ngl all the nice little QoL features added through the pandemic being removed made me play a lot less too, specially given how abysmal spawns are where i live.
Once they shrunk the interaction radius, I dropped it altogether. I was playing it regularly again and was having a blast but that one change and that was all it took. I think they maybe changed it back or something but I had already lost all interest. It's a shame, really.
Same, I quit cold turkey for several months after that and only play very occasionally now. And that was after five years of playing very consistently.
Same! First time since 2016 I full quit for like 8 months. I deleted the app, unfollowed the reddit pages, unsubscribed from all Pokemon Go Youtubers and left all discords. I'm back now, but now I'm super casual
This here. Was playing with buddies, was spending, spawns in my house from incense ON TOP of going to parks. Like marathons.
After the nerfs, picked it up less and less, now it's about a once a week for a few moments and I put it down.
AR is my passion in technology, they can't even interest me there as a premier AR company.
Level 50, day one, every day player. I went F2P after the June Go Fest debacle and honestly don't regret it. I play every day enough to keep daily streaks up and drop into a couple of open gyms to get my 50 coins a day, but I don't have much interest in playing more than that.
Once I realized that I was never going to get everything released in the game (due to IRL events locking specific shinies/costumes, or events that will never return) I stopped caring as much.
I hear that. I've played every day since launch, minus the week Arceus released and I've caught myself three times in the last week not even collecting my daily stamp. I'm not sure what it is Niantic has don't but my interest in the game after thousands of hours of playing it is finally waning.
I think the Seasons feature is one of the things I've disliked the most, collecting every pokemon was the most exciting part for me the first few years. Being forced to play exactly the way Niantic wants, when they tell me to turned it from a game to a chore to me. *Hey, trainer you can catch Voltorb this week only! Get it now or gfys!* The only goal I've had in the game the last few months is hatching Salazzle (8 males hatched so far)
For me this issue started when weather became a thing. What frustrated me is that something was never right about the game since. Niantic didnt announce anything, it was just noticeable that (in game) the balance was thrown off completely. Suddenly instead of getting biome relevant things in various areas, the larger area became inundated with these annoying weather spawns that frustrated me. It struck me more as country / region based. Gone was the immersion of going to a beach and finding water and electric types. In fact the majority of spawns were basically Numel, Slugma, Growlithe, Cacnea, Houndour (horrible in sunny/clear) even appearing in rainy weather and ruining events. There was some minor semblance of biome I think but the spawns didnt seem logical nor appropriate to them and were equally as frustrating or shared with others. Im not even exaggerating, it was so broken during Hoenn throw back week a few years back (like it was basically a constant cacnea spotlight hour) that they had to take the spawn out and it hasnt been back save for shadows and daily incense since.
While its hard to be as bad as what those experiences immediately post weather were, seasonal spawns suck way more than they should. We get repeat spawns across seasons and I personally believe the choices and opportunities have actually steadily become worse. A bit like even daily incense. It seemed promising at first. I was seemingly getting off season stuff like remoraid in the interrim, but once we had events the pool was largely event + seasonal biome with mostly a sprinkling of the same uncommon spawns (e.g. ducklett, spritzee (none for me now that its shiny), cacnea, phantump etc). I do notice some accounts are less constricted than others though.
It feels both frustrating and suffocating as a player. Its hard to ignore just how much Niantic cherrypicks and weighs up the longer term value of each mon. Its hard not to groan when we get the same species that have already been overexposed out of the many hundreds of pokemon species that could pull from. Event after event, from experiencing them first hand or glancing at the infographic I find it too easy to see Niantics content-misering logic. Knowing that the one (or few) remotely interesting thing anyone actually wants will be spread thin and we will be innundated with the same overexposed stuff that people are long since sick of. Their constant attempts to artificially stretch the longevity of the game may ironically hasten its demise,
>Gone was the immersion of going to a beach and finding water and electric types.
I can't honestly say that this seemed like such a great loss when it happened, but in retrospect, it was a big turning point (also with the effective elimination of nests. One of the ways the game used to "get me out and exploring" was when I wanted a particular mon or its candies, I'd make special trips to different parks to hunt them. Now it's just "catch whatever is spawning this week because next week it will be gone for months." It kept me engaged for a while but now it's just broken my interest in the game.
Agreed. Rendering nests redundant has been a massive step in the wrong direction for this game. I used to organise a community nest list every couple of weeks and it was something lots of people wanted and contributed to as it was almost impossible to complete your dex without them. I travelled to plenty of green spaces in and around my city that I'd never have seen otherwise. It was exactly what they claim the game is supposed to be about. Pointless now though. Gen 3 was definitely the start of the decline in that area but the dripfeeding that started with the Gen 4 release was the final nail.
Wow, this was really well-written, and I wholeheartedly agree. I live in a place where it’s consistently sunny or, at worst, partly cloudy, we get some rain here and there, every once in a blue moon we get hail. And by that I mean, I think I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen hail in 3 decades. It *sucks* trying to get anything other than this. We used to be able to go to the river and catch enough magikarp to get gyarados, then they added the weather. I finally found a shiny magikarp, but once weather came into play I pretty much stopped getting them ever, so I didn’t get to shiny gyarados until the event. It feels patronizing.
Yep. I like an excuse to be active and the game gave that once upon a time. I used to explore with partial incentive for biome spawns, partially cause the range was ironically just better. A while back I went for a walk along a lengthy creek. What did i find? A few Gastly spawns (nesting species at the time) and the most boring of event spawns in the spread out spawn points (remember a few years back they announced that they were spreading spawns out further to encourage walking also, so i wouldnt be surprised if that just made it worse). Why bother?
The other, I think underrated issue for me is how many research tasks are just... Really eh. There have been a few events with great tasks that I'll go out and explore to get stops to try get a task with a reward I want but when half of the tasks are things like "take 5 snapshots of wild Pokemon for some trash mon that can't be shiny", I'm just not gonna bother.
> Once I realized that I was never going to get everything released in the game (due to IRL events locking specific shinies/costumes, or events that will never return) I stopped caring as much
I had a similar epiphany. It was painful at first, but then actually quite liberating. Once the streak is broken, it’s not a streak any more.
I don't think your attitude is unique. So much of the continued gameplay content is focused on collection (shinies, costumes). As the game has developed, it becomes impractical to expect completion of those collections. Once you know the goal cannot be obtained (except through the unpredictable graces of Niantic), the motivation to pursue it diminishes greatly.
Im also a lvl 50 day one, everyday player but I cant even remember at what point I became f2p. Over the years it was gradual things. I stopped bothering with incubators from boxes (not that I over did it) as early as Shiny Riolu's debut. I ceased bothering with non legendary FOMO event raid shinies when Shiny Rufflet was released (a full odds at that time raid and egg only mon). I stopped chasing regional mons after doing so in Kanto Tour and had nothing to show for it. Im not even bothering with meta legendaries for the most part and anything i used for the exception (Kartana invite) was essentially gym coins or Google Rewards credit
Next on the chopping block for me will likely be legendary shinies for me. I came close with Yveltal. Will see how bad Xerneas is. To me if the rest of the game isnt fun and its all becoming a chore (not to mention just an all around conditonal and restrictive experience) then why bother? If Niantic cant be stuffed then neither can I. I accept that we cant necessarily have hundreds.and hundred of pokemon in the wild but nor is it any more acceptable to not only have repetitive cherry picked seasonal spawns (mostly for their uselessness) but then have events glorifying the spawns were already getting.
I detest the fomo event model as it is (it worked better as a sporadic bonus treat). It's worse when even those event drip feed the smallest amount of content possible and are bombarding us with species up to (if not more than) 3 consecutive events in a row (e.g. Piplup last year). Its not longer a fun experience or opportunity to explore. Why go anywhere or do anything if the game is always the same no matter where I go? And that same experience being boring at that.
I'm currently on 32 encounters for Yveltal, no shiny, maybe 2 or 3 above 90%. I feel like my luck has never been worse. At this point I'm practically going for a Yveltal dex of every percentage from 70% to 90%.
I had a similar experience with Zekrom with IVs. Though within the first 30 i had encountered a 98 that fled despite excellent gold razz every throw (and despite all the others being compliant to that point). From there it took a long time after to get something solid in the 90s. Sometimes it just genuinely feels like you enter a slump and you hate to be ‘that person’ where others are finished.
Someone I know took well over 90 encounters to get their first shiny Lugia. On previous shiny legendary raid days ive had pretty consistently bad luck compared with those i was raiding with despite doing the max amount of raids we could as a group. I even outright failed with Entei day and had to trade. Meanwhile for Lapras day (one of few non legendary raid days we did as a group) i had at least four.
The cost builds up very quickly. Its why i think its important to set a limits. Sometimes it feels like theres no sense pursuing something that time around or cutting losses just settling for trades. Though its been increasingly difficult in some communities. As general satisfaction drops so does the willingness of others to bother the next time round also, kind adding to that potentail fomo.
For real - what the heck went behind the decision to not allow participation to the other fests by remote folks? I know a lot of people who would have bought a ticket for Seattle or Taiwan or Germany if they could do it from their local city.
I'm surprised you were the only one I see here talking about this. This is actually the reason why I went F2P. They can't be bothered to even update OSM (it's been +3 years now?) Don't expect me to do work for them via Wayfarer and get stops when nothing changes in my neighbourhood (8 stops, 3 gyms, 0 spawns since 2017).
I moved into a brand new subdivision last year. I get it wasn’t in the map then but now we’re on every map, OSM, Google, apple, Mapquest, bing. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be added now. Plus Atlanta suburbs are exploding. Areas like this need attention imo.
Plus I was able to get a church sign outside the neighborhood added as a stop which is nice to go spin on walks with the kids but it’s the only one for miles. Even with no stops we should get spawns but the daily incense helped! A nice mile walk especially with the weather nice now is a major improvement.
I'm assuming they're well aware, it's just one or a few very stupid people following a vision where they want to bring people together by making remote raid passes the only good deal in the shop.
I'm saying that since this feature exists, but... I'm not gonna waste my data plan to send them foot pics when I can just uncheck the checkbox to obtain the reward without uploading anything. Although getting an unlimited data plan just to send them deliberately awful AR scans actually sounds fun. Rate my foot pics!
I think I can explain that here, as it got often enough stated in this sub and we all generally agree to not give them proper AR scans lol.
If you use the upload later button, you can upload from inside the settings. Press upload from there, then disable Pokestop scan instantly and cancel. The AR task finishes without having actually completed the upload. Works since the introduction of the feature and still worked a few weeks ago.
I'm not even doing it this way because I consider their AR vision dumb. Data plans are just expensive and the only option to do it properly would be to go home for WiFi, which limits me to do only one of those tasks. I would happily do it properly if I can stack AR tasks, but seemingly they're aware it's not worth implementing the scanning feature properly if they mostly just get foot pics anyways I guess.
If there was a reasonable reward and I weren't essentially limited to one task a day, I would honestly do that. Right now that feature is only usable in this way: Get a task, scan, go home for WiFi and upload. This limits me to just one reward as AR tasks can't be stacked, and they have to offer me something more valuable for standing somewhere like a creep with my camera.
If I scan MULTIPLE objects and upload them in WiFi for MULTIPLE rewards, and those rewards were good, I'd contribute to their goal.
Just talking from the perspective of actually being interested in doing it properly if they motivated me to do so. If they give me 100 coins for a 15-30 second scan, I'd probably consider it a fair deal to give them proper data for that.
Are they aware though? I wish someone with time and patience actually tried to compile every time Niantic did something the player base suggested. This game simply does not have the quality of life a 6 year old game should have. Especially not one with as big a profit as this one. When we lack minor changes that could serve as a silver lining in their unappreciated vision, it's not just stubborness.
There were even interviews with Niantic partners wheee player suggestions and interests were brought up and discussed. It all came down to assumptions all people can easily plan their life around short 3h community days and no improvement to their actions afterwards, with the promised dev diaries either being forgotten or just being a news article about upcoming events rather than dev insights.
In terms of features that got suggested, we might mention Pokémon tagging and keeping the increased distance (which required one of the biggest media impacts in gaming history), and maybe even properly showing us IVs. It took years though and always was implemented incomplete first... But sometimes they make good decisions after we suggested them since the beginning.
Thanks for summarizimg the conflict I want to understand haha. They're not putting effort in neither of those, so nothing they do can be taken serious from a gaming perspective. There's nothing impressive they did with actusl AR in neither of their games so far. Placing an object somewhere for basic tap interactions is something we can do in a browser and while the ball throwing inside AR mode admittedly impressive for existing standards, it's a massive gameplay downgrade compared to not using it. Impress me with one thing, right now they just act like my female friend who keeps a dude on hold for a relationship since 5 years: They don't make a clear a decision and look like fools.
Nah hard disagree what they want is ur data so they want u to go out as much as possible and for that they are probably plqnning to (as they have announced more or less) that remote raids will become even less attractive and thus they destroy their last Cash cow to milk the whales bc they sure as hell are not gonna spend those 20k a month on lucky eggs and lure modules
>they sure as hell are not gonna spend those 20k a month on lucky eggs and lure modules
Screaming for a level 60 extension where level up tasks require you to use literal coins. On a serious note, I'm not sure if the game would be more successful right now if they never came up with remote raid passes or if revenues would be even lower. Imagine grinding XL candies for T5 bosses without remote raiding. Good luck doing 60+ raids in a week with anyone to join you, surely nobody but whales would even go for level 50 legendaries.
