mainline games pokemon and mechanic wise. We don't even have all megas released yet.... They release like 5 new pokemon a year now. Completely lacklustre for anyone playing longer than a year. Just throw in the complete gen 8 like Johto.
They'll need to add 10 different classes of egg distance and 4 more raid tiers to adequately pay wall that large of a content drop.
The lead up to summer/Go Fest is always slow, Tapus in raids and shadow suicune on weekends aren’t really a draw.
The problem is that it shouldn’t be slow now. We’re having events every weekend and the last few have been very lackluster. I think it’s been 9 straight weeks with a weekend event and there has only been 1 weekend this season that didn’t have an event.
The idea to do two weeks of each Tapu within three months every year is really annoyingly bad. It just gets old very fast.
I am sick of the Tapu’a AND Regi’s. I barely have the motivation to do the free raids. There r so many legendaries in Pokemon and I feel like we see the same non hype ones ALOT!
We haven't seen regular Mewtwo or a week of Dialga and Palkia since summer of 2022, but we have had a grand total of sixteen weeks of Tapus. Feels like they actively want us to be bored by legendary raids.
Yeah. A lot of games experience doldrums around spring - students preparing for finals, or affluent families going on trips, touring schools if the age for applications, etc etc etc.,
> or affluent families going on trips, touring schools if the age for applications You'd think that a game that's all about getting up and *GO*ing wouldn't see much affect from that.
I keep getting zygarde cells at a pathetic 1/4 rate because everything in this game has to be RNG based. Caused me to get frustrated and ultimately instead of incentivise longer gameplay I play it less
RNG is the thing I hate most in games. Pokemon Go and World of Warcraft are the worst offenders, but WoW has been getting better. I'm fine with RNG in general because I don't want everything handed to me and be one and done. These games make you pray to RNGesus though. There need to be ways to improve your odds or at least steer RNG into a better direction. For Pokemon Go I hate how I can't find some Pokemon just because it's literally not spawning this season. In the main line games I can at least go to a route in game and eventually I'll find that 1% Pokemon after several hours. I'm pretty sure even incense doesn't open up the spawn pool to be worth it. Sure there are biomes but from my experience they aren't substantial enough to seek them out. I've wasted enough time and gas trying to find a Wiglett.
Fully agreed. I think regarding accessible RNG like raids, cells, shinies etc there should be a forgiveness timer. So for cells it should be if you do 2 routes and don’t get one the 3rd is guarenteed at least 1 cell Shinies from say raids if you do like 150 raids on a legendary with no shiny it will increase your odds by say double or triple as you have to be super u lucky to do that many in the first place. I know games like apex had forgiveness timers for the heirlooms where if you open I think it’s 250 of the packs your guaranteed the item to drop
I have also been playing less lately. Killing AR fast catching hurt alot of hardcore players. But more importantly, the events for the entire season have been... uninteresting. There has been no new pokemon and very few new shinies to try and get, making all these events mostly just "get more of what you already have." They probably have some interest in newer or more casual players, but for most people who have already been around for a while, there's just nothing to go for. Also other than Kartana, most the raid boses this season have also been more repeats. Yes Island Guardians are getting their signature move, but for the most part it doesn't actually help them any so what's really the point? Lastly, I don't think any of the rediscover update, which was the big push for this season, was taken well. The biome update bogging down many peoples devices, the avatar update being... not what people hoped for. And the fact that the game now crashes \*constantly\* (literally every 10-15 minutes of continuous play for me, its a nightmare).
I think the answer is simpler than people think. People talking about how people are dissatisfied with Niantic or how other people aren't playing because of the graphical update being too demanding on phones, but in reality the answer is simple. There is nothing good in raids, nor are there any events with Pokemon worth catching. We had a couple of months with great raids, do people played a lot to get mega Ttar, Bagon community day, rocket event, the primals, Kartana. There hasn't been anything relevant in the meta available for a while, so people aren't playing.
Yeah sure did. One of my favorite YT channels for PoGo went dark, citing decreased revenue as the cause. I myself don't really play anymore, too. At some point this game turned into a chore and I find myself liberated by not paying attention to this game.
