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

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.