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

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

central park update: probably a hundred people stampeding up a path in the evening, clearly still a thing but the energy levels of the crowds are more muted, less interaction, more hardcore players now i think and most of the casuals have dropped out of serious hunting.

Yeah, it's definitely like checking yr email. My desk is within range of a pokestop (I'm on a university campus with three gyms in lunch-distance and dozens of pokestops).

Ended post too early; and I find myself spinning the pokestop every few minutes.

I'm halfway through a two-week pidgey stacking exercise. Gonna crack a lucky egg on Wednesday.

I just leveled-up to level 20 and now it;'s gonna take me 50k experience points to get to 21, wtf?!

Please explain your pidgey stacking exercise.

I catch all pidgeys and keep them for a fortnight to evolve as many as possible in one go. If you do that while a lucky egg is in use you get double XP (and below level 20 that usually takes you up a level). You can do this with other pokes as well, but as pidgeys only need 12 candies to evolve they are particularly efficient. Yesterday I evolved 13 pidgeys, 6 rats, 3 drowsies, 2 spearows, a shellder and a horsey in about 20 minutes, and it's got me close to level 22. Very boring, so make sure you have something good on telly.

Ooooh. Tactics! That's the thing. There are tactics. Like, I wonm't walk past any pokemon now unless I absolutely have to - I try and catch every last bloody rat and pidgey. And evolve all the time.

Yeah stockpile is the thing. Honestly I haven't noticed much in the upper levels apart from the base-level size of the Pokemon increasing and you get the max potion, which is throwing off my ability to keep the ball/potion balance correct