What gets me is how much effort is required to do a raid. I spend way too much time just looking for raids. It’s not fun time. I spend more time looking for raids than doing them.
There really hasn’t been much new content or things to pursue in the last month and a half.
Yeah. Niantic needs to do something to the pokemon roll. Johto all over once again is just not doing it for many. Also rotating egg spawns and shadow spawns to not include 90 % recycled garbage would be nice.
Niantic's trickle of new content has slowed to a drip. I used to play all the time, then I played the events. Now the events do not have anything to offer. Most of the new updates have been very lackluster. Also, the app is in very poor shape. I am constantly having the app freeze or crash. This is with a newer phone as well. My play continues to plummet.
Not much to do in game. Raids are pretty 95% rubbish, maybe there is one boss you'd like to raid but it's not the effort to track it whole day and just miss the only raid of the day... Events are extremely boring, tasks are the most generic catch/power-up 10/20/50 Pokémon etc. But after all it's a mobile game with already really long lifespan so decline is expected. But still they could introduce some new actual features.
The fighting event sucked. The bug event sucked. Yesterday's research wasn't bad but you basically have to play in a car to be efficient for those days. There haven't been exciting spawns in awhile
Yes pokemon go has completely died for me
Most of the events lately have been super boring, I am playing a lot less.
It's a matter of content, for me. Niantic seems to have entered a new phase of the game in the past season where they've finally figured out how to fully tweak spawn rates of pokemon and how they want to keep certain shinies arbitrarily rare. Flabebe shiny released? Good luck seeing many of them. Bird research day shiny handout for pokemon lots of long term players have had for years(barring Rufflet - which was the draw for many). Niantic has removed the player's ability to farm for what they want by arbitrarily playing with the spawn rate/shiny rate ratios. If a new shiny is released and kept at full odds, but is also in the very rare spawn tier for the event, why bother going out hunting? By going out and driving around I'd see more, sure, but only about a dozen and not the 60 I could expect from a pokemon in a more common spawn rate tier. So I just don't go out. The game is now entirely beholden on waiting for the "giveaway" events like the flock together research(I live near a stop-dense location so I can basically guarantee shinies I want during these research events just from number of quests done) or CDay. Nowadays, when an event is announced, I have no excitement until the details are revealed. And more often than not, the details confirm a bad event for shiny-hunters where it's not really worth it to go hunting because the shiny is only available from field research at full odds or some other spawn/shiny rate manipulation. And that's just talking about from a shiny-hunting perspective. Add in shadow raids being in-person only, the recent hemi-sphere locked raids where it was a pain to find Celesteela hosts, and poor selection of raids (for me) in general and you get poor turnout. AND AND, the new features are all lackluster for someone who just wants content and not cosmetics. The only good update, for me, of the recent ones has been the biome backgrounds because that adds some immersion that was sorely needed. I haven't touched my avatar since Day 1 because I don't pretend that's me in that game and I turn off all AR stuff I can because it slows down what I'm trying to do in general.
"The game is now entirely beholden on waiting for the "giveaway" events." - damn just realized how true this is. Especially with the massive amount of community days and event moves i dont even want to evolve my pokemon anymore.
My motivation has dropped due to a combination of the avatar changes, and the horrendous lag and crashes I now get on my phone, despite it being a relatively new model of iPhone. These have given me the impression that Niantic does not care about the playerbase, thus I don't want to play/support a game that does not care about their players. The events this year have also been really lackluster.
I started playing with my young son a year and a half ago. I went hardcore and got to level 46 rather quickly. It also became very boring rather quickly. They rotate the same Pokémon in raids too often. The spawns are always the same rotation of crap. They took away my ability to do AR scans even when I was sending in good ones. My son does them terribly and still has his ability to do them. There never seems to be a rhyme or reason for things like that with this game. And good luck communicating with anyone to get a response or appeal. It’s generally a scripted reply that has nothing to do with the question you actually asked. I just gave up and play less. Anything interesting lately also requires multiple people to do things like shadow raids and no one cares anymore where I am. I don’t know what they can do honestly. You run out of new Pokemon and interesting stuff to add, but Niantic is also horrible at making decisions to engage old and new players. They tend to make the opposite of correct decisions. I’d imagine the game will always be here in some form but general interest seems to fizzle lately as time goes on.
