I will travel across the land, searching far and wide
July 7, 2016 1:36 PM   Subscribe

 
i want this so bad i so want this really bad. I still can't download it - not sure if my device is actually incompatible (galaxy s3) or if it is slowly rolling out to my region or what.
posted by rebent at 1:39 PM on July 7, 2016


It's been less than 10 minutes of play on Pokémon Go and we've already decimated a tenth of the phone's battery.

/twitch
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:40 PM on July 7, 2016 [28 favorites]


If you're having fun collecting pokeballs, thank your local Ingress player. Those are portals.
posted by maryr at 1:42 PM on July 7, 2016 [26 favorites]


Is this the most anticipated game of the year? I've been thinking of it as the Ingress that non-turbonerds want to play.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:43 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


After playing Ingress, I can assure you that I loathe my local Ingress players.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:44 PM on July 7, 2016 [29 favorites]


It's been less than 10 minutes of play on Pokémon Go and we've already decimated a tenth of the phone's battery.

So it's down 1% is what you're saying?
posted by The Tensor at 1:44 PM on July 7, 2016 [84 favorites]


I sideloaded this yesterday as it's not available on the Canadian play store yet - it's decently fun and encourages exercise, but speaking realistically, yeah, someone's going to get run over.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 1:44 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Let me get this straight: to play this video game, I have to go outside?

It's like some people don't even get the point of video games.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:45 PM on July 7, 2016 [24 favorites]


i'm still very confused by what is happening but there is cheery pokemon music and i just caught a goldeen so im good
posted by Think_Long at 1:47 PM on July 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I caught it! Starting with Bulbasaur, just like with Pokémon Blue! Unfortunately, I'm behind my desk for another 30 minutes. (And thankfully, I have a portable cell phone charger!)
posted by kimdog at 1:47 PM on July 7, 2016


I can't wait until drivers start playing this in their cars. :-(
posted by clawsoon at 1:48 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


After playing Ingress, I can assure you that I loathe my local Ingress players.

That's because you live in Smurfland.
posted by maryr at 1:48 PM on July 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


I only played a little bit at lunch so only two things:

1) Seeing a little critter through AR is pretty neat. It's not a new trick, but seeing a little Squirtle out in the quad is endearing.
2) The actual catching mechanic makes no sense.

Otherwise I'm looking forward to playing this with the little one. Exploring and looking for pokestops and pokes to catch will be a lot of fun I think.
posted by Tevin at 1:49 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I can't get Google Play to believe that I am in fact located in the US now (presumably because I bought the phone in Canada)

No pokemons for me :(
posted by quaking fajita at 1:49 PM on July 7, 2016


Everything you are thinking could go wrong here already goes wrong with Ingress players.

Just now it's going to go wrong for ten year olds.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:49 PM on July 7, 2016 [16 favorites]


Thank the gods Ingress did not allow elementary schools to become portals. Based on those Kotaku tweets, people would be getting arrested.
posted by maryr at 1:52 PM on July 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Was playing it a bit before the servers started going down constantly, and I've got to say, the distribution of Pokemon is a bit boring. They are highly concentrated around streets and portals Poke Stops. I went for a walk in a forest, hoping there would be some to find, but there were literally none. A missed opportunity, really.
posted by Jimbob at 1:55 PM on July 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can't wait until drivers start playing this in their cars. :-(

The catching mechanic means that (hopefully) this will be less possible than with Ingress.
posted by Jimbob at 1:56 PM on July 7, 2016


Seriously though, this is why people play Ingress.
posted by maryr at 1:57 PM on July 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


I downloaded Ingress and opened it a couple of times but never actually played it. My daughter loves Pokemon right now (she's 4) so maybe this is something we can play together but it isn't showing in the Play Store for me, even using a VPN to make it look like I'm in the US.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:58 PM on July 7, 2016


I went for a walk in a forest, hoping there would be some to find, but there were literally none.

Perhaps they were taken away by the local VVitch of the wood.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:58 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


A missed opportunity, really.

This is probably intentional so as not to encourage children to run away into the wilderness.

I am also told there's an 'incense' item that lures pokemans to your bathroom/cubicle/couch/whatever so you don't actually have to go outside to catch 'em
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:58 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


My house is overrun with goddamn Rattatas.

Can you grind up the Pokemon you don't want and feed them to those you do to give them a taste for blood? Asking for a friend.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:59 PM on July 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


There's a transfer button on the pokemon's page that lets you trade it in for a candy to help others of its kind evolve, so sort of.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 2:00 PM on July 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


There's a Pokestop right across the street from my place. Close enough for me to swipe on it from my living room and get extra pokeballs every few minutes.

If the server ever lets me back on I'm going to try to take pictures of rattatas sitting on my cats.
posted by Metroid Baby at 2:01 PM on July 7, 2016 [19 favorites]


Metroid Baby: That is a portal. You have a couchie.
posted by maryr at 2:05 PM on July 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


A home portal is basically the best thing in Ingress, except when it's 2 am and your phone blows up with notifications that somebody's blowing up your stuff and you're going "I didn't need to know that there's people here in the middle of the night."
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:08 PM on July 7, 2016 [30 favorites]


Sorry, I just really can't get over the direct translation of portals to pokestops. Like, I knew there would be carry over from Ingress, why else give Ingress away for years?, but damn. Every portal is now a pokestop.

...I'm really going to have to go to Brighton and catch a pokemon at the Hanging Out With Jesus portal.
posted by maryr at 2:09 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Every portal is now a pokestop.

Not every portal - I reckon 80-90% though. Where you have sets of extremely close together portals, seems they've only made one of the group a Poke Stop.
posted by Jimbob at 2:13 PM on July 7, 2016


Sadly, I don't have an actual couch portal, but I do have a rustling leaves spawning portal in my back yard. So far only Zubat, but if the server load ever lessens I should be able to grind my way to a better bat with candy. And there's a pokestop at the corner, so it at least encourages me to periodically walk down the block.

However, the server load thing is annoying. Something I didn't have spawed across the street, I tapped on it futilely until I had to reboot. And now I can't get on at all.
posted by tavella at 2:13 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Server has been up and down all day, which is understandable. The fact that your settings get reset every time you have to log back in after a server hiccup instead of getting saved locally or being associated with you account, is both annoying and a weird oversight.
posted by thecjm at 2:14 PM on July 7, 2016


The dev and support teams at work are so smitten with this that we ended up having to make a dedicated Slack channel just for chat about the app. Not to hide from our managers, because they're playing too, but just to filter the conversation from 90% Pokemon Go to 100%
posted by thecjm at 2:16 PM on July 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Yeah. Server hiccups are normal on the first day for an app like this, but having to log back in with Google and 2fa every time is a pain in the ass. I'm also crashing a ton on iOS.
posted by eyeballkid at 2:21 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


As somebody who played every WoW expansion through Pandaria literally minutes after launch, I'm a bit amused at the complaints about today's server stability.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:34 PM on July 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


Everything you are thinking could go wrong here already goes wrong with Ingress players.

Like get arrested by Homeland Security and be forced to create an impromptu resistance along with my teenage friends?
posted by happyroach at 2:44 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


One of the Ingress factions is literally named the Resistance, so yes?
posted by maryr at 2:45 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


dang i guess all the server problems mean i actually have to do work this afternoon instead of wandering around my office building and neighborhood. more like pokemon go do your job
posted by burgerrr at 2:46 PM on July 7, 2016 [9 favorites]


Three portals between my office and the subway, caught a Zubat and a DoDuo. Yeah, so far, this is fun.
posted by kimdog at 2:52 PM on July 7, 2016


For some strange wizard reason Plants Vs. Zombies - Heroes launched in New Zealand and Canada two weeks before anywhere else, so that's where all my bandwidth is right now. But now I'm reconsidering.
posted by Shepherd at 3:21 PM on July 7, 2016


I'm chained to my desk a few more hours, so I caught a Squirtle on my laptop and a Pidgey under my desk.
posted by angeline at 3:23 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


GUYS. I work on the Hill (well, near) and there are SO MANY Pokestops in the Capitol complex. I nearly ran down a congresscritter leaving the House chamber this afternoon while catching a Shellder. It's amazing.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 3:28 PM on July 7, 2016 [15 favorites]


I don't understand how any of you are playing, even in the U.S. I managed to log in with a Pokemon Trainer Club account this morning after an hour of intermittent getting the website to load properly, then having it take my registration after a bunch of 502/503s, then finding out it has a password character limit and DIDN'T TELL ME and accepted my password anyways, then having to wait for the stupid password reset to take after some more 502/503s, then finally resetting my password and playing for a few minutes before the app complained about no GPS access. Restarted the app, and suddenly I'm logged out and can't log in anymore.

I'm sure it'll improve in the coming days, Nintendo might be stupid most of the time but they're not THAT stupid. But this is a shitty experience top to bottom.
posted by chrominance at 3:32 PM on July 7, 2016


Now that I can get back on, there is apparently a fierce territorial war going on between Red and Blue in my area. I have 4 arenas around me, one in each direction, and they have been periodically catching on fire for the last hour or so.
posted by tavella at 3:33 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Are you on an Iphone, chrominance? I understand the UX is much worse there than the Android.
posted by tavella at 3:35 PM on July 7, 2016


The server keeps being down!!!!!!!!!!! Raaaar!!!! I want to walk in the park and catch pokemons!
posted by Deoridhe at 3:43 PM on July 7, 2016


I have gotten as far as managing to connect at all on my second try, capturing my Contractual Obligation Bulbasaur, and then figuring out that the nearest pokestops are all farther away than i really feel like walking right now. Perhaps tomorrow!
posted by cortex at 3:48 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


the closest pokestop to me is something labelled "raccoon bench". ok...
posted by burgerrr at 3:51 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


my favorite local pokestop so far is "erosion control fabric"
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:54 PM on July 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


Here in Salem, we have tourism markets all over so a walk downtown with my 5 year old, Pokemon obsessed son netted us thirty pokeballs, a Psyduck, two bug types, and an almost altercation with a pair of twenty something dudes who were also playing and said the word "Charmander" too loud, thus prompting my son to charge them, flexing his muscles, roaring "DO YOU WANT TO BATTLE!?"

After I dragged him away, he muttered to me "Those two better stay away from our gym." His eyes were still burning with dark energy.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:57 PM on July 7, 2016 [78 favorites]


to play this video game, I have to go outside?

Yes, now I can gamify my fitbit, which is already gamified. Getting 10,000 steps gets me a fitbit trophy, but now I have an app that turns that game into a game: get pokemon while I walk to get my trophy. When I eventually have a hard time getting up the energy to get out to find pokemon to battle, I'm probably going to have to buy a mech suit that simulates a virtual reality battle around my pokemon game, and I collect stars as I stomp around blowing up the neighbors houses.
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:58 PM on July 7, 2016 [12 favorites]


All I can find is trubbish.
posted by drezdn at 3:58 PM on July 7, 2016


They've gamified something I already do with my daughter, chase down weird local spots from Wikipedia/Special/Nearby. Thank you PokemonGo nee Niantic nee Google.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 4:12 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


*prays to Arceus that this won't be necessary to get items or Pokemon in Sun/Moon*
posted by clorox at 4:31 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Someone is going to die playing this game while not paying attention. It's just a matter of time. I'm pretty sure one picture I saw had a pokemon standing on a railroad track.

(His heart was all aflutter.)
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:52 PM on July 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Someone probably will die, but you don't have to follow the Pokemon onto the railway tracks - once you've found one it just hovers on your screen, trying to walk closer doesn't achieve anything.
posted by Jimbob at 5:02 PM on July 7, 2016


That being said, I'm totally playing this game, and my nine year old is going to love it. I've been trying to get her up in the mornings to go walking with me, and this might do the trick.
posted by SpacemanStix at 5:12 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


and then figuring out that the nearest pokestops are all farther away than i really feel like walking right now.

It must suck to not have a pokestop within a hundred miles.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:36 PM on July 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


It must suck to not have a pokestop within a hundred miles.

That's when you teach your pokemon flight.
posted by drezdn at 5:54 PM on July 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


My ex-boyfriend worked on the Radford Outdoor Augmented Reality (ROAR) project while he was a grad student way back in 2008, so I guess so far I am anti-Pokemon-Go as I have spent most of the day seeing photos of Pokemon pop up on Facebook and thinking way more about my ex than I have in years.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:21 PM on July 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Just checked and it's available on the Australian Play store but the reviews are pretty awful. As a proof of concept building on Ingress, though, I think it's a pretty cool idea. Would be neat to have a Dark Souls-esque multiplayer messaging/note app thing you could use IRL I guess!
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:58 PM on July 7, 2016


Would be neat to have a Dark Souls-esque multiplayer messaging/note app thing you could use IRL I guess!

There's a third party App called GoChat, whipped up by a lone developer who has gotten in way over his head. He's had to turn to crowdfunding to pay the server bills to keep the app going long enough for him to figure out a way to sell ad-space on it. It's a shame too that he's going to need to be focusing his developing efforts on putting in ads, because as the app stood the last time I looked at it, it had some downright dangerous privacy concerns that should have been addressed before he started promoting it as the chat solution for an all ages game that doesn't have one.

He did seem receptive to my suggestions on changes needed to keep it from becoming a stalker's dream resource, but until he implements them, I can not recommend the app. If you do end up using it, be aware that every chat you post from it gets geotaged with your exact location, and even if you only post where you play, people can still infer things about places you like to frequent and your daily routine by correlating enough of those post locations and times.

