Pokemon Go ARG by Niantic (a Google company)

Hey. Uh. Just....

Look. Having the game running while driving is a bad idea, ok?

It's a bad idea.

oilypenguin wrote:

Hey. Uh. Just....

Look. Having the game running while driving is a bad idea, ok?

It's a bad idea.

Also, Ingress stops you from being able to do stuff at 45 mph... I assume the same will be done for this game.

Do pokemon recover over time or do you have to use items to get them back to 100%?

If its the latter, I'm going to have dump pokeballs soon to make room from potions.. took quite a beating last night at a gym.

Evolving an injured Pokemon brings its HP back up to full.

My son and I went for a nice long walk the other night thanks to Pokemon Go. I have to say it's a GREAT incentive if you want an excuse to go out and get some exercise

My biggest complaint so far (besides the server issues) is that some Pokemon appear well off the sidewalk, so we either have to take a few steps into the road or up someone's driveway. Luckily it's a quiet neighborhood without a lot of thru traffic, but I'm definitely NOT letting my kid go out on their own with their face glued to the phone.

I'm seriously contemplating posting a sign at the front of my property: "No Pokemon Here, Get Off My Lawn"

Yonder wrote:

Also your Pokemon of the same type have not only different health but different secondary attacks. The Pidgey's for example seem to have either Aerial Cutter, some other Flying attack, or a Dragon move. In the early game when you don't have a lot of types available you may want to hold on to two of the same species with different attacks so you get that spread.

Even the primary attack can be different, I think I had a Rattata with Tackle and a Rattata with Quick Attack. Or maybe that was also Pidgey.

D'oh! Good to know. I'll have to look more closely from now on. Oh well. There are so many Pidgeys near me, replacing them won't be a problem.

I'm amazed at how many people are playing in our area. We've seen 10-20 different trainer names the 4-5 gyms in our area the past day, and they seem to be changing hands a lot. When we walked into lunch yesterday at a restaurant, one of the waitresses there spotted my daughter on the app and got all excited, telling us how the restaurant was a battleground (gym).

I'm not sure how it'll work in the long run for me, or if there will be a long run. I tend to get hyper-competitive with these types of things, and don't want to get to the point where I'm freaking out that blue team has taken over the gym nearest our house, and running out at midnight to reclaim it. I get to that level pretty quickly, and it's not a good thing. I've learned to back away slowly from games/activities that lead me down paths like this.

Also, I want to find a more "healthy" playstyle. For us, getting about 50 Pokeballs takes a 15-minute drive, looping through the 20+ Pokestops within a couple of miles of home. And because we have all sorts of Pokemon popping up in our living room, we're always out of Pokeballs, before we even get to the point of "Let's go for a walk to find some Pokemon."

I might toy with some "house rules" like "only one gym battle per day" and "no catching Pokemon at home". I can really see the benefit to going for more walks, especially for our dog, and if there is a way I can work this out to make that happen I could see myself playing for a while.

On a good note, the server issues aren't cropping up yet today. Fingers crossed.

Hmm... going cold pretty quick on this game. An hours worth of walking to collect 10 poke balls and then used them all to try to get one pokemon that is a little too far in the middle of the street. Seems designed to make you spend real money.

I did the fights at the gym and really didn't like that either. I didn't expect real time twitch battles in a pokemon game.

Apparently you can occasionally get coins through the "defender bonus" once you've got at least one Pokemon defending a gym. On the store page there's a shield at the top right of the screen you can tap to claim any bonuses you've earned.

JeremyK wrote:

An hours worth of walking to collect 10 poke balls and then used them all to try to get one pokemon that is a little too far in the middle of the street.

That's the part I'm trying to work out. I think I can gather up Pokeballs pretty quickly, just going about things during the day. But I'm not sure how much fun driving by the same places on a regular basis to collect Pokeballs in order to take a walk will be. I'm going to take a break from work and go try out my plan this afternoon.

There also looks to be a place nearby to walk the dog where I can hit a good half dozen Pokespots during the walk.

JeremyK wrote:

I did the fights at the gym and really didn't like that either. I didn't expect real time twitch battles in a pokemon game.

It seems that it's pretty easy even for a non-button masher like me to just tap the screen and beat stronger Pokemon, but I agree: the mechanic is not compelling. Most of the fights seem to only last a few seconds though, so I'm okay with it.

Stengah wrote:

Apparently you can occasionally get coins through the "defender bonus" once you've got at least one Pokemon defending a gym. On the store page there's a shield at the top right of the screen you can tap to claim any bonuses you've earned.

Yes, I got 10 coins and 500 stardust for each of four gyms I controlled at the end of the 21-hour cycle. It's not much of a bonus though. I was hoping for something cool.

PSA, the Incubators you buy for 150 coins are not infinite like the one you start with. They are x3 use incubators.

JeremyK wrote:

Hmm... going cold pretty quick on this game. An hours worth of walking to collect 10 poke balls and then used them all to try to get one pokemon that is a little too far in the middle of the street. Seems designed to make you spend real money kill you.

ftfy

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

On a good note, the server issues aren't cropping up yet today. Fingers crossed.

