5 ms·

Your points about AR are worth emphasizing: Pokemon Go has AR... that most users turn off. With AR turned off, it's strictly a location-based game.

nkrisc 4y ago
Frankly I’d have turned it the location based aspect too if I could have. I don’t want to go places to play a video game, I just want to play it wherever I am. Obviously that wasn’t the point of the game, but it turned me off to the game after a few days. Never mind how repetitive it was.
- ryderdini 4y ago
  Wouldn’t it be better to just play the regular Pokémon games at that point?
  - nkrisc 4y ago
    Not on my phone.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  Hopefully after this all blows over they will eventually make the obvious sequel to Pokémon Go. Pokéstop!
- recursive 4y ago
  Well then you could just play literally any other game. I'm very intrigued by the possibilities of a physical-location-based multiplayer game. I got into Ingress, but there wasn't significance to decisions in that game for my taste. I hope one day someone produces another GPS-based game that has more interesting strategy.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    Ah, but you couldn’t play Pokémon on your mobile phone, (side-loading emulators on android nonwithstanding). I’d bet that was a sizable chunk of the appeal, especially since ingress did not have anywhere near the success.
- silisili 4y ago
  It's not my kind of game either, but was definitely interesting and to me a good thing because it got people out of house. I used to walk my local park daily for years, only ever saw a few people. Seemingly out of nowhere, the park seemed always packed...kids, adults, you name it. It was kind of jarring to me, to be honest. I mentioned it in passing to my brother, kinda complaining about the sudden crowds but later describing it down to details...how people seemed to be taking pics of the ground for no reason...he said "they're playing pokemon go, dummy." I had no idea such a thing existed and thought I was going nuts. But ultimately what I saw was a lot of people venturing out and about, enjoying the day, having fun solo or in groups... and thought it was a net positive to society, for once, unlike most modern apps and games.
  - perardi 4y ago
    I agree. Or…that’s how it used to be. COVID neutered quite a lot of that. Though in retrospect it was a bit silly to be that scared of being outside…let’s not go there… But more so, Niantic’s responses really killed in-person gameplay. You had Remote Raids, where you could be invited to join a raid at a gym from a friend. A good idea, but one they never really weaned the player base off of, because it was way easier for players to stay on the couch. (Well, and Niantic made fat bundles of cash off the Remote Raid Passes IAP.) They also made totally sensible changes to interaction distances—which is to say, they doubled (was it doubled…whatever, a non-trivial increase) the distance you could be away from a Pokéstop or a Gym to interact with it. A really nice change, and one that I think made the game better even outside the pandemic. And they rolled it back, right when Omicron took hold. And they barely spoke a word about any of the changes. It felt fickle. Arbitrary.
    - silisili 4y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to explain. That just sounds like misstep after misstep. I'm not familiar enough to say what they should have done, but whatever they were doing early on was clearly working better.
    - xuki 4y ago
      I think they panicked when the pandemic arrived and did not consider the long term ramifications of the changes. Without those changes many players would quit the game.
perardi 4y ago
I immediately turned off the “feed your Pokémon AR mode”. While it is theoretically fun to plop your Piplup on a table and feed it a Pinap: it’s slower than a Slowking to do so, and got very old very fast.
- undersuit 4y ago
  Wailord has to be the slowest Pokemon to feed that there is and impractical to place in AR space too as one of the largest Pokemon
  - perardi 4y ago
    Yeah, but that’s way harder to find good alliteration for. Some of the big flying Pokémon were also terrible to interact with. Nearly off-screen if they moved.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- seanhunter 4y ago
  Like most things in life, you have to go with a Snorlax-only strat and then everything makes sense.
  - perardi 4y ago
    I could make some quite obscure Smogon references here, but I will stop myself.
darknavi 4y ago
We had some design challenges (and many other types of challenges...) but we really tried with Minecraft: Earth to go big with AR AND location-based gaming. After we sunset it, it really struck me how scary GaaS can be. No one can play Minecraft in AR any more (at least currently) and I think that, even if it got old fast, it was a pretty magical experience. It made me really want to record a video playthrough for a few hours to try and capture the experience.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  And it applies to all games with a server component. It is arguably even worse with MMOs like world of warcraft that have significant patch circles, as it effectively get removed every 1-2 yrs.
- cykros 4y ago
  Minecraft Earth's big failure was being just too bloated for most hardware to handle it. I was running a fairly current Pixel phone and in one of the AR modes (build or adventure) watching the battery drain was like time lapse photography...never mind how hot the phone would get in the process. Microsoft jumped the gun with software that the hardware wasn't ready for; I'd hope they try something similar in a few years when things have had a chance to catch up.