Also thanks to prize bull octorok for this post. I wanted to do a follow up to my earlier post, but since I was a member of the closed field test for this game, I felt that would have been drifting too near self-post territory.
posted by radwolf76 at 7:21 PM on July 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Passed a bunch of teens around 9:30 tonight standing around a flagpole shouting about Onyx.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:42 PM on July 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


I am headed to Old Sturbridge Village tomorrow, and I would like to enjoy the irony of playing a phone game in an anti tech theme park. But, no server love for me as of yet, still just "We're working on it, be patient. " messaging... Bah!
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:19 PM on July 7, 2016


maryr, I figure you have to be from Boston, that's the only town I've heard a home portal referred to as a "couchie"
posted by perianwyr at 9:27 PM on July 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I have enjoyed this for a couple of days and suddenly it seems very empty. The fighting back and forth will never end. Catching is another dopamine grind.

I don't know.
posted by solarion at 11:54 PM on July 7, 2016


My children and their friends have gone bananas with this. It is the middle of winter, but they have been running around non-stop for the last two days.
It if gets the kids playing out in the street more I'm all for it.
posted by bystander at 2:16 AM on July 8, 2016


I just ran out of my apartment at 2 am because I noticed the Gym down the block had an open slot.

This game does terrible things to your mind.
posted by rifflesby at 2:44 AM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


My experience so far is...that I need a new phone. Agonising load times, crashes during battles, AR mode doesn't work (no gyro) and GPS signal is incredibly spotty. When it works I get a glimpse of how truly cool it can be, but basically the stars have to align for my data, GPS, and the servers to all be working at the same time.

I still wanna catch 'em all ;_;
posted by Gordafarin at 3:23 AM on July 8, 2016


GPS signal is incredibly spotty

I've found that GPS Status & Toolbox by MobiWIA - EclipSim can useful in diagnosing and possibly correcting GPS issues on Android. Particularly the tools for keeping your A-GPS Data current.
posted by radwolf76 at 3:31 AM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't know about this as a game qua game, but it is a fantastic experience. (When the servers can handle the traffic, at least.) Seeing Pokémon imposed on IRL is very satisfying.
posted by ignignokt at 5:59 AM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


So many people I know are doing this.

So many of my RSS feeds are exploding with this.

My daughters are begging me to download it, like that japanese backyard cat game and that other thing.

Guess I'll be downloading it tonight.

Hunting Pokemon in Baltimore - this is gonna be fun
posted by sidereal at 6:45 AM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


hey bowtiesarecool the Capitol is on lockdown, you are totally cheating
posted by sidereal at 7:02 AM on July 8, 2016


My 19-year-old son called me after he was done at work last night and said, "Hey, so I just wanted you to know that I got Pokémon Go so I'm gonna be out for a few hours catching things and stuff."

When I got home at 9:30-ish with my 16-year-old daughter (who hadn't had time to download the app), he ran out of the house and showed us his phone: "There's a gym on the walking trail* that hasn't been claimed yet! Let's take the dog and go!" So they did! For like an hour!

We're going on road trip in about three weeks. It's going to be even more fun for them with Go.

*There's a trail system in our township, a large portion of which runs through the woods behind our neighborhood. Fun!
posted by cooker girl at 7:03 AM on July 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


My friend who works at a sex toy store has an amazing picture of a rattats charging out in front of a row of dildos.
posted by ActionPopulated at 7:21 AM on July 8, 2016 [23 favorites]


Pokémon Go's current level of multiplayer interaction seems to be limited to competing for gyms. How does that compare to Ingress?
posted by fragmede at 7:28 AM on July 8, 2016


Soapstone is basically dark souls messages for google maps. They have ios and android apps.

Playing using the sideloaded android apk here in the UK and happily farming all my old ingress portals. 5min cooldown but no max uses for a pokestop and no limit on sparring at a gym that I could find other than running out of pokemon health/potions.

You can claim 10 of the premium currency for each gym you control once every 23 hours.
posted by pixie at 8:20 AM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ingress has tons more interaction:

Built in faction and global chat.
Trading of items/ muling of portal keys around the world.
Having to work together with 7 other people to get a portal to max level.
All the crazy continent spanning link stuff.
posted by pixie at 8:22 AM on July 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Ingress has tons more interaction:

Built in faction and global chat.
Trading of items/ muling of portal keys around the world.
Having to work together with 7 other people to get a portal to max level.
All the crazy continent spanning link stuff.
posted by pixie at 11:22 AM on July 8 [+] [!]


NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT INGRESS WHEN THERE ARE POKEMON TO BE HAD!

I mean I guess other than appreciating them farming all y'all for beta testing.
posted by edbles at 9:06 AM on July 8, 2016 [16 favorites]


a friend got mugged at gunpoint in st louis last night while out walking around playing pokemon go. he's okay but whew i wonder how many more times that's going to happen to people
posted by burgerrr at 9:47 AM on July 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


I've had a lot of 'this game is great'/'this game is going to legit get people killed' thoughts bouncing back and forth in my head since I downloaded it
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:54 AM on July 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


The game already starts up with a giant "BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS" notice. I think that's the best that Niantic can really do about the situation. I don't know of it being a particularly huge problem in Ingress (though I am 100% it has happened), but if my neighborhood is any indication, the scale of people playing is on a different level.
posted by maryr at 9:55 AM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


the biggest danger IMO is pokemoning while driving, when you're cruising along at 40+ mph the encounter rate for pokestops/pokemons goes up by a factor of roughly a bajillion
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:56 AM on July 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hunting Pokemon in Baltimore - this is gonna be fun

I just did this for a few hours. It was both interesting and fun. As most probably know, Baltimore has stark transitions between relatively safe neighborhoods and half-abandoned neighborhoods with lots of crime. I live on a totally nice block with no vacants, but three blocks away across the Expressway the boarded up houses begin. It's not the type of area that it would be prudent for an outsider to walk around with their nose buried in their phone. The second nearest gym is currently being defended by a weakass Charmander but actual reality butts up against alternate reality. In my neighborhood, most of the Pokestops are monuments and grand buildings, and across the Expressway they're mostly murals and graffiti walls. It's an interesting look at the psychic geography of the two spaces.

On my walk, I drifted down from the train station toward the Harbor. On Charles and St. Paul, which are crowded with Pokestops, there were lots of other people playing, but few on other streets. I shared many knowing glances. I caught a Golbat in the plaza at One Charles Center and it was very satisfying. The Washington Monument is a really awkward gym. None of the benches in the park are close enough to the Monument, so you have to go lean against the fence. In this heat, the shady area is crowded with wannabe Pokemasters.
posted by vathek at 9:59 AM on July 8, 2016 [7 favorites]


I suspect the toned down level of interaction is deliberate. For example, global chat requires that you spend a lot of resources policing it if you don't want it to turn into a sewer. Ingress was niche enough that I never saw much apart from the occasional person spamming very rares for sale, but Pokemon Go was obviously going to be for a broader market. Same for the fact you can play a more solitary game. Once you got beyond the basic levels in Ingress, the only real game was fields. Here you can just be a collector if you want.

BTW, does anyone know if it is possible to lose a Pokemon permanently in a gym fight? I tried out a couple last night but they usually wanted to use the rare ones I only had one of. I didn't want to lose my Ponyta so I declined just in case.
posted by tavella at 10:01 AM on July 8, 2016


the biggest danger IMO is pokemoning while driving, when you're cruising along at 40+ mph the encounter rate for pokestops/pokemons goes up by a factor of roughly a bajillion

Ingress would actually track your speed (based, I believe, on the distance between your interactions with the game world) and look for you to go over 35 mph. (So, for example, if you hit up a portal and then hit another one five minutes later which was 3 miles (36 mph/12) away, you get tagged.) Doing that would lock you out of missions and prevent you from acquiring items for awhile.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:05 AM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


defending pokemons are stuck in their gym until another team wins and kicks them out, then you get them back

attacking pokemons don't perma-die if they lose all HP but you can only get reviving/healing items from pokestops and they don't seem to be super common so far

I don't think there's any way to lose a pokemon permanently other than by trading it in for candy
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:06 AM on July 8, 2016


I don't know if it is POSSIBLE, but I didn't lose any Pokemon when I was schooled in my first gym attempt. They did get knocked out though.
posted by maryr at 10:06 AM on July 8, 2016


I am having a lot of fun watching my 20-something sisters and friends posting about Pokemon and my Ingress-playing self is just sitting here with steepled fingers. Yes, my children, you will probably talk to the police at some point. Try to get them to play the game for your team, they will be amazing additions.

Locally it seems like about 2/3 of the Ingress portals in high-density areas have Pokemon equivalents, and I haven't seen any pokewhatevers that are NOT portals. I also haven't seen any new pictures or descriptions.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:33 AM on July 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


the biggest danger IMO is pokemoning while driving, when you're cruising along at 40+ mph the encounter rate for pokestops/pokemons goes up by a factor of roughly a bajillion

The biggest danger is not being aware of what's around you - just losing track of where you're putting your feet, or who's around you. If someone's Cargressing/Pokecarring(?), at least they're probably trying to actually be actively aware of both. It's when you forget that your environment that can be dangerous that you get into trouble. We lost one of ours in the UK/Ireland Enlightened community last year.

So yeah, head out to play, get active, but always remember to keep an eye on what's around you. Don't flash your phone where you wouldn't normally, be aware of traffic, and accept that sometimes you won't be able to safely and legally get in range of pokestops/gyms.
posted by MattWPBS at 11:17 AM on July 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


Whoa, I hadn't heard about that, MattWPBS. Thanks for link.
posted by maryr at 11:27 AM on July 8, 2016


Er. My roommate points out that this story makes the Pokemon Go! loading screen a little awkward.
posted by maryr at 11:32 AM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


My son is now insisting on posing for a picture with each Pokemon before we try to capture them. If he decides it's a good picture, he won't let me grind the Pokemon up for candy.

This lead to a bit of an argument when the picture of him standing like Superman behind a Weedle was spoiled when it jumped up right when the picture snapped. Not only am I not holding on to a junk Weedle, but I'm also not holding on to what appears to be a picture of my son showing off his cartoon wang.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:18 PM on July 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


Ingress would actually track your speed (based, I believe, on the distance between your interactions with the game world) and look for you to go over 35 mph. (So, for example, if you hit up a portal and then hit another one five minutes later which was 3 miles (36 mph/12) away, you get tagged.) Doing that would lock you out of missions and prevent you from acquiring items for awhile.

The Pokequivalent seems to be that your travel doesn't count for hatching eggs when you're going too fast (apparently the limit is somewhere around 'fast skateboard'). I am surprised they don't deny 'mon spawns at speed though.
posted by rifflesby at 12:19 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Incidentally, I did some research into the 'Nearby' box, which may be helpful to people because it's super unclear: that box lists pokemon that are near to you, in order of proximity, graded by 0-3 footprints. If one is listed with 0 footprints, tap it in the list and it will spawn. If it has footprints, tap it to select it as the guy you're currently tracking, and as you walk around the box will flash when you're heading toward your target. So you can play Hot & Cold to literally hunt a pokemon you want.
posted by rifflesby at 12:26 PM on July 8, 2016 [17 favorites]


rifflesby I plan to put your advice into effect if they ever let me onto the servers ever again.
posted by edbles at 12:41 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


robocop, we're going to need to see that picture (or a cute picture of your son and a less phallic pokemon).
posted by maryr at 1:04 PM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Has anyone found a guide for what the various sounds mean? I know the spawn sound (especially since it comes with a vibration), but there's chirps and what sounds kind of like a meow, and I haven't figured out if they have meaning as well.
posted by tavella at 1:13 PM on July 8, 2016


rifflesby, I've seen some people who tested that out, and they say the box flashing just means it updated. So I'm not sure if you can count on that.
posted by tavella at 1:15 PM on July 8, 2016


Washington DOT (previously) had an adorable tweet warning people not to play and drive.
posted by epersonae at 2:38 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


robocop, we're going to need to see that picture (or a cute picture of your son and a less phallic pokemon).

The WeedleWang picture got deleted pretty quickly. Here he is with his Evee, who is another thorn in my side because she's not very tough but he keeps wanting to battle her at gyms. She loses.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:56 PM on July 8, 2016 [21 favorites]


rifflesby, I've seen some people who tested that out, and they say the box flashing just means it updated. So I'm not sure if you can count on that.

