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Xerodragon12
07-07-2016, 05:01 AM
So the app officially released today (or yesterday, depending on when I finish this write-up)

What are your thoughts on it? What was your starter Pokemon? (Mine was Squirtle, because that was my starter when I ran through Pokemon Blue)

I think it's pretty cool. Since I live near a college campus, college buildings count as either Pokespots or Pokemon Gyms, so I was able to get a bunch of free Pokeballs just by going to areas that I normally go to. Not only that, when I went out to check out the Pokespots, I saw like a bunch of people going around doing the same. We talked and bonded over the fact that we are nerds going out at like 10 in the evening just to play real life Pokemon, and wished each other luck and went our separate ways. I mean, microtransactions and such are there, but you can get in-game currency by participating in Pokemon Gyms, so it's not too bad. Between the Pokespots on campus and the Pokemon eggs, I can see this being a good way to encourage physical activity.

Be careful, be safe, and good luck!

Dragonite
07-07-2016, 05:13 AM
I hate my phone and ignore 99% of mobile apps that come out on it (Miitomo is the only one I've spent more than about 5 minutes in, including Fallout Shelter) but I might try out Go; if nothing else, it sounds like an excuse for me to get outside more than I ordinarily do.

The game's been in development for god knows how long, at least, which implies that Nintendo put more effort into this than your usual standard fare app store rubbish.

Zachgoose
07-07-2016, 04:46 PM
I'd be interested in it, but I don't think I can reliably get anything out of it since I don't have a data plan, so my phone would only work if it's connected to Wi-Fi. It seems like a good idea and it's probably fun if you get into it right now, but a month from now I think it'll be dead, and the people that do continue playing it will be so OP that they'll suck the fun out of newer/casual players.

Ayra
07-12-2016, 04:24 AM
Since the same day GO came out was also the day I began my visit to Washington DC. I've learned that American University, Georgetown, the monuments, and Capitol Hill are great places to play GO. Terrible places in DC to play include, but are not limited to: 1) the pentagon, 2) Arlington Cemetery, 3) Holocaust Memorial Museum.

CaptainRed1000
07-13-2016, 11:21 PM
I've played GO for about a week, and I'm enjoying it. It's a nice little timewaster that encourages me to go for a walk every now and then. I only have two issues with it:

The first is how the people of Australia got attached to it. Over the last couple of days, I've heard news reports of children wandering into places they shouldn't be, nearly getting run over by moving vehicles because they weren't paying attention and, most horrifically of all, a string of armed muggings of peoples phones over this. Seriously, I knew a lot of Australian's loved Pokémon, but not so much that they would hurt others because of it. Not sure if this, or something similar to this, happens elsewhere in the world. I really hope not.

The second is how much it is used in Australia. Whoever owns the servers in Australia seriously underestimated us. Since I got the app, the servers have been overloaded through overuse THREE times, resulting in no one being able to access it for 5 hours to an entire day. Two of these overloads came on days where I would be travelling a lot, so I'd have been able to hatch an egg or three in a day if it weren't for these shutdowns. So that's mildly annoying. Some paranoid few suspect that the UK is accessing our local servers and these added users are causing the meltdowns, because the game is not out in the UK. No one's confirmed or denied this, but either way, we're gonna need more or larger servers. The Aussie fanbase is HUGE.

EDIT: I do find myself agreeing with Zachgoose. Everywhere I go I see people with Pokémon in the late 1500 CP. My highest at the moment is 360. Yeah. That's quite a gap.

Xerodragon12
07-14-2016, 10:36 PM
EDIT: I do find myself agreeing with Zachgoose. Everywhere I go I see people with Pokémon in the late 1500 CP. My highest at the moment is 360. Yeah. That's quite a gap.

