Interesting comparison: Pokémon Go location density in San Francisco (near border of Chinatown and the Financial District) on the left versus my mostly residential neighborhood in Cincinnati on the right. It really doesn't seem equitable when, in one city but not another, you can hit multiple pokestops without even leaving your residence.
This situation also led to me giving up on Ingress.
ReplyDeleteHeck, you neighborhood is way more populated than mine; I have only three pokestops within walking distance, each in different directions. And one of my friends who lives on a farm said that the nearest stop for him is about a thirty minute drive away.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot about the game that Niantic has mismanaged. Heck, the whole advancement mechanic runs antithetical to how the main principles of the very world have been established; that any Pokemon can be powerful if nurtured, and that your Pokemon are supposed to be friends, not just tools of war. Instead, this game discourages trying to raise Pokemon up, and instead encourages simply replacing them with stronger ones as soon as they become available, and to just trade in the replaced ones for no appreciable reward.
A friend was in SF last weekend and said every gym is level 10 maxed out and defended viciously making the game pretty unfun for lots of people.
ReplyDeleteIts a double edged sword. I'm lucky to have the ocean nearby and the Boardwalk and wharf. I had a good evening of hunting!
I'm disappointed my couch Pokéstop/portal in my back yard is just 50' out of reach. I have to walk to my back yard to hack it =P
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/r0qZeA3awdbH9gsLPELa3LcbTsVAPrgMznBIRWPLLTj6EjLbAODXfHGwcVckuYjwEV9BbAtErSy4skU=s0
I have one about a block and a half away, a cemetery. Besides that one there are about 4 in the center of town, one near the shore and one on the edge of town. There are 2 gyms in the center of town and that's it. Pokemon here only show up in a few specific places and we rarely get rare Pokemon around here and none of the really rare ones. Playing Pokemon here in this small town in Puerto Rico can actually be quite boring. All the good places are too far away, 30 minute car drive at least.
ReplyDeletePokestops are just clones of the Ingres portals and those were mostly user created. You can suggest pokestops to Niantic, Do you have local parks, historical landmarks, and (ugh) places of worship near you? Send them a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteI have a local park, historical landmark, place of interest and major artwork all in my living room, gimme four stops!!!
ReplyDeleteYou actually can suggest your own house as long as you can provide proof of your ownership... I think.
ReplyDeleteWill be even easier to do if you have a home business, because all businesses are eligible.
I agree the distribution of pokestops is batshit. There should be a certain percentage automatically generated via a player's presence to mitigate this. After some travelling and comparisons (I've managed to visit five states and umpteen locations in the last two months), I've noticed things like some places it's just plain rare for animals to appear (for example, in a place that is bursting with pokestops, I actually get very few animals appearing; but just this weekend in a wilderness area there were no pokestops at all, but I was almost guaranteed to see 2-3 animals pop into view each time I signed back into the game.
ReplyDeleteThere needs to be some kind of decay factor for gyms to prevent the 20Kcp animals from just squatting there and yeah, I'd like to see some system other than killing off the weakest of a species and evolving only the highest scoring ones. It'd be cool to link together animals to fight as a unit for example.
I work at a pokestop rich place, and I'm bored with it too. It just doesn't have that much variety, once the novelty wears off.
SF i'm willing to bet by default had far more 'bronze' and shiny things around to submit Ingress portals from.... that and the glut of SF players probably far outpaces any Niantic activity in Cincinnati until Pokemon Go started.
ReplyDeleteI've been forcing myself to keep playing Pokemon Go (I am still joyfully playing Ingress, mind you) mainly in the belief that it would become fun after some (high) level. Reached level 23. But, really, couldn't find any fun on it until, even_at this point. Pokestops locations are the minor annoyance, though.
ReplyDeleteIt gets fun at 23? Well then I could at least shoot for that and see, but what a long slog.
ReplyDeleteCindy Brown , not at all. Definitely more boring than at the beginning... :-(
ReplyDeleteI guess those L5+ gymnasiums might be funny to create with a bunch of teammates, but that would take so much time that I really don't see myself doing this. I also confess that I have a hard time believing that real people are actually doing them. I believe that most, if not all, are simply bot work.
I've edited my previous reply to make it clear that the game is not fun at L23 either.
Pokemon Go will get fun the further along it goes for anyone looking for more than a full Pokedex (PvP, events, new items)..... the first bit of Ingress wasn't close to the number of mods/items/badges that it has now..... to the equitable issue, I gave a few Ingress invites to some friends of mine around the globe when that started, several guys had to go 10km to even see a portal and one dude only had a single portal on the island he was living on.... no population, no 'game' it seems (though Go is far more about paying to win/play).
ReplyDeleteRemember all those friends that told you to play ingress. If you had listened you could have submitted your own pokestops months ago !
ReplyDeleteStephen Beynon I'm personally responsible for at least 40 portals in the Ingress catalog (started playing very early on), with several dozen more submitted and rejected over the 18 months I played. In fact, at least one of the pokestop photos in the game is a picture I took (PoGo, unlike Ingress, doesn't give photo credits).
ReplyDeleteCraig Froehle I should probably have been a little more clear that I was aiming at none ingress players. I know a few people that moaned to me about lack of pokestops in real life but did not play ingress when I suggested they try
ReplyDeleteCraig Froehle , the lack o photo credits on pokestops annoys me. A lot!
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