Yeah, I've just been out trying it for myself, and if the pings are for hot/cold they aren't frequent or informative enough to be much use. :/

I hope they do make it into a proper hot/cold. Being able to actually track the guys down would be amazing.
posted by rifflesby at 4:45 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


(You can still track/triangulate by watching the order of pokemon in the list as you walk, since they are sorted by proximity. But something more informative than that would be nice.)
posted by rifflesby at 4:49 PM on July 8, 2016


Oh hey, if you've found yourself lamenting the decline of gay cruising culture, spotting other Pokemon Go players wandering in the neighborhood park at 1 AM in search of Meowth makes for a pretty good simulacrum of the experience.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 5:03 PM on July 8, 2016 [21 favorites]




I've seen at least one "Pokémon are for customers only" sign in a business's window on Twitter.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:40 PM on July 8, 2016 [19 favorites]


Our dog is exhausted from all the walks we've taken her on over the last two days, and it's been hilarious running into people all over playing it. It's been a really fun distraction.
posted by Torosaurus at 7:43 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've never played a Pokemon game before but I've caught five so far this evening, and I'm planning a walk tomorrow. What is happening here?
posted by epj at 8:01 PM on July 8, 2016 [6 favorites]


I've also never played before, but I've been looking for something like this while I wait for Run An Empire so I gave it a shot. There is a pokestop on my regular walking route so I guess I'll keep playing.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:57 PM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Confirmed that playing hot-and-cold based on the ordering of the Nearby list works -- I saw a Wartortle pop up with 2 footprints, and went out to hunt it down. It seems like 1 footprint means "within a block or two" and 2 means "3 or 4 blocks". So 3 footprints is probably not worth going after, unless you're walking a certain direction anyway and notice it moving up the list.
posted by rifflesby at 10:47 PM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is a subversive urbanist game. Lot of parents going to discover how unwalkable their cities are for small kids. Maybe the next Jane Jacobs trains pokeymans
posted by anthill at 10:49 PM on July 8, 2016 [18 favorites]


Also I look forward to the genre sequels with ballsier legal departments?
posted by anthill at 10:50 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've seen at least one "Pokémon are for customers only" sign in a business's window on Twitter.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:40 PM on July 8


Obvious photoshop is obvious: Flickr
posted by bizwank at 10:56 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh look, they did an AR version of Pokemon Snap. Crazy kids with their rock and roll music and their gotta catch 'em alls.
posted by ostranenie at 4:55 AM on July 9, 2016


I basically never play vidja games of any type, but I just downloaded this to see what all the fuss is about, and uh. I could easily see becoming obsessed with it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:10 AM on July 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


I was sitting on my porch last night and three young men went past, all with their phones out in front of them talking excitedly and then clustered in front of the neighbor's house. Without this thread, I'd have been confused but I'm guessing that they were playing this game.
posted by octothorpe at 6:55 AM on July 9, 2016 [5 favorites]


I was finishing a long walk along the bikepath last night when a young couple walked by close together with their phones out. As they passed me, I heard the young man tell his girlfriend "Everyone is doing it!"

Another time I might have rolled my eyes, but that section of the bikepath has a kind of sweet spot for Pokemon where we were. "It's true!" I replied loudly. "I just caught one!" I heard approving laughter as they walked away.

That was the fourth or fifth set of strangers I had friendly interactions with last night. This game is crazy. The only person we saw standing around who wasn't playing Pokémon was the guy in studded leather waiting for someone outside a pet store. He was just watching snakes. And I'm still surprised he wasn't catching Pokémon.
posted by maryr at 7:37 AM on July 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


My theory is that this is just a way for Google to collect more data for walking directions for Maps.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:03 AM on July 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


(Niantic came out of Google Labs and went independent last year, but Google is still one of their big investors)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:05 AM on July 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I just downloaded the game this morning to see what all the fuss was about, but since I've never played another Pokemon game before I didn't entirely know what I was doing. Within a minute of leaving the house I saw two other people absorbed in their phones who immediately asked me if I was playing Pokemon Go. When I said yes and I was still figuring out how to use it, we walked together for a bit and they showed me how to find a PokeStop.

I saw tons of other people playing the whole time I went to the Farmer's market and got coffee. Later I ran into an old acquaintance playing in the park; we caught up a bit on our walk home, and he showed me a few more things about how the game works.

Definitely going to keep playing, for the positive social interactions if nothing else.
posted by ActionPopulated at 12:34 PM on July 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


My theory is that this is just a way for Google to collect more data for walking directions for Maps.

Ingress players have suspected the same for years. It's usually countered by someone pointing out that the gameplay aspects have players walking in ways that no sane pedestrian would consider. It was bad enough when Ingress players were walking from player-submitted Point of Interest to player-submitted Point of Interest, but PoGO is even worse because of the seemingly random places Pokemon can spawn.

They're not entirely random though. One of the early field test versions used to show shimmering overlays over places that the game considered Pokemon Habitats, places they were more likely to spawn. A later update in the field test turned these shimmers off in most areas of the map, except for in parks and other regions that are dark green on the map. The habitat shimmers were most likely removed to improve rendering performance and reduce battery consumption, but kept in parks to encourage play in those types of areas.

Before they were removed though, keen eyed field testers instantly recognized how Niantic had chosen where to place habitats. Niantic's earlier game, Ingress, has a basic energy resource, called XM, that can be found at the Point of Interest "Portals" in that game, but more importantly, can also be found scattered in patches all over the map, and the places where you'd find those scattered pools of XM in Ingress directly corresponded to where habitat overlays were shown. Just as Niantic had recycled Portal locations into PokeStops/Gyms, they recycled the locations of background XM to be habitats.

The interesting thing about background XM in Ingress, is that from a gamelore standpoint, it is an extradimensional energy that leaks into our world and collects at places of human activity. Very few Ingress players bother with that game's lore however, so they set about to try to figure out if they could reverse engineer how Niantic was distributing it. The general conclusion was that while they were still a part of Google, Niantic had asked the android department for a list of locations where they had a lot of location services pings from devices that were moving at walking speed or less. So places like shopping centers and urban pedestrian malls, and transit stops you can find plenty of background XM, but also gas stations, high traffic congested intersections, and cell phone retailers with their shelves of demo units running all day long in the same place. Suburban residential areas? Not so much, except for a few isolated houses that would be lit up with XM like the local Verizon store. This confused the player-investigators who were working on the theory until someone reported that they knew why the house in their neighborhood had so much XM, and it was because it was an independent businessperson in the "herbal" market who happened subscribe to one of that industry's best practices by keeping a lot of "burner phones" on hand (totally missing the point that burner phones should best have location services turned off).

The fact that these locations got recycled into Pokemon Habitats (even if for the most part habitats aren't visible to players anymore) is a bit dystopian. Kids aren't going to know it's probably not a good idea to hang around high traffic intersections or the front yard of that one house, all they'll know is that's where they seem to find the most pokemon. And it still screws Google out of good walking data, because the game is just telling people go walk in places it already knows that a lot of people walk.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:58 PM on July 9, 2016 [38 favorites]


I wanted to say thank you all, because I've been seeing people all day today who are playing this or talking about it, and I only know what they're doing because of this thread.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:11 PM on July 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


By the way, I suspect that it's not incompetence that is causing the problems. Niantic has a lot of information from both regular Ingress play and Anomalies about how to code to deal with heavy usage in AR games. And they are using Google Cloud, and I suspect have had a bunch of senior engineers from there dealing with this 24-7 since Wednesday, and Google isn't exactly inexperienced with shoveling around massive amounts of data to large numbers of people. I suspect we are just seeing what happens when a substantial percentage of the United States is playing the same AR game. The system gets hammered like the Wrath of God even as you pour more resources in.
posted by tavella at 2:25 PM on July 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


I just installed it and killed two in my patio but it had eaten about a quarter of my battery by that time and it took me about fifty tries to find a nickname which was annoying.
posted by octothorpe at 3:03 PM on July 9, 2016


I had a 15 minute walk from the subway through Chinatown today and I caught like 8 Pokemon on the way to brunch! This game is so fucking fun y'all. (I did wind up killing my battery after a few more hours out though.)

I'm gonna go do this in Central Park someday soon! Should be a blast.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:29 PM on July 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


Annnnd right now I'm getting a 'server issues, please come back later' message. But... but I wanna catch 'em all
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:32 PM on July 9, 2016


Oh, Sorry. Caught two, not killed two. I've never actually played a Pokemon game before although I've certainly paid for many of them.
posted by octothorpe at 3:36 PM on July 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I set up the ingress portals in my neighborhood so that you can barely driveby hack them (to make people pull off to play) and have already had people just stopping their damn cars in the road to catch Pokemón.

If you're walking the routes (lots of sidewalks) it's a great place to hack/catch.
posted by tilde at 4:15 PM on July 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


I just installed it and killed two in my patio but it had eaten about a quarter of my battery by that time

Yeah, if you plan to play for any length of time you're gonna want something like one of these. I spent quite a few hours this morning strolling around town with a cable snaking out of my pocket and into the phone in my hand.

There's also all the usual battery-saving tricks, like turning off the music, and turning your screen brightness way down when possible. I don't recommend their own battery-save setting (which turns the screen off when you're phone's upside-down, e.g. When your hand's down at your side), because I've very frequently had it bug out and be unable to recognize the touchscreen after waking up.
posted by rifflesby at 4:26 PM on July 9, 2016


Yeah I had the same thing happen with low power mode on iPhone.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:53 PM on July 9, 2016


I've never played a Pokemon game before and randomly decided to sign up mostly based on this thread. Being on campus there are a lot of stops and Pokemon around. My museum workplace is a gym, amusingly. Also most of our sculptures in our garden are stops. One of the stop descriptions, a De Suvero sculpture, amusingly repeats a strange and not really true campus legend about the sculpture. Now we'll never get people to stop repeating it! Thanks, Nintendo!
posted by PussKillian at 5:14 PM on July 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


If you're getting a battery pack, I'd recommend looking at the Anker ones. Good product, and lots of good customer service reports I've heard.
posted by MattWPBS at 5:30 PM on July 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


I finally opened the battery pack I got for Christmas just for this game. It's charging up now. Never had a need for it before!
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:40 PM on July 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'd recommend looking at the Anker ones.

Anker is certainly a favorite among Ingress players. They're one of two manufacturers to have actually put out special limited edition Ingress-branded batteries. I just bought my 5th Anker since I started playing Ingress in Jan of 2013.
posted by radwolf76 at 5:45 PM on July 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Guys help it's 9:30pm and I am considering taking a walk to the grocery store "for beer" (for pokeymans)
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:28 PM on July 9, 2016 [15 favorites]


This morning Mr. Corpse saw someone drive down our block with his phone up, looking at his screen, coming to a halt at the Pokestop. We don't have a sidewalk where the Pokestop is, there's a ditch there, it's a street where a lot of us walk, and we have a lot of people with disabilities in the immediate area. I hope Pokestop drive-bys don't become a problem.

My kids and I have loved playing so far -- we're geocachers and one of us is a hardcore Pokemon fan, so this is just our thing.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:25 PM on July 9, 2016


Ungh. Not even a week in and the Tryhards are starting to take over all the local gyms.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:31 PM on July 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


As a diehard Ingress player, I had the pleasure of showing and explaining Ingress to quite a few PoGo players last night, in a park.

Then I fielded the whole park. Because no one else was playing Ingress at the time, so I didn't have to worry about the Resistance tearing apart my pretty emerald triangles. They were too busy running after Squirtles.
posted by spinifex23 at 11:42 PM on July 9, 2016 [12 favorites]


Whee! I got my first more than 1k CP Poke, an Arcanine. Unfortunately, it abandoned its cool fire powers for the incredibly lame Bulldoze.
posted by tavella at 1:09 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I wanted to hit up the gyms this morning* but the server's gone. At this rate, we'll never get a worldwide release.

*Not how I usually begin my sentences
posted by Gordafarin at 1:53 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I live in the mountains, and slightly disappointed that the playing field is basically limited to roads. Hunting is much better in town, even in a parking lot.
posted by krinklyfig at 4:29 AM on July 10, 2016


I had a lot of fun playing Ingress. I think the highlight was the raid flipping the sculpture garden at UCLA at 3am, but my team leader was a 20-something tech bro. Everyone around was great but I could not abide his bro-ness. Also, I live in a really packed area. When the wind is blowing the right way I can reach three portals from bed (two have been converted to Poke stops) and I felt a ton of pressure to keep my section of town blue. But I did lose a pant size.

I'm so glad I saw this thread because I know nothing about Pokemon and I wouldn't have paid attention to this. I'm really enjoying it but I'm not pAying too close attention to the training and comparing stats, just impulsively powering them up, transferring extras, and evolving them when I can. I joined on 7/7 and I'm just over halfway to level 10, which I think is good considering I've stayed within a 5-mile radius and have been taking a lot of busses. The downside to that is it's taking forever to hatch these eggs.

I was just thinking that, since I'm not playing Ingress, I don't really need to schlep around this brick of a battery (an Anker, it's great) but I guess not. There server thing is a drag, but the bigger drag is going through the whole 2fa ordeal since I can only get a code via SMS. Otherwise, this has been a very difficult time for me, and this is a great distraction.

This would be a good meetup activity. The idea had been floated for Ingress but the teams made it difficult.

Also, I have a huge poke craving which must be sated.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:05 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Side-loaded in the UK and already met someone else playing on Sunday morning.
posted by fullerine at 6:41 AM on July 10, 2016


Somebody stuck a lure in the community garden a few blocks away. I've been sitting here in the sunshine eating a cheese danish and I've caught like 5 things. And two other people have shown up who I am 90% sure were also playing.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:28 AM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


The house across the street is a PokeStop because it's Gertrude Stein's birthplace. I'm not sure why exactly that pleases me.
posted by octothorpe at 7:35 AM on July 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


Am I right in guessing that this would not be as fun on a device with WiFi-only capabilities?
posted by nickmark at 8:29 AM on July 10, 2016


Am I right in guessing that this would not be as fun on a device with WiFi-only capabilities?