Here's a few fun facts for you. Allegedly, the health of Gym pokemon don't regenerate. This means you can just simply pressure your way into a gym victory through shear force, or with friends on the same team. Although it does discourage me from entering my pokemon into a gym because I know most of my opponents will have pokemon with twice the CP of my strongest. (Always try and conquer gyms with friends!)

Also, the CP for hatched pokemon will almost always be higher than CP for wild pokemon.

Dragonite
07-16-2016, 08:44 PM
so I did learn that Westboro Baptist church has been made a Gym (https://twitter.com/IfUSeekDrew/status/751772733718011904) and I am sure that our favorite organization who opposes all things fun is very, very happy about that!

Bricktoad
07-17-2016, 07:04 AM
2 pay-to-win for me

Scrapping what I had written originally.

I started with Squirtle, and I'm at level 7 right now. I haven't really been interested enough to walk through town for Pokestops. Walking where there's no cell phone service is better :^)

I'm having fun but not like, this game deserves the amount of attention it's gotten fun. I wanna call it underdeveloped but idk if that's using the word properly. I've played most of the Pokemon games, so this one, with its very few features and lousy battle system, isn't the most appealing. The quality of the game's kind of what you'd expect to see from a really ****** fan game.

I understand why it's a trend mate. I just don't feel like it's a good game. It needs more development. At least give us trading or something lmao. There's no actual interaction between players, so I mean, it's cool that you might encounter other people playing the game while looking for Pokemon, but that's not at all a motivator.

Also I hate the battle system (as I sort of mentioned before :P). I know, it's a mobile game. But it's got nothing going for it. After a few battles I honestly still found it hard to wrap around exactly what had happened apart from tapping away. This is the first Pokemon game where I feel the combat actually sucks. Like, even the beat-em-up style games they've been making lately are still.. you know, viable.


A side note, I've had a few encounters while driving with people not paying attention while most likely playing Pokemon GO (there seem to be a lot more people out walking with their phone in their hands :^))
The most notable one was when I was coming out of a gas station nearby a few Pokestops. I was stuck for a minute or two waiting for people to get out of the road. Nobody was really paying attention. It was pretty frightening tbh.

some cancer
http://i.imgur.com/rLKlW75.png


http://i.imgur.com/3PtzV75.png


http://i.imgur.com/PCanaJB.png


http://i.imgur.com/47nmx58.png

Zachgoose
07-18-2016, 03:16 AM
I'm having fun but not like, this game deserves the amount of attention it's gotten fun. I wanna call it underdeveloped but idk if that's using the word properly.

It's not underdeveloped, just has a lack of features and was a cheap cash-in. But your post really hit the head on the nail with things that are wrong with the game. Once you've caught one Pokemon, you've basically experienced all the gameplay has to offer.

It feels amazing to see everyone playing Pokemon everywhere, but the success of Pokemon GO worries me. Its success affirms to Nintendo that only the casual audience matters, so they will continue to produce even more cheap games with no substance.

Xerodragon12
07-18-2016, 03:38 AM
Niantics is the primary developer of Pokemon GO, not Nintendo. As such, I do think it is a bit unfair to compare the depth of this game with the games produced by Game Freak and Nintendo. For those of you saying that this game lacks depth, I think you're missing the point. This game isn't meant to be "Pokemon in real life", nor is it meant to have the depth of the original games in terms of battling and strategy. Pokemon GO is really a geocaching game with a Pokemon skin. The main experience of the game is going around the world and seeing new sites and meeting new people, with the incentive of catching and hatching Pokemon and taking down gyms for your team, not catching Pokemon and fighting gyms with the incentive of traveling. In that regards, the game seems rather fleshed out, especially since it seems to share geographical data with Niantic's other game, Ingress.

Don't get me wrong, I think the game will definitely improve with the addition of trading and player-to-player battling, but with the servers in their current state, I'd much rather Niantic focus mainly on improving their servers than any new features at this current moment.

