Everyone's outside, and it's because of POKÉMON GO

Of course as soon as I post that I have 3 Pidgey's run away from me on my commute. Thanks AA!

wanna give leveling a real purpose after 20, make a real gym defender bonus or something. 10 coins for getting your pokemon in a gym (once a day), 2 coins every hour they last. something like that.

― qualx, Monday, August 1, 2016 11:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ was thinking something like this. like 1/2 coin every 30 minutes you have a thing in a gym to keep the precious 10/gym ratio.

re: my breakout observation yesterday; it looked like they updated twice in, like, 12 hours yesterday and the more aggressive taunting/fleeing behavior was nerfed.

wld also really be into the distance mechanism being tied into real steps/the health app so that ur winter treadmill running counts. can't wait to see how horrible this game is when it's 10 degrees out

god it really doesn't seem so complicated to make this into a good and maybe even excellent game. it's just so half-assed.

the structure is absolutely there and parts of it are rock solid. i suspect nintendo pressured them to get it out early while the northern hemisphere was still in summer (which is weird for a company that delays heavily for the sake of perfection, but sun/moon is locked in for november).

at a guess, based on reports that niantic is ~40 members, it needs at least another three months of portal/pokestop processing, fine tuning of mechanics and gym development to get where it needs to be.

can't wait to see how horrible this game is when it's 10 degrees out

― How Butch, I mean (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Tuesday, 2 August 2016 23:59 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's painful. two thermal t shirts, scarf, overcoat and thermal socks are sometimes enough if you're out of the wind.

Of course as soon as I post that I have 3 Pidgey's run away from me on my commute. Thanks AA!

― Jeff, Tuesday, 2 August 2016 23:59 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

commute? if you're in a moving vehicle at the time, they're probably moving out of range. the range was apparently reduced in the latest release.

(thought i posted this 3 hours ago, apparently not)

Bus. I still caught plenty of stuff, but maybe that is the case.

I have acquired the knack of visiting pokéstops from a reasonably fast moving train. It doesn't always work - you have to touch in at exactly the right time - but travelling from south to central London can be quite profitable.

via the dancehall thread: http://djstefanomusic.com/music/mr-vegas-nuh-play-pokemon

also - http://i.imgur.com/m0WUIe0.mp4

spent a couple hours at the big local hotspot, which is a big nu-outdoor-commercial-area-you-have-to-drive-to situated around a lake (the rio in maryland) with about 15 stops around it and one gym no one really cares about. and if you were there you'd have no idea the craze has died down at all. hundreds of people all doing the same thing on a wednesday night.

sad thing is that it really does feel like a social taboo to actually interact with other people. everyone has their little groups they're with and people are wearing pokemon shirts/hats and even playing with the sound on but it's like an unspoken agreement that you won't actually acknowledge anyone else to their face

https://twitter.com/PokemonGoApp/status/761301330967326720

Trainers, a new bug affecting throw accuracy increases the odds of escape and omits the XP bonus. We are working on a fix, stay tuned...

more and more this feels like the biggest botched opportunity of the year and I am including JEB!

at least they're communicating now

i mean i sort of get this. they're are relatively small team, and they and nintendo/tpc knew it'd be big but not this big. now they're having to deal with users who are angry that features in a game that didn't even exist (beyond beta) five weeks ago are broken or have been hidden. all evidence is that they're doing everything they can between users screaming at them and nintendo demanding international rollout.

launching it without trading pokemon or simple fights (even of the kairosoft variety where you have no control!) is just unconscionable imo

they should've known it'd be big enough to have a single PR person on staff

I feel like the absence of all this stuff gives it an air of mystery, but I just play it when I'm walking my dog.