That all depends on whether or not there would be useable WiFi hotspots in the area you want to play, even if it means tethering to someone's phone. The listed requirement is "Strong internet connection (Wi-Fi, 3G, or 4G)", but I have played it in 2G (it's a struggle with lag, but it can be done). The other thing that's a requirement is GPS, and I've heard from some players who had iPads that didn't have GPS that there was an add-on chip that did work with the game.
posted by radwolf76 at 9:10 AM on July 10, 2016


Last night I went out to a meetup with my LGBTQ+ singles group. We met in a bar in the Dallas Gayborhood.

Out of curiosity, I fired up the game before I got out of the car. And oh, my lord, the entire Gayborhood is RIDDLED with Gyms and Pokéstops. Someone had stuck a Lure Module up on the Round Up Saloon Pokéstop, so it was exploding in shiny pink hearts...and people kept refreshing it through the night. The Gayborhood, it turns out, is a very active Pokémon hunting ground. I sat in my car and giggled in delight for a good several minutes.

(yes, I slipped away from the meetup with another player in my group to go grab some Pokéballs and a few little monsters, of course I did)

The bartender told me she had left her phone in her car all day yesterday so it was overheated when she got back to it, but one of the many Pokéstops threw her some eggs and Pokéballs, and so she had to frantically race to pick them all up before her phone shut off from the heat.

Was such a fun night.
posted by angeline at 9:20 AM on July 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


My roommate and I went on our weekly comic book run, and of course the local comic shop is a gym. We headed to my office on the way home to grab the pokestops and gym there. We noticed there was a gym at a park across the street, and walked over- only to find another five or so groups of people wandering around the soccer field, phones out, chasing pokemon. It was amazing- we kept a running commentary between all of us as we found interesting pokemon. There were families, and groups of teenagers, 20-30 somethings, and everything else. It was pretty amazing.
posted by Torosaurus at 9:35 AM on July 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Black man plays Pokemon Go, enjoys it for five minutes before adding it to "the extremely long list of things white people can do without fear of being killed, while Black people have to realistically be wary."
posted by clawsoon at 10:21 AM on July 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


Those of you who are new to pokemon may find this chart useful. If you're seeing e.g. "Super effective!" in gym battles, this is why.
posted by rifflesby at 1:51 PM on July 10, 2016 [3 favorites]


> I have a huge poke craving which must be sated

I was disappointed today when I went to Poke to the Max and it wasn't a gym.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:29 PM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]




Okay, I have a basic "how the game was programmed" question that's been fascinating me. And forgive the obvious cluelessness, but I am unfamiliar with both any version of Pokemon, and with Ingress.

So - this is a game where people wander around in the world, and there are random Pokemons that are presumably tied to various GPS locations - and when someone with the game on their phone is nearby, it shows up as a Pokemon they can catch. I got that much - but what is fascinating me is, how does the Pokemon signal get attached to a given GPS location in the first place? Is it some kind of randomly-generated thing, where the game controllers are just constantly generating randomized GPS coordinates and uploading them to the cloud for people to find? Is it the same on everyone's phone, or if one person catches one, does that mean it's gone and the next person to come along to that same location won't see it? Is there a finite number in the world that were generated when the game was launched?

I don't know why this of all things is fascinating me but it is.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:22 PM on July 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Those of you who are new to pokemon may find this chart useful. If you're seeing e.g. "Super effective!" in gym battles, this is why.

Is there an easy way to compare your Pokemon? I've got 12-15 of a few and flipping back and forth between them, trying to remember all the different powers and weights and other stats is breaking my brain.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:54 PM on July 10, 2016


Betamax
MySpace
Ingress
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:21 PM on July 10, 2016 [11 favorites]


Is it the same on everyone's phone, or if one person catches one, does that mean it's gone and the next person to come along to that same location won't see it?

Fortunately for those of us with more than one child, yes, it's the same on everyone's phone. So the five-year-old and the seven-year-old can both catch the same creature in the same spot, rather than creating fights about whose turn it is to get one. They also seem to regenerate after some period of time, so you can come back later and catch the same type of creature in the same spot. That's what our family found on our evening walk tonight, anyway.

When I woke up this morning I knew nothing about Pokemon, either. One thing I've learned is that it's a good thing I was a little too old to get sucked in when they first came out, because they seem to scratch a lot of my innate collect/organize/improve itches...
posted by nickmark at 8:24 PM on July 10, 2016 [4 favorites]


I know nothing about Pokémon (I was born too late to grow up with it) and I usually lack the patience to stick with any game for very long, but for now at least this is amusing to play with.

I live in a residential neighborhood without much activity, so in the first couple of days I just hit up the pokéstop at the church down the street, and some others while I was out shopping. But tonight Mrs. mbrubeck thought it would be fun to go for a short a walk and try to get some cute pokémon photos. During our walk we spotted a pair of people nearby with their phones out, and a while later saw there was a lure planted at the closest pokéstop. We headed over and found the two players we’d seen before. They were super-excited about the game and about Pokémon in general. One had just reached level 11 and said she’d done more this weekend than ever before.

I do hope they work out the bugs and come up with better low-power/background modes. The game is fun but I’m not going to use it that often if I have to haul around an extra battery pack, or frequently wait 30 seconds to restart and log in. I can definitely see the appeal of the (currently unavailable) wristwatch thingy.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:36 PM on July 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oops, I meant I was born too early to grow up with it.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:45 PM on July 10, 2016


Both my wife and I started this weekend, and neither of us ever saw the cartoon. So when we started it, we were all "Ahh! A monster on my dashboard! How do I catch it? We will hit it with the pokeball! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!" One bludgeoned pokemon later, we got into the swing f things.

Also, I have walked more this weekend than I have in the last three months. Our walking monitors think we've been put on a forced march.
posted by happyroach at 11:20 PM on July 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is it the same on everyone's phone, or if one person catches one, does that mean it's gone and the next person to come along to that same location won't see it

Yesterday I found some fellow trainers in the park who had put a lure into a nearby Pokestop (which attracts pokemon to that location for everybody) - we sat there and every few minutes, one of us would announce the next poke that had popped up, and we all proceeded to capture it.

We all saw the same pokemon, and were all able to catch it for ourselves, though each one's stats varied depending on trainer level.
posted by Gordafarin at 1:16 AM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is there an easy way to compare your Pokemon? I've got 12-15 of a few and flipping back and forth between them, trying to remember all the different powers and weights and other stats is breaking my brain.

If you mean you've got 12-15 of a single type, don't keep them all! Look at the two or three with the highest CP (combat power); pick the one or two with the biggest numbers next to the attacks and/or with the fewest little blue bars next to the 'special' attack; ignore the weight and size stuff completely because it doesn't seem to have any in-game effect. Then go through all the rest of them and hit the button at the bottom that says 'transfer.' This will remove the pokemon from your inventory and send it to the Professor, in exchange for one candy for that species. If you collect enough candies, you can level up the one or two most powerful ones you decided to keep, and then you will have a much much more powerful pokemon.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:02 AM on July 11, 2016 [10 favorites]


I made a few more Team Valor signs and my son and I have been asking business that are also gyms if we can put them up. The local video arcade/bar near our place said yes pretty quickly. I've had a few requests to carve/print some Mystic and Instinct signs so will get to work on that this week.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:45 AM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Still waiting for this to hit the Google Play Canada store. Hurry up damnit?!!
posted by Fizz at 5:14 AM on July 11, 2016


There are four PokeStops on the grounds of my library - none of which are reachable from my office. Oh well. Still, I should hit up the YA/Children's librarians to see if we want to do a LureFest or something.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:28 AM on July 11, 2016


Thanks, showbiz_ liz! At first I was semi-randomly transferring extras, based mostly on CP, but then I started trying to compare all the stats and recall that info 10 seconds later, which is what was driving me bonkers. Once I sort all these out it will be much easier.

I should hit up the YA/Children's librarians to see if we want to do a LureFest or something.

This immediately came to mind.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:59 AM on July 11, 2016


So where do the Pokemon COME from? Is there a finite number in the world, or is the game constantly generating them and randomly placing them at random GPS coordinates?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:59 AM on July 11, 2016


I had my nephews for the weekend, so after reading this thread, I downloaded the game on Friday night. By the time I picked them up on Saturday, I'd captured a bunch of Pokemon, and I was approaching Level 5. I had the best time with them cruising around the little college town near my apartment. We found Poke-stops, got killed in a Gym battle with our sad, under-evolved Poke-army, and took selfies with the wild pokemon. Best of all, there's no win/lose component to the game except in battles, where the boys aren't fighting each other. It was so much fun, especially when we saw three thirtysomething women at a Pokestop just learning how to collect the stuff. Learning to play a game with them was such a good time, and they loved how much more they know about pokemon than I do. Now, Level 8, Team Yellow! Still haven't won a battle yet, though.
posted by gladly at 7:20 AM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have a toddler who has been getting up at 5 in the morning for the last few weeks (no matter what we do), and I've been struggling with the lack of entertainment/shopping to be done in these early hours. Turns out that he is very amenable to being strapped into the stroller for a long windy route through campus while I play Pokemon. I had no problem with server crashes before 8am on a Saturday.

We invited friends over to our house on Saturday night to hang on our patio, and everyone was idly catching pokemon as we chatted.
posted by aabbbiee at 8:13 AM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm really enjoying this so far. I might just be a collector, although knowing that I won't lose my Pokemon permanently if I decide to go to battle helps. I am level 6 but haven't picked a team yet! I had 4 conversations with total strangers about it this weekend (staff at restaurants/shops, people walking down the street or in the park.) If nothing else, this is a fascinating social experiment.
posted by misskaz at 8:51 AM on July 11, 2016


EmpressCallipygos, the game is constantly generating new pokémons and placing them randomly, or semi-randomly. (It seems to have certain areas tagged as “habitat,” which radwolf76’s comment explored in detail.)

If I were programming the game server, the pokémon spawning would happen “lazily”: Instead of constantly updating the whole globe, it would ignore any areas with no players active. As soon as a player appears and their phone asks the server for a list of nearby pokémon, then it would randomly place a set of of them in the area (and continue spawning new ones at random intervals while players are still around). But this is just speculation, since there’s way to know what pokémon are doing where no humans are around…

**Another typo in my earlier comment: The player we met said she’d done more walking than ever before.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:55 AM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Out of curiousity, what is the highest player level people are seeing out there? I was surprised to see some level 22's near me last night.
posted by maryr at 9:00 AM on July 11, 2016


Ultimately I think I'm more of an Ingresser, but my kid is in love with the capturing mechanic and with the idea that incubating eggs hatch by walking around, so I'm having fun with PoGo too. We were 0.1 km away from hatching an egg yesterday after going for a hike and he held my phone and walked in circles around the yard until it clicked over. He's already an active kid but this it's always good to have further encouragement to go outside.

maryr--mid-to-upper teens here at the moment. I've heard that there are some tricks for getting lots of XP, something about hatching an egg a certain way.
posted by tchemgrrl at 9:04 AM on July 11, 2016


The fastest way to level is to save up the pokemon you want to evolve, and even some extra evolutions -- I'm still evolving pidgeys, for example, because I collect tons of the candy and they make good arena holders. Then pop a lucky egg and run through them all. I went from barely 14 to nearly 15 just sitting in my living room the other day.

Also, if you live in a suburban or urban area, check the ingress maps near you (there's a bunch of apps and online places) and look for dense clusters of portals. There's various downtowns, universities, and cemeteries that have 100+ portals/pokestops in a small area, and that's 5000+ points right there, as you get 50 points the first time you hit a new pokestop. Plus hitting different areas will increase the likelihood of finding new types, and that's another 500 every time.
posted by tavella at 9:16 AM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


So my suburban California town is absolutely crawling with Pokemon Go players. I've never seen so many teenagers out on sidewalks and parks. It's nuts. And my daughter is going out walking just to get eggs incubated. This is either the end of society or the glorious portal to a world where people stare at their phones in public instead of on their couches. I must have seen a hundred people outside on Sunday who were all obviously playing Pokemon Go.
posted by GuyZero at 9:54 AM on July 11, 2016 [6 favorites]



Betamax
MySpace
Ingress


Except Pokemon and Ingress were written by the same people? And use the same POI database?
posted by GuyZero at 9:55 AM on July 11, 2016


Yeah, that assumes that one takes away from the other. Locally we've seen a huge influx of new Ingress players, and they seem to be doing things in between bouts at the Gym and not just signing up for access to the maps.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:25 AM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


The big thing I think PoGo has over Ingress is that PoGo can be played, at least in theory, just about anywhere. Even if there's no nearby gyms or Pokestops you can still hunt Pokemon or manage your stable. In Ingress, unless you're at a portal, there's really nothing you can do.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:31 AM on July 11, 2016


I find myself super envious of the people who've created portals/PokeStops. Can I create portals/PokeStops?
posted by aabbbiee at 10:32 AM on July 11, 2016


aabbbie: Ingress hasn't allowed any new portal submissions for nearly a year, although you can submit new pictures or errata.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:34 AM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


AFAIK all PokeStops and Gyms are just Ingress portal locations, and Niantic stopped taking new portal submissions... I want to say a couple of years ago? They promised to work something out to reopen portal submissions and handle the workload but unless something's changed every PokeStop or Gym is a place that an Ingress player wanted to be in-game between two and four years ago.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:35 AM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Check your Google account settings. Pokemon Go is a huge security risk (for some people on iOS, it seems). I just checked my Google account and the article is right, the game is granted FULL access to my account.

