Gaming
Nintendo and Niantic have created a monster: here’s how they can tame it.
It’s happened so quickly, it’s almost hard to grasp just how big Pokémon GO has become already. By some accounts, the augmented reality mobile game has more daily active users than Tinder and is poised to eclipse Twitter; certainly it’s the biggest game Nintendo or The Pokémon Company have ever released, at least in terms of numbers playing.
Incredibly, the game is still only officially available in a handful of countries including the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom. That’s right, would-be trainers in much of Europe and all of Japan are having to sit out on the sidelines while they watch friends on social media voraciously catch’em all and level up to an enormous head start. That means Nintendo and developer Niantic have only got even more work ahead of them to keep up with demand, and if they want to appease all players and, crucially, keep them coming back, they’ll need to make a few tweaks. These ones, specifically.
Explain the radar
Is that – is that an Electabuzz?! And only a mere two paw prints away? Time to get out of bed and start wandering the streets in your pyjamas, except, oh, no, wait, it’s gone and now you’re stood by a children’s playground in the dark, questioning where your life took a turn. It was probably just a Geodude anyway. The radar is just a cruel tease, really. Not only does it not give any indication of how far one, two or three paw prints (not to mention none) are from you, it doesn’t make clear if the grid is in order of priority by distance as crow flies, or in a compass around you (it appears to be the former). A little transparency here would go a long way here.
Make gym fights less obtuse
Pokémon GO is not good at explaining things, but the chances are you’ve probably muddled through the basics already. What you may not be prepared for, especially if you’ve yet to hit level five or dare to take on the ripped, 1,000CP Pinsir at the top of your road, is just how different and bewildering gym battles are to capturing wild Pokémon. No primers are given, you’re just expected to realise that you can swipe right to see the even bigger, badder gym opponents currently installed, and that you can swipe to dodge moves or hold down on the screen to unleash your own special moves. The results play like terrible, kaleidoscopic Infinity Blade battles at 240bpm. We’d love to see a few instructions given, or the hitbox for dodging moves increased to give a bit more of a sense of skill and timing to combat.
Fix that 1HP glitch
Even if you do figure out what on earth is going on with gym fights, you train up and bring your Wartortle to a fight with a Charmander with more kawaii than CP, you still might not win, purely because of a notorious glitch that leaves your AI opponent left with 1HP even though they should have fainted. This is easily the most annoying bug in the game, more frustrating than the crash after a Pokeball shuts successfully or when you click on a distant gym to see what’s what and your character vanishes into the ether. Niantic have shown they’re willing to react quickly to fixes, rapidly patching out a lot of unnecessary security permissions on the iOS version of the game. Could you get rid of this next, please, guys?
Make movesets less random
You may have noticed by now that every Pokémon has two moves, one regular and one special you charge to unleash. They’re not actually fixed for each type of Pokémon however; it’s possible to find variants of the same beastie with different moves, and crucially, these can sometimes be of different elements, which can be make or break in a close gym fight. Annoyingly, these also get randomised when you evolve a Pokémon, meaning you can’t put much forethought into which particular one you choose to train up. Keeping the same moves after changing form would provide a little bit more depth to the game for those on higher levels.
Spice up the suburbs
By this point, even in countries where Pokémon GO is still to officially launch, gyms in town centres have become absolute bloodbaths – count yourself lucky if you can hold onto a spot in one for more than a few minutes. At the other extreme, many less populous areas have no points of interest at all. Villages and even some suburbs are completely devoid of Pokestops, forcing you to drive around between distant locales, which, in turn, won’t get you any distance walked for incubating your eggs, putting rural trainers at an enormous disadvantage.
Let’s get a heads up on Legendaries
Niantic clearly has huge plans afoot for the OG legendary Pokémon. They’re not available in the game right now, meaning the developer likely intends to introduce them with much fanfare at events dotted around the globe – some are speculating that Mewtwo might first appear in New York’s Times Square, as he did in the original launch trailer last year. Even if it’s just to book our flights – and let’s not pretend otherwise here, many people absolutely would jump on the plane to another continent for the sake of a Moltres – our sanity would be better preserved if Niantic would just send out a save the date. We’d rather not choose between attending a friend’s wedding and getting a Mew, because when push comes to shove, well…let’s just leave that sentence unfinished.
Put the wristband on sale. Now.
We get it, we do. Nintendo is clearly a little nervous about putting the wristband out, which buzzes whenever a Pokémon is nearby while simultaneously making you look as cool as an Articuno, on sale. Pre-orders are sold through already, and they’re surely going to get scalped for even more extortionate prices than the rarest amiibo, but we’d love some idea of just when we can get a hold of one of our own. We’re already sick of having to walk around with our phone’s screen on at all times, watching it drain away all to hatch yet another Rattata. Yes, there’s a battery saver mode, but your phone is still active while it’s on; we don’t think it’s too melodramatic to say many people would be willing to pay more than $35 to solve this problem.
Fix those server issues
If there’s one thing that needs to be covered above all – aside from adding trading and battling, as seen in the original teaser trailer – it has to be the server issues. Plenty of Pokéfans have had their travels thwarted by connection issues, as it looks like Niantic’s servers are unable to keep up with demand – we’ve seen plenty of instances where we’ve been disconnected from the game, just as we were about to capture a sought after critter, and it’s just plain maddening. As Niantic rolls the game out around the rest of the world, it needs to have the server capacity to match – and if the craze continues as it has been so far, it looks like the team will be working overtime to match demand.
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