Pokemon GO!

[Missingno. Master]

Just 900 experience points away from level 12... I can almost taste those Great Balls... Holy crap, that came out wrong.

[Missingno. Master]

Finally! Level 12!

[Ironthunder]

Meanwhile, back at level 9 with a 550 CP Pidgeot as my highest by a good 200 CP...

[KamenAeons]

And in the south, we have me breaking Level 17 and the 1000 CP wall.

[Ex-Admiral Insane]

So it seems that once you hit Lv.15, everything suddenly enjoys running away from you almost immediately after your first capture attempt. I lost my first chance at a Bulbasaur and second Jigglypuff this way, right after each other. Then, just to add insult to injury, a low-levelled Weedle decided to do the same.

[kingothestone]

Originally Posted by Ex-Admiral Insane

So it seems that once you hit Lv.15, everything suddenly enjoys running away from you almost immediately after your first capture attempt. I lost my first chance at a Bulbasaur and second Jigglypuff this way, right after each other. Then, just to add insult to injury, a low-levelled Weedle decided to do the same.

I feel your pain. I've lost a hitmonlee and a Charmeleon via this. Plus two squirtles this morning.

[phoopes]

Razz berries are a godsend, my friends

[Missingno. Master]

Just hit level 13! Hatched a Caterpie and a Sandshrew, and got my first 10km Egg. Caught a bunch of stuff, was able to evolve a Caterpie into my first Metapod, and when I was about to go home, I swung by the local PokéStops one more time, only to find out someone had set up Lure Modules there! So yeah, needless to say, that extended my walk for the day by about half an hour. And to round the whole thing off, just as I got home, found a Squirtle. It was hell to catch, but I got it anyway.

I've had several Pidgey flee from me today, though. Also, my first impression with Great Balls is... they can go a little wild sometimes, can't they? Like, way off target for no apparent reason?

EDIT: Oh, yeah- the local Gym is back under Team Valor control, but for some reason, it didn't give me the option to leave a Pokémon there. And there were only three Pokémon there- what gives?

[SoS]

I found both Meowth and Machop today! Super cool. Got 2/3 Eeveelutions by using the nickname trick, and my new Jolteon is a super swole 860 CP.

[Snorby]

Yeah, Great Balls get curveballs when you aren't trying to curve them really frequently.

[Missingno. Master]

Yeesh. I should probably make an effort to work on my curveball technique, then. That improved catch rate, though- really came in handy against that Squirtle.

[rotomotorz]

If you throw in a straight line it should be fine. Most of the time this happens is people leave their fingers on the screen after the throw and it think you're curving it

[Missingno. Master]

...Apparently there is a Dragonair in the general vicinity. O_O THE HUNT IS ON!!!

[GrJackass]

I caught a dragonair @ Coney Island!

I just hit 105 unique pokemon! where is everyone else at?

[Missingno. Master]

Well. Today was pretty good! Hatched a Zubat from an Egg... Got some good stuff from the local PokéStops... Took over the same Gym for Team Valor twice (and now Team Instinct's taken it back yet again)... caught a few Pokémon I've gotten before, like Weedle, Oddish, Rattata, a Squirtle... And then, at one point, I see a silhouette for one of the nearby Pokémon. It's spherical, with little bumps on every side. You probably already know what this is, and if you know anything about me whatsoever, you should have a good general idea as to how I reacted. So yeah, wasted no time hunting down and catching my very first Koffing! And it ended up being, I kid you not, right above a garbage can. You cannot make this stuff up.

Didn't level up today, but I still have a few things to evolve, plus a 2km Egg that's not too far from hatching, so who knows? But hey- who cares? I got a Koffing!

[SoS]

I'm fuckin livid.

Came across a Pidgeot with base 765 CP.

Over 100 Pokéballs straight up missed the fucker, and were curving without my say-so.

[Missingno. Master]

Minor update.