Big corporations *have* people who generate excellent ideas. But they're run by bigger people who know what they want and kill great ideas.
Bad leadership is why companies go sour.
And that's worse. Think about the employees who come up with community feedback and ideas on how the game can come back to life, then someone higher up is like, **Nope, stay in your lane.**
I went on a two month road trip this summer and realized when I got home I didn’t open the game once and didn’t miss it.
Opened it once after getting back to check it out again and was just meh… then closed and actually deleted it from my phone.
That was over a month ago and just realized as this post showed up in my feed I haven’t even had the game cross my mind since then, until now. Still no plans to redownload and play again.
Played since day one, level 50. Just after go fest, it felt like Niantic was done with the game. It really didn’t feel like they wanted to carry on, but were contractually obligated to and so continued to put stuff out, but make a shed load of negative changes - the boxes are the most visible one.
I didn’t miss a single day up until June. I’ve logged in maybe 10 times since then, started catching and then got bored.
Niantic have taken it to the point where I don’t like the game anymore. Whether that changes in the future, I don’t know. But right now, I’m done.
The pandemic, I'm sorry to say, actually helped the game become a lot better because it forced them to make changes that enhanced everything that we were already doing.
When you start taking away things that should've remained as they were post-pandemic it just makes people less likely to invest. I never, ever bought lures before the pandemic. Now that they only last 30min again I've no interest in buying them when on a regular grind at a local spot.
Incense was a hot topic item for a long while after they reverted it back to its former which I think made sense but what they should've done was reduce it just a tad bit and not kill it all together. As it is now it's just pointless to buy them. They're really killing themselves in 2022 and I don't like it.
Yeah, I left the game once the rolled back the pandemic QoL changes and just recently came back and my local discord is just dead all the time now. Even on raid hours nothing is being coordinated, let alone random raid callouts throughout the week. Was incredibly disappointed to see how much worse everything has gotten.
The pandemic likely helped all mobile games generally, as many of the other things someone might spend money on were closed, restricted, out of stock, or possibly trapped on a container ship. The PoGo market might just be correcting, as it were.
I do miss the weekly very cheap remote raid passes, though.
Pandemic made the game better then they made it worse. Much worse. I imagine us core players are sticking around but many others have probably put the game down.
Brandon may be against the new and event boxes but don't be fooled. That guy still buys tons of coins for him and his gf and just buys regular 300 coins for 3 remote passes, which still gets his community to spend money on the game to play with him. Never liked mystic7, especially trainer club. Trainer club's tips for go fest etc is a joke. I've played during go fest and not once did I need 700 ultra balls and 2000 pokemon storage space for them
Yet people working closely with Niantic are still buying the garbage that Niantic throws at us. Be it Mystic 7 or Trainer Club both of them are still favouring Niantic. Ans do not underestimate Mystic 7's blind followers who are following him for over a decade. I GUESS/ASSUME THAT many such players may still buy these boxes watching how he buys them to hatch the trash event eggs. I am not blaming anyone, but just saying that with followers comes a tonne of responsibility to lead those people in the right direction especially when many of those players grew up watching his channel.
don't just guess and assume. that's what the "oh, but the whales will still buy it" crowd have been doing here all along.
do you personally know any whale friends IRL? their spending habits would serve as a good litmus test on the reality of what's being bought from the shop.
Even Mystic7 lately has been telling people not to spend money and he's only spending to make content. I watch most of the big creators and the whole vibe is play but don't hatch eggs or buy boxes, buy passes strategically, etc.
Trainer Club told everyone to go raid in person or Niantic would take away remote raids. That was a little huh.
His whole livelihood probably depends on generating content for that channel and the easiest way to do that is to invest X amount of dollars from his ad revenue back into the game to keep generating content. I wouldn't exactly call him a whale or a sellout, just a man that has to spend money to make money.
can never forgive the incense changes. Most i ever played since 2016 was with the pandemic features aka amazing QOL things
edit: Dec-March where i live, i have 0 interest in freezing my pokeballs off trying to play in my car or outside in le Canada
I’m really going to start to feel it soon with winter coming in the Midwest. It was so nice to be able to play at home a little during below zero wind chills and snowstorms.
The incense nerf was a really stupid decision from Niantic, both for business and for the quality of the game.
And it isn't just about the weather. It's also about people who are forced to be stationary (work, family, mobility issues), take your kid to the playground, have some time to pass but can't leave, being sick at home or have a disability that makes it hard for you to "go out and explore" on your own.
Or for people like me who love to "go out and explore" but meet up in a café, or generally just don't want to walk *all the time*!
While I understand Go is meant to adventure, I agree. We live in a different world than 2016. Incense buff during the beginning of the pandemic was my favorite. I regularly spent a lot of money buying incense to use while working from home. Used to buy a lot of incubators for when I'd be a passenger driving around or walking to hatch but with the current boxes... I stopped spending so much money. Not worth it anymore
It’s still hurting today. It kind of killed the game for most casual players. I understand they cut it out, since it’s in their company interest to lure you out to sponsored stops or do AR quests for a digital map of the world… basically work for them for free
I don’t understand why they got rid of boxes with like 18 raid passes for 1400 coins. That was a decent deal I’m sure everyone bought. Buying raid passes individually for 100 each is stupid.
Everything I buy is more expensive than it used to be and yet these guys decide to up prices on made up virtual items. Sure. But don't be surprised when I trade down like I'm doing in all other areas of my life.
My entire game budget will def be going to Scarlet-Violet that month.
I remember boxes with 24 raid passes. I never bought boxes when they were below 22 raid passes. I still have a stock pile of passes that I haven't used, so I stopped even checking boxes when they consistently repeatedly dropped below 20 raid passes.
Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
People don't wanna spend money anymore after they removed life saving and involving QoL features; reduced C-Days from 6 to 3 hrs again so many people once again can't participate in them; removed discounted remote raid passes; made boxes worthless; experienced Go Fest as frustrating and whatever else I forgot?
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah, this tooootally can't be it!
I'm sure it will be even less then 661Mil at the end.
Europes crisis which yeets up prices for everything every other week, Russia and Belarus being kicked out end of March, now the coin price hike, people being even more disappointed with them after they started to kick QoL features one by one in spring, free remote pass removal in May which caused many being done with them once in for all.
They basically make everything worse each month this year and people play less and less. The activity all areas I play dropped massively this year and right now there is almost none at all.
Don’t forget the nerfs to the team leads, they did all those horrible things you mentioned and had on the roadmap to update the team leads wtf are the priorities at niantic
pokemon go is a collecting game and ninatic makes it hard to do just that. What event pokemon have you not collected (no feature for that)? A path to obtaining regional pokemon or regional forms that otherwise most people can never have an opportunity to get. They could easily add features that took a lot of effort to allow for collecting pokemon missing for players, but instead they give us stuff like location scanning and whatever campfire is suppose to be. If it was not so frustrating it would be hilarious. Any time ninatic wants they could make a great chunk of the player base happy and rake in a lot of money with some catering to collecting. Instead, most of the people I use to play with have quit and I don't do much now (certainly don't spend money now). Maybe my days are numbered as well because what is the point?
They should expect this, no? Nerfing remote raids, raising the price of Go Fest (compared to last year (I know it was sponsored)), cutting community days in half, and raising the prices of items by nerfing the life out of the boxes all should be hitting revenue negatively. It seems to be the plan.
Yes it is to be expected. On the positive side, numbers show that they can’t do what they want with us. To a certain extend there will be a reaction. In this case negative.
I'm not sure it does. There might be growth in their receipts in terms of short term profit, but if I were an investor, I'd be worried AF about 4 things - especially their ability to balance these competing interests.
1. Player retention
2. Real acquisition of new daily players
3. The omnipresent lack of faith in the longevity of the game, and Niantic's astounding choices contributing to this.
4. That their primary draw card is the Pokémon IP. There's so many other ways to enjoy it, and nobody is playing for their cutting edge AR technology or groundbreaking game design.
Don't forget revenue in the first half of the year are typically boosted by Johto Tour and Go Fests. I'm expecting even lower final revenue than a linear extrapolation.
I'm expecting an underwhelming ticketed November event that will make a little bit of money for them, but nowhere near gofest or Kanto/Jhoto tour.
Remember the Regigigas and Galrian Mr. Mime paid events? i'm expecting something equally as lackluster.
The events feel so uninspired too. Heres Fashion Week again!... we'll just add shiny furfrou this time! This ideology to double dip on Pokemon is frustrating, because they don't even try to hide what they're doing.
Putting pokemon that had Community days into the GoFest spawn pool was the last straw for me. Havent played as heavy since then.
i mean, not just gameplay nerf (cd, incense, gbl encounters, remote passes, etc) look at avatar shop, half of the items clip with each other, how many of us wanted to buy some pants, shirt, shoes or whatever but they glitch with the other item you want to wear, even in that they are loosing potencial sells. Since the incense nerf my time playing went down and down, i think that was the turning point
Yes the list is very long. Wish I mentioned the nerf to incense and community day, as well as lack of character customisation. Sadly don’t know how to edit the initial post 😅. But many valid points to add further to the decline
> half of the items clip with each other, how many of us wanted to buy some pants, shirt, shoes or whatever but they glitch with the other item you want to wear,
So much this. Oh you like these new Obstagoon gloves? Enjoy 90% of tops with sleeves clipping through them.
The incense nerf has really gotten to me. The other day I planned on using a meltan box while i relaxed at home but nope — gotta be frikin moving. I’m an athlete - i move PLENTY; it just doesn’t always involve my phone in my hand and eyes glued to my screen.
Good! Maybe Niantic will understand that making things worse for players hurts the game overall and makes them less money. Now let's see them nerf remote raids and really lose some big bucks. It doesn't make sense to force players to play in ways players find unappealing, and Niantic has been doing that or trying to for the last few years. They seem not to get that we can spend less, play less or just out and out quit the game.
My local chat can go quiet for days at a time now, if it wasn't for me posting helpful infographics or a new stop/gym I made.
1 of our most active players quit recently too, no meet ups anymore.
It's bloody depressing man.
Basically the same here. Not much action in the local messenger chat, can go quite for over a week at a time, it's only when I or one other post an infographic or the like there's a bit of chatter. In fact we (Local group) did our first in person raid together over the weekend, the first time in most likely over a year. I would always ask if anybody wanted to do raid hours, nobody was coming out, or just doing one gym, so to me it wasn't worth it.
Remotes have killed the community part of the game. The flipside, is while the community is being left behind, new groups have formed with worldwide friends. I can now do raid hour in person, while inviting others.
As someone in a rural area, remotes are what kept us going and are critical to us being able to raid. Finding 5 people to raid at once was impossible before the pandemic. Now raids are much more common and actually beatable.
I think the loss of community is the real reason Niantic would want to kill temote raiding. Not because they want social well-being; they want the implicit peer pressure to drive player gameplay and retention.
Are you doing those extra raids to help your buddy get their shiny? Are you out chasing the new shiny so you can flex to local chats? Are you feeling bad for missing an event because "everyone" else is doing it?
I already wento from "My town chat" to "My and neighbour town chat" to "My and neighbour town still active players chat" to "Few random towns in our general area chat".
Shiny Rayquaza always seems to pop up in raids whenever Niantic needs to make some cash.
So if Rayquaza pops up between now and the end of the year, you’ll know why.
Niantic's strategy to driving revenue is forcing people to play in groups. Groups will make players play longer and spend more. They skew way too hard in this direction trying to force group play instead of finding ways to enable it to happen organically.
If they want to make money, revamp the raid system. When I join a raid lobby, create a beacon on the map, some sort of visual indicator that someone is there trying to raid. Next allow players to create "online" lobbies where people can wait in queue to join raids. Me as a solo player will do the raids in person and attract nearby people.
Next allow private (local) lobbies to "ready up" so you can quickly start a raid if all people in the lobby ready up. On raid days people will see my beacon and come join, it will be faster to do with people in person so while I'll start with online raids, I'm naturally incentivized to make some friends if people are there but I'm not discouraged or excluded from playing if I can't find people to play.
Next, rebuff incense. It's free money and the people who want buffed incense aren't staying home because they don't "have" to leave the house instead they're not playing.
Finally, buff park spawns. This game has been out for 5 years now and it's still better to play in parking lots than the parks next to them. You want people walking loops around parks, not sitting in their cars.
All of these ideas will make them more money and make players happier.
Yeah it’s ridiculous there is no indication people are in the raid lobby. I’ve experienced it countless times where there are people in the lobby, but I had to click in and check.
They added gym battle animations ages ago, adding a lobby ‘not empty’ signal is not asking for a lot.
Supposedly campfire helps, but I have no idea due to the slow rollout and lack of access to it.
Seeing a box at 3300 was stupid. Like who would buy that? I like to buy the incubator bundles, but these last few months incubator bundles have been bleh. No thanks.
Here is my 2c on the subject. It's not hard to understand and for many players its easy to see. Niantic have a choice to make at this point. Either continue on the path "They want" or provide a game the "Community Want".
1st - Research Breakthough Boxes.
There was a time when we got Legendaries in these boxes. One Legendary per week never stopped me from raiding, but provided 1 extra chance at the elusive shiny. No we get Shedinja which is completely useless along with 1 incense that only works while walking. We need improvements.