I'm revoking access and starting over with a new throwaway account. :/
posted by misskaz at 10:36 AM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


(I will happily read any posts debunking the security risk thing; I don't personally know enough about apps accessing account info to judge the severity of the threat.)
posted by misskaz at 11:11 AM on July 11, 2016


On Android (for me at least), the game didn’t get any permissions to the Google account I signed in with. Probably because Android has a built-in Google authentication API that's different than what they used on iOS.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:48 AM on July 11, 2016


Isn't the solution to the Google account access to sign up for that Pokemon Club thing?
posted by maryr at 11:58 AM on July 11, 2016


Apparently the club pokemon signups are temporarily disabled due to the massive influx of users. So in theory yes, in practice no.
posted by GuyZero at 12:01 PM on July 11, 2016


This is either the end of society or the glorious portal to a world where people stare at their phones in public instead of on their couches.

Or, if you're paranoid, it is the Powers That Be's way of getting everyone distracted away from tying to fix the problem of police brutality.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:05 PM on July 11, 2016




Pokemon Go players battle Westboro Baptist church for control of virtual gym. Waking up in the weird science fiction future.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:46 PM on July 11, 2016 [6 favorites]




I finally found a team gym that had a low-level Pokemon, so I battled it with the same kind that had a few more CP. It beat me quite handily, but I was really confused because after I lost it turned into another team's gym with a high-powered Pokemon. Does that mean that someone else was battling at the same time? I don't think I like that.

One thing that's been hard to Google is why some Pokemon have a light blue background in the list. Does anyone know what that indicates?

AFAIK all PokeStops and Gyms are just Ingress portal locations, and Niantic stopped taking new portal submissions...

I came to ask about that. This morning there is a new gym at a location that did not have a gym or Pokestop 12 hours earlier. I am positive about this because it's at a bus stop I embarked and disembarked at at least three times in the last few days. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a portal there, either.

I've been hearing that it was bananas at the Santa Monica Pier this weekend. Reports of hundreds (thousands?) of people playing, and the Pokemon music was even playing over the PA. I took a walk down there this morning, and in 40 minutes I collected twenty* new Pokemon, plus assorted duplicates. It was exciting but I really like collecting the ones from other areas besides my own.

*Weedle, Spearow, Jigglypuff, Pares, Meowth, Psyduck, Poliwag, Abra, Machoke, Tentacool, Slowpoke, Magnemite, Shellder, Marowak, Horsea, Goldeen, Electrabuzz, Pinsir, Magikarp, Omanyte
posted by Room 641-A at 1:40 PM on July 11, 2016


Sometimes the server calls fail and it doesn't draw stuff on the map that should be there. I've had gyms come and go which basically seem to be bad server connections.

ALSO FROZEN POKEBALLS POST-CAPTURE. ARGH.
posted by GuyZero at 1:43 PM on July 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


Hello I have not read this thread but i wish to atch the pokes with a drone is this aloud y/n ALSO any way fro game to test if player is drone y/?

posted from my drone
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:46 PM on July 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Woah, that security risk issue misskaz posted about looks really serious. I just revoked Pokemon Go's access to my account, and I'm starting over with a new burner Google account. It looks like their overzealous access request for iOS users is a bug, and if they screw up that badly in that regard, it doesn't inspire much confidence in their security practices.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:49 PM on July 11, 2016


Room 641-A - the blue background shows around recent catches (last 24 hours or so). If you sort by "recent" you'll see all the blue ones at the top.

There definitely seems to be some wonky behavior with gyms. I've taken over gyms and added a pokemon to them, only to see a few minutes later that my pokemon is gone but others of the same team color have been added. As far as I know you can add extra pokemon to your team's gyms if the level is high enough, but I don't see how you can straight up replace a teammate's pokemon, yet that seems to be happening to me. (I suppose it's possible a vile Red or Blue defeated my pokemon, left the place empty, and then another glorious Yellow has put one in place, but that seems highly unlikely in the space of 5 minutes, especially when I didn't see any other players around). Plus I've encountered the 'invincible" bug where you get an enemy down to 1 HP and then can't kill it. Hopefully the kinks are worked out soon.
posted by Roommate at 1:55 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I can't wait till we can have meetups at the local PokeGym and just hang out with lures. IRL anyone?
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:59 PM on July 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hello I have not read this thread but i wish to atch the pokes with a drone is this aloud y/n ALSO any way fro game to test if player is drone y/?

posted from my drone


One person has already tried this and posted photos with the caption "I'm a cheater."

However, earlier precedent suggests that Niantic might actually be ok with drone use in its games.

As for testing whether the player is a drone, I don't know if anyone's taken a close look at the data traffic between client and server for Pokemon GO, but I know that in Ingress, sometimes when they suspect someone of cheating using automated tools, they'll institute a soft-ban where you can log into the game but not really have any in-game actions succeed. Seemingly, the only way out of an Ingress soft ban is to repeatedly do something called "Glyph Hacking" which is a memory-style minigame that involves tracing squiggly lines on a hexagonal grid of dots.

Presumably, something in this minigame lets them determine if you're human, and if I had to take a guess, I think they're gathering data from your acclelerometer and gyro sensors as you're tracing the lines. Even if someone were to teach a bot how to do the tracing game, there wouldn't the proper corresponding motion component. There is a bit of encrypted data that gets sent back to the servers from the client, and I don't believe any of the reverse engineers have cracked it (at least the ones that share their findings).

Similarly, I believe that spinning the PokeStop disc to get items and throwing the pokeballs are also watching not just the screen touches, but also how the phone moves. Remoting into a phone that's mounted on a drone would probably look very bot-like if they had this scheme in place for PoGO.
posted by radwolf76 at 2:28 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


ALSO FROZEN POKEBALLS POST-CAPTURE. ARGH.

Check the journal! Every time this happens it's been recorded as a capture for me no they end up in the inventory. I think the glitch has even captured a few who would have actually escaped.

Thanks, Roommate (no relation.) I want to do some reading up on the gyms anyway so I think I'll just focus on capturing instead of fighting.

Ugh, I guess it's time for a new account? And now I can't use my name again.

IRL anyone?

If I could nail my schedule down is post one for L.A.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:36 PM on July 11, 2016


Every time this happens it's been recorded as a capture for me no they end up in the inventory.

It's done that most of the time for me but a MISSED PIKACHU says that it doesn't happen 100% of the time.

Grrr.
posted by GuyZero at 3:19 PM on July 11, 2016


Yeah I only have about a 50% success rate when the pokeball freezes post-capture.
posted by misskaz at 4:11 PM on July 11, 2016




How to Revoke Pokémon Go’s Extensive Permissions to Your Google Account

Varying accounts on how/if it works and needed restarting/reinstalling. I haven't tried it yet
posted by Room 641-A at 5:21 PM on July 11, 2016


My pokeballs stopped freezing -- and I pause here to reflect on how my life has turned out -- after I tuned off LTE on my phone. Do I know what that means? Do I know if that's a good thing to do? No and no. But it works.

As far as battery draining: you can download the Google map for your area when you're at home on wifi, and that's supposed to help with battery life when you're out getting your Pokemon on.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:21 PM on July 11, 2016


> I'm revoking access and starting over with a new throwaway account

I use an old work e-mail address. The project it's associated with is dead, nobody will care.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:23 PM on July 11, 2016


I went out for a Pokemon hunting walk with my kids Saturday morning and my daughter loved it and I took some cute pictures of her posing with Pokemon. We even ran into someone else who was playing, who I have since seen walking around the neighbourhood.

The downside is that my daughter wanted to take our Pokemon stuffed toys with us and my 2 year-old son managed to throw his Chespin out of the stroller at some point and it is now gone forever. It is sad because he really looks (and acts) like Chespin so it was his Pokemon avatar in the same way that Snorlax is mine.

I think we'll make a habit of a morning Pokemon walk, but won't take any additional toys with us. Especially not my Snorlax.

I am kind of worried that we'll never progress at the same rate as more involved players so won't be able to challenge at the gyms, but as long as we get a few weeks of summer morning walks it will still be good.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:44 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


I am kind of worried that we'll never progress at the same rate as more involved players so won't be able to challenge at the gyms, but as long as we get a few weeks of summer morning walks it will still be good.

Yeah, as a parent there's just no way to compete with the thirteen-year-olds on summer break. You have to pretend it doesn't bother you.
posted by nickmark at 5:53 PM on July 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


If you're going to start over and you want to start with a Pikachu, this trick works.

Just wanted to add that I'm having tons of fun so far without using the gyms.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:02 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, you get to stack 6 attackers, so if it's a low level gym, you still have a decent chance against it if you are patient. Plus the gym holders have to leave their pokemon in the gym, which means they aren't going to have their best stuff there unless it's their home gym. You should still be able to to find spots to have fun with it even if some have a stack of six 1000+ defenders.
posted by tavella at 6:10 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I got a ginormous Lapras from a 10km egg today, which was great, but the 5km egg that should have hatched at the same time just disappeared. So stagger your eggs, I guess?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:36 PM on July 11, 2016


Also, here we are installing the new sign at Bit Bar Salem. I carved and pressed that one, but might just do them as silk screens going forward for ease of shirtage.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:45 PM on July 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


Except Pokemon and Ingress were written by the same people? And use the same POI database?

[deletes horrible sarcastic reply]

I'm not cranky at all Ingress players, just the ones who keep coming up to me and saying 'I MADE THIS NOT YOU YOU'RE A BAD PERSON'
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:25 PM on July 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm not cranky at all Ingress players, just the ones who keep coming up to me and saying 'I MADE THIS NOT YOU YOU'RE A BAD PERSON'

Wrong reaction. We're trying to recruit the parents instead.
posted by MattWPBS at 11:03 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Update on the Google permissions thing
posted by pixie at 11:30 PM on July 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Not sure if this is common knowledge, but I figured out a way to get coins for the item shop without spending real money. Once you've put one or more pokemon in a gym, go to the shop menu and click the shield in the top right corner. It seems you get coins based on how many pokemon you have in gyms at the moment (I only had one - I haven't been able to keep one in place for more than 10 minutes or so, gyms are very active around here - and it gave me 10 coins). Then a 24 hour counter will start before you can click the shield again.
posted by Roommate at 4:21 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yep 10 coins and 500 dust per gym (upto a max of 10 gyms) I think the timer is 21 hours rather than 24.

Game isn't even officially out in the uk and i've not managed to hold onto a gym for more than a hour.
posted by pixie at 5:01 AM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Well, for the moment, Pokemon Go is a bigger pop culture phenomenon than Game of Thrones and Donald Trump combined, and is sucking all the air from the room so fast, it'll soon die from a new variation of autoerotic asphyxiation. So for the 30 seconds or so remaining in its designated 15 minutes, Alex Balk of The Awl has compiled "The Seventeen Remaining Pokemon Go Headlines". (well, there may be a few others, but that's where we come in...)
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:18 AM on July 12, 2016


For some odd reason there are three gyms within three blocks of my apartment. I have guys at two of them right now and am wondering how wrong it would be to beef some more pokes up and totally dominate this neighborhood for Red
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:22 AM on July 12, 2016


In terms of pop culture phenoms it feels more like Hamilton to me- came out of fucking nowhere to make people like a genre they've never liked before, baffling the olds who don't understand these hiphopymons
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:24 AM on July 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Damn it that joke link says the same thing. But it's TRUE though!
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:26 AM on July 12, 2016


Would be cool if the day/night toggle on the map could sync with local sunrise/sunset time. It seems to just switch over at exactly 8am/pm.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:30 AM on July 12, 2016


I think a lot of the news hype comes from media discovering yet again that mobile and casual gaming is a huge industry, and a successful mobile game can rival mainstream movies for revenue in early weeks of adoption with "million-dollar days."

Which they'll forget all about until the next time a mobile or casual game release has breakout success, then we'll see the same news cycle all over again.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:50 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Of course, Hugo-nominated author Chuck Tingle has gotten in on this: "Pokebutt Go: Pounded By 'Em All"
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:55 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


This morning I caught a drowzee in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.
posted by octothorpe at 6:07 AM on July 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think a lot of the news hype comes from media discovering yet again that mobile and casual gaming is a huge industry, and a successful mobile game can rival mainstream movies for revenue in early weeks of adoption with "million-dollar days."

I think there's more to it than that - this isn't just the next Farmville or Angry Birds. It's visible in a way that non-GPS based mobile games aren't. Here in Greenville, SC it feels like everyone is playing this game. I walked down to Falls Park downtown on Sunday, and there were at least a hundred players of all ages hunting pokemon, throwing down lures, contesting for the gym - and interacting. Dozens of strangers congregating spontaneously in the same place, chatting, joking, trading tips, good naturedly ribbing the other teams. It was amazing. Even last night, after work I wandered downtown, and Pokemon Go players were everywhere. It feels like more people are playing than not, sometimes.

The game is still new, and I'm certain the hype will drop dramatically in a week or two, but for now it's definitely a phenomenon unlike any other game. Ingress had it, to some degree, but not nearly to this scale.
posted by Roommate at 6:15 AM on July 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think a lot of the news hype comes from media discovering yet again that mobile and casual gaming is a huge industry, and a successful mobile game can rival mainstream movies for revenue in early weeks of adoption with "million-dollar days."

