Pokemon Go ARG by Niantic (a Google company)

I'm not sure if spawns are linked to pokestops. I'm in suburbia and have had no problem finding pokemon. I have 4 Pokéstops in a half mile stretch of road: a park, a cemetery, a house of worship, and a large rock. I admit, if I were in a rural area, I'd be kinda screwed, though, and might only play when I go to a more populated area.

Speaking of Pokemon Go Suggestions, I made this one on the subbreddit, where a grand total of zero people upvoted it :(. I like it a lot though!

As you start unlocking the type-specific medals you should be introduced to an NPC that works with them. Say at 30 poison pokemon a new NPC pops up "Hi, I specialize in studying poison pokemon, and Professor Oak tells me you've been catching a lot of them, I'd love to work with you!"

Once this happens when you go to transfer poison pokemon you have two options, transfer to Professor Oak for 1 candy, or transfer to this new person for 100+ stardust (based on rarity of species).

Additionally, this person would have a new shop page where you could buy candy of that type for Stardust. So you could, for example, transfer the Normal Professor five Rattattas and use the proceeds to buy a Tauros candy (or a Charmander candy from the Fire Specialist).

Psst. It's Willow, not Oak. And it also defeats the purpose of going out and catching multiples of trash Pokémon.

So I checked the Ingress Map, and it looks like there is nothing within a 5 mile radius of where I live...I didn't bother to go any further than that...sigh.

I think Pokemon spawns might be tied to players in the area. At home (where there's two pokestops and a gym nearby, there'll maybe be one or two pokemon spawned 3 footprints away, but at work it's a little more active (despite there being no pokestop for miles), which I think is due to other people in the industrial park playing. Last night when I went to a nearby park with 5 pokestops and a gym there were 5-10 other players and pokemon were spawning much more often.

So my guess is that every player has pokemon spawn around them every so often, and they stay there until they're caught or despawn. Pokemon that spawn from one player show up for every other player around them too, so more players in the area should mean more pokemon spawned. That'd also account for why more rare pokemon seem to pop up in more populated areas, and all I see are the super common ones, with an occasional shadow of an uncommon one. More players means more spawns, and more spawns mean more chances for a rare spawn to occur. If you're only getting one or two around you at a time, recruit family members and people in the area to play too so you'll catch more when you're out walking. Maybe some of the pokemon that spawn three footprints away from them will be right within your circle.

One pro of living in Chicago is that I am utterly surrounded by gyms and pokestops. I can count 60+ stops within a quarter mile of me.

Farscry wrote:

Yeah, I get that I could go drive downtown and get lots of stops because this was built off of Ingress portals. That's not new information.

My point is that it's stupid for this game to make it so that I would be better off driving around downtown to play rather than going out for a walk in the general vicinity of where I live.

Taking a half hour in the evening for a walk is good for my health and totally the point of having this game function the way it does, though it's about all the time I can take before it's time for doing family stuff. Driving fifteen minutes each way to get downtown leaves no time for an actual walk, wastes gasoline and harms the environment.

Ingress/Geocaching/Pokemon Go have a lot of similarities, and this comment applies to all three. There is a strong "power caching" side to geocaching. There are power trails set up so you can drive .1 miles, hop out of your car, grab an obvious cache by the side of the road, and do that for thousands of caches in a row non-stop. The numbers drive this side of the game, as in "How many caches do you have?" The problem this begets is that if you take away the numbers the activity in itself is boring and pointless.

Ingress, with its urban emphasis, struck me as heavily focused on driving around and staying in your car to achieve the best results. At least geocaching makes you get out of the car, and you can completely avoid the "power caching game" if you want. There are fantastic adventures in nature with geocaching.

Because it's using Ingress portals for the most part, Pokemon Go seems to have focused on populated areas for play. This is good for Niantic and likely intentional, because it makes the game more visible and increases the social element to the game, all of which are good for sales and popularity.

I hope they are willing to tap into the potential for Pokemon Go, however, to get people out walking in less populated areas and out in nature rather than exclusively focusing on urban areas. In the Twin Cities, the game does a pretty good job of having Pokestops in parks, but that's easy here because we've got parks literally everywhere. So for us it's great, but I don't imagine that's the same in many areas.

iOS update out that fixes security bug...

To be sure it updates your settings.. I did this.

1) Revoke the app access on your google page
2) sign out of the pokemon go (bottom of settings page)
3) update
4) re sign in...
5) Check google app permissions.. should say "Basic Info"
6) GET BACK TO POKE-ZOMBIE!

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Farscry wrote:

Yeah, I get that I could go drive downtown and get lots of stops because this was built off of Ingress portals. That's not new information.