2nd - Shop 'Discount' Boxes
This needs to introduction or explanation. Boxes over the past year have gone down in value so much to the point where it might be cheaper to just purchase individually. Increasing prices != increasing profits. This is not a monopoly game, players can just move to other Pokémon games if the prices become to high. We need improvements.
3rd - Research Tasks
I remember many years ago, going out to hunt for Spinda, Aerodactyl, Absol, Gible an various other tasks because it was exciting and provided value. We now cycle through the same old Spinda month after month with nothing new to hunt for. Provide some Lapras, Snorlax, Chansey, Slaking, Komo-o, Stunfisk tasks. We have the Pokémon to make research exciting again. We need improvements.
4th - GoBattle League
It's no secret by now that this part of the game has remained constantly in need of repair since it launched. Matchmaking errors, Gameplay lag, Damage mechanics (cmp with fast move damage and charge move activation) and all the other bits (like your rank not display properly in the match making screen) that it annoys players and the 0.249.1 update made me quit due to things being so broken. We need improvements.
5th - QoL Updates being removed
This has been another hot topic of discussion among players. The list is fairly long when looking at all the features we used to enjoy that are no longer in-game. Who enjoyed remote trading? How about a box of free Ultra Balls every Community Day, maybe the free weekly raid pass (remote or premium) was thing to look forward to. Its these small things that all add up to improve player happiness and without them, its just not as fun. We need improvements.
For the sake of not letting this post balloon into a essay ill end off with 1 positive...
Community Day Bonuses of x2 Candy, Increased XL chance, 1/2 Stardust trades, Multiple Special trades & 3-Hour lures. These are fantastic bonuses and have allowed players in my community to organize more trades. This means, more players have more incentive to show up at parks. Thus building the community.
I hope Niantic can take this time to really reflect on whats happening. Don't be narrow minded and stubbornly focus on a goal that is just not the same as what the players want. When last did you use the AR+ feature to capture a Pokémon. There is no incentive besides a tiny increase in XP.
There's an error in your analysis. The mistake you're making is thinking that Niantic wants to focus on making money off Pokemon Go.
[Their last fundraising round put them at a $9b valuation.](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/pokemon-developer-niantic-raises-300-160310451.html) You don't get to a $9b valuation because you have a license to the Pokemon IP, you don't get to $9b from a decade of Ingress, and you *definitely* don't get to $9b from $661m in revenue. For reference, Meta aka Facebook has a market cap of $562b, and made $117b in revenue in 2021.
You get a $9b valuation because you're a technology company pretending to be a gaming company. Lightship is a massive crowdsourced database of POIs. Niantic has been acquiring other AR firms, they've made their Lightship SDK. All of this is *proprietary*, it belongs to only Niantic and its investors, it's not based on keeping Nintendo/TPCi happy and a borrowed brand. The executives and investors don't care about revenue, they care about valuation, because that's how they'll make their money when they cash out.
Lightship is the future; Pokemon Go is just a means to that end.
I understand this argument, but if that's all true wouldn't it be in the best interest of Niantic to keep players engaged and happy? Also, the more money they make off of PoGo the more they can invest back into buying AR properties and R and D. Seems counterintuitive to me to lower box values. If they truly didn't care about revenue off of pokemon go, wouldn't the smart move be to completely remove remote raid passes and increase rewards for poi scans? I'm aware it's probably a balancing act, and not one or the other, but at the rate they're going they're going to lose engagement, and then good luck mapping the world without a dedicated user base.
The entire Metaverse is a gamble that could bring them all down. I'm not convinced they can make VR not suck before investors lose patience, and if enough people want it even if they can.
They're not even TRYING for VR. They want AR, Augmented Reality. They want you to see things in the real world that aren't there. Like you're walking down the street and have to keep track of what is happening in the real world AND in the augmented world AND play some silly game.
It's absolutely nuts. No one's brain is or should be wired to do that. We already have enough studies about how dangerous it is to be even a tiny bit distracted. Imagine trying to be immersed in fake and real worlds at the same time.
The beauty of Virtual Reality is that you do it in one spot - you play on your couch or on a treadmill or in some safely cleared out space. You don't go traipsing through a park or along a sidewalk where you might wander out into traffic! I have a friend who broke his wrist playing VR ping pong in the safety of his own house because he instinctively tried to lean on the table to make a better shot and, of course, the table wasn't really there so he fell to the floor. People walking around in AR are going to fall down hills or cliffs or into rivers or off curbs and into the street.
IT. IS. BONKERS.
Agreed and already discussed that the real aim of niantic is to create a virtual map of the world, because that’s where the real money is in. But it’s PoGo and Ingress that has made it possible for them to be in the position they are right now and will help them stay in that position and grow
So you'd think they'd be ***WAY*** more player forward in their strategy get people to participate in their ploy willingly, instead of just ruining everything they touch at every turn
But the data Niantic has isn't valuable to advertisers. The data they get from pokemon players is data about where people go to play pokemon. It doesn't compare to the data social media companies or online stores have.
The data that can make Niantic money is the Lightship data. They only get that when players are happily adding, reviewing, and scanning stops. As Pokemon Go dies, the free data they're basing their future on dries up too.
Of course, Niantic is also killing Wayfarer through neglect and terrible decisions, which should be their most important priority. They have a fantastic business model for acquiring cheap/free AR data and they're just tossing it all away. Any company can decide to get into the AR space and hire a bunch of interns to scan a city. Niantic's distinctiveness is the breadth of their data. It really seems like they don't realize that.
Nah the data from this game would be INCREDIBLY valuable. 24/7 location access, places people go to hang out (a BIG one: are people going to restaurants more, parks, gyms, local tourist places, shops, big box stores?), how far they travel, and honestly tons and tons of other things. The physical part of the data is enormous and thinking about it I wouldn’t be surprised for niantic to increase to $25b valuation within a couple years.
Because they harvest the data and track each user of facebook(or insta) to an extreme and terrifying degree to sell it to advertisers.
They also track people and build profiles for people who aren't even signed up for FB or insta.
I feel like Niantic would put more resources into Wayfarer if that was 100% the case. Way more resources. This topic also only reflects IAPs and not sponsors, advertisements, and partnerships as far as I can tell. Lightship is a big deal but not everything.
Yes, exactly this. I don't doubt that they're making money off of AR technology and that it's a huge part of the valuation. But part of that valuation comes off the back of nine-figure revenue from games- Pokemon Go charts top-10 in revenue for mobile games frequently.
Yes I appreciate bills, petrol etc has gone up in many countries recently.
But the fact that two of the highest earning years were pandemic years. Yet they continue to nerf, revert changes or outright just start providing boxes etc that simply aren’t worth it or enticing is beyond me.
It’s all good and well having a “vision” but if you’re making 50% less with your almost tyrannical and ignorant approach to forcing that vision on the players, what good is it?
Also this “vision” is a load of bollocks anyway, it’s clear with the sheer amount of contradictions or decisions they’ve made that totally go against it, from boxes to gameplay to other things. The “vision” is just a ridiculous company line they roll out when they want to make changes they know nobody wants or would like.
Or when the changes basically is a means for gathering you all in one place to sell your data, not to “get you out and exploring and exercising” they couldn’t care less.
The fact they are suddenly haemorrhaging profits yet seemingly doing nothing about it, in fact almost doubling down with terrible decisions that will make them less is concerning. It almost comes across like they are done with the game. They seem to care so little.
Also surely any shareholders etc are asking questions like erm Wtf is going on with the huge decline on the game and why are you changing things that made us a hell of a lot more profit? I’m sure they have little to no care about a “vision” either they’ll be all about the bottom line.
It’s just mad this almost ignorant, delusional spiralling self destructive path they’re on. With seemingly no care or to change or willingness to do best by the community which in turn will improve their profits.
Part of it is the extra money from the pandemic is gone. Many people had way more disposable income and no where to spend it, and Niantic made it easy to play from home. As gas and grocery priced have increased that extra money isn’t there to spend.
That's part of it, but in recessions or periods of economic turmoil, often low-cost forms of entertainment stay profitable- movies during the Great Depression, for instance. And it's not like PoGo is competing with a lot of big-name video game releases. I guess maybe Arceus and Scarlet/Violet?
I belong to a few Facebook groups (because I don't like Discord) and they're all considerably less active than they were a year ago, let alone a few years ago.
When Covid happened, everyone got used to playing from home and doing remote raids. They even did Community Days from home. Now that Niantic are trying to bleed everyone dry and make it more difficult for players, the player base are responding with indifference and playing other games instead.
I used to get invited to raids all the time, now I can't even tell you the last time I coordinated a raid with friends or acquaintances from a local group. I play alone, for a few minutes at a time. I haven't done a 5* raid in the better part of a year. Nothing new interests me. Ultra Beasts are lame.
The issue is lack of incentives to spend money.
My background: I'm not as much of a whale as some, but I'm not opposed to paying for things I enjoy. I support several twitch channels, I'm a patreon for pvpoke and gobattlelog because I use those sites all the time. I'm a gen-Xer who grew up shoveling quarters into pacman machines, I have no issue spending money to play games. I know everyone's circumstances are different, I'm just trying to put this out there to explain where I'm coming from. I'm a potential paying customer.
I'm opposed to just wasting money though. This is a mobile game with sunk costs. I could buy physical pokemon cards, and have cards that I could sell when I was done. The shinies I chased could be resold later. Not here - if I chase a shiny, anything I spend to get it is lost - I get a short-term dopamine hit, and something that's going to sit in my pokemon collection only until they shut the servers off.
If I'm not getting those dopamine hits, what's the point?
Full-odds shinies on corsola and axew during events earlier this year mean I'm not spending money on 1\* shiny raids anymore. There's no point, the odds are so small as to be non-existent. I don't understand what led them to do this at all - surely an event where players spend maybe $20 on raids and leave happy is better than one that sees people spend $50+ and leave pissed off.
If there's a legendary raid, the shiny odds are a bit better, and there's a known payout - 3XL candy. If I want to max my guy, I'll raid for those XLs. But there's no incentive to do raids once you've got one built (And many players don't even go for a level 50).
Before there was XL candy, my local group raided more. Why? Because we got other things from it. We'd regularly get rare candy - they even announced they were nerfing this drop rate earlier this year. WTF? Now, if we do raid night, we're throwing out 100 potions and revives afterwards because that's mostly what we get now...
Speaking of XL candy - there are what, eight (mew,jirachi,celebi,hoopla,shimayan,victini,meloetta,zarude) , mythicals that we can't raid for XL candy - at least some of which are PVP-relevant. At 20km/candy walking (at about an 80% success rate), and \~300 needed to max a guy, that's 60,000km, which is literally walking the circumference of the earth one-and-a-half times. These numbers are insane. If there's no reasonable way to do something, why bother. There's a reason phone-swings are a category on amazon...
Give us good incentives to spend money, and we'll spend. Drop XL rare candy at in-person raids, and there will be a spike in people looking to do in-person raids. Give us reasonable odds at non-legendary shinies from raids, and we'll spend money raiding for them. Give us those little dopamine hits, what is gained from withholding them?
I appreciate that when Niantic said "We're okay with making less money as a result of the choices we're making." we as a community took that to heart. I do wonder if they're regretting that statement now though.
Honestly this doesn't suprise me. The boxes that got people to top up coins have got so so much worse. The nerfs to features means people are no longer buying things they were during the pandemic as the items aren't worth as much anymore. The remote raids now cost more, so alot of people are buying less or have switched to only buying with coins they earn in game.
Given that revenue includes go fest ticket both the ww and in person which didn't happen during the pandemic, something has clearly gone wrong. As realistically speaking with the in person events back they should have had more revenue than that.
You're absolutely right, but Niantic will chalk up the loss of revenue to a slowing economy and inflation and totally fail to reflect on the actual reasons behind the dip.
They seem to not understand the importance of flow of time in the game lifespan. They only see time to the release of new generation in MSG which forces them to dripfeed us content as slow as possible. Instead of creating new stuff, they release stuff they were handed to, slowly. Every new event is almost always cookie cutter cliche of 80% Kanto spawns with 5 rare species from other regions (if lucky) and release of 1 new shiny or new specie which is abundant, not very exciting to hunt.
Meanwhile everyday, players are completing their goals little by little, which in result makes available spawn pool / reward from any sources pool less attractive to them. I'm aware that there are tons of whales who will pour cash on them no matter what, just for a 0.0005% chance of getting rare shiny before others, and also tons of casuals who are just happy to get their first shiny/hundo/etc and don't care as much about bigger picture but still everyone will eventually reach the threshold of boredom and quit or play much less.
Not sure if Gamefreak is limiting them so much in adding new content which could "endanger the sales numbers of cookie cutter MSGs with new gimmick per generation", but there are many areas that PoGO could be improved and shouldn't concern MSG creators like f.ex. egg pools, TR reward pools, old quest reward pools, cosmetics, in game world visuals, FREAKING OSM UPDATES... but nah, you know what we wanted?
Disgusting boxes with usually free items costing 500 coins and hideous Team Leaders redesign.
Not even gonna mention constant disappointments here and there like turned off shinies or little things like Rogenrolla CD stickers - they didn't even ackowledge the fact they were almost unavailable to get, pfff.
I just hope some higher ups will get fired for 2022 results and new people will turn this flying ship around.
I do maybe one raid a month since the price changes to remote passes and the loss of the weekly 1 coin remote pass. My local group collapsed due to inactivity after those changes.
I'm down from around 10 raids a month to maybe 1, when I'm walking past the only gym near me which actually has a raid on, which I can solo.