*Saw that there was another Koffing in the area... during a thunderstorm. Much as I'd like to be able to say otherwise, I did not get to catch this one.

*Evolved yet another Drowzee into Hypno. Said Hypno has a CP level of 738, making it my strongest Pokémon thus far, surpassing my 609 Jynx and my 586 Golbat.

*Less than 1,000 XP away from level 14. Gaaaaaaah...

*Been using an IV calculator I Google'd. Apparently, the previously mentioned Golbat and a Bellsprout I have have the best potential of any of my Pokémon, so I've been leveling them up like crazy. I... need more Stardust. And in Bellsprout's case, I need to level up some more.

*Tried a curveball on a Drowzee I just caught (not the same one I evolved). I'm really starting to refine my technique. If Great Balls are gonna sometimes force a curveball, I'd like to be ready for it.

[deoxys]

I have a fucking bone to pick with this game. I'm Level 22 now.

TL;DR - The game artificially increases in difficulty by making RNG go up - Pokemon not named "Pidgey" and "Weedle" take an average of several pokeballs to catch, even WITH Razz Berries, and they are far more likely to run away. My breaking point was tonight after having several days of this happen, when a Poliwag, Jigglypuff, Hitmonchan, AND Hitmonlee all ran from me after using up most of what was left of my Poke/Great/Ultraball supply.


I have found myself for the first time since a very early level down to my last 5 or so Pokeballs. I live in a suburban area and getting out to the city where a lot of Pokestops are is a chore so I don't get the option of farming Pokestops for balls.

I'm level 22. Almost every Pokemon takes 3-5 balls to catch. Even landing perfect hits means nothing now; it's painfully clear Niantic artificially increased the difficulty by making the game an RNG shit fest. This means you are spending more time to get more and more resources that deplete much faster than before. And on fairly high occasion, the Pokemon will, after several attempts to catch, and sometimes only after one or two, just flee. Which means you just wasted a ton of balls, and a Pokémon you went out of your way to catch is now gone.

Something needs to change, or people will lose interest and leave in droves - and that is coming from a hardcore player of this game who has invested a LOT of time already and has been going out every day to play it.

Niantic: Many other games have shriveled up and died due to the very tactics you are employing on 20+ level players. The majority of the players right now are still sub-15, but give it a month and this very same complaint here will be fucking everywhere.

Fix your game before your fans realize they'd be better off at a casino. If I wanted crazy RNG, I'd play Hearthstone.

Rule number one for gaming is that you don't punish players for playing the game correctly and increase the difficulty artificially. Instead, find other ways and methods to make the game more challenging - but given the F2P nature, this feels like it's just to try and push the player into spending money to buy more Pokeballs - which are useless at this level - and you'll use up very quickly. It's already fucking hard enough as it is to find Pokemon that aren't Pidgey, Rattata, Weedle, or Spearow. I don't need the few that I can find to fuck my Pokeball inventory and then run away.

[Talon87]

Complaining that a micro-transactions game is making you suffer when you choose to play it for free ...

As a friend and fellow Pokémon enthusiast, I do sympathize. But I think you know as well as I do that your time with the game is near an end. It was always going to be this way. Most "F2P ;)" games don't hold players' interest for more than a couple of weeks. Why should Pokémon Go be any exception? You want it to be one a) because you love Pokémon so much and b) because you want to believe that Nintendo had a hand in this. But you know full well that this is Niantic's baby and that Niantic doesn't have a beaming track record of making high-quality games that players stuck with for years. Ingress was a "Who? What? " game to most of us, and even we only heard of it thanks to our passing interest in Pokémon Go before its release. Most people have to this day never even heard of Ingress. You think that speaks well for the company helming Pokémon Go? Hell no. I realize every big company's gotta start somewhere. I realize that before Mario and Zelda there were forgettable Nintendo title No.1 and forgettable Nintendo title No.2. But I just don't think Niantic is there yet, or that they will ever be there. I don't see anything in Go that leads me to believe that this is their Mario.