So it's your fault the servers have been down the past 2 hours for me

Running Man wrote:
JeremyK wrote:

Hmm... going cold pretty quick on this game. An hours worth of walking to collect 10 poke balls and then used them all to try to get one pokemon that is a little too far in the middle of the street. Seems designed to make you spend real money kill you.

ftfy

This is also true.

ukickmydog wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

On a good note, the server issues aren't cropping up yet today. Fingers crossed.

So it's your fault the servers have been down the past 2 hours for me :)

Yes. I don't know what I was thinking when I posted that. I take full responsibility. They went down for me just as I got five minutes from home with the dog for a walk.

The server issues are starting to get old quick.

ukickmydog wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

On a good note, the server issues aren't cropping up yet today. Fingers crossed.

So it's your fault the servers have been down the past 2 hours for me :)

Agreed!!! I've not been able to log on in hours!

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
ukickmydog wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

On a good note, the server issues aren't cropping up yet today. Fingers crossed.

So it's your fault the servers have been down the past 2 hours for me :)

Yes. I don't know what I was thinking when I posted that. I take full responsibility. They went down for me just as I got five minutes from home with the dog for a walk.

The server issues are starting to get old quick.

Dude... Server issues during the launch week of a multiplayer POKEMON game made by a small company... How dare they!!! This is so unexpected!!!!!

Come back in a week or two if it is bothering you.

There's not much of a multiplayer aspect to it right now, just the gyms which aren't even live battles. Given that it's pretty much just a Pokemon skin overtheir existing game, Ingress, which they've been running for over three years, they should have had most of the server issues already figured out. At the very least, it'd be nice to get some actual updates on what's causing the servers to be down and when we can expect them to be back up.

I know my previous comment is a little mean, but it is clearly a very popular game. It is most definitely different servers as Ingress works when Pokemon doesn't. As a former/occasion Ingress player, the server load on a 3 year old game is nowhere near what Pokemon is getting. I don't need to see any numbers to know that.

I know it's annoying, but when Call of Duty has issue like this the first week, how can we expect a relatively tiny company to be ready for a giant rush especially when they soft launch?

manta173 wrote:

I know it's annoying, but when Call of Duty has issue like this the first week, how can we expect a relatively tiny company to be ready for a giant rush especially when they soft launch?

Isn't Niantic still part of Alphabet? In other words, Google? Is that really a "small" company?

My wife and I went out at 11pm last night on our first date in years. Catching Pokémon and eating pizza at midnight was fun.

Sadly someone in Mexico went over a bridge. Stay safe everyone.

Went out on my usual walk to get lunch, and caught a dozen pokemon and hit about 15 stops. After work, we hit the mall, and then walked around a park looping through a dozen stops over the course of an hour.

This is the first day I've hit my Fitbit step goal in the past month.

Came to post that.

My son and I went for a walk in a nearby park that has about 10 or so Pokestops in it. We ran into ten people playing the game (5 groups of 2), and saw another 10+ who we think were playing the game. That's out of about 30 people we saw in total. It's crazy how popular the game is around here. We both had a good time tonight, and walked for a good hour or so.

On the way back we stopped at a Level 5 Red Gym, brought it up to Level 7, and added two of our Pokemon to it.

The Gym battles against opposing colors seem really buggy though. We tried to take a blue gym down in the park, but once it got to Level 2, the battle just wouldn't end. Even though one of the fighting Pokemon had a sliver of health, it just wouldn't faint, and would stay that way until the battle timed out. Then the game would be unresponsive, and we'd have to restart.

manta173 wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

Hey. Uh. Just....

Look. Having the game running while driving is a bad idea, ok?

It's a bad idea.

Also, Ingress stops you from being able to do stuff at 45 mph... I assume the same will be done for this game.

Pokemon Go tops out at 10 mph. My friends and I have been walking around our campus. We've decided to use our bikes or scooters instead, because then we can move around a bit faster to make sure we have enough pokeballs to use. We're also carry around our chargers or some power banks to ensure extended hours.

They use some of the Ingress portals, not all of them. A lot of the portals on my campus aren't stops. But based on knowing the Ingress map pretty well, I knew where most of the stops and gyms were without much hassle.

Fight your own color gym to help level it up (this is useful for those of us on Team Red. Hail Moltres). But also for any color. You level up the gym, and it can help your Pokemon when you evolve them. This also means if you beat that gym, your best Pokemon gets to help defend that gym.

EDIT: Pokemon Go International Release Delayed Because of Server Troubles

If you're getting a lot of the same type of Pokemon, hang on to the ones that only take 12 candies to evolve. When you use a lucky egg to double your xp gain, you get an extra 1000xp for each one you evolve.

Edit - Just evolved one myself and it only gave 500xp, so the bonus would only be another 500xp, not 1000xp.

If you're not familiar with Ingress, you can still register to play and then use their Intel map to scope out possible PokeStop/Gym locations: https://www.ingress.com/intel