nkrisc 4y ago

Frankly I’d have turned it the location based aspect too if I could have. I don’t want to go places to play a video game, I just want to play it wherever I am. Obviously that wasn’t the point of the game, but it turned me off to the game after a few days. Never mind how repetitive it was.

ryderdini 4y ago
Wouldn’t it be better to just play the regular Pokémon games at that point?
- nkrisc 4y ago
  Not on my phone.
faeriechangling 4y ago
Hopefully after this all blows over they will eventually make the obvious sequel to Pokémon Go. Pokéstop!
recursive 4y ago
Well then you could just play literally any other game. I'm very intrigued by the possibilities of a physical-location-based multiplayer game. I got into Ingress, but there wasn't significance to decisions in that game for my taste. I hope one day someone produces another GPS-based game that has more interesting strategy.
- mattnewton 4y ago
  Ah, but you couldn’t play Pokémon on your mobile phone, (side-loading emulators on android nonwithstanding). I’d bet that was a sizable chunk of the appeal, especially since ingress did not have anywhere near the success.
silisili 4y ago
It's not my kind of game either, but was definitely interesting and to me a good thing because it got people out of house. I used to walk my local park daily for years, only ever saw a few people. Seemingly out of nowhere, the park seemed always packed...kids, adults, you name it. It was kind of jarring to me, to be honest. I mentioned it in passing to my brother, kinda complaining about the sudden crowds but later describing it down to details...how people seemed to be taking pics of the ground for no reason...he said "they're playing pokemon go, dummy." I had no idea such a thing existed and thought I was going nuts. But ultimately what I saw was a lot of people venturing out and about, enjoying the day, having fun solo or in groups... and thought it was a net positive to society, for once, unlike most modern apps and games.
- perardi 4y ago
  I agree. Or…that’s how it used to be. COVID neutered quite a lot of that. Though in retrospect it was a bit silly to be that scared of being outside…let’s not go there… But more so, Niantic’s responses really killed in-person gameplay. You had Remote Raids, where you could be invited to join a raid at a gym from a friend. A good idea, but one they never really weaned the player base off of, because it was way easier for players to stay on the couch. (Well, and Niantic made fat bundles of cash off the Remote Raid Passes IAP.) They also made totally sensible changes to interaction distances—which is to say, they doubled (was it doubled…whatever, a non-trivial increase) the distance you could be away from a Pokéstop or a Gym to interact with it. A really nice change, and one that I think made the game better even outside the pandemic. And they rolled it back, right when Omicron took hold. And they barely spoke a word about any of the changes. It felt fickle. Arbitrary.
  - silisili 4y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to explain. That just sounds like misstep after misstep. I'm not familiar enough to say what they should have done, but whatever they were doing early on was clearly working better.
  - xuki 4y ago
    I think they panicked when the pandemic arrived and did not consider the long term ramifications of the changes. Without those changes many players would quit the game.

perardi 4y ago

I immediately turned off the “feed your Pokémon AR mode”. While it is theoretically fun to plop your Piplup on a table and feed it a Pinap: it’s slower than a Slowking to do so, and got very old very fast.

undersuit 4y ago
Wailord has to be the slowest Pokemon to feed that there is and impractical to place in AR space too as one of the largest Pokemon
- perardi 4y ago
  Yeah, but that’s way harder to find good alliteration for. Some of the big flying Pokémon were also terrible to interact with. Nearly off-screen if they moved.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
seanhunter 4y ago
Like most things in life, you have to go with a Snorlax-only strat and then everything makes sense.
- perardi 4y ago
  I could make some quite obscure Smogon references here, but I will stop myself.

darknavi 4y ago

We had some design challenges (and many other types of challenges...) but we really tried with Minecraft: Earth to go big with AR AND location-based gaming. After we sunset it, it really struck me how scary GaaS can be. No one can play Minecraft in AR any more (at least currently) and I think that, even if it got old fast, it was a pretty magical experience. It made me really want to record a video playthrough for a few hours to try and capture the experience.

411111111111111 4y ago
And it applies to all games with a server component. It is arguably even worse with MMOs like world of warcraft that have significant patch circles, as it effectively get removed every 1-2 yrs.
cykros 4y ago
Minecraft Earth's big failure was being just too bloated for most hardware to handle it. I was running a fairly current Pixel phone and in one of the AR modes (build or adventure) watching the battery drain was like time lapse photography...never mind how hot the phone would get in the process. Microsoft jumped the gun with software that the hardware wasn't ready for; I'd hope they try something similar in a few years when things have had a chance to catch up.