(Also, since this game is developed almost entirely by Niantics with involvement from Nintendo/Game Freak being mostly skin-deep, I really don't think the assumption that "Nintendo will push more cheap games with no substance" will really fly, especially with Nintendo (re: Miyamoto) believing that games should focus more on making the gameplay fun for everyone.)

Zachgoose
07-18-2016, 06:01 PM
Nintendo (re: Miyamoto) believing that games should focus more on making the gameplay fun for everyone.)

Fun for everyone = more casual games.

Casual players don't have the time or patience to really invest themselves in a game. Take a look back to the first few generations of Pokemon. You had to explore on your own in order to progress in the game, and the maps were complex. With gens 5 and 6, the maps are basically just a straight line without any backtracking, and everything you need to know to progress is just spoonfed to you by mandatory cutscenes and such. Not to mention you have stuff like free mega legendaries that you can just mash A with and win the game because they have 3 times the base stats of other trainer's Pokemon.

Masuda admitted that Pokemon games have become more easy over time, because Pokemon has to compete with other games, so much strategy, depth, and content is simplified for the sake of appealing to a wider audience.

Nintendo has made a significant portion of the profits from Pokemon GO, even though it wasn't developed by them. That's why their stocks increased so much. If there is a big money making trend, of course they're coming to follow it. We've already seen a surge in Nintendo finally trying to compete in the mobile markets, with games like Miitomo and Pokemon Shuffle.

I understand that Pokemon GO lacks depth because it wasn't meant to have depth, so I'm not really criticizing it in that way. I'm more critical of its potential ramifications on gaming as a whole and further pushing the idea that people want more casual games like this.

Dragonite
07-18-2016, 06:09 PM
I'm more critical of its potential ramifications on gaming as a whole and further pushing the idea that people want more casual games like this.

Correct, except for one point: the entire rest of the gaming world except for Dark Souls was already doing this sort of thing about five years ago. The problem to me is that the success of Go is suggesting that gaming's going to be in its Dark Ages for a bit longer than I expected it was going to, say . . . a month ago.

edit:


the entire rest of the gaming world except for Dark Souls was already doing this sort of thing about five years ago.

"making games easy" and "making stupid mindless trash that you play on your cellular telephone," that is, not "making massive geocaching games." although apparently Niantic was doing that, too.

Bricktoad
07-21-2016, 05:45 AM
May I add that the "casual playerbase" is the kind of crowd that tends to move on from fads very quickly

Acknowledging that this game hasn't actually been pay-to-win, so players can keep on playing without waiting. However, from what I've observed, you'll eventually hit a peak, and I kind of compare that peak to completing a video game. A lot of people are gonna put this game down at that point. A lack of content is going to keep the.. "non-casuals"(?) not so interested either. I appreciate that the point of this game wasn't so much to be an adventure, however, a lack of features is gonna kill off this game if more don't come soon enough.

i should probably stop typing these after midnight lol

Dragonite
07-21-2016, 06:19 AM
worth mentioning: judging by the dearth of Go spam i've seen on Twitter and other places in the last few days, I'm guessing people have already started getting bored of it. either that or journalism's just gotten a bit preoccupied with the RNC.

SuperSceptile
07-22-2016, 02:46 PM
I've done next to nothing with this app. I never saw the appeal of it. The trailers were cool and all but we knew the actual app would be nothing like it. I didn't have much fun with it when I did decide to take a stroll. This is probably because I was always more into battling rather than catching pokemon, and this app is mainly catching.

That being said, I'm happy this has been so popular. It brings some more attention back on to pokemon, including people who haven't touched the series in a while. For example, one of my friends who mainly plays on PS4, wants to get a 3ds just for sun and moon. That was just because of the app. Even my mom was asking me about the app lol.

It's funny. My friends were expecting me to have played the s*** out of this since I'm such a fan of the series, but in reality they've gotten much more out of it than I have. I'm just waiting for Sun and Moon to be honest.

I much prefer Pokemon Shuffle as a time waster/mobile game.