My point is that it's stupid for this game to make it so that I would be better off driving around downtown to play rather than going out for a walk in the general vicinity of where I live.

Taking a half hour in the evening for a walk is good for my health and totally the point of having this game function the way it does, though it's about all the time I can take before it's time for doing family stuff. Driving fifteen minutes each way to get downtown leaves no time for an actual walk, wastes gasoline and harms the environment.

Ingress/Geocaching/Pokemon Go have a lot of similarities, and this comment applies to all three. There is a strong "power caching" side to geocaching. There are power trails set up so you can drive .1 miles, hop out of your car, grab an obvious cache by the side of the road, and do that for thousands of caches in a row non-stop. The numbers drive this side of the game, as in "How many caches do you have?" The problem this begets is that if you take away the numbers the activity in itself is boring and pointless.

Ingress, with its urban emphasis, struck me as heavily focused on driving around and staying in your car to achieve the best results. At least geocaching makes you get out of the car, and you can completely avoid the "power caching game" if you want. There are fantastic adventures in nature with geocaching.

Because it's using Ingress portals for the most part, Pokemon Go seems to have focused on populated areas for play. This is good for Niantic and likely intentional, because it makes the game more visible and increases the social element to the game, all of which are good for sales and popularity.

I hope they are willing to tap into the potential for Pokemon Go, however, to get people out walking in less populated areas and out in nature rather than exclusively focusing on urban areas. In the Twin Cities, the game does a pretty good job of having Pokestops in parks, but that's easy here because we've got parks literally everywhere. So for us it's great, but I don't imagine that's the same in many areas.

What they really need to do is partner up with national and state parks departments. Have a pokestop or gym at the start and end of the trail (or point furthest from the start if it's a trail that loops back on itself), and at various interesting places along it.

Carlbear95 wrote:

iOS update out that fixes security bug...

To be sure it updates your settings.. I did this.

1) Revoke the app access on your google page
2) sign out of the pokemon go (bottom of settings page)
3) update
4) re sign in...
5) Check google app permissions.. should say "Basic Info"
6) GET BACK TO POKE-ZOMBIE!


Here's a link with more info.

Niantic wrote:

We recently discovered that the Pokémon GO account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon GO only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected. Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon GO or Niantic. Google will soon reduce Pokémon GO’s permission to only the basic profile data that Pokémon GO needs, and users do not need to take any actions themselves.

Stengah wrote:

What they really need to do is partner up with national and state parks departments. Have a pokestop or gym at the start and end of the trail (or point furthest from the start if it's a trail that loops back on itself), and at various interesting places along it.

This would be amazing.

Stengah wrote:

Amazon's Prime Day Sale has some good deals on battery packs to help offset how quickly this game drains batteries.

It's not on sale, but Anker makes a few solar chargers that you can attach to a backpack.

Stengah wrote:

What they really need to do is partner up with national and state parks departments. Have a pokestop or gym at the start and end of the trail (or point furthest from the start if it's a trail that loops back on itself), and at various interesting places along it.

That is the case at Valley Forge National Park in PA. It is the site of a Revolutionary War battle, the trail heads are pokestops, and the various cannon, leftovers of defensive fortifications, monuments, cabins, lookout points, and rest stops are Pokestops or Gyms. I can only imagine how much of a gold mine Gettysburg is.

There's a beautiful rails-to-trails multi-mile walking/biking/skating trail near me (south of Grand Rapids, MI) and I was disappointed to see that there aren't really any Ingress locations (and therefore Pokemon locations, most likely) along the trail.

On the plus side, the game seems a lot more stale with the iOS 1.01 update! On 1.00 the game was freezing hard on me about 33% of the time when I'd attempt to catch a pokemon. Low sample size, but I've done 3 captures on the new patch now (just sitting at my desk in my home office) with no issues yet. Hopefully that'll keep up!

deftly wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Amazon's Prime Day Sale has some good deals on battery packs to help offset how quickly this game drains batteries.

It's not on sale, but Anker makes a few solar chargers that you can attach to a backpack.

The fact that there isn't a pikachu themed battery with a plug that looks like the tail means that there are millions of dollars being left on the table.

WolverineJon wrote:

no issues yet. Hopefully that'll keep up!

Jinx! Just threw a Pokeball at a Pidgey and the game hung just after it was pulled inside. Was hoping that wouldn't be a thing anymore. :-/

Here's a great tip I learned from some coworkers for those that are having problems hitting the target.
If you miss your throw, you can tap on the Poke Ball and get it back, but you do have to be quick.

