3 ms·

I want to voice my concerns about the future of Pokemon Go so I'll do it here. The power inflation is insane. The game will probably be unplayable to new playe

I want to voice my concerns about the future of Pokemon Go so I'll do it here. The power inflation is insane. The game will probably be unplayable to new players by the end of this month. Unlike Ingress, the game does not have a way to "remove" power from the game. You can increase the combined combat points of your pokemon collection unbound, and you have a massive power inflation going on. Sure, you get diminishing returns on the training but in the end the pokemon don't disappear and you have a permanent increase in strength. Ingress mechanics always removes XM from the system and you get an equilibrium with the spawn rate of XM and the consumption rate of XM (roughly equal to the rate of portal turnover). Pokemon Go has none of that. If this isn't addressed properly I think the game might just die.

shkkmo 10y ago
In Ingress, only inactive areas had XM decay as a significant source of destruction. Most areas saw the majority of destruction redone by players, and the only limit on that was generally people's willingness to spend time farming. In Pokemon Go, Attacking and powering up gyms takes longer, but is still fundamentally tied to farming equipment (potions and revives). We'll see how Pokemon Go develops, given it's growth at present it's hard to predict how stable or volatile gym membership will end up being.
lubujackson 10y ago
There's two things of interest here. The game itself, which is really thin as far as gameplay and will dry up like a standard MMORPG as people go crazy leveling and the initial rush dies down. But the social aspect of meeting up at hotspots and dropping lures to get a party started and all that feels like a new sort of sensation that should persist beyond this one game. The real key is the location data from Ingress. There's plenty of room to expand into other games, to create a cross-game persistent world or do any number of fun things (they already have the original Ingress game and a travel app based on it). It'll be interesting to see if they can keep branching off from this. I think ultimately it could become a sort of better Foursquare and that's where real advertising $ could come into play. It's been an advertiser's dream for a while for a phone app to make some sort of "location alerts with coupons" hit critical mass and slathering that over this game would be extremely easy (go to the Starbucks to get a Pikachu or free lure!)
- hatsunearu 10y ago
  Well, it's a fun game. I dropped a lure near my place and a few people showed up and we had a nice chat. Pretty compelling story TBH. What I'm concerned about is the disturbing lack of attention towards game economics management. (read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy)
bargl 10y ago
Now that you say it I can totally see this. They need to add some major features for this game to stay in the top slot for very long. Battles between friends, messaging, trading, etc. I'd like to see them add in battling to capture Pokemon in the beginning as well but I'm ok with it how it is right now. It's a fun game that I think introduces the gamification of walking to a new level that I love. It gets nerds (like me) out of my house to play and really brings AR to a new level. It would be awesome to have more rogue-like games that are AR based where you have mazes and bosses to get through.

shkkmo 10y ago

In Ingress, only inactive areas had XM decay as a significant source of destruction. Most areas saw the majority of destruction redone by players, and the only limit on that was generally people's willingness to spend time farming. In Pokemon Go, Attacking and powering up gyms takes longer, but is still fundamentally tied to farming equipment (potions and revives). We'll see how Pokemon Go develops, given it's growth at present it's hard to predict how stable or volatile gym membership will end up being.

lubujackson 10y ago

There's two things of interest here. The game itself, which is really thin as far as gameplay and will dry up like a standard MMORPG as people go crazy leveling and the initial rush dies down. But the social aspect of meeting up at hotspots and dropping lures to get a party started and all that feels like a new sort of sensation that should persist beyond this one game. The real key is the location data from Ingress. There's plenty of room to expand into other games, to create a cross-game persistent world or do any number of fun things (they already have the original Ingress game and a travel app based on it). It'll be interesting to see if they can keep branching off from this. I think ultimately it could become a sort of better Foursquare and that's where real advertising $ could come into play. It's been an advertiser's dream for a while for a phone app to make some sort of "location alerts with coupons" hit critical mass and slathering that over this game would be extremely easy (go to the Starbucks to get a Pikachu or free lure!)

hatsunearu 10y ago
Well, it's a fun game. I dropped a lure near my place and a few people showed up and we had a nice chat. Pretty compelling story TBH. What I'm concerned about is the disturbing lack of attention towards game economics management. (read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy)

bargl 10y ago

Now that you say it I can totally see this. They need to add some major features for this game to stay in the top slot for very long. Battles between friends, messaging, trading, etc. I'd like to see them add in battling to capture Pokemon in the beginning as well but I'm ok with it how it is right now. It's a fun game that I think introduces the gamification of walking to a new level that I love. It gets nerds (like me) out of my house to play and really brings AR to a new level. It would be awesome to have more rogue-like games that are AR based where you have mazes and bosses to get through.