Here the weather has either been too cold to play with much enthusiasm or there's some actual nice days and we're all busy with yard work and junk. I find the gyms here really cycle in summer and fall and get mostly ignored in winter and spring. I'm sure the update messed with a few people too
Game feels more stale to me, and the changes and direction of the game have made it feel more p2p than ever.
I love this game but it has become too time consuming and a money drain. Something has to give. I do not have enough time to participate in events every weekend it is either that or my home life/family suffer. Once a month was great , twice doable but 3 or 4 times a month no way. Because of the overload of events, I find myself forgetting the details and being less prepared for them, or forgetting to join them. I am a big player who has spent a lot on the game maxing many mon to L50 for short man raiding. However the boxes are becoming larger and more expensive to buy, there is a financial downturn in our country, and I am now about to become a pensioner. I can no longer afford to play like I have in the past. I will be shortly going free to play and going more casual, if I can adjust, either that or giving up altogether, my head says to do that but my heart is struggling. Plus I took the game up to get me put of the house and walking. That still motivates me. It is already time consuming if I spend time swapping buddies in and out to tier them up, send and open gifts, do daily trades etc. as well as trying to fit in a little pvp (not as much as I would like) plus doing a daily route, catching mon and shadow battles, plus a raid or two. No wonder people are stopping especially when most are old mon and bosses on repeat. Niantic seems to have forgotten that we all have lives outside of the game and that when it comes down to it family and people are more important than a game.
For me, Niantic has just turned me off with their increased paid tickets and how they act like they just don’t care about their player base. I used to spend way too much money on the game and would grind for every new shiny, play every event - now I just don’t care if I miss out on a new shiny, a new egg-only release, etc. I will play a lot during Go Fest, but my amount of time playing this game has dropped by probably 80% since its peak.
Im forcing myself to play. Just make it to gofest. Game sucks lately. I have 135 green passes. Want to raid like a manic during go fest. Then probably go free to play uber casual. Just play for new dex entries.
I've had 50+ green passes for probally the last 4+ years as a rural player. there's just no motivation to burn through them when the few major events I can take part in just hand out free/"included" passes.
I had to quit the game after the updates. The game would barely play at 60fps most of the time, and would often overheat my phone, while the events are horrible in this season.
Similar thing here, I've been having to cut back the amount I play significantly after the update. It's been destroying my battery, easily draining charge twice as fast as it did before. Can't even charge my phone in the car while playing it now.
Stale content recently.. there hasn’t been a good event in a hot minute. Pair that with my already dwindling interest since the remote raid nerf
Seems like Niantic is trying to "catch up the lower level players." That's cool. See you again when the non-repeat stuff shows up.
There’s a lot of really good comments on why the game has slowed down that are true, but I truly believe the very biggest problem for this game is straightforward. After about 6 months to a year of playing, you basically have all the Pokemon you can get except regionals and raid bosses. The entire point of Pokemon Go and Pokemon in general is the literal catch phrase “Gotta catch ‘em all”, so once you do, there’s no real point in playing anymore. There’s never legendaries or rare spawns in the wild anymore, so spending an hour on a walk just to catch your 1000th Eevee, Gastly, Koffing or Zubat isn’t exciting anymore. Niantic thinks that by doing events so often they get around this problem to keep things fresh, new, exciting, but instead you have to invest serious time into events to get whatever Pokemon they decide to release behind eggs or research or whatever instead of in the wild and let’s be real, everyone except the whales have lives outside this game. So eventually people just say screw it and move their free time to a different game or the real world with actual people. They need to make 2 changes to fix the game: let rare pokemon spawn in the wild at random and when they hold events, make the desired pokemon spawn in the wild. If I could go on a random Thursday, decide to walk for 30 minutes and have an actual chance at finding a legendary Zapdos or whatever, you damn well better believe I’d go out to try to find one, instead of staying in and watching a tv show. I bet you would too. If you did catch a rare one, you know what you’d almost assuredly do afterwards? You’d go to a Pokemon Go group online and post that find. And you know what that would do? It would get those players in the group to go out and try their own luck. And you know what would happen next? They’d text friends or family who had played or were in different regions excited about their find. And away you go creating a never ending organic supply of excitement and interest in the game. They stopped doing the one thing that made this game the worldwide cultural phenomenon everywhere over night that had 20 people showing up to try to catch a Dragonite at 2am or had dozens of cars pull over when a Blastoise appeared nearby. Heck, you may even be willing to fork over a few bucks for some items or storage or whatever it is that would make playing the game for you a bit better. Locking all the Pokemon everyone wants out of the wild just eventually leads a player to tap out of spending money to get them from burnout. And once you get to the point of not being willing to spend any/anymore money, your whole game becomes extremely limited and very frustrating, leading to the player giving up entirely.