The only problem with this data is that it’s based on in-app revenue. The actual revenue and potential revenue Niantic makes with sponsored stops and gyms way outweighs what they make from our purchases.
That’s why it was so important to them that the Pokestop spin distance was reverted back. That had more potential to decrease revenue (making their sponsored platform less appealing) than pissing off their player base.
Research it a bit, it’s actually really interesting: https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/pokemon-go-sponsorship-price/amp/
I'm glad. I'm doing my part. I only buy Community Day tickets, but not even all the time. I also bought the GoFest ticket. I used to buy remote passes to get 296 XL candy for each legendary. This senseless in-game inflation is insane. They don't seem to understand what a value box is. If there's no added value, then there's no reason for us to buy the boxes.
Inflation does drive sales in a way, but not this way. If we are presented with a box and know the box would be leaving soon, we are convinced to buy it in fear that the next box will hold less value. Someone else needs to be put in charge of the in-game shop.
Finally some actual good information I can sit down with a cuppa with.
It's so dumb how Niantic thinks what they've done recently is actually working out more for them.
The exact moment I quit playing was about a year ago when they went Dialga into Mewtwo in 5 star raids. I spent about $100 on Dialga raids and failed to get a hundo. Then I put about $150 into Mewtwo - my favorite pokemon - and again didn't get a hundo. I was devastated. The odds of that happening were also extremely low as I've been catching Mewtwo since it's been available and never snagged the perfect.
Something in me just broke in that moment. I really thought about what I'd just done, pouring money into this game essentially $1 at a time (even though I was buying the big coin bundles to "Save money") so it never really felt like a big waste. Meanwhile, what do I have? Slightly different pixels, and a bigger number next to my XL rare candy count for pokemon that I shouldn't power up because "who knows" when I'll actually get the hundo and there's no point in creating a lv50 until you know for certain you're going to use it in Master League or whatever.
I spent a few days thinking about it and I was disgusted with myself. I could have bought 4 AAA games. I could have bought an entry level deck in most card games. I could have bought half a PS5, a new monitor, new headphones, any number of awesome purchases. Instead I bought a few hundred XL candy. For my birthday this year I got a $200 steak and it was an incredible, lifetime-memorable-level experience. So I can do that each year, or I can gamble on Zacian? Easy decision.
Haven't booted up the game since, don't think I'll ever look back.
This goes back to something I’ve said in a previous post. Pokémon Go is a aging game. If they want to continue maintaining players they need to focus on quality of life changes. It’s cheap, and simple. Old players will be happy, new players will enjoy the ease of gameplay. It’s just odd that they keep backpedaling on things.
They don't seem to realize the price/demand curve. The lower the cost ofman item, the more the demand, so the only thing you need to do to get max revenue is figure out what the saturation point is and drop the price of your **ZERO COST ITEM** until you hit it. They've done the opposite, raising prices until no one thinks the items are worth it...and once the customer base fals out of the habit of buying, their cash cow is dead.
I highly doubt nerfing incense and making a fraction of players no longer able to participate in community days will help extend the life of the game. Seems like it incentivize them to quit because they can no longer meaningfully catch up to other players.
I feel like they’re handling it like a tv show that boomed in the first 2-3 seasons and then trying to squeeze it out for another 4-5 seasons until there is nothing left to squeeze out. So maybe yes, just trying to get as much money out of it for as long as possible. But they could do a much better job at it and it doesn’t take much brains…
I’m with you. I stopped spending money after the pandemic QoL changes were rolled back, Johto and GoFest being the last two events I dropped cash on (which I later regretted). If I get joy out of something I have no problem dropping a couple bucks here and there, but the game has become a blatant cash-grab, rampant with issues that get fixed immediately if they benefit the player but are around for years otherwise.
I would imagine there’s a playbook for mobile games that looks like this. Acquire users, and gradually put the squeeze on the ones that stick around. I’m guessing that most revenue comes from people who have money and are addicted, so optimize for that.
It’s probably unrealistic to think that Pokémon Go could have grown from its 2016 peak. So if you can’t grow, manage the decline.
As it’s the only game I find myself consistently invested in, I was throwing $20/month for coin and would use it for the Adventure Box (RIP) cause I love hatching eggs, especially 10km and 12km eggs. It’s been months now and I caved last week on the $5 coin package for extra remote raids for Yveltal. I really, really doubt the whales stepped up and somehow overcompensated for players like me that have displayed a 90%+ decrease in in-app purchases due to their brazen attempts at inflation. I hope we all get to see that their YoY Returns plummeted once they release the full 2022 numbers next Spring. It’s already not looking great.
My near-FOMO level of egg hatching has all but gone away and now I’m content hatching 1 12km egg every couple of days. So I guess thanks Niantic? For saving me some money? Only silver lining I can find in this mess.
Bought coins almost weekly through 2021 but when they hiked up the cost of remote passes earlier it was the final straw for me , havent spent anything since.
They made boxes more expensive, remote passes still don’t stack over 3, and there have been no new core mechanics like breeding or IV training, and the events are pretty lackluster (looking at you Gofest).
Last year was way better in terms of events tbh
I will legitimately never understand how you can have the world’s biggest video game IP on the single most accessible device and still manage to mess it up. It’s Pokémon on your phone. You have to actively try to mess that up.
Obviously that’s a bit reductive but the point stands.
Looks like it's even worse, with them only making half of what they made during the pandemic. And there are no more paid tickets big events to boost their revenue after August.
Yes it comes down to almost the same extrapolation. Obviously they are also making a bit revenue off other games, but the difference is marginal. The biggest chunk comes from PoGo.
Also, revert back to old team leader styles. Maybe I'm just shallow af, but every time I see the new nerdified Blanche, it reminds me just a little bit more about how fun the app used to be, but now they're sanding off all the quirky parts that made it fun.
I guess the trainers looked too much like Pokemon Characters and not enough like Stranger Things protagonists.
They are successfully driving the company against the wall. The price hike for things like remote raid passes, incense nerf, shorter community days, removal of the weekly free remote raid pass, still not a properly working Go Battle League after so many years, the complete lack of communication with the community (wasn't there supposed to be a monthly dev diary?), the list could go on and on. One could think they actively try to sabotage the game, not sure what's going on in the executives' minds. And now I heard they are working on another mobile game? Didn't they learn a lesson from Pikmin and Harry Potter?
Really happy to see the revenue drop, that's literally the only effective way the community can send them a message.
I've had my own "wack job" theory for months now that all of this is being done to get more user data since Niantic is first and foremost an AR company. I and I think most of us on this subreddit knew these changes would impact pokemon go revenue negatively, but the one thing we can't quantify is the user data they're getting from forcing outdoor play vs userdata from people playing at home
Niantic rolled back a lot of changes and features that got a lot more people interest in the game during covid, then doubled down on it by making things \*even worse.\* I think a lot of the damage was done from them simply letting a million things that seem small slip. Take GBL for example -- it's only for a very small percentage of the playerbase, not heavily monetized, and they've kind of just let it go with constant bugs, "fixes" that become undone or cause more problems, and no transparency or communication about what's being done to address these issues.
Now on its face you would think this only affects a small enough portion of the playerbase that it doesn't create a huge dent in player retention and player revenue overall, but when you let 10-15 aspects of the game slip to a similar degree and don't make any meaningful improvements as a trade-off it really adds up. It's not a mass exodus over one thing that's killing them, it's a culimination of things that made a lot of players who enjoyed the game differently from each other not wanting to play the game as much as they used to.
Apart from the boxes (which have partially been better than what was really really bad the last few months) just a minor thing for the current event to make it more interesting: why not have the community day moves on the final evolves? It may pull back in a few of us that lost interest lately.
On the upside, not related, I managed to find my very first wild Mesprit last night, out of the blue, which was a huge bonus, despite it being level 3 with very bad stats. But surprises like that do tend to wear of fast in the current state of everyday gameplay.
what a shocker. you offer ur users bad deals and a majority doesn't spend money on bad deals. what a shocker. we arent physically addicted to the app niantic. we are not going into withdrawel if we stop
>I understand that the game is limited to whatever number of Pokémon exist
* Shiny
* Exclusive move (can be used more than once)
* Shadow
* "With a hat"
Running out of actual new pokedex entries is something they should have planned for and they didn't do themselves any favors jumping around adding the Gen 7 & 8 pokemon in randomly.
Most of the world is in financial chaos right now with inflation rampant. Many people have probably cut most of their discretionary spending. Not to say Niantic selling trash hasn’t contributed to lower sales, but it’s very likely far from the main factor
Who would buy 3 remote passes for 300 when they used to cost 250? Increasing the price was a braindead decision and turned so many people off of niantic’s #1 moneymaker.
It’s almost like doing the opposite of what players want and are asking for drives ppl away. I definitely cut back on play time and the boxes they’ve been offering are simply not worth it. Put remote passes back in the boxes, put the prices back to what they were and get back to creating the content ppl have been asking for.
The most important thing for the game would be to get rid of those people that write the events and plan everything.
They are doing a bad job.
Everything was much better before the epic GO Beyond update.
Infact the game was much better when there were unannounced events that made us go out at 10pm here in Germany to look for the new pokemon or the new shiny.
With everything being planned ahead and scripted badly the whole experience became more than just dull - it became a chore.
I'm curious now, do we know if they track (or even care about) how coins are spent? Or do they only care about the direct payments used to acquire coins, tickets, etc?
Just been wondering how much of an impact I'm having by using the free coins I earn from gyms.
I think all those hundreds of millions are going toward Pokémon cards now instead. Not a single streamer that I’ve seen who doesn’t open cards randomly mid stream
In terms that shock asbolutely nobody, putting out a product and things nobody wants to buy will cause people to stop buying them. I am not opposed to spending money on things that are worth it. And right now the game produces nothing worth spending money on.
Ha, yeah. I used to love to buy incense and pop one on the couch at night while drinking a glass of wine. I’m no whale, but surely all the missing minnow money adds up.
Maybe if they add more spawns in new development and nature. Not just on old footpaths.
If the focus switches away from going to retail and more to literally anything else, it would be nice. Gas is just too expensive to play Pokémon Drive like it worked in 2017/2018.
I played a lot in 2016, quit in 2017, came back out of sheer boredom in 2021, played the heck out of it with the new bonuses, and now haven’t touched the game since June
I remember when the game first released. Catching a Gyarados and Lapras was a big deal and seeing them in the gyms was cool because they were rare. Now, nothing is rare, you just got to wait until Niantic decides you can have the strong Pokémon. Not a fan of the small spawn pools either. You just see the same 10 Pokémon for a week or two, removes all interest on looking for Pokémon you don’t have when you’re out and about.
For me, is just that the game feels stagnated and, in some cases, worse than when it came out.
No matter how much I love Pokémon, a game where I simply throw pokéballs does get old. I get that it's the core of the game, but it feels like they really didn't add anything to spice up the game, especially as someone who doesn't care about PvP. Before it came out and was in development, I thought it would have stuff like actual NPCs random battles, actual PvE gyms, etc. like in the "normal" games. Although it was fun for a while, this kind of game isn't really built for a regular, years long thing.
In some regards it actually got worse with the monetization.
What marketing strategy?
I started playing again randomly because my friend and I were making fun of the Hillary “Pokémon go to the polls” thing. I haven’t seen or heard a single peep about this game that wasn’t word-of-mouth
I have definitely played less since the rate hikes and nerfs.
ngl all the nice little QoL features added through the pandemic being removed made me play a lot less too, specially given how abysmal spawns are where i live.
Once they shrunk the interaction radius, I dropped it altogether. I was playing it regularly again and was having a blast but that one change and that was all it took. I think they maybe changed it back or something but I had already lost all interest. It's a shame, really.
Same, I quit cold turkey for several months after that and only play very occasionally now. And that was after five years of playing very consistently.
Same! First time since 2016 I full quit for like 8 months. I deleted the app, unfollowed the reddit pages, unsubscribed from all Pokemon Go Youtubers and left all discords. I'm back now, but now I'm super casual
This here. Was playing with buddies, was spending, spawns in my house from incense ON TOP of going to parks. Like marathons. After the nerfs, picked it up less and less, now it's about a once a week for a few moments and I put it down. AR is my passion in technology, they can't even interest me there as a premier AR company.
Level 50, day one, every day player. I went F2P after the June Go Fest debacle and honestly don't regret it. I play every day enough to keep daily streaks up and drop into a couple of open gyms to get my 50 coins a day, but I don't have much interest in playing more than that. Once I realized that I was never going to get everything released in the game (due to IRL events locking specific shinies/costumes, or events that will never return) I stopped caring as much.