No way. This is not "another fun mobile game." For like 95% of people (excluding the few super-nerdy people who had heard of/played Ingress), this is a completely new paradigm in gaming.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:49 AM on July 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Supervisor: "Hey Liz. You're the only Millennial I know. Have you heard about this 'Pokemon Go'?"

(She is up to level 2. I showed her my 860CP Clefairy and she could not believe it.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:54 AM on July 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that my office's two-week metrics meeting next Wednesday will show a Pokemon induced drop in productivity. It seems to be all anyone around here is talking about.
posted by octothorpe at 7:07 AM on July 12, 2016


From my desk, I can hit a PokeStop, which is equal parts awesome and productivity-dropping all at once. Lately, people seem to enjoy dropping lures around it during their breaks and it become all manner of tempting.

I have yet to actually meet a fellow co-worker playing the game, though. We all appear to be desk-hunting.
posted by PearlRose at 7:13 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Holocaust Museum to visitors: Please stop catching Pokemon here

posted by pixie at 7:26 AM on July 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


For anyone wondering why the Holocaust Museum is a pokestop. The old portal submission guidelines from ingress.
posted by pixie at 7:32 AM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


From my desk, I can hit a PokeStop, which is equal parts awesome and productivity-dropping all at once. Lately, people seem to enjoy dropping lures around it during their breaks and it become all manner of tempting

My Ingress desk-portal is now also a desk-Gym. There's at least three blue players, one yellow and maybe one red in the office. Met the yellow player, now renaming my Pokemon with intra-departmental insults.
posted by MattWPBS at 7:36 AM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Holocaust Museum to visitors: Please stop catching Pokemon here

Never forget. Except Niantic apparently did.
posted by radwolf76 at 8:04 AM on July 12, 2016


> From my desk, I can hit a PokeStop, which is equal parts awesome and productivity-dropping all at once

A friend of mine can hit one from her kid's bed.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:39 AM on July 12, 2016


My son and I share an account, because I only like the geocaching-like experience of finding the stuff and leave the gyms to him. Does anyone know if that's going to cause a problem for us eventually, if we both log in at the same time?

Obviously we should just try doing it, but so far we've never had two charged phones while the servers were up.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:42 AM on July 12, 2016


I can hit a stop from my bed. It's across the street but the street is only three car widths wide.
posted by octothorpe at 8:44 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Things I learned last night: despite his lazy looking ways, a 1500 point Snorlax is an arena murder machine. Level 3 gym, he chews right through all three defenders, and they weren't tiny, three rounds of that knocking 3k prestige off each time, and it's gone and becomes all mine.
posted by tavella at 9:01 AM on July 12, 2016 [3 favorites]




Went for another Pokemon walk today and it was pretty fun. We saw a Pokestop had a lure going but by the time we got there it had ended - we were able to catch a Hypno when we were close though so that was good. Our egg ended up hatching which was also pretty exciting. There is a block of condos we walked by where there were multiple Pokestops as well as a gym. Must be pretty convenient for the people who live in them.

Our current hunting method is to walk towards various pokestops and then stop by anywhere we see leaves nearby. Pokemon will show up this way but there are also times where there are lots of rustling leaves nearby but no Pokemon shows up. Is there a better way to do this? We aren't looking for any specific Pokemon at the moment, we just want to catch as many as we can.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:14 AM on July 12, 2016


There are three pokestops within reach of my desk at work. Earlier this morning someone had dropped lures on two of them. So without moving I got 2 psyducks, a pidgeotto, a rattata, a horsea, a krabby, and a poliwag. In like...3 minutes? The funny thing is I was only opening the app to check on an egg. I even thought, "Dammit, stop showing more pokemon I just want to check on my egg!" But they were all good/cute/new-to-me pokemon so I couldn't just leave them there.

Just now opened the game again... add magikarp and oddish to my newly-acquired pokemons list.

Playing downtown feels like cheating because the pokemon are so abundant. And it makes the (fairly well "stocked") park near my apartment seem relatively desolate.
posted by misskaz at 10:17 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Turns out the iOS permissions bug was the part where it said it had full permissions, not that it actually got full permissions.

enter Slack security dev Ari Rubinstein. He's tested out the OAuth token used by Pokémon to see what has access to in a Google account, and posted the results on GitHub. Ultimately, what he's found is that the problem is likely more related to use of an out-of-date API that caused Google to display a message showing it had "full access" to your account, even though the app ultimately does not have permission to access things like your email or calendar even if it wanted to.
posted by GuyZero at 10:48 AM on July 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also Niantic said they're working on an update.
posted by GuyZero at 10:50 AM on July 12, 2016


Anyone else have problems with AR on their phones? Nothing appears for me, and panning in search of monsters drags everything to a standstill.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:31 AM on July 12, 2016


CBrachyrhynchos, does your particular phone model have a gyroscope sensor? From what I hear, devices that don't can't properly display the AR at this time.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:45 AM on July 12, 2016


I've had to turn off the AR, it's causes the catching animations to be super laggy and I end up throwing either way off or it didn't register my flick and the ball gets dropped lazily.

Also without AR you don't have to pan around to keep the monster in sight, useful if you're on a train like me during commutes.

I downloaded the game Saturday night and checked earlier to see it didn't show that it has full access to my Google Account.

If you're like me and you're just now powerful enough to start taking on Gyms, learning the different types is important. (especially, again like me, if you only ever watched the shows and never played the games and didn't memorize all the strengths and weaknesses of each type)
posted by numaner at 11:49 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, my gyro glitches.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:22 PM on July 12, 2016


A Geodude sighting on the library's grounds caused a minor stampede. There are definitely packs of a trainers wandering around town.

Is the biome thing verified? Because I live near a lot of cemeteries and have seen all of one Ghastly in the wild.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:16 PM on July 12, 2016


I've also had poor luck with Ghastly or any ghost type, despite trying a cemetery.
posted by tavella at 1:29 PM on July 12, 2016


I've verified water biomes are a thing at least. Have you tried at night? If it's safe to do that where you are?
posted by rifflesby at 1:36 PM on July 12, 2016


The one ghastly I got at night, but otherwise even at night it's been the same usual downtown stuff. But I plan to walk around a nearby campus tonight for a bit, see if I can get anything different.
posted by tavella at 1:39 PM on July 12, 2016


I found a ghastly in a public park during daytime.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:42 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm in Salem, MA so the biggest danger at night near cemeteries is being trampled by a ghost tour.

I think I'll check in with some of the tour guides I know to see if Pokemon is showing up on their walks. Some of them have over two dozen tourists in tow and I can't help but think that there would have to be at least 4-6 bored teens on each tour.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:43 PM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


One downside of all of this Pokemon Go is that it's absolutely tanking my data usage for the month. I'm nearly at my limit, and it's I still have 10 days left in my cycle.
posted by PearlRose at 1:56 PM on July 12, 2016


FWIW, those Pokemon I found at the pier I haven't seen anywhere else, not even a block from the ocean.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:08 PM on July 12, 2016


This is going to be a complete shitshow. I'll be there, if only to witness it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:11 PM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is the biome thing verified?

Mashable has an interview with Niantic CEO John Hanke, where he shares some vague details about how the biome thing looks from the back end.
posted by radwolf76 at 2:17 PM on July 12, 2016


Is the biome thing verified?

Clearly I have to stop doing whatever it was I'm doing and head to local cemetery to test this.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:58 PM on July 12, 2016


I got a Gastly at home. It showed up in my kitchen at night which was great timing because I was just explaining to my daughter how we'd be able to go out and hunt Pokemon the following morning. The closest cemeteries are a 20-30 minute walk from home so I think it had more to do with time of day than where we were.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:03 PM on July 12, 2016




Walking around in the smaller historical cemetery did reveal a lot of Venonat's. Will have to play in the big, internationally known cemetery some time this week.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:49 PM on July 12, 2016


OMG - weaponised Ingress.

I have seen friends reduced to shuffling, incoherent zombies by Ingress.

This will not end well.
posted by Devonian at 6:29 PM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


There seems to be one other player on the small Canadian island where I live. I took over some of their gyms this morning, and they seem to have taken them back this afternoon. I wonder if I'll ever actually meet this other player when I'm out playing one of these days (it's a small island and there aren't very many pokestops/gyms around).
posted by borsboom at 6:58 PM on July 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


That's a true-to-canon Pokémon rivalry in the making!
posted by rifflesby at 7:11 PM on July 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


Upsated iOS app pushed out, no longer have to re-enter credentials when the server logs you iut.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:38 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Be warned that there are reports of the update being broken if you are using a Club Pokemon account instead of Gmail.
posted by rifflesby at 7:48 PM on July 12, 2016


Pokeception
posted by Room 641-A at 9:39 PM on July 12, 2016


“Holocaust Museum to visitors: Please stop catching Pokémon here,” Andrea Peterson, The Washington Post, 12 July 2016
posted by ob1quixote at 10:57 PM on July 12, 2016


I also note that at least two friends reported hostile reactions from visitors or workers in nearby cemeteries. People there apparently got fed up with Ingress related traffic a while ago.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:00 PM on July 12, 2016


Recommendations for cemetery play:

Sound & Music OFF. Not even headphones, just turn them both off. I know at one point the game had a bug where certain sound effects would not respect that setting, so perhaps have the headphones plugged into the jack but not worn.

Have a dual purpose for being there: don't just go there for the pokeymenz, go there to pick up trash & straighten up any permanent flowers that the wind might have knocked over. (I know that some communities of Ingress players even arranged volunteer days with caretakers, where members of both teams would come out to help clean up.) Or bring a notebook to document the headstones of local historical figures so you can research them later. (Possibly find out if the local genealogy society has cataloged the information there, and if not, would they like some volunteer help?)

If there is an active service going on, come back later.

Research your local laws and respect them. For instance, in Tennessee it's actually a felony to "play at any game or amusement" in a cemetery.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:50 AM on July 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm gonna have to find a Rosary app for my phone so I can switch to it if questioned.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:03 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hah, I didn't even consider active cemeteries. Most the ones we have around here stopped accepting new occupants 150 years ago. The ones that still do are the giant landscaped garden affairs that people run in the mornings.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:24 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is there any way to write into a will that you are okay with, or actively encourage, playing games at your monument? Also, does anyone want to invest in a cemetery/arcade commercial venture with me?
posted by Drinky Die at 5:01 AM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Our library is doing a Lure Event today where we will continually cast lures on the PokeStop in front of our library for a few hours. We're putting up signs so people know! (I suggested wording them as "Yet Another Digital Resource Provided by the Libraries!" but I don't know if that's what got approved.) Thanks, hivemind, for the idea!
posted by aabbbiee at 7:04 AM on July 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Hah, I'll be doing the same thing at the concert on my library's lawn tonight. I'll swipe that line, too, like I swiped that gym from those blue suckers.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:37 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Cemetery tourism is nothing new. Cemeteries should be treated as quiet, reverent places, but that doesn't mean you can do nothing but morn there. It would be so sad for us to leave the dead completely alone.

Personally, I think of a stroll through a cemetery as something between a botanical garden and a museum. Don't just tromp through the graves willy nilly - try to stick to paths or at least walk the borders of a grave (not right in front of the headstone!). Take only pictures, leave only memorials. Think about the people who remain there. Thank god you were born in an age of antibiotics every time you pass a lamb.

If you are unfamiliar with (American) cemeteries this article has a good summary of etiquette. Here's another.
posted by maryr at 9:11 AM on July 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Take only pictures,

If you do take something, take out the trash. The groundskeepers won't bemoan you if you pick up other people's litter, and make their job a tad bit easier. Geocachers have a saying: "Cache In, Trash out," and it's not a far walk from geocaching to GeoCatchEmAll.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


I don't know if it's a server load issue or the latest app update (I'm on 1.0.2 on iPhone) but now almost every time I catch a pokemon the app freezes and I have to quit and restart.
posted by misskaz at 10:23 AM on July 13, 2016


yeah, that's happened a lot to me without the update
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:07 AM on July 13, 2016


Probably a combination of server issues, coverage issues (especially with AT&T in smaller towns) and new software.

Cherish these moments though! Once Europe and Asia come online, the internet might really actually break.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]




Hillary Clinton campaign using Pokemon Go to attract voters

A Pidgey? Seriously? Do they need 8 year-olds working the phone bank?
posted by GuyZero at 11:19 AM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think this is the downside of me being in a Pokemon hot spot. The freezing has happened to me before but never with this frequency.

My job should probably be happy that I can't play from my desk anymore.
posted by misskaz at 11:19 AM on July 13, 2016


I can't believe they haven't rolled this out in Japan yet.
posted by maryr at 1:23 PM on July 13, 2016


smaller cemeteries might not even require you to go all the way in. the range for pokestops is pretty wide, you can probably just stand out in the street and get to it. don't disturb anything if you don't have to go in.
posted by numaner at 2:02 PM on July 13, 2016


It seems a lot less stable with the update from this morning. It keeps locking up on me when I'm trying to catch one.
posted by octothorpe at 4:23 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Same here. It was more stable yesterday, once I turned off LTE.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:28 PM on July 13, 2016


Yep, seem more unstable.

Also, tracking a Pokemon seems like bullshit most of the time. The tracker is deliberately crippled so it doesn't make sense to use it, which is half the allure of the game.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:30 PM on July 13, 2016


Neil Cicierega has released his version of the Pokemon Rap.