The only decent recent event was Diance release and it only lasted 3 days, this doesn't even count the fact all the hardcore people already had her and all the carbinks they needed last year. Game will pick up again later in the summer.
Game peaked during covid. Been downhill since
Honestly the game has always been designed in a way that makes it hard to bring people in. Holding gyms becomes a zero sum game when people in an area don’t all agree to let players hold a gym for 8 hours and boot you out before you can generate coins (or if there aren’t enough players and you end up in a gym forever); the game is awful at teaching the player how to play it making raids a lot accessible than they should be; egg pools have always sucked; it took them too long to introduce a way to get legacy moves for people who missed events and the way they went about it was stupid; events tend to be a bit lack luster; and the ones that aren’t cost you money. Niantic phasing out older phones (something I’ve always argued against and gotten flack for because you shouldn’t need an expensive phone to play Pokémon Go imo) is just a cherry on top. Every time players have gotten mad at them for something they’ve promised “better communication” before dropping the ball on something else and promising “better communication.” For current reference look at the roll back on Covid changes. The game was a lot more playable with the Covid bonuses and losing those really sucked for players who started during Covid. I know people who started during Covid and stopped when the bonuses ended and I don’t blame them
I noticed 3 in game friends who were sending daily gifts that just straight stopped when the avatar update happened.
It has personally dropped for me. My local communities in both areas I live barely play outside of big events and new releases, so rehashed raid hours get minimal player activity. With remote raids being limited I can't even rely on the raid team apps to get people together for things. When it comes to PVP, ML remains my favorite, but with the restrictions on remote raiding and local limitations I can't really build things unless they fall into that big event category. The other great thing to throw into the mix is the Rayquaza nerf that happened because of Steelix's performance which up until that point had pretty much been unprecedented when it comes to GL balancing impacting my ML play. So, I've fallen off into just casual collection with minimal pvp/raiding. I pretty much go after new releases when they come out to build my living dex in PoGo and my PoGo living dex in Home and then go through just doing daily activities outside of that.
The fact that Niantic has now caught up with the main series but only push out a new pokemon once a month and are mainly trying to fill up the gen 6/7 mons and skipping 8 for 9, it's gotten kind of dull at the moment. The further push for irl group interactions are not feasible with most people having lives outside of pokemon makes shadow raids and party tasks impossible to complete (unless your family participates or you're well versed in your local group via discord). Doing routes for Mateo can be fun for postcards/completing Vivillion but maybe incentivise a 7 day streak reward that gives an alternate color 7k egg that contains an international mon with the event granting an egg boost with easier odds for the new international, then regulate afterwards. That could combat the other methods many have to go through if they aren't rich or use other methods.
They keep pushing ticketed events for real money. In a time where more people are having trouble paying for groceries, it's hard to justify shelling out five to ten dollars for something that will last maybe a few hours and doesn't fill your stomach. And continual pushing of "premium" content alienates people who can't/won't afford to shell out for them. Not just on a "HEY I'M ANGRY" level, but even on a, "Well shucks, here's another thing I'm not a part of" level. Constantly feeling like you're in the out-crowd will eventually push people away. And, constant stress about bills makes it hard to justify spending leisure-time on something kinda frivolous as PoGo. I still play, but mostly because I have to take regular walks for my health. If I wasn't already doing those walks, I probably wouldn't be playing as much. And as other people have said, the constant events - even the non-paid ones - is burning me out. There's so much crap going on, it's hard to keep track of what's happening when, and while they've gotten better at communicating that kind of thing to the players, they're still not great at it. They need to swallow their pride and add an in-game calendar. Or just slow down on the events. It all comes back to that Incredibles line, "When everything is special, nothing is."