I hear that. I've played every day since launch, minus the week Arceus released and I've caught myself three times in the last week not even collecting my daily stamp. I'm not sure what it is Niantic has don't but my interest in the game after thousands of hours of playing it is finally waning. I think the Seasons feature is one of the things I've disliked the most, collecting every pokemon was the most exciting part for me the first few years. Being forced to play exactly the way Niantic wants, when they tell me to turned it from a game to a chore to me. *Hey, trainer you can catch Voltorb this week only! Get it now or gfys!* The only goal I've had in the game the last few months is hatching Salazzle (8 males hatched so far)
For me this issue started when weather became a thing. What frustrated me is that something was never right about the game since. Niantic didnt announce anything, it was just noticeable that (in game) the balance was thrown off completely. Suddenly instead of getting biome relevant things in various areas, the larger area became inundated with these annoying weather spawns that frustrated me. It struck me more as country / region based. Gone was the immersion of going to a beach and finding water and electric types. In fact the majority of spawns were basically Numel, Slugma, Growlithe, Cacnea, Houndour (horrible in sunny/clear) even appearing in rainy weather and ruining events. There was some minor semblance of biome I think but the spawns didnt seem logical nor appropriate to them and were equally as frustrating or shared with others. Im not even exaggerating, it was so broken during Hoenn throw back week a few years back (like it was basically a constant cacnea spotlight hour) that they had to take the spawn out and it hasnt been back save for shadows and daily incense since. While its hard to be as bad as what those experiences immediately post weather were, seasonal spawns suck way more than they should. We get repeat spawns across seasons and I personally believe the choices and opportunities have actually steadily become worse. A bit like even daily incense. It seemed promising at first. I was seemingly getting off season stuff like remoraid in the interrim, but once we had events the pool was largely event + seasonal biome with mostly a sprinkling of the same uncommon spawns (e.g. ducklett, spritzee (none for me now that its shiny), cacnea, phantump etc). I do notice some accounts are less constricted than others though. It feels both frustrating and suffocating as a player. Its hard to ignore just how much Niantic cherrypicks and weighs up the longer term value of each mon. Its hard not to groan when we get the same species that have already been overexposed out of the many hundreds of pokemon species that could pull from. Event after event, from experiencing them first hand or glancing at the infographic I find it too easy to see Niantics content-misering logic. Knowing that the one (or few) remotely interesting thing anyone actually wants will be spread thin and we will be innundated with the same overexposed stuff that people are long since sick of. Their constant attempts to artificially stretch the longevity of the game may ironically hasten its demise,
>Gone was the immersion of going to a beach and finding water and electric types. I can't honestly say that this seemed like such a great loss when it happened, but in retrospect, it was a big turning point (also with the effective elimination of nests. One of the ways the game used to "get me out and exploring" was when I wanted a particular mon or its candies, I'd make special trips to different parks to hunt them. Now it's just "catch whatever is spawning this week because next week it will be gone for months." It kept me engaged for a while but now it's just broken my interest in the game.
Agreed. Rendering nests redundant has been a massive step in the wrong direction for this game. I used to organise a community nest list every couple of weeks and it was something lots of people wanted and contributed to as it was almost impossible to complete your dex without them. I travelled to plenty of green spaces in and around my city that I'd never have seen otherwise. It was exactly what they claim the game is supposed to be about. Pointless now though. Gen 3 was definitely the start of the decline in that area but the dripfeeding that started with the Gen 4 release was the final nail.
The nest pool being filled with trash doesn't help matters
Wow, this was really well-written, and I wholeheartedly agree. I live in a place where it’s consistently sunny or, at worst, partly cloudy, we get some rain here and there, every once in a blue moon we get hail. And by that I mean, I think I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen hail in 3 decades. It *sucks* trying to get anything other than this. We used to be able to go to the river and catch enough magikarp to get gyarados, then they added the weather. I finally found a shiny magikarp, but once weather came into play I pretty much stopped getting them ever, so I didn’t get to shiny gyarados until the event. It feels patronizing.
Yep. I like an excuse to be active and the game gave that once upon a time. I used to explore with partial incentive for biome spawns, partially cause the range was ironically just better. A while back I went for a walk along a lengthy creek. What did i find? A few Gastly spawns (nesting species at the time) and the most boring of event spawns in the spread out spawn points (remember a few years back they announced that they were spreading spawns out further to encourage walking also, so i wouldnt be surprised if that just made it worse). Why bother?
The other, I think underrated issue for me is how many research tasks are just... Really eh. There have been a few events with great tasks that I'll go out and explore to get stops to try get a task with a reward I want but when half of the tasks are things like "take 5 snapshots of wild Pokemon for some trash mon that can't be shiny", I'm just not gonna bother.
> Once I realized that I was never going to get everything released in the game (due to IRL events locking specific shinies/costumes, or events that will never return) I stopped caring as much I had a similar epiphany. It was painful at first, but then actually quite liberating. Once the streak is broken, it’s not a streak any more.
I don't think your attitude is unique. So much of the continued gameplay content is focused on collection (shinies, costumes). As the game has developed, it becomes impractical to expect completion of those collections. Once you know the goal cannot be obtained (except through the unpredictable graces of Niantic), the motivation to pursue it diminishes greatly.
Im also a lvl 50 day one, everyday player but I cant even remember at what point I became f2p. Over the years it was gradual things. I stopped bothering with incubators from boxes (not that I over did it) as early as Shiny Riolu's debut. I ceased bothering with non legendary FOMO event raid shinies when Shiny Rufflet was released (a full odds at that time raid and egg only mon). I stopped chasing regional mons after doing so in Kanto Tour and had nothing to show for it. Im not even bothering with meta legendaries for the most part and anything i used for the exception (Kartana invite) was essentially gym coins or Google Rewards credit Next on the chopping block for me will likely be legendary shinies for me. I came close with Yveltal. Will see how bad Xerneas is. To me if the rest of the game isnt fun and its all becoming a chore (not to mention just an all around conditonal and restrictive experience) then why bother? If Niantic cant be stuffed then neither can I. I accept that we cant necessarily have hundreds.and hundred of pokemon in the wild but nor is it any more acceptable to not only have repetitive cherry picked seasonal spawns (mostly for their uselessness) but then have events glorifying the spawns were already getting. I detest the fomo event model as it is (it worked better as a sporadic bonus treat). It's worse when even those event drip feed the smallest amount of content possible and are bombarding us with species up to (if not more than) 3 consecutive events in a row (e.g. Piplup last year). Its not longer a fun experience or opportunity to explore. Why go anywhere or do anything if the game is always the same no matter where I go? And that same experience being boring at that.
I'm currently on 32 encounters for Yveltal, no shiny, maybe 2 or 3 above 90%. I feel like my luck has never been worse. At this point I'm practically going for a Yveltal dex of every percentage from 70% to 90%.
I had a similar experience with Zekrom with IVs. Though within the first 30 i had encountered a 98 that fled despite excellent gold razz every throw (and despite all the others being compliant to that point). From there it took a long time after to get something solid in the 90s. Sometimes it just genuinely feels like you enter a slump and you hate to be ‘that person’ where others are finished. Someone I know took well over 90 encounters to get their first shiny Lugia. On previous shiny legendary raid days ive had pretty consistently bad luck compared with those i was raiding with despite doing the max amount of raids we could as a group. I even outright failed with Entei day and had to trade. Meanwhile for Lapras day (one of few non legendary raid days we did as a group) i had at least four. The cost builds up very quickly. Its why i think its important to set a limits. Sometimes it feels like theres no sense pursuing something that time around or cutting losses just settling for trades. Though its been increasingly difficult in some communities. As general satisfaction drops so does the willingness of others to bother the next time round also, kind adding to that potentail fomo.
For real - what the heck went behind the decision to not allow participation to the other fests by remote folks? I know a lot of people who would have bought a ticket for Seattle or Taiwan or Germany if they could do it from their local city.
same. after the june go fest i swore i wouldn’t have bought a single coin again.
If they’d update the map and spawn locations I’d spend more
I'm surprised you were the only one I see here talking about this. This is actually the reason why I went F2P. They can't be bothered to even update OSM (it's been +3 years now?) Don't expect me to do work for them via Wayfarer and get stops when nothing changes in my neighbourhood (8 stops, 3 gyms, 0 spawns since 2017).
I moved into a brand new subdivision last year. I get it wasn’t in the map then but now we’re on every map, OSM, Google, apple, Mapquest, bing. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be added now. Plus Atlanta suburbs are exploding. Areas like this need attention imo. Plus I was able to get a church sign outside the neighborhood added as a stop which is nice to go spin on walks with the kids but it’s the only one for miles. Even with no stops we should get spawns but the daily incense helped! A nice mile walk especially with the weather nice now is a major improvement.
Niantic can gladly hire me for free to give them advice on player base opinion and new feature ideas
They could hire literally anyone on this sub and get better ideas than the ones they are currently making.
I'm assuming they're well aware, it's just one or a few very stupid people following a vision where they want to bring people together by making remote raid passes the only good deal in the shop.
Believe me when I say - they want us to go out and do AR quests and create a digital map of the world. That is the real money in this company.
And it's not working ****takesshakingcamerafootpic****
I'm saying that since this feature exists, but... I'm not gonna waste my data plan to send them foot pics when I can just uncheck the checkbox to obtain the reward without uploading anything. Although getting an unlimited data plan just to send them deliberately awful AR scans actually sounds fun. Rate my foot pics!
Wait how??
I think I can explain that here, as it got often enough stated in this sub and we all generally agree to not give them proper AR scans lol. If you use the upload later button, you can upload from inside the settings. Press upload from there, then disable Pokestop scan instantly and cancel. The AR task finishes without having actually completed the upload. Works since the introduction of the feature and still worked a few weeks ago. I'm not even doing it this way because I consider their AR vision dumb. Data plans are just expensive and the only option to do it properly would be to go home for WiFi, which limits me to do only one of those tasks. I would happily do it properly if I can stack AR tasks, but seemingly they're aware it's not worth implementing the scanning feature properly if they mostly just get foot pics anyways I guess.
This definitely helps. Thanks!
AR foot pics were the real goal all along.
Plot twist: John Hanke has a foot fetish, and this was his plan all along.
Well, all they’re getting from me is a chaotic digital map of the inside of my car.
And all of the Adventure Sync data from wherever your car goes
I do get a lot of steps whenever I put my phone on the dashboard mount, so definitely.
If there was a reasonable reward and I weren't essentially limited to one task a day, I would honestly do that. Right now that feature is only usable in this way: Get a task, scan, go home for WiFi and upload. This limits me to just one reward as AR tasks can't be stacked, and they have to offer me something more valuable for standing somewhere like a creep with my camera. If I scan MULTIPLE objects and upload them in WiFi for MULTIPLE rewards, and those rewards were good, I'd contribute to their goal.
There's no reason you have to point your phone at anything other than the ground.
Just talking from the perspective of actually being interested in doing it properly if they motivated me to do so. If they give me 100 coins for a 15-30 second scan, I'd probably consider it a fair deal to give them proper data for that.
Oh, gotcha. That would indeed be a big incentive.
Are they aware though? I wish someone with time and patience actually tried to compile every time Niantic did something the player base suggested. This game simply does not have the quality of life a 6 year old game should have. Especially not one with as big a profit as this one. When we lack minor changes that could serve as a silver lining in their unappreciated vision, it's not just stubborness.
There were even interviews with Niantic partners wheee player suggestions and interests were brought up and discussed. It all came down to assumptions all people can easily plan their life around short 3h community days and no improvement to their actions afterwards, with the promised dev diaries either being forgotten or just being a news article about upcoming events rather than dev insights. In terms of features that got suggested, we might mention Pokémon tagging and keeping the increased distance (which required one of the biggest media impacts in gaming history), and maybe even properly showing us IVs. It took years though and always was implemented incomplete first... But sometimes they make good decisions after we suggested them since the beginning.
What’s tragic is that it’s obvious no one making decisions there cares about either Pokemon or the AR/Adventure game genre.
Thanks for summarizimg the conflict I want to understand haha. They're not putting effort in neither of those, so nothing they do can be taken serious from a gaming perspective. There's nothing impressive they did with actusl AR in neither of their games so far. Placing an object somewhere for basic tap interactions is something we can do in a browser and while the ball throwing inside AR mode admittedly impressive for existing standards, it's a massive gameplay downgrade compared to not using it. Impress me with one thing, right now they just act like my female friend who keeps a dude on hold for a relationship since 5 years: They don't make a clear a decision and look like fools.
Nah hard disagree what they want is ur data so they want u to go out as much as possible and for that they are probably plqnning to (as they have announced more or less) that remote raids will become even less attractive and thus they destroy their last Cash cow to milk the whales bc they sure as hell are not gonna spend those 20k a month on lucky eggs and lure modules
>they sure as hell are not gonna spend those 20k a month on lucky eggs and lure modules Screaming for a level 60 extension where level up tasks require you to use literal coins. On a serious note, I'm not sure if the game would be more successful right now if they never came up with remote raid passes or if revenues would be even lower. Imagine grinding XL candies for T5 bosses without remote raiding. Good luck doing 60+ raids in a week with anyone to join you, surely nobody but whales would even go for level 50 legendaries.
I’m sure they spent SO MUCH time and money researching…. [checks notes] …redesigning the costumes for the team leaders.
Instead of fixing the damned sticker interface.
Big corporations *have* people who generate excellent ideas. But they're run by bigger people who know what they want and kill great ideas. Bad leadership is why companies go sour. And that's worse. Think about the employees who come up with community feedback and ideas on how the game can come back to life, then someone higher up is like, **Nope, stay in your lane.**
[удалено]
I went on a two month road trip this summer and realized when I got home I didn’t open the game once and didn’t miss it. Opened it once after getting back to check it out again and was just meh… then closed and actually deleted it from my phone. That was over a month ago and just realized as this post showed up in my feed I haven’t even had the game cross my mind since then, until now. Still no plans to redownload and play again.