Will it be cool if they listen to you and other fans and they make this game everything you ask for? Sure, I guess. (Depends what you ask for! ) But I wouldn't count on it. The whole entire point of this game is to get you hooked with the first few (in this game's case, 20) easy levels that make you feel like a champion ... and then suddenly DIFFICULTY SPIKE that either punishes your time and patience or else punishes your wallet, your decision.

[deoxys]

Originally Posted by Talon87

Complaining that a micro-transactions game is making you suffer when you choose to play it for free ...

As a friend and fellow Pokémon enthusiast, I do sympathize. But I think you know as well as I do that your time with the game is near an end. It was always going to be this way. Most "F2P ;)" games don't hold players' interest for more than a couple of weeks. Why should Pokémon Go be any exception? You want it to be one a) because you love Pokémon so much and b) because you want to believe that Nintendo had a hand in this. But you know full well that this is Niantic's baby and that Niantic doesn't have a beaming track record of making high-quality games that players stuck with for years. Ingress was a "Who? What? " game to most of us, and even we only heard of it thanks to our passing interest in Pokémon Go before its release. Most people have to this day never even heard of Ingress. You think that speaks well for the company helming Pokémon Go? Hell no. I realize every big company's gotta start somewhere. I realize that before Mario and Zelda there were forgettable Nintendo title No.1 and forgettable Nintendo title No.2. But I just don't think Niantic is there yet, or that they will ever be there. I don't see anything in Go that leads me to believe that this is their Mario.

Will it be cool if they listen to you and other fans and they make this game everything you ask for? Sure, I guess. (Depends what you ask for! ) But I wouldn't count on it. The whole entire point of this game is to get you hooked with the first few (in this game's case, 20) easy levels that make you feel like a champion ... and then suddenly DIFFICULTY SPIKE that either punishes your time and patience or else punishes your wallet, your decision.

Thing is though that if they allowed you to buy Great and Ultra balls in shop after unlocking them, I wouldn't necessarily disagree. But Pokeballs are the only thing you can purchase with money, and they are very much useless the higher your level, just like in the main games. So purchasing Pokeballs would do you zero favors at this level - and I imagine most players are smart enough to know this and would thus not buy them. So, if Niantic was smart, they'd monetize Great and Ultra Balls, because at least they have a higher capture rate, and so people would be more willing to purchase them to keep playing.

The other issue I take with F2P games like this is when they make the game more difficult with the hope that you'll spend more money on it. Things like Incense, Lures, Lucky Eggs, and Egg Incubators are very inoffensive things to purchase from the store - you're never 'required' to buy any of these things and could play the game just fine without them. But buying them gives you a more engaging and rewarding experience.

I don't understand why they don't go the least inoffensive route on top of this and throw in character customization for $$$. As it is, you only have a few pieces of clothing to choose from; why not make a bunch more, including some classic designs from the games, and sell THAT? And while we're at it - custom Pokeball animations like in the games, evolution stones as alternatives to using Candy to evolve specific Pokemon, etc.

And they would still make a shit-ton of money. But stepping up the difficulty makes no sense when buying Pokeballs to catch the Pokemon at this level is useless anyway Instead, your only real option is to go to a populated area, farm Pokestops for Ultra/Great Balls, and basically just spend an hour or two doing that. And Niantic doesn't make a penny off of it.

It's as you said. I think that, for as smart as they are, they don't have the proper knowhow of running/controlling a game, especially one of this size. Because there are so many better choices (and often the most obvious ones) they could be making, but aren't.


Sorry if any part of this was confusing. I started to sort of lose consciousness halfway through typing it (from sleep deprivation)

[Talon87]

Hmm, I didn't realize that about the PokéBalls vs. Great Balls and Ultra Balls. That is strange. You'd think for sure that those would be purchasable.