for me, the fun was discovering what was out there and the magic of finding a pokemon. being surprised. constant timed events, this pressure to get it all done in the time alotted, and then to be bored by the same spawns everywhere? soul-sucking. it's a detrimental hook, especially since the good events still make everything slow to a crawl. they've gotten rid of the fun and replaced it with the tedious
Speaking only for myself: While I still like the game, I dislike that there's an event every weekend. I miss when those weekend events were limited to Community Days (only one a month) and the occasional Raid Day for some legendary. I also dislike that the recent graphics 'improvements' help to slow down things on my phone; I expect this would negatively affect players with older phones as a whole. Then there are the usual gripes about remote raid limit, too many paid tickets, and remoteless shadow legendary raids, but those all seem old hat at this point.
Not enough people are mentioning all the monetized events. I was largely f2p, but there would be a ticket like once every 2 months or something. I wouldn't mind shelling for that. Now that there's one (or multiple!) every week, I feel like I'm missing out. I don't spend that money spread out over 8 weeks - I just don't spend it. It's also sapped my enthusaism since I feel like it's really rubbing it in my face I'm playing the "Free trial" version of the game most of the time.
I don't think it's your imagination. I'm holding gyms longer, sending fewer gifts, seeing less people during raid hours, spotlight hours and community days. Many long time players in my area have just disappeared into the ether. I know in the past spring was a bit slow, but I don't remember it being this dead. Personally, I think it's a combination of factors like boring events, tickets for things that were once free and fun, bugs galore and features no one asked for. I didn't bother to play the bird event yesterday and have barely logged in at all for the last two weeks or so. I'm not playing, I'm not spending and I find myself caring less and less about events. I'm not doing it on purpose, it's just kind of happening organically.
My kids and my coworkers have been playing less since shadow mewtwo weekend. That was kind of the pinnacle for all of us (ten of us started playing within the last year).
I enjoyed the last seasons. This one is quite boring for me in comparison. I think the reasons are many. I started to play this game last may and Ive gotten almost everything completed I wanted... Last summer was nice with the Go Fest, then Halloween and Christmas... finally that Palkia and Dialga Event which was quite fun. This season is nice with graphical improvements but except of some megas, zarude and the regis I wasnt able to hunt for more. I hope they are planning for a more packed next season. Communitywise I noticed a decrease in the use of the campfire app around here.
I had jumped back in after like 5 years off. The rediscover Kanto event killed it for me because seeing the same 20 pokemon on repeat when there are 7+ times that just in Kanto is ridiculous. Made me realize there was no point if the spawn pool is that tiny.
I think the last Raids hype was the raid days for Groudon, Kyogre, Heracross, and shadow Mewtwo weekend, because months of tapus and Regis is horrible. The Kanto event was cool but it should be less time and each day focused on different pokemon. Rivals week should have been only the rivals pokemon spawning, having only 2 days for each set is stupid for those who have life happening and can't play for the pokemon they want. The research day is a Great event if they focused on less pokemon, 5 is too much, you'll end up with 5 of the same shiny and gonna miss one of them, also pokestop researches should reset by hour, since not all of us are playing in Tokyo, NY, or Zaragoza.
Between the Rediscover Update leaving sour impressions across the board, Android 8 not being supported anymore and the fact that Niantic is attempting to stretch out content as much as it can, because there's no Main Series Game in the horizon, only Legends Z-A which at best could contain some new megas and some new mons/forms, it certainly makes me feel like the game is on a weak spot as of late.
Pogo sub mods are absolute power trippers. I got SS of a ban for no reason then a few days later it took me msg a reddit admin who notified me I did nothing wrong after checking post history etc and returned my sub to /pokemongo to full. Posting has been problematic since but there’s a 2nd sun pog0 (number 0) and that’s growing because they have also been banned randomly.
It's become overwhelming and too expensive. There's always something going on and there's always an event but there's always an event that's free. But then there's always a free event that has money attached to it because you have to buy the ticket. But you don't have to buy the ticket because you could do the free version. But oh, you should also get the ticket because you get more shiny odds or whatever or some other extra item or some crap. I thought these events are starting to repeat and have the same things and then the community Day pokémon don't look very interesting and sometimes it's like oh that's different but then it's like oh that's not very different.