Carlbear95 wrote:

iOS update out that fixes security bug...

To be sure it updates your settings.. I did this.

1) Revoke the app access on your google page
2) sign out of the pokemon go (bottom of settings page)
3) update
4) re sign in...
5) Check google app permissions.. should say "Basic Info"
6) GET BACK TO POKE-ZOMBIE!

Carlbear95 wrote:

iOS update out that fixes security bug...

To be sure it updates your settings.. I did this.

1) Revoke the app access on your google page
2) sign out of the pokemon go (bottom of settings page)
3) update
4) re sign in...
5) Check google app permissions.. should say "Basic Info"
6) GET BACK TO POKE-ZOMBIE!

Just tested it and it works. App only has access to basic info now.

I had a Pidgey with 98 CP break free of 2 great throws in a row, then glitched to be so close I couldn't even see the whole body or any of the interface and then lost my last 3 pokeballs... Why did I even bother?

WizKid wrote:

Here's a great tip I learned from some coworkers for those that are having problems hitting the target.
If you miss your throw, you can tap on the Poke Ball and get it back, but you do have to be quick.

...

WolverineJon wrote:
WolverineJon wrote:

no issues yet. Hopefully that'll keep up!

Jinx! Just threw a Pokeball at a Pidgey and the game hung just after it was pulled inside. Was hoping that wouldn't be a thing anymore. :-/

Today has been significantly better than the past for that issue occurring, and most importantly all three times it's happened after the reboot I have checked my recent pokemon to find that I actually got credit for catching it.

Yonder wrote:

... and most importantly all three times it's happened after the reboot I have checked my recent pokemon to find that I actually got credit for catching it.

This.

I just checked and at least it gave me that pokeball munching pidgeo, and then taunted me with a distant Pikachu. The first I've seen.

Weird one. Near my house there are about a dozen Ingress portals that I pass on my walk. Several of them areally where someone tagged every bench at a senior citizens center but the others are things like a cemetery, a pedestrian bridge, historical markers (I live in Atlanta, we have a lot of those) and the like.

One of them is a small marker for the location of the first death on the "Trail of Tears".

Guess which one is the Pokegym...

Since Pokemon Go came out I'm having a much easier time talking the kids into going shopping with me. My 11 year old picked up 6 critters today at Costco.

If you want more stops and gyms near you, download the ingress app and submit new ones.

http://ingressportal.com/research/po...

So this bein all the rage...i tried it...i don't get it...deleted. wiiiieeeerrrd/.

Just hatched a Lapras and a Porygon! Neither of which are strong enough for me to use for serious battle, but I still like having them, and that's three candy each for later ones.

I left the Porygon at a Gym. At 226 he can't help much, but I wanted to show him off.

Edwin wrote:

If you want more stops and gyms near you, download the ingress app and submit new ones.

http://ingressportal.com/research/po...

According to this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te..., suggesting portals hasnt been a thing since last September.

Re-downloaded Ingress (my account was still there! Level 10 woot!) just to check out correlation with pokestops/gyms, totally going to dig up the Ingress Intel link I used to use to scope out good portal places. My daughter so far has been loving the variety of local parks we've been visiting, and asks me whenever I've been for a walk if I've caught any new pokemon. Very cute.

I've set up BlueStacks on my PC so I can run the PokemonGo app on my PC, doesnt find location, but I can still access my pokemon and items etc. I'm finding it a much easier way to compare my pokemon and manage transfers and it means I can save my phone and backup battery for when I'm out and about. Would be nice if I could get my location through to that app though, just so I can nab anything that wanders past or monitor if any rares show up outside.

ALSO, took my wife to a local art gallery with a large outdoor sculpture area (about 3 acres worth), I had scoped the place out on Ingress, and sure enough, 3 gyms and about 15 Pokestops. Two pokestops can be accessed from the lovely cafe there and when we sat down a couple had activated two modules, so that was rad. I get Pokemon, my wife gets coffee and cake. Everybody wins.

Any idea on how to get location through to either my PC or especially my iPad if I have it tethered to my phone?
Figured out my iPad wasn't getting location from my Android hotspot, but sharing internet over bluetooth appears to have worked! Hurrah.

ukickmydog wrote:
Edwin wrote:

If you want more stops and gyms near you, download the ingress app and submit new ones.

http://ingressportal.com/research/po...

According to this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te..., suggesting portals hasnt been a thing since last September.

Yup, and there's no ETA on when that will resume. There's also no response on whether this will affect Pokemon Go, or if there will be an alternative option for Pokemon Go.

I'm sure something will change. Eventually. Hopefully it won't involve charging non-urban customers more money.