[Missingno. Master]

Maybe they'll implement it in a future update, but yeah, kinda odd that they didn't think to get it in there from day one.

Meanwhile, I got no complaints about Go at the moment. Getting better at curveballs- just caught another Drowzee (seriously, they seem to love my neighborhood for some reason), used it for curveball practice. And the GPS problem I've been having with my local PokéStops has long since seemed to solve itself, so I can just rake in the extra Poké Balls, Great Balls, Razz Berries, etc., to my heart's content. Moreover, this game's got me happily making excuses to get out of the house and exercise. That's about the opposite of usual for me. Meanwhile, I'm seeing practically everyone else outside playing this as well. Hell, a while back, someone asked if I was playing Go, and when I said that I was, they told me about a wild Hypno a couple of streets over. All I could think to myself after that was, "Welcome to the world of Pokémon".

[Ex-Admiral Insane]

A friend of mine just recently decided to quit playing as well, stating that the stardust cost was getting ridiculous and not fun anymore. He needed to catch 30+ Pokémon or so just to increase 1 Pokémon's CP by 30, making it extremely difficult to stay caught up with the rest of the players in the area. The insane amount of exp. expected from you Lv.15 onwards isn't exactly making it that much easier either.

My bet is that there is going to be some sort of big overhaul, or at least I hope, as I agree with Deoxys on the ridiculousness of the intensity scale. Not just that but so far we don't have Trading or simple Trainer vs Trainer battles yet; two of the three basic concepts on which Pokémon was built on.

I don't know, coupled with the plan to add future generations, possibly adding more Pokéstops/Gyms and the recent reveal that the three Team Leaders will play a bigger role makes me think they're going to add more to the game. I hope so, because speculation as I've heard now is that most players are going to get fed up of the game in about a month when everyone's reached Lv.20+, making the fad die out unless something changes; by that time, the Pokémon Go Pro accessory will be useless and Nintendo/Niantic really aren't going to make ANY money out of this. (As Deoxys said; it gets hard to get more Poké-/Great-/Ultra-balls, so why would you buy an accessory that only gives you a chance at catching something using an item you have very little of in the first place?)

[Connor]

I imagine updates will come thick and fast. My personal thoughts were that they've been so sidetracked by having to fix the servers to accommodate for the rush of players that they didn't anticipate that they've not really had time to actually address the other issues with the game.

[deoxys]

Excellent article I found that sums up my thoughts on the game as is perfectly.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/0...level-players/

For instance, Riggnaros says, once you reach a level in the "mid 20s," low-powered Pokémon you encounter in the game start to "have an abnormally high chance to evade capture." That means players will need to start wasting a lot more Pokéballs to capture the most abundant monsters, which are key to gaining the experience points needed for that next level. Getting enough Pokéballs to keep up with all those escaping Pokémon means spending real money or spending inordinate amounts of time farming free Pokéballs from those slowly refilling Pokéstops.

"From level 29-30 I went through over 1000 pokeballs. Literally," Riggnaros complains. "I cannot stress how ridiculous this would be for someone playing [without] spending coins on pokeballs (ie playing the game [free to play] - which is the majority)."

What's more, the total amount of experience needed to reach the next level appears to go up exponentially as the game continues. While advancing to level 15 only requires a few thousand experience points per level, by the time you hit level 30, it takes a full 500,000 experience points to increase your in-game status.

The exponentially increasing steepness of the leveling climb is particularly daunting, Riggnaros argues, because the game doesn't increase the amount of experience offered by the Pokémon you capture at later levels. "It makes no sense that a 10cp Pidgey should be giving the same XP as an 1600cp Scyther," he writes. "Stronger, evolved, and more rare Pokémon should reward you with more XP, plain and simple."

Bonus graph, because everyone likes graphs






TL;DR this game is VERY QUICKLY going to become a game people will want to go out and play to something most people will only want to open up and mess with a few minutes at a time and then ignore it again until a major update comes out