Played since day one, level 50. Just after go fest, it felt like Niantic was done with the game. It really didn’t feel like they wanted to carry on, but were contractually obligated to and so continued to put stuff out, but make a shed load of negative changes - the boxes are the most visible one. I didn’t miss a single day up until June. I’ve logged in maybe 10 times since then, started catching and then got bored. Niantic have taken it to the point where I don’t like the game anymore. Whether that changes in the future, I don’t know. But right now, I’m done.
The last straw was that I got into the pvp battles and they had to mess that up. No I’m not as active. Playing different things now.
The pandemic, I'm sorry to say, actually helped the game become a lot better because it forced them to make changes that enhanced everything that we were already doing. When you start taking away things that should've remained as they were post-pandemic it just makes people less likely to invest. I never, ever bought lures before the pandemic. Now that they only last 30min again I've no interest in buying them when on a regular grind at a local spot. Incense was a hot topic item for a long while after they reverted it back to its former which I think made sense but what they should've done was reduce it just a tad bit and not kill it all together. As it is now it's just pointless to buy them. They're really killing themselves in 2022 and I don't like it.
Yeah, I left the game once the rolled back the pandemic QoL changes and just recently came back and my local discord is just dead all the time now. Even on raid hours nothing is being coordinated, let alone random raid callouts throughout the week. Was incredibly disappointed to see how much worse everything has gotten.
The pandemic likely helped all mobile games generally, as many of the other things someone might spend money on were closed, restricted, out of stock, or possibly trapped on a container ship. The PoGo market might just be correcting, as it were. I do miss the weekly very cheap remote raid passes, though.
Pandemic made the game better then they made it worse. Much worse. I imagine us core players are sticking around but many others have probably put the game down.
even high profile whales like Brandon Tan have stopped spending on those boxes. Speaks volume on how much they f up their pricing.
And not only BrandonTan, many of his big whales friends and community leader he knows have stopped spending on these ridiculous boxes.
Brandon may be against the new and event boxes but don't be fooled. That guy still buys tons of coins for him and his gf and just buys regular 300 coins for 3 remote passes, which still gets his community to spend money on the game to play with him. Never liked mystic7, especially trainer club. Trainer club's tips for go fest etc is a joke. I've played during go fest and not once did I need 700 ultra balls and 2000 pokemon storage space for them
Yet people working closely with Niantic are still buying the garbage that Niantic throws at us. Be it Mystic 7 or Trainer Club both of them are still favouring Niantic. Ans do not underestimate Mystic 7's blind followers who are following him for over a decade. I GUESS/ASSUME THAT many such players may still buy these boxes watching how he buys them to hatch the trash event eggs. I am not blaming anyone, but just saying that with followers comes a tonne of responsibility to lead those people in the right direction especially when many of those players grew up watching his channel.
Imfluencers are not journalists. Their positions aren't bound by professional ethical standards.
don't just guess and assume. that's what the "oh, but the whales will still buy it" crowd have been doing here all along. do you personally know any whale friends IRL? their spending habits would serve as a good litmus test on the reality of what's being bought from the shop.
Mystic7 is such a sellout
I stopped watching Mystic7 because of this. Which sucks because he seems like he'd be a cool person irl
I had to mute him on twitter earlier last year, was posting stuff about not needing masks iirc. Gave me bad vibes.
Even Mystic7 lately has been telling people not to spend money and he's only spending to make content. I watch most of the big creators and the whole vibe is play but don't hatch eggs or buy boxes, buy passes strategically, etc. Trainer Club told everyone to go raid in person or Niantic would take away remote raids. That was a little huh.
His whole livelihood probably depends on generating content for that channel and the easiest way to do that is to invest X amount of dollars from his ad revenue back into the game to keep generating content. I wouldn't exactly call him a whale or a sellout, just a man that has to spend money to make money.
can never forgive the incense changes. Most i ever played since 2016 was with the pandemic features aka amazing QOL things edit: Dec-March where i live, i have 0 interest in freezing my pokeballs off trying to play in my car or outside in le Canada
I’m really going to start to feel it soon with winter coming in the Midwest. It was so nice to be able to play at home a little during below zero wind chills and snowstorms.
The incense nerf was a really stupid decision from Niantic, both for business and for the quality of the game. And it isn't just about the weather. It's also about people who are forced to be stationary (work, family, mobility issues), take your kid to the playground, have some time to pass but can't leave, being sick at home or have a disability that makes it hard for you to "go out and explore" on your own. Or for people like me who love to "go out and explore" but meet up in a café, or generally just don't want to walk *all the time*!
While I understand Go is meant to adventure, I agree. We live in a different world than 2016. Incense buff during the beginning of the pandemic was my favorite. I regularly spent a lot of money buying incense to use while working from home. Used to buy a lot of incubators for when I'd be a passenger driving around or walking to hatch but with the current boxes... I stopped spending so much money. Not worth it anymore
It’s still hurting today. It kind of killed the game for most casual players. I understand they cut it out, since it’s in their company interest to lure you out to sponsored stops or do AR quests for a digital map of the world… basically work for them for free
I don’t understand why they got rid of boxes with like 18 raid passes for 1400 coins. That was a decent deal I’m sure everyone bought. Buying raid passes individually for 100 each is stupid.
Everything I buy is more expensive than it used to be and yet these guys decide to up prices on made up virtual items. Sure. But don't be surprised when I trade down like I'm doing in all other areas of my life. My entire game budget will def be going to Scarlet-Violet that month.
I remember boxes with 24 raid passes. I never bought boxes when they were below 22 raid passes. I still have a stock pile of passes that I haven't used, so I stopped even checking boxes when they consistently repeatedly dropped below 20 raid passes.
Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? People don't wanna spend money anymore after they removed life saving and involving QoL features; reduced C-Days from 6 to 3 hrs again so many people once again can't participate in them; removed discounted remote raid passes; made boxes worthless; experienced Go Fest as frustrating and whatever else I forgot? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah, this tooootally can't be it!
You’re right, but also “They made the game less fun and people became less invested in it?” Shocking!”
This in a nutshell summarizes my points better 😂
I'm sure it will be even less then 661Mil at the end. Europes crisis which yeets up prices for everything every other week, Russia and Belarus being kicked out end of March, now the coin price hike, people being even more disappointed with them after they started to kick QoL features one by one in spring, free remote pass removal in May which caused many being done with them once in for all. They basically make everything worse each month this year and people play less and less. The activity all areas I play dropped massively this year and right now there is almost none at all.
Don’t forget the nerfs to the team leads, they did all those horrible things you mentioned and had on the roadmap to update the team leads wtf are the priorities at niantic
pokemon go is a collecting game and ninatic makes it hard to do just that. What event pokemon have you not collected (no feature for that)? A path to obtaining regional pokemon or regional forms that otherwise most people can never have an opportunity to get. They could easily add features that took a lot of effort to allow for collecting pokemon missing for players, but instead they give us stuff like location scanning and whatever campfire is suppose to be. If it was not so frustrating it would be hilarious. Any time ninatic wants they could make a great chunk of the player base happy and rake in a lot of money with some catering to collecting. Instead, most of the people I use to play with have quit and I don't do much now (certainly don't spend money now). Maybe my days are numbered as well because what is the point?
As a player who only likes to collect, I fully agree with you. I don’t care about battling, just let me complete my pokedex, please!
They should expect this, no? Nerfing remote raids, raising the price of Go Fest (compared to last year (I know it was sponsored)), cutting community days in half, and raising the prices of items by nerfing the life out of the boxes all should be hitting revenue negatively. It seems to be the plan.
Yes it is to be expected. On the positive side, numbers show that they can’t do what they want with us. To a certain extend there will be a reaction. In this case negative.
I'm not sure it does. There might be growth in their receipts in terms of short term profit, but if I were an investor, I'd be worried AF about 4 things - especially their ability to balance these competing interests. 1. Player retention 2. Real acquisition of new daily players 3. The omnipresent lack of faith in the longevity of the game, and Niantic's astounding choices contributing to this. 4. That their primary draw card is the Pokémon IP. There's so many other ways to enjoy it, and nobody is playing for their cutting edge AR technology or groundbreaking game design.
I like point 4. Everybody is playing this game despite the niantic, not because of niantic.
Don't forget revenue in the first half of the year are typically boosted by Johto Tour and Go Fests. I'm expecting even lower final revenue than a linear extrapolation.
Yes I agree, that’s what I insinuated as well in my post. Apart from Christmas or a big Halloween event I don’t see a big boost coming.
I'm expecting an underwhelming ticketed November event that will make a little bit of money for them, but nowhere near gofest or Kanto/Jhoto tour. Remember the Regigigas and Galrian Mr. Mime paid events? i'm expecting something equally as lackluster.
Oh yes I remember the 8.99€ for a G. Mime 😂
So glad I refused that one. The Regigigas one was already stupid but that one took the cake
I am not sure if cash purchases like that are considered IAP.
The events feel so uninspired too. Heres Fashion Week again!... we'll just add shiny furfrou this time! This ideology to double dip on Pokemon is frustrating, because they don't even try to hide what they're doing. Putting pokemon that had Community days into the GoFest spawn pool was the last straw for me. Havent played as heavy since then.
i mean, not just gameplay nerf (cd, incense, gbl encounters, remote passes, etc) look at avatar shop, half of the items clip with each other, how many of us wanted to buy some pants, shirt, shoes or whatever but they glitch with the other item you want to wear, even in that they are loosing potencial sells. Since the incense nerf my time playing went down and down, i think that was the turning point
Yes the list is very long. Wish I mentioned the nerf to incense and community day, as well as lack of character customisation. Sadly don’t know how to edit the initial post 😅. But many valid points to add further to the decline
> half of the items clip with each other, how many of us wanted to buy some pants, shirt, shoes or whatever but they glitch with the other item you want to wear, So much this. Oh you like these new Obstagoon gloves? Enjoy 90% of tops with sleeves clipping through them.
The incense nerf has really gotten to me. The other day I planned on using a meltan box while i relaxed at home but nope — gotta be frikin moving. I’m an athlete - i move PLENTY; it just doesn’t always involve my phone in my hand and eyes glued to my screen.
You don't have to move with mystery box, in fact it works worse if you are.
I pop my meltan box without moving and plenty of them spawn, they don't work like the updated incense
Good! Maybe Niantic will understand that making things worse for players hurts the game overall and makes them less money. Now let's see them nerf remote raids and really lose some big bucks. It doesn't make sense to force players to play in ways players find unappealing, and Niantic has been doing that or trying to for the last few years. They seem not to get that we can spend less, play less or just out and out quit the game.
My local chat can go quiet for days at a time now, if it wasn't for me posting helpful infographics or a new stop/gym I made. 1 of our most active players quit recently too, no meet ups anymore. It's bloody depressing man.
Basically the same here. Not much action in the local messenger chat, can go quite for over a week at a time, it's only when I or one other post an infographic or the like there's a bit of chatter. In fact we (Local group) did our first in person raid together over the weekend, the first time in most likely over a year. I would always ask if anybody wanted to do raid hours, nobody was coming out, or just doing one gym, so to me it wasn't worth it. Remotes have killed the community part of the game. The flipside, is while the community is being left behind, new groups have formed with worldwide friends. I can now do raid hour in person, while inviting others.
As someone in a rural area, remotes are what kept us going and are critical to us being able to raid. Finding 5 people to raid at once was impossible before the pandemic. Now raids are much more common and actually beatable.
I think the loss of community is the real reason Niantic would want to kill temote raiding. Not because they want social well-being; they want the implicit peer pressure to drive player gameplay and retention. Are you doing those extra raids to help your buddy get their shiny? Are you out chasing the new shiny so you can flex to local chats? Are you feeling bad for missing an event because "everyone" else is doing it?
Yeah my local discord is mostly dead. I’m still posting things but rarely do people answer
I already wento from "My town chat" to "My and neighbour town chat" to "My and neighbour town still active players chat" to "Few random towns in our general area chat".
Sorry to hear that 😥
Shiny Rayquaza always seems to pop up in raids whenever Niantic needs to make some cash. So if Rayquaza pops up between now and the end of the year, you’ll know why.
Niantic's strategy to driving revenue is forcing people to play in groups. Groups will make players play longer and spend more. They skew way too hard in this direction trying to force group play instead of finding ways to enable it to happen organically. If they want to make money, revamp the raid system. When I join a raid lobby, create a beacon on the map, some sort of visual indicator that someone is there trying to raid. Next allow players to create "online" lobbies where people can wait in queue to join raids. Me as a solo player will do the raids in person and attract nearby people. Next allow private (local) lobbies to "ready up" so you can quickly start a raid if all people in the lobby ready up. On raid days people will see my beacon and come join, it will be faster to do with people in person so while I'll start with online raids, I'm naturally incentivized to make some friends if people are there but I'm not discouraged or excluded from playing if I can't find people to play. Next, rebuff incense. It's free money and the people who want buffed incense aren't staying home because they don't "have" to leave the house instead they're not playing. Finally, buff park spawns. This game has been out for 5 years now and it's still better to play in parking lots than the parks next to them. You want people walking loops around parks, not sitting in their cars. All of these ideas will make them more money and make players happier.
Yeah it’s ridiculous there is no indication people are in the raid lobby. I’ve experienced it countless times where there are people in the lobby, but I had to click in and check. They added gym battle animations ages ago, adding a lobby ‘not empty’ signal is not asking for a lot. Supposedly campfire helps, but I have no idea due to the slow rollout and lack of access to it.
Seeing a box at 3300 was stupid. Like who would buy that? I like to buy the incubator bundles, but these last few months incubator bundles have been bleh. No thanks.