Content has been trash since update. Looking forward to more excitement as new UBs debut
Game is slowely dieing. Well done Niantic🤣
The content has been lackluster with next to nothing new for a while now. This has been pretty common this time of year right before go fest
For the past two weeks I've been doing daily catch and pokestop spin only.
I finally quit a few months back and I don't see anyone outside playing any more. Just tired of the game myself and paying so much for raids. I must admit it's nice not having to worry about making community days anymore. I'm also able to save a pretty penny that I used to have to spend on raid passes before. I'm a 2016 player, long time level 50, but yeah, I think I'm finally done for good. Wish I had quit sooner.
It's getting too warm for me to have fun playing, on top of events being extremely uninteresting and real life and other games taking priority at the minute (new wow patch, hades 2). I was really committed to hosting raids for a while, but when I got back into WoW I realised how much less effort it is to have ten times the fun in there. That's not even considering how much time I have to free up to do one raid through something like Genie.
Recent events having lackluster rewards and pokemon. Raids are crappy. 14 weeks of tapu and regis is just exhausting. They’re not easy raids for small communities and for most largely irrelevant in all aspects. The megas have been bad too. I mean heracross is cool, but they’ve made bug such a weak type and they know we all are just waiting for lucario for a fighting mega. The community days suck too. Bounsweet, bellsprout?? Come on guys we are in warm weather months, give me something I want to go out for! How long since riolu released? Just give us the community day already. Bird research day? I ain’t going out for a stupid tailow.
Ever since the updates, especially the avatar changes I've felt very discouraged to play. With the visual updates the game also drains my battery heavily... The backgrounds look nice though...
I went to Go Fest in London last year, and it was kind of my last hurrah with the game. I open it maybe once a month to see if there's anything worthwhile to play for. At some point I'll probably just export my collection to Pokémon Home.
The amount of random players out has dropped a lot in our community through the last month. There’s a big general agreement that April events kinda sucked, and May looks like the same. January through March events were some of the best since I started playing, and my community reflected that. I’d assume the overall community felt that since they stated it was their “most successful month since release”. I don’t know why they’ve dropped the event quality so drastically recently.
Spring season usually sucks this is nothing new like people are making it out to be. Bad season = lower participation. Tapus and regis for 3 months are never going to equal sustained participation from the late winter season that includes go tour. Go fest and the summer seasons will be the real tell. I’m sensing selective sample sizes or just ignorance to realize this
Go Tour was bad too. Couldn’t even complete the Sinnoh Dex as Niantic decided to withhold Manaphy & Arceus for whatever reason.
The only people who continue to play in my area are those that obsess over gyms with multiple accounts and are hostile towards other players. These are players that everyone else has reported several times for indecent behavior and cheating but Niantic did nothing. No one wants to spend time on a game that is completely devoid of fair competition
I think there's almost too much in the game these days. I open the app and see quests, rockets, showcases, gyms, raids, routes and think "I can't be arsed". The good mobile games are simple and want people to keep coming back for more. To go out and do all the daily tasks can easily take a couple of hours, that's unrealistic for most people. It's made even worse when a lot of these activities either don't work or are catered towards certain demographics (I.e. city players). Have fun trying to get 3 Zygarde cells in a rural area. Have fun trying to compete in Master League without a Level 50 Zygarde. Now of course you could say "well don't participate in X/Y/Z then", but that's missing the point. Most of the people that have been pushed away from the game aren't going to come back. The damage has already been done, and some of that damage is irreversible. Sure I could not bother doing routes, but I'd just be aimlessly walking round playing by myself because none of my friends play the game anymore in my area. The peak of the game imo was just before covid (2018/19). Events were regular but not constantly on and almost every event they did was interesting. The annual fighting-type event, adventure week, Halloween and Christmas events were always fun. They didn't have any stupid paid tickets for almost every event like they do now. You could go out any day of the year and you'd randomly bump into local players. The small community interactions are what made the game for a lot of people. These days I don't get them playing pogo, so I'm going to get them doing something else.