I did not survive.
posted by rifflesby at 7:16 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Caught my first Gastly today in broad daylight standing between a club and a shopping mall. It's about as far from graveyard territory as you can get. There was a lure on the club, if that matters.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 11:16 PM on July 13, 2016


The mall is a figurative graveyard, a capitalist manifestation of existential decay.

Also, fuck Zubats.
posted by cortex at 11:30 PM on July 13, 2016 [12 favorites]


I caught all kinds of ocean pokemon! I can't wait until trading; I'll level up awesome sea pokemon to trade!
posted by Deoridhe at 12:17 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, fuck Zubats.

We can't stop here! this is Zubat country! No point in mentioning them though, poor bastard will turn on his AR camera soon enough.

...

We had two bags of tall grass, seventy-five pellets of rare candy, five sheets of high powered TM29, a salt shaker half full of stardust, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored Chesto Berries, Qualot Berries, Payapa Berries, Roseli Berries... and also a quart of Full Heal, a quart of Max Elixer, a case of Super Potion, a pint of raw Max Ether, and two dozen evolution stones. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious trainer inventory, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:30 AM on July 14, 2016 [11 favorites]


Pokemon Go has been released in the UK. I may never see my children again...
posted by pharm at 3:05 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Love this picture of a deer casually wandering by in Allegheny Cemetery as two guys play. The cemetery management doesn't seem to mind if you walk around as long as you don't bother the funerals.
posted by octothorpe at 3:55 AM on July 14, 2016


Is there an updates list of the habitats/biomes somewhere? I could have sworn I saw one, but Google is super unhelpful when it comes to anything with the word Pokemon in it right now. The LureFest at the library was pretty popular last night and I need to put together a primer for the Children's Room.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:21 AM on July 14, 2016


Also, fuck Zubats.

Rattatas are an invasive species in my neighborhood.
posted by gladly at 7:03 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Good eating, though.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:08 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, fuck Zubats.

I'm pretty sick of Drowsies myself.
posted by octothorpe at 7:28 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Well, that makes sense. A group of Drowsies is called a "sickness" after all.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:50 AM on July 14, 2016


Small businesses are buying and setting lures (at $1.19/hour) at Pokestops to draw in customers.
posted by PenDevil at 7:56 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, fuck Zubats.

Probably won't be too long until Zubats becomes an actual racist slang.

Please prove me wrong humanity!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:13 AM on July 14, 2016


Is Pokemon Go Illegal?

Does placing an AR object on a person’s property, without their permission, affect their interest in exclusive possession of property?

Does owning property in “the real world” extend property rights to any geo-locative, intellectual property elements that may be placed on it?

Is placing an AR object on a person’s private property, without their permission, a creation of an attractive nuisance?

posted by rebent at 8:22 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sponsored Locations Are Coming to Pokémon Go on a Cost-Per-Visit Basis

[companies] "pay us to be locations within the virtual game board — the premise being that it is an inducement that drives foot traffic".
posted by pixie at 8:36 AM on July 14, 2016


Also, fuck Zubats.

I suspect he doesn't mean how prevalent they are, but because of how hard they are to hit with a ball. They're constantly fluttering and for some reason they're always set at a farther distance than other pokemon on the catching screen, so you have to flick further and your aim gets all messed up. I'm better at catching them now but I think I spent like 10+ balls on my first Zubat.

And yes, the game is almost unplayable today after the update last night. It freezes up half the time when I'm catching, and the pokestops takes forever to load.
posted by numaner at 8:55 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


It worked for me this morning. A mom was leading her three girls on their first Pokemon hunt and I was able to fire the game up and set a Lure pretty easily.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:08 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ever since I hit about level 9 the Rattatas are way more hyperactive than they were. I thought this was Pokemon Go, not Duck Hunt!
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:09 AM on July 14, 2016


Speaking of Rattatas, this happened yesterday. Scared the crap out of us.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:41 AM on July 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


Hmm, having to stand there for five minutes and use 15 great balls to capture a golbat defeats the purpose of walking around the city.

Cranky servers don't help!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:05 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Niantic has rolled out a web form to report problems with stops/gyms, which includes the ability to suggest new ones.
posted by rifflesby at 10:13 AM on July 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


That's great news. I had the bright idea to take the new Expo Line from one end of the city to the other, but the train wasn't there when Ingress portals were being established, so there's almost nothing there right now.

I have a three strikes plan for zubats. They happen to be the most plentiful right here and I've already run out of balls once trying to get one. If I can't get it in three I move on. This might not be worth it if you're in a less-populated area, though.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:52 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Babby son looked surprised but delighted to be going on a second walk with his dad, mere minutes after having got back from a walk with me. It's a great trick for livening up walks and we have a park with several sculptures in it five minutes walk away with a gym and several pokestops on the way. A lot of players!
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:16 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm realizing how privileged I am for having a stop accessible from home. I've got over a hundred balls saved up and don't worry about throwing five or six at a zubat before I hit it.
posted by octothorpe at 11:41 AM on July 14, 2016


I'm not sure how to link to a section of twitter, but this twitter thread by Kendra James about the lack of Pokestops in depressed cities and for nonwhite users was really a good check on how playable the game is for people who wouldn't have been playing Ingress. "Given how much of a mental health bump Pokemon GO has been to so many of us, it REALLY sucks to know that kids in cities like Irvington...Can't really participate as easily as the rest of us."
posted by gladly at 12:45 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


With submissions open again, that should be able to be corrected. I've seen tweets of rural places where e.g. "The bike rack in front of the McDonalds" is registered as a pokestop, so Niantic aren't particularly concerned about them being major landmarks. Or at least, they recognize that "major landmark" is relative.
posted by rifflesby at 1:13 PM on July 14, 2016


"Given how much of a mental health bump Pokemon GO has been to so many of us, it REALLY sucks to know that kids in cities like Irvington...Can't really participate as easily as the rest of us."

I read those tweets and she (I thought he but I think I was wrong?) seem to balance that yeah, that sucks, but at the same time the game is only a week old and there are a lot of things to fix, pokestop availability being one of them. Hopefully Niantic addresses the issue sooner rather than later. Also, after a week (two?) of use they have much data on people trying to use the app who aren't near any stops.
posted by GuyZero at 1:19 PM on July 14, 2016


Niantic has rolled out a web form to report problems with stops/gyms, which includes the ability to suggest new ones.

If the 7-11 near my house with a tiny little fountain can be a gym, I don't see why my neighbor's well manicured garden can't be a pokestop.
posted by numaner at 1:37 PM on July 14, 2016



If the 7-11 near my house with a tiny little fountain can be a gym, I don't see why my neighbor's well manicured garden can't be a pokestop.


These came from Ingress Players' portal "discoveries". The criteria got stricter as time went on but mostly it is limited to public shared spaces that fit criteria-o-the-day (unpublished and arbitrary and massively borked. I sumbuitted several hundred that were not accepted or rejected officially, just deleted or glitches away. )
posted by tilde at 3:30 PM on July 14, 2016


I've seen tweets of rural places where e.g. "The bike rack in front of the McDonalds" is registered as a pokestop, so Niantic aren't particularly concerned about them being major landmarks.

Portal monkeys man. You'd submit a historically significant monument (listed by English Heritage) and it would get rejected despite meeting 3 or 4 different criteria. Then you'd get annoyed, submit something stupid to take the mick, and it would get accepted. One time people submitted pictures of the inside of their pockets all at once with the title "pocket portal", and some of them got approved.
posted by MattWPBS at 3:52 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


Jacobin: Resist Pokémon Go
Culture, according to a certain strand of grouchy leftist criticism, is turning us all into children. The dominant forms, the ones that not only rake in the most money but code the cultural terrain itself, are video games, which are for children, and superhero films, which are also for children.

It’s not just a question of genre, though: these forms demand a particular type of engagement, that of a vicious, sticky-fingered child — you’re to not just pay the price of admission but support the culture-commodity uncritically, identify with its characters, buy the action figures, nurture an obsession verging on the pathological. Act, in other words, with the rapacious glee of a dull child.

Any other mode of engagement is tacitly forbidden. Look at the fury of the fans when someone tries to approach mass culture with any critical judgement. Why are you being so serious about this, so pretentious; it’s just a film or a game, it’s meaningless — but at the same time, how dare you, you’re ruining my fun.

For many critics, we’re living out an apocalyptic scenario. This is about Pokémon Go, of course it’s about Pokémon Go — how else could you describe a world in grown adults in their millions are milling about aimlessly, staring at their phones, collecting digital rats, reliving a stupid childhood, and shrinking all the while into inattentive sugar-zapped brats?

All this is a strong critique of the game, but it’s not the one I’m interested in pursuing. Never mind the infantilized adults; what do children, actual children, do? At play, in their masses and unmediated by anything other than the imagination, they do something spontaneous and incredible: they create new worlds.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:06 PM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Walk around. Explore your neighborhood. Visit the park. Take in the sights. Have your fun.

Yes, I do that. Sometimes I do that while geocaching. Sometimes I do that while thinking. Sometimes I do that while playing Pokemon Go. Pfffft.

If they wanted to, the game’s creators could send people leaping willingly off cliffs, dawdling on train tracks, running into forest fires

Is this satire? I can't tell; college was a long time ago.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:58 PM on July 14, 2016 [11 favorites]


I've got over a hundred balls saved up and don't worry about throwing five or six at a zubat before I hit it.

I had a ton, also. I started to lose my cushion once I got to a certain level because now I might get one ball and three potions. also, are there different levels? I feel like there are easier green zubats and some much harder orange zubats. I might be confused about that part.

Is anyone else constantly running up against a full bag? Since I'm not battling I'm dumping potions but a larger bag is a tempting purchase. I need to check to see if you get credit for a new stop if your bag is full.

Last night, the guy I was sitting next to on the train saw me playing and we ended up having a really nice conversation.* So far my interactions have been more like that, with curious onlookers, but anything that gets me out of my shell a little bit bit good for me.

*No, he definitely was not hitting on me!
posted by Room 641-A at 5:20 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Critic Unfamiliar With Games Criticism, Games Criticizes Games And Games' Lack Of Criticism
posted by cortex at 5:25 PM on July 14, 2016 [13 favorites]


Two men fall off a cliff playing 'Pokémon Go': The gamers had climbed over a marked fence and onto the bluff

They were trying to capture a Darwinino.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:38 PM on July 14, 2016 [6 favorites]


Is this satire? I can't tell; college was a long time ago.

It reads like something from adequacy.org.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:51 PM on July 14, 2016


also, are there different levels? I feel like there are easier green zubats and some much harder orange zubats.

Yeah -- the higher a 'mon's CP rating, the harder they are to catch, and this is indicated by the circle shading from green to red. As you advance in trainer levels, you're more likely to meet harder-to-catch guys.
posted by rifflesby at 7:29 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is anyone else constantly running up against a full bag?

Yes, and its kinda annoying at first, but worked out once I began going to a gym and using a lot of stuff.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:40 PM on July 14, 2016


Incidentally, that's also what the semicircle behind a pokemon is, when you pull it up in your inventory. How far to the right the dot is indicates how powerful that guy is relative to others of its species. The location of the dot persists through evolution, so if you level up a 170° Pidgey, you get a 170° Pigeotto, and its CP increases to whatever that would be.

That arc is also apparently the only thing that determines how much stardust/candy it costs to power a guy up, and the costs are the same regardless of species.
posted by rifflesby at 7:40 PM on July 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


How far to the right the dot is indicates how powerful that guy is relative to others of its species. The location of the dot persists through evolution, so if you level up a 170° Pidgey, you get a 170° Pigeotto, and its CP increases to whatever that would be.

so if hypothetically I were to find a Rattatta that was at the far right end of the CP curve...that would be in the top percentage of all Rattatta?

brb calling everyone I know to tell them
posted by Krom Tatman at 12:39 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


that would be in the top percentage of all Rattatta?

For a trainer of your level, yes.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:54 AM on July 15, 2016


Heard a couple of reports that the feedback form just gives a auto reply saying they aren't adding new stops/gyms at the moment.

Probably needs to be a in app feature like it was in ingress if they hope to ever make it manageable. Even then they would need to throw 100s of people at the task of validating all of the submissions or it will just end up with a 6 month backlog again.
posted by pixie at 1:51 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


Eep just seen my first Pokemon related near - miss. Fella stood in the middle of the tram tracks, headphones in, oblivious. Had to literally put my hand in front of his phone to get him to stop and move. For a Rattata too! They are everywhere!
posted by threetwentytwo at 5:03 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


Piccadilly gardens by any chance?
posted by pixie at 6:40 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


In my neighborhood there were three gyms very close together. This morning, one of them seems to have vanished.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:56 AM on July 15, 2016


Yep, Pixie! Whole place was packed out with Pokehunters (me, I was mainly on the hunt for a cake).
posted by threetwentytwo at 7:15 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


does anyone know what it means when there's a blue glow behind some pokemon?
posted by numaner at 8:10 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think the blue glow is just to show they are new ones. Found in the last hour or last day maybe?
posted by pixie at 8:17 AM on July 15, 2016


Found within the last day, yes.
posted by radwolf76 at 8:22 AM on July 15, 2016


I thought that's what it meant but when I sorted it by recent I didn't see the blue on some. And then I realized some, like Tangela, simply covers the blue glow because of their pic.
posted by numaner at 8:32 AM on July 15, 2016


Another Ghastly data point: I found one last night around 9:30, on one of my regular travel routes. It's nowhere near a cemetery, but I happened to be exactly 3/4 if the way to level 17, so maybe they're triggered at a certain level?

rifflesby, thanks for the CP info. I just came across that at the IGN guide. I don't play a ton of games but I always find good info there.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:03 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Another Ghastly data point: I found one last night around 9:30, on one of my regular travel routes. It's nowhere near a cemetery, but I happened to be exactly 3/4 if the way to level 17, so maybe they're triggered at a certain level?