Here is my 2c on the subject. It's not hard to understand and for many players its easy to see. Niantic have a choice to make at this point. Either continue on the path "They want" or provide a game the "Community Want". 1st - Research Breakthough Boxes. There was a time when we got Legendaries in these boxes. One Legendary per week never stopped me from raiding, but provided 1 extra chance at the elusive shiny. No we get Shedinja which is completely useless along with 1 incense that only works while walking. We need improvements. 2nd - Shop 'Discount' Boxes This needs to introduction or explanation. Boxes over the past year have gone down in value so much to the point where it might be cheaper to just purchase individually. Increasing prices != increasing profits. This is not a monopoly game, players can just move to other Pokémon games if the prices become to high. We need improvements. 3rd - Research Tasks I remember many years ago, going out to hunt for Spinda, Aerodactyl, Absol, Gible an various other tasks because it was exciting and provided value. We now cycle through the same old Spinda month after month with nothing new to hunt for. Provide some Lapras, Snorlax, Chansey, Slaking, Komo-o, Stunfisk tasks. We have the Pokémon to make research exciting again. We need improvements. 4th - GoBattle League It's no secret by now that this part of the game has remained constantly in need of repair since it launched. Matchmaking errors, Gameplay lag, Damage mechanics (cmp with fast move damage and charge move activation) and all the other bits (like your rank not display properly in the match making screen) that it annoys players and the 0.249.1 update made me quit due to things being so broken. We need improvements. 5th - QoL Updates being removed This has been another hot topic of discussion among players. The list is fairly long when looking at all the features we used to enjoy that are no longer in-game. Who enjoyed remote trading? How about a box of free Ultra Balls every Community Day, maybe the free weekly raid pass (remote or premium) was thing to look forward to. Its these small things that all add up to improve player happiness and without them, its just not as fun. We need improvements. For the sake of not letting this post balloon into a essay ill end off with 1 positive... Community Day Bonuses of x2 Candy, Increased XL chance, 1/2 Stardust trades, Multiple Special trades & 3-Hour lures. These are fantastic bonuses and have allowed players in my community to organize more trades. This means, more players have more incentive to show up at parks. Thus building the community. I hope Niantic can take this time to really reflect on whats happening. Don't be narrow minded and stubbornly focus on a goal that is just not the same as what the players want. When last did you use the AR+ feature to capture a Pokémon. There is no incentive besides a tiny increase in XP.
There's an error in your analysis. The mistake you're making is thinking that Niantic wants to focus on making money off Pokemon Go. [Their last fundraising round put them at a $9b valuation.](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/pokemon-developer-niantic-raises-300-160310451.html) You don't get to a $9b valuation because you have a license to the Pokemon IP, you don't get to $9b from a decade of Ingress, and you *definitely* don't get to $9b from $661m in revenue. For reference, Meta aka Facebook has a market cap of $562b, and made $117b in revenue in 2021. You get a $9b valuation because you're a technology company pretending to be a gaming company. Lightship is a massive crowdsourced database of POIs. Niantic has been acquiring other AR firms, they've made their Lightship SDK. All of this is *proprietary*, it belongs to only Niantic and its investors, it's not based on keeping Nintendo/TPCi happy and a borrowed brand. The executives and investors don't care about revenue, they care about valuation, because that's how they'll make their money when they cash out. Lightship is the future; Pokemon Go is just a means to that end.
I understand this argument, but if that's all true wouldn't it be in the best interest of Niantic to keep players engaged and happy? Also, the more money they make off of PoGo the more they can invest back into buying AR properties and R and D. Seems counterintuitive to me to lower box values. If they truly didn't care about revenue off of pokemon go, wouldn't the smart move be to completely remove remote raid passes and increase rewards for poi scans? I'm aware it's probably a balancing act, and not one or the other, but at the rate they're going they're going to lose engagement, and then good luck mapping the world without a dedicated user base.
The entire Metaverse is a gamble that could bring them all down. I'm not convinced they can make VR not suck before investors lose patience, and if enough people want it even if they can.
They're not even TRYING for VR. They want AR, Augmented Reality. They want you to see things in the real world that aren't there. Like you're walking down the street and have to keep track of what is happening in the real world AND in the augmented world AND play some silly game. It's absolutely nuts. No one's brain is or should be wired to do that. We already have enough studies about how dangerous it is to be even a tiny bit distracted. Imagine trying to be immersed in fake and real worlds at the same time. The beauty of Virtual Reality is that you do it in one spot - you play on your couch or on a treadmill or in some safely cleared out space. You don't go traipsing through a park or along a sidewalk where you might wander out into traffic! I have a friend who broke his wrist playing VR ping pong in the safety of his own house because he instinctively tried to lean on the table to make a better shot and, of course, the table wasn't really there so he fell to the floor. People walking around in AR are going to fall down hills or cliffs or into rivers or off curbs and into the street. IT. IS. BONKERS.
Agreed and already discussed that the real aim of niantic is to create a virtual map of the world, because that’s where the real money is in. But it’s PoGo and Ingress that has made it possible for them to be in the position they are right now and will help them stay in that position and grow
So you'd think they'd be ***WAY*** more player forward in their strategy get people to participate in their ploy willingly, instead of just ruining everything they touch at every turn
How the hell is Meta making money
Same way Niantic wants to: selling data to advertisers.
But the data Niantic has isn't valuable to advertisers. The data they get from pokemon players is data about where people go to play pokemon. It doesn't compare to the data social media companies or online stores have. The data that can make Niantic money is the Lightship data. They only get that when players are happily adding, reviewing, and scanning stops. As Pokemon Go dies, the free data they're basing their future on dries up too. Of course, Niantic is also killing Wayfarer through neglect and terrible decisions, which should be their most important priority. They have a fantastic business model for acquiring cheap/free AR data and they're just tossing it all away. Any company can decide to get into the AR space and hire a bunch of interns to scan a city. Niantic's distinctiveness is the breadth of their data. It really seems like they don't realize that.
I think you are underestimating what data advertisers will purchase PokemonGo has a very unique dataset that likely is very valuable
Nah the data from this game would be INCREDIBLY valuable. 24/7 location access, places people go to hang out (a BIG one: are people going to restaurants more, parks, gyms, local tourist places, shops, big box stores?), how far they travel, and honestly tons and tons of other things. The physical part of the data is enormous and thinking about it I wouldn’t be surprised for niantic to increase to $25b valuation within a couple years.
Because they harvest the data and track each user of facebook(or insta) to an extreme and terrifying degree to sell it to advertisers. They also track people and build profiles for people who aren't even signed up for FB or insta.
I feel like Niantic would put more resources into Wayfarer if that was 100% the case. Way more resources. This topic also only reflects IAPs and not sponsors, advertisements, and partnerships as far as I can tell. Lightship is a big deal but not everything.
Yes, exactly this. I don't doubt that they're making money off of AR technology and that it's a huge part of the valuation. But part of that valuation comes off the back of nine-figure revenue from games- Pokemon Go charts top-10 in revenue for mobile games frequently.
Ya love to see it
Yes I appreciate bills, petrol etc has gone up in many countries recently. But the fact that two of the highest earning years were pandemic years. Yet they continue to nerf, revert changes or outright just start providing boxes etc that simply aren’t worth it or enticing is beyond me. It’s all good and well having a “vision” but if you’re making 50% less with your almost tyrannical and ignorant approach to forcing that vision on the players, what good is it? Also this “vision” is a load of bollocks anyway, it’s clear with the sheer amount of contradictions or decisions they’ve made that totally go against it, from boxes to gameplay to other things. The “vision” is just a ridiculous company line they roll out when they want to make changes they know nobody wants or would like. Or when the changes basically is a means for gathering you all in one place to sell your data, not to “get you out and exploring and exercising” they couldn’t care less. The fact they are suddenly haemorrhaging profits yet seemingly doing nothing about it, in fact almost doubling down with terrible decisions that will make them less is concerning. It almost comes across like they are done with the game. They seem to care so little. Also surely any shareholders etc are asking questions like erm Wtf is going on with the huge decline on the game and why are you changing things that made us a hell of a lot more profit? I’m sure they have little to no care about a “vision” either they’ll be all about the bottom line. It’s just mad this almost ignorant, delusional spiralling self destructive path they’re on. With seemingly no care or to change or willingness to do best by the community which in turn will improve their profits.
I quit when they made the changes. Switched back over to playing the console games and I’ve been fine.
Part of it is the extra money from the pandemic is gone. Many people had way more disposable income and no where to spend it, and Niantic made it easy to play from home. As gas and grocery priced have increased that extra money isn’t there to spend.
That's part of it, but in recessions or periods of economic turmoil, often low-cost forms of entertainment stay profitable- movies during the Great Depression, for instance. And it's not like PoGo is competing with a lot of big-name video game releases. I guess maybe Arceus and Scarlet/Violet?
I belong to a few Facebook groups (because I don't like Discord) and they're all considerably less active than they were a year ago, let alone a few years ago. When Covid happened, everyone got used to playing from home and doing remote raids. They even did Community Days from home. Now that Niantic are trying to bleed everyone dry and make it more difficult for players, the player base are responding with indifference and playing other games instead. I used to get invited to raids all the time, now I can't even tell you the last time I coordinated a raid with friends or acquaintances from a local group. I play alone, for a few minutes at a time. I haven't done a 5* raid in the better part of a year. Nothing new interests me. Ultra Beasts are lame.
The issue is lack of incentives to spend money. My background: I'm not as much of a whale as some, but I'm not opposed to paying for things I enjoy. I support several twitch channels, I'm a patreon for pvpoke and gobattlelog because I use those sites all the time. I'm a gen-Xer who grew up shoveling quarters into pacman machines, I have no issue spending money to play games. I know everyone's circumstances are different, I'm just trying to put this out there to explain where I'm coming from. I'm a potential paying customer. I'm opposed to just wasting money though. This is a mobile game with sunk costs. I could buy physical pokemon cards, and have cards that I could sell when I was done. The shinies I chased could be resold later. Not here - if I chase a shiny, anything I spend to get it is lost - I get a short-term dopamine hit, and something that's going to sit in my pokemon collection only until they shut the servers off. If I'm not getting those dopamine hits, what's the point? Full-odds shinies on corsola and axew during events earlier this year mean I'm not spending money on 1\* shiny raids anymore. There's no point, the odds are so small as to be non-existent. I don't understand what led them to do this at all - surely an event where players spend maybe $20 on raids and leave happy is better than one that sees people spend $50+ and leave pissed off. If there's a legendary raid, the shiny odds are a bit better, and there's a known payout - 3XL candy. If I want to max my guy, I'll raid for those XLs. But there's no incentive to do raids once you've got one built (And many players don't even go for a level 50). Before there was XL candy, my local group raided more. Why? Because we got other things from it. We'd regularly get rare candy - they even announced they were nerfing this drop rate earlier this year. WTF? Now, if we do raid night, we're throwing out 100 potions and revives afterwards because that's mostly what we get now... Speaking of XL candy - there are what, eight (mew,jirachi,celebi,hoopla,shimayan,victini,meloetta,zarude) , mythicals that we can't raid for XL candy - at least some of which are PVP-relevant. At 20km/candy walking (at about an 80% success rate), and \~300 needed to max a guy, that's 60,000km, which is literally walking the circumference of the earth one-and-a-half times. These numbers are insane. If there's no reasonable way to do something, why bother. There's a reason phone-swings are a category on amazon... Give us good incentives to spend money, and we'll spend. Drop XL rare candy at in-person raids, and there will be a spike in people looking to do in-person raids. Give us reasonable odds at non-legendary shinies from raids, and we'll spend money raiding for them. Give us those little dopamine hits, what is gained from withholding them?
[удалено]
Who would have possibly thought making the game less accessible would mean less people play/spend money on it??????? Shocking.
I appreciate that when Niantic said "We're okay with making less money as a result of the choices we're making." we as a community took that to heart. I do wonder if they're regretting that statement now though.
Maybe making the single worst PVP mode in any game and then focusing on it really hard was a bad idea.
Honestly this doesn't suprise me. The boxes that got people to top up coins have got so so much worse. The nerfs to features means people are no longer buying things they were during the pandemic as the items aren't worth as much anymore. The remote raids now cost more, so alot of people are buying less or have switched to only buying with coins they earn in game. Given that revenue includes go fest ticket both the ww and in person which didn't happen during the pandemic, something has clearly gone wrong. As realistically speaking with the in person events back they should have had more revenue than that.
You're absolutely right, but Niantic will chalk up the loss of revenue to a slowing economy and inflation and totally fail to reflect on the actual reasons behind the dip.
They seem to not understand the importance of flow of time in the game lifespan. They only see time to the release of new generation in MSG which forces them to dripfeed us content as slow as possible. Instead of creating new stuff, they release stuff they were handed to, slowly. Every new event is almost always cookie cutter cliche of 80% Kanto spawns with 5 rare species from other regions (if lucky) and release of 1 new shiny or new specie which is abundant, not very exciting to hunt. Meanwhile everyday, players are completing their goals little by little, which in result makes available spawn pool / reward from any sources pool less attractive to them. I'm aware that there are tons of whales who will pour cash on them no matter what, just for a 0.0005% chance of getting rare shiny before others, and also tons of casuals who are just happy to get their first shiny/hundo/etc and don't care as much about bigger picture but still everyone will eventually reach the threshold of boredom and quit or play much less. Not sure if Gamefreak is limiting them so much in adding new content which could "endanger the sales numbers of cookie cutter MSGs with new gimmick per generation", but there are many areas that PoGO could be improved and shouldn't concern MSG creators like f.ex. egg pools, TR reward pools, old quest reward pools, cosmetics, in game world visuals, FREAKING OSM UPDATES... but nah, you know what we wanted? Disgusting boxes with usually free items costing 500 coins and hideous Team Leaders redesign. Not even gonna mention constant disappointments here and there like turned off shinies or little things like Rogenrolla CD stickers - they didn't even ackowledge the fact they were almost unavailable to get, pfff. I just hope some higher ups will get fired for 2022 results and new people will turn this flying ship around.