I love all the new loading messages tho

DO NOT PLAY POKEMON GO IN NON-DORMANT VOLCANOES

WINNERS DON'T DO DRUGS

lotta hotspots on my dogwalking routine, people seemed excited tonight and it felt very 21st century in a good way

idk why it's free, not everything has to be

Still playing this when I can get the chance, but feeling increasingly embarrassed that I'm only at level 18. Getting used to seeing gyms I've spent ages taking down changing colour as soon as I'm walking triumphantly away.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/8c817e5fef67504c813f4be65d5b1394/tumblr_obb3o2mdnf1u73tgro1_500.jpg

i got bored of this after two weeks, i'm afraid. ingress lasted me about twice as long.

they should've known it'd be big enough to have a single PR person on staff

― qualx, Friday, 5 August 2016 12:51 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well yeah, out of a staff of ~40 people one person could have flung off a couple of explanation tweets in that first month. no excuse for radio silence. ingress players have complained about that all along.

launching it without trading pokemon or simple fights (even of the kairosoft variety where you have no control!) is just unconscionable imo

― thrusted pelvis-first back (ulysses), Friday, 5 August 2016 12:32 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they claim it's just the foundation for a much bigger game but eh. afaict it was only ever a marketing exercise to sell sun/moon and it's got out of hand. nintendo however will make hats out of money when 3ds/2ds sales explode in november.

you're probably right there. Are there stated plans for an new xmas pokemon for the handheld console?

pokemon sun/moon in nov

ah, as autumn said. first i heard of it

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pok%C3%A9mon-going-gone-jonathan-meiri

There's considerable space between "more players than all other games combined" and "dead" - it may well be roughly the size that Niantic were planning for in the first place.

https://twitter.com/StateDeptPM/status/765209532695977984

just colloquially, the crowds in central park have started to thin and the roaming mobs aren't really out anymore

The same (anecdotally) goes for my upstate town square.

yeah it's definitely died down a lot. maybe the new tracking functionality will bring some of it back

did i say colloquially? I meant anecdotally. me no speak good.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/47498462f8094dee1858598d18b94de8/tumblr_oabwivnzA21vzmtw8o1_1280.jpg

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/08/23/pokemon-go-decline/

because obviously

I used it for about two weeks, went on holiday for a week where I didn't have much data and needed my phone batter so didn't play, got home and thought to myself - are you really going to keep playing this dumb game? I suppose the lack of depth is the issue, because I was legit addicted when I was playing.

me too. when you get to a higher level and you've caught enough, there's no incentive to go out and catch more bloody rattatas (not to mention the difficulty is still arse backwards)

So if anything I'm playing this more than ever. But I need to get better at battles. I've got about 4 Pokemon with over 1000 CP, and I've won one gym, once. And then lost it inside about 3 minutes. I don't really get combat. But I think I've figured out that I just need to catch every Pokemon I see, even all the bloody pidgeys and zubats, to get stardust so I can power them up. But gyms confuse me. Do gym levels change over time? Why? How?

If you look at the numbers next to a gym, that indicates their level, and how to get them to the next level up. So a Level 2 will say 2000/4000 which means it's at 2000 but needs to get to 4000 before it becomes Level 3. If it's your own colour, you can train there and nudge the numbers up with each battle you win until it reaches 4000, at which point another slit opens and you csn stick in one of your own pokes. If it's a rival gym, you can battle there until 2000 becomes 0, then it turns grey and you can take ownership with one of your pokes. In either case, you can run at any time after you've beaten one opponent and the numbers will still go up/down for that victory. So you can get a space for yourself in a gym of your own colour by repeatedly beating the weakest poke in it, then running.

Scuse the typos.

i haven't played this in weeks. they cut down on the number + rarity of pokemon in my neighborhood so i can't catch any good ones when i take the dog for a walk anymore and the tracking system last i checked was still busted ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i guess i'll check back when ppl say it has gotten better

To fight, tap rapidly on your poke. When you see one of the blue bars in the top left corner fill up, tap and hold to unleash your killer move (you'll get a letterbox view so you know you've done it right).

I haven't really got the hang of dodging opponents - I just take what they throw at me and hope for the best.

Always collect coins as soon as you put a poke in a gym.

Here endeth the lesson, amen.

How do you collect coins when you put a poke in the gym?

I need more yellow gyms near me. They're all blue here. I should have checked before I picked my colour.

top right in the 'shop' area

The gym/gold thing ismy great bc of the 20 hour limit on collecting coins. The act of battling is rly only for ur amusement once u collect your coins for the day. The best strategy, in terms of time management, is to try and get in a lot of gyms all at once (easy in the city; idk where u live) and collect ur coins all at once. U can keep going to gyms if u want (for fun or whatever) but u can just not worry about it until ur clock runs out.

Still playing; I find the game is more of a nervous twitch/compulsive thing like checking ur email