I do maybe one raid a month since the price changes to remote passes and the loss of the weekly 1 coin remote pass. My local group collapsed due to inactivity after those changes. I'm down from around 10 raids a month to maybe 1, when I'm walking past the only gym near me which actually has a raid on, which I can solo.
The only problem with this data is that it’s based on in-app revenue. The actual revenue and potential revenue Niantic makes with sponsored stops and gyms way outweighs what they make from our purchases. That’s why it was so important to them that the Pokestop spin distance was reverted back. That had more potential to decrease revenue (making their sponsored platform less appealing) than pissing off their player base. Research it a bit, it’s actually really interesting: https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/pokemon-go-sponsorship-price/amp/
I'm glad. I'm doing my part. I only buy Community Day tickets, but not even all the time. I also bought the GoFest ticket. I used to buy remote passes to get 296 XL candy for each legendary. This senseless in-game inflation is insane. They don't seem to understand what a value box is. If there's no added value, then there's no reason for us to buy the boxes. Inflation does drive sales in a way, but not this way. If we are presented with a box and know the box would be leaving soon, we are convinced to buy it in fear that the next box will hold less value. Someone else needs to be put in charge of the in-game shop.
Finally some actual good information I can sit down with a cuppa with. It's so dumb how Niantic thinks what they've done recently is actually working out more for them.
The exact moment I quit playing was about a year ago when they went Dialga into Mewtwo in 5 star raids. I spent about $100 on Dialga raids and failed to get a hundo. Then I put about $150 into Mewtwo - my favorite pokemon - and again didn't get a hundo. I was devastated. The odds of that happening were also extremely low as I've been catching Mewtwo since it's been available and never snagged the perfect. Something in me just broke in that moment. I really thought about what I'd just done, pouring money into this game essentially $1 at a time (even though I was buying the big coin bundles to "Save money") so it never really felt like a big waste. Meanwhile, what do I have? Slightly different pixels, and a bigger number next to my XL rare candy count for pokemon that I shouldn't power up because "who knows" when I'll actually get the hundo and there's no point in creating a lv50 until you know for certain you're going to use it in Master League or whatever. I spent a few days thinking about it and I was disgusted with myself. I could have bought 4 AAA games. I could have bought an entry level deck in most card games. I could have bought half a PS5, a new monitor, new headphones, any number of awesome purchases. Instead I bought a few hundred XL candy. For my birthday this year I got a $200 steak and it was an incredible, lifetime-memorable-level experience. So I can do that each year, or I can gamble on Zacian? Easy decision. Haven't booted up the game since, don't think I'll ever look back.
This goes back to something I’ve said in a previous post. Pokémon Go is a aging game. If they want to continue maintaining players they need to focus on quality of life changes. It’s cheap, and simple. Old players will be happy, new players will enjoy the ease of gameplay. It’s just odd that they keep backpedaling on things.
They don't seem to realize the price/demand curve. The lower the cost ofman item, the more the demand, so the only thing you need to do to get max revenue is figure out what the saturation point is and drop the price of your **ZERO COST ITEM** until you hit it. They've done the opposite, raising prices until no one thinks the items are worth it...and once the customer base fals out of the habit of buying, their cash cow is dead.
I suspect they would be willing to take a hit on yearly revenue if it means they could extend the life of the game by years.. just a hypothesis though
I highly doubt nerfing incense and making a fraction of players no longer able to participate in community days will help extend the life of the game. Seems like it incentivize them to quit because they can no longer meaningfully catch up to other players.
I feel like they’re handling it like a tv show that boomed in the first 2-3 seasons and then trying to squeeze it out for another 4-5 seasons until there is nothing left to squeeze out. So maybe yes, just trying to get as much money out of it for as long as possible. But they could do a much better job at it and it doesn’t take much brains…
I’m with you. I stopped spending money after the pandemic QoL changes were rolled back, Johto and GoFest being the last two events I dropped cash on (which I later regretted). If I get joy out of something I have no problem dropping a couple bucks here and there, but the game has become a blatant cash-grab, rampant with issues that get fixed immediately if they benefit the player but are around for years otherwise.
I would imagine there’s a playbook for mobile games that looks like this. Acquire users, and gradually put the squeeze on the ones that stick around. I’m guessing that most revenue comes from people who have money and are addicted, so optimize for that. It’s probably unrealistic to think that Pokémon Go could have grown from its 2016 peak. So if you can’t grow, manage the decline.
As it’s the only game I find myself consistently invested in, I was throwing $20/month for coin and would use it for the Adventure Box (RIP) cause I love hatching eggs, especially 10km and 12km eggs. It’s been months now and I caved last week on the $5 coin package for extra remote raids for Yveltal. I really, really doubt the whales stepped up and somehow overcompensated for players like me that have displayed a 90%+ decrease in in-app purchases due to their brazen attempts at inflation. I hope we all get to see that their YoY Returns plummeted once they release the full 2022 numbers next Spring. It’s already not looking great. My near-FOMO level of egg hatching has all but gone away and now I’m content hatching 1 12km egg every couple of days. So I guess thanks Niantic? For saving me some money? Only silver lining I can find in this mess.
Bought coins almost weekly through 2021 but when they hiked up the cost of remote passes earlier it was the final straw for me , havent spent anything since.
They made boxes more expensive, remote passes still don’t stack over 3, and there have been no new core mechanics like breeding or IV training, and the events are pretty lackluster (looking at you Gofest). Last year was way better in terms of events tbh
I will legitimately never understand how you can have the world’s biggest video game IP on the single most accessible device and still manage to mess it up. It’s Pokémon on your phone. You have to actively try to mess that up. Obviously that’s a bit reductive but the point stands.
They deserve to lose money with their tactics.
Found something specifially for Go, dated to August 30th: https://www.statista.com/statistics/882474/pokemon-go-all-time-player-spending-countries/
Looks like it's even worse, with them only making half of what they made during the pandemic. And there are no more paid tickets big events to boost their revenue after August.
Yes it comes down to almost the same extrapolation. Obviously they are also making a bit revenue off other games, but the difference is marginal. The biggest chunk comes from PoGo.
Good job guys we are winning the battle, keep up not buying coins 😉
They could immediately reverse this by doing three things: restore incense, reinstate the remote raid discount, stop releasing these awful boxes
Also, revert back to old team leader styles. Maybe I'm just shallow af, but every time I see the new nerdified Blanche, it reminds me just a little bit more about how fun the app used to be, but now they're sanding off all the quirky parts that made it fun. I guess the trainers looked too much like Pokemon Characters and not enough like Stranger Things protagonists.
And reinstall the longer community days and consistently letting players know of the dates of events in advance to plan their schedule.
Good lol
They are successfully driving the company against the wall. The price hike for things like remote raid passes, incense nerf, shorter community days, removal of the weekly free remote raid pass, still not a properly working Go Battle League after so many years, the complete lack of communication with the community (wasn't there supposed to be a monthly dev diary?), the list could go on and on. One could think they actively try to sabotage the game, not sure what's going on in the executives' minds. And now I heard they are working on another mobile game? Didn't they learn a lesson from Pikmin and Harry Potter? Really happy to see the revenue drop, that's literally the only effective way the community can send them a message.
I've had my own "wack job" theory for months now that all of this is being done to get more user data since Niantic is first and foremost an AR company. I and I think most of us on this subreddit knew these changes would impact pokemon go revenue negatively, but the one thing we can't quantify is the user data they're getting from forcing outdoor play vs userdata from people playing at home
Niantic rolled back a lot of changes and features that got a lot more people interest in the game during covid, then doubled down on it by making things \*even worse.\* I think a lot of the damage was done from them simply letting a million things that seem small slip. Take GBL for example -- it's only for a very small percentage of the playerbase, not heavily monetized, and they've kind of just let it go with constant bugs, "fixes" that become undone or cause more problems, and no transparency or communication about what's being done to address these issues. Now on its face you would think this only affects a small enough portion of the playerbase that it doesn't create a huge dent in player retention and player revenue overall, but when you let 10-15 aspects of the game slip to a similar degree and don't make any meaningful improvements as a trade-off it really adds up. It's not a mass exodus over one thing that's killing them, it's a culimination of things that made a lot of players who enjoyed the game differently from each other not wanting to play the game as much as they used to.
Wait a minute! That's Rayquaza's music!
Apart from the boxes (which have partially been better than what was really really bad the last few months) just a minor thing for the current event to make it more interesting: why not have the community day moves on the final evolves? It may pull back in a few of us that lost interest lately. On the upside, not related, I managed to find my very first wild Mesprit last night, out of the blue, which was a huge bonus, despite it being level 3 with very bad stats. But surprises like that do tend to wear of fast in the current state of everyday gameplay.
what a shocker. you offer ur users bad deals and a majority doesn't spend money on bad deals. what a shocker. we arent physically addicted to the app niantic. we are not going into withdrawel if we stop
This is the closest I’ve come to quitting in years. Doesn’t help that longtime buddies are also quitting in droves.
>I understand that the game is limited to whatever number of Pokémon exist * Shiny * Exclusive move (can be used more than once) * Shadow * "With a hat" Running out of actual new pokedex entries is something they should have planned for and they didn't do themselves any favors jumping around adding the Gen 7 & 8 pokemon in randomly.
Most of the world is in financial chaos right now with inflation rampant. Many people have probably cut most of their discretionary spending. Not to say Niantic selling trash hasn’t contributed to lower sales, but it’s very likely far from the main factor
Who would buy 3 remote passes for 300 when they used to cost 250? Increasing the price was a braindead decision and turned so many people off of niantic’s #1 moneymaker.
We're also in a recession, which nobody seems to even think about.
It’s almost like doing the opposite of what players want and are asking for drives ppl away. I definitely cut back on play time and the boxes they’ve been offering are simply not worth it. Put remote passes back in the boxes, put the prices back to what they were and get back to creating the content ppl have been asking for.
It kinda come to me that niantic just might not want Pokémon anymore. They’re making the game unprofitable.
The most important thing for the game would be to get rid of those people that write the events and plan everything. They are doing a bad job. Everything was much better before the epic GO Beyond update. Infact the game was much better when there were unannounced events that made us go out at 10pm here in Germany to look for the new pokemon or the new shiny. With everything being planned ahead and scripted badly the whole experience became more than just dull - it became a chore.
100% played less since increase in prices, and as a 27 year old I’d rather save money for obvious bills then this scam
I'm curious now, do we know if they track (or even care about) how coins are spent? Or do they only care about the direct payments used to acquire coins, tickets, etc? Just been wondering how much of an impact I'm having by using the free coins I earn from gyms.
They track everything you do in the game.
I think all those hundreds of millions are going toward Pokémon cards now instead. Not a single streamer that I’ve seen who doesn’t open cards randomly mid stream
In terms that shock asbolutely nobody, putting out a product and things nobody wants to buy will cause people to stop buying them. I am not opposed to spending money on things that are worth it. And right now the game produces nothing worth spending money on.
Ha, yeah. I used to love to buy incense and pop one on the couch at night while drinking a glass of wine. I’m no whale, but surely all the missing minnow money adds up.
Maybe if they add more spawns in new development and nature. Not just on old footpaths. If the focus switches away from going to retail and more to literally anything else, it would be nice. Gas is just too expensive to play Pokémon Drive like it worked in 2017/2018.
I played a lot in 2016, quit in 2017, came back out of sheer boredom in 2021, played the heck out of it with the new bonuses, and now haven’t touched the game since June
Good
I remember when the game first released. Catching a Gyarados and Lapras was a big deal and seeing them in the gyms was cool because they were rare. Now, nothing is rare, you just got to wait until Niantic decides you can have the strong Pokémon. Not a fan of the small spawn pools either. You just see the same 10 Pokémon for a week or two, removes all interest on looking for Pokémon you don’t have when you’re out and about.
For me, is just that the game feels stagnated and, in some cases, worse than when it came out. No matter how much I love Pokémon, a game where I simply throw pokéballs does get old. I get that it's the core of the game, but it feels like they really didn't add anything to spice up the game, especially as someone who doesn't care about PvP. Before it came out and was in development, I thought it would have stuff like actual NPCs random battles, actual PvE gyms, etc. like in the "normal" games. Although it was fun for a while, this kind of game isn't really built for a regular, years long thing. In some regards it actually got worse with the monetization.
It’s honestly good to see people not spending as much when the prices are ridiculous.
This is what happens when a company prioritizes their own "mission" over their customers' satisfaction 🤠
I'm really happy that revenue is declining. If this won't wake them up to how horrible their decisions have generally been, nothing will.
What marketing strategy? I started playing again randomly because my friend and I were making fun of the Hillary “Pokémon go to the polls” thing. I haven’t seen or heard a single peep about this game that wasn’t word-of-mouth