Nah, got a ghastly at level 10 or so, in a park, during the day.

But the local wildlife preserve has to beef up night security to keep people out. Evidently neat ones come out at night there. *sigh* people.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:08 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've noticed Ghastly showing up in my suburb neighborhood late at night, first time I was level 13. But goddammit I have a bed time!
posted by numaner at 9:17 AM on July 15, 2016


I (hate-)read that Jacobin article last night and discovered it's a lot more fun if you replace every instance of the words "Pokemon Go" with "philosophy".
If something like Pokémon Go philosophy really could turn adults into children again, it might have some value. What it actually does is very different.

...

The remapping of reality carried out by Pokémon Go philosophy is unresponsive and indifferent to social existence; it’s an objective fantasy, abstracted, centralized.

...

Walk around. Explore your neighborhood. Visit the park. Take in the sights. Have your fun. Pokémon Go Philosophy is coercion, authority, a command issuing from out of a blank universe, which blasts through social and political cleavages to finally catch ‘em all. It must be resisted.
posted by maryr at 9:19 AM on July 15, 2016 [9 favorites]


Ah, my mistake. I thought the Ghastlys were mainly found around cemeteries. (Or haunted houses!) I didn't capture mine because it ended up...ghasting.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:31 AM on July 15, 2016


I've got two Ghastly's, both in daytime.
posted by threetwentytwo at 9:35 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I get ghastlys frequently (ish, I've captured 5 total), they are not that rare around my work or home for some reason. I'm not near cemeteries and it hasn't been at night.
posted by misskaz at 10:12 AM on July 15, 2016


meanwhile I have fucking Ratatas and Pidgeys everywhere. At least at work I also get a ton of Doduos.
posted by numaner at 10:19 AM on July 15, 2016


Turns out I don't like stopping while walking or getting talked to randomly by strangers, so it's not for me. Cool to see what a big thing it's become though; even in Canada where it's not even "released" yet.
posted by ODiV at 10:25 AM on July 15, 2016


I have Ratattas, Pidgeys, Spearows, and Drowzees up the wazoo. I've caught 29 fucking Drowzees. Leveled one up to a Hypno and now have enough candy to level up a second. I hate Drowzees now. I just wasted 6 balls and 2 razzberries trying to catch a reluctant one (and still failed) and I'm furious about it because they're everywhere and I didn't even need it.
posted by misskaz at 10:25 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


that's how I felt about a goddamn Pidgey that took me 7 regular and 2 great balls and 2 razzberries to get, because it was a CP172. turns out my highest was like 19? something, I didn't even need it.
posted by numaner at 10:32 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have yet to see a single Drowzee, so apparently there's a rare breed around here. Tons of Eevees, though. (Along with the Rattata, Pidgey, and Spearow invasive poke-species.)

So far, my greatest Pokemon Go accomplishment was catching a Snorlax before bed two days ago, then yesterday, attending a trivia night with my friends near several pokestops and a gym, getting my butt handed to me at the gym, before eventually retaking it for my team before the end of the night. (Snorlax is quickly becoming my favorite for battling.)

Then a freaking Krabby ran away from me. My first runaway, so I've got a bit of a sad about that, especially since I didn't have one yet.

(I still want a Jigglypuff like crazy, though. They were my favorite as a kid, and I want one so badly. I even had a Jigglypuff ring watch that I wore so much it was essentially held together by superglue and childhood affection. Then I left it in a pizzeria on vacation and mourned the loss of it for the rest of the trip. My parents bought me a different pink one, but it wasn't Jigglypuff, so therefore, it wasn't the same.)
posted by PearlRose at 10:43 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've seen lots of posts on my FB feed defending PGO against its detractors, but no actual posts talking negatively about PGO. The world seems agog over it, in fact. Am I just not seeing the hateful posts or is that a straw man?
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:44 AM on July 15, 2016


I've seen lots of posts on my FB feed defending PGO against its detractors, but no actual posts talking negatively about PGO. The world seems agog over it, in fact. Am I just not seeing the hateful posts or is that a straw man?

I've seen the same thing! I assume this merciless shit-talking that people are responding to is happening on tumblr or twitter or something, because it would be uncharitable to suggest that it's just people looking for an opportunity to feel righteous about something.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:48 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


My trophy is a Tauros with a CP of 444. I probably threw a dozen pokeballs at it, and it escaped three times, plus, the app crashed, and I wasn't sure I actually caught it. BUT I DID, and I can't believe how proud I actually am of this little fictional creature.
posted by gladly at 10:49 AM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


Oh, I've seen at least 3 detractors of it on my FB feed (compared to 5-10 active players). Detractor No. 1 is taking a "get off my lawn" approach, which drives me crazy, so I've mostly muted her. Detractor No. 2 would prefer people actually go enjoy nature for nature's sake (and stop posting all of their pokemon pictures), while Detractor No. 3 is super worried about the privacy concerns and just how many permissions the app wants in order to allow you to play (which has also concerned me more than a little).

I'd say probably another 5-10 people I'm friends with on FB or know are just taking a "no thanks, not for me" approach and muting/skimming past Pokemon Go posts, which yeah, I totally get that. Either that or they tried it, didn't like the server woes, found out it wasn't their jam, and dropped it.
posted by PearlRose at 10:49 AM on July 15, 2016


I have not seen like 1 or 2 posts on Facebook specifically making fun of adults playing the game, and a few more comments on other people's positive posts about it. Stuff along the lines of "fully grown adults, smh". I know of a few people that are not actively making fun of people for playing it but are very "meh, I don't get it, not for me" about it, on both FB and Twitter.
posted by misskaz at 10:52 AM on July 15, 2016


most of my non-playing friends are posting articles warning people either about not going to the Holocaust museum or not falling off a cliff, while the rest are like "I don't get it". At least 1 or 2 are basically going "MUST.... RESIST.... PEER PRESSUUUURE", but.. they all give in at some point... ^_^
posted by numaner at 10:55 AM on July 15, 2016


Correction, I *have* seen posts making fun of people. Not sure where that "not" came from.
posted by misskaz at 11:01 AM on July 15, 2016


misskatz, this may not apply to places that don't have 100+ plus pokestops within a mile, but: if you have spare pokeballs, catch all those pidgeys and rattatas that annoy you. They are XP machines when you evolve them. I'm currently level 22, and a lot of that was from common evolutions: pidgeys are only 12 candy, and rattatas 25, so if you catch a couple of dozen pidgeys that's 8,000 points under a lucky egg.

Also, I have finally found the magical water pokemon spot, after being frustrated visiting various lakes and creeks: there's a place near me that has a bridge over a creek, with four overlapping pokestops. When all four are lured, it is a festival of pokemon, and a respectable percentage are water. Kabuto, Omanytes, Krabbys, Magikarp, Staryu. I actually ran out of all but Ultra pokeballs, and that's because I am reserving those for Pokemon I don't have yet or other really good ones.
posted by tavella at 11:09 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


My son and I had a madcap chase through the twisting streets of Salem last night tracking a Pikachu. The damn mouse remained two pawprints ahead of us, though. From the panicked expressions of some other players, he eluded them too.

So to make it up to my son, I made these.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:10 AM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


Inner city black neighborhoods are facing a lack of pokestops and gyms, for the usual reasons. Go into one of those neighborhoods and request pokestops and gyms when you get a chance!
posted by numaner at 11:33 AM on July 15, 2016


I've seen lots of posts on my FB feed defending PGO against its detractors, but no actual posts talking negatively about PGO.

Well, over at File77 there's been people expressing concern, but then SF fans tend to react with terror to any new technological development.

And oh yeah, my partner's doctor says we're walking too slow to have any benefit.
posted by happyroach at 11:45 AM on July 15, 2016


Your partner's doctor is a dumbass, IMHO. Any level of physical activity is better than no physical activity for health. An arbitrary pulse rate is not the only fitness goal worth achieving.
posted by tavella at 11:53 AM on July 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


I saw people straight up running to track down an Arbok last night, so
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:17 PM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm just way annoyed by that, happyroach. That is exactly the kind of bullshit that leads to people just giving up exercise, people announcing that they aren't doing it right. You are out being active, in a way that you enjoy (and there nothing more effective for people keeping up activity that making it something they like), and he or she is bitching that unless you do it the exact way they demand, it can't possibly be of benefit.
posted by tavella at 12:35 PM on July 15, 2016 [7 favorites]


Man, my local rec center is by a large church and a Masonic lodge - between them all, the land is FESTOONED with Pokéstops and gyms. It's somewhat hilly terrain, as well. Even with stopping to spin the Stops, I still work up a good sweat and muscle burn, so I figure the activity surely must be doing me some good. It's about a mile around the circuit, and my fat self going at a pretty brisk pace can get it rounded in just under 30 minutes...that can't be worth absolutely nothing, so I'm just going to keep it up. Eventually I'm sure I'll work my way up to rounding the circuit multiple times. That being a hell of a lot more activity than I usually engage in, well, the naysayers can go boink themselves.
posted by angeline at 1:00 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]




Ok, Red has taken over the US Capitol with a CP1432 Exeggutor. There's a lot of meaning in that, but as soon as I can beat it I'm going to turn the Capitol BLUE like it should be.
posted by numaner at 1:41 PM on July 15, 2016 [12 favorites]


My Pokemon training philosophy

A more relevant one
posted by numaner at 1:42 PM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]




They are going to a farm, angeline. A beautiful farm where they can play all day.
posted by tavella at 2:15 PM on July 15, 2016 [16 favorites]


The theory that Professor Willow is grinding up your excess Pokemon in order to make candy is strongly supported by that dude's uncanny resemblance to anime Rick Sanchez.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:49 PM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


Everything you are thinking could go wrong here already goes wrong with Ingress players people who text.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 7:12 PM on July 15, 2016


I beg to differ. People who text have never beaten my Pidgeotto when it was holding down the dorm across from the chemistry building.
posted by Krom Tatman at 7:30 PM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


I caught a Magmar!!! I want to use him to dominate the local gym on the first step of my quest to dominate the world!!! Muahahahahahaha!
posted by Deoridhe at 1:03 AM on July 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


Old Lady's Opinion:

ANYTHING that gets kids moving is a GOOD THING. But like all new things, parents gotta use some goddamned common sense.

Case in point: I was with my 3 adult kids who were visiting Boston for the weekend; we did the usual walk through the North End, got Modern Pastry, sandwiches from Thinking Cup and olives and bread from our hidden salumeria and headed to Christopher Columbus Park to have a picnic and watch the harbor.

It was a gorgeous day and I saw DOZENS of people walking with their heads down. It was just sad and terrible to watch. No doubt the players were having fun finding their pretend things, but watching people play it -- it's not a pleasant experience.

Later that day I had my oldest son come with me as we took Detective Kima on a trail run and he had his phone out. After he tripped over at least 4 trees I screamed at him to put his fucking phone down, which he only did reluctantly.

People moving = great.
People ignoring reality to chase fake things = not so great.
People getting hurt and acting like idiots as they chase fake things = WTF.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 5:17 AM on July 16, 2016


It was a gorgeous day and I saw DOZENS of people walking with their heads down. It was just sad and terrible to watch. No doubt the players were having fun finding their pretend things, but watching people play it -- it's not a pleasant experience.

Yesterday I met up with a friend after work who I hadn't seen in a while. We walked all over downtown Manhattan exploring little parks we'd never seen before, rode on a carousel, grabbed a burger and beers afterward, watched the sunset. We were also playing Pokemon Go, which was the reason we decided to meet up. But REALLY, it was an excuse to hang out and catch up and enjoy exploring the city. And if it wasn't for the handy excuse of this game, we probably never would have made these plans to hang out, because it was Friday and we were tired and we're both nerdy homebodies. It was the most fun I'd had just hanging out with a friend one-on-one in weeks.

Sorry if we looked annoying while we were out having fun, geez. This is a very 'get off my lawn you whippersnappers' comment.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:20 AM on July 16, 2016 [35 favorites]


Yesterday, a person I met while setting Lures at my library on Wednesday ran up to me in a different park in a different town. He told me he was paying forward the Lures I had set and dropping some on the local PokeStops.

My son was with me at the time and he looked at me like I was President Pizza McHotdog.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:56 AM on July 16, 2016 [18 favorites]


People ignoring reality to chase fake things = not so great.

My reality is that I am stuck indoors for 14 hours a day -- from 6am-8pm -- taking care of my elderly mother. When I left yesterday I took another two hours going to her Pharmacy and going home. I hugged the cat, slept for a few hours, and returned here. Some days I get off the bus a few stops early. Not to take in the breathtaking view of the ocean, but to play this game for a few more minutes. You are damn right I'm ignoring reality. Maybe some of those people you saw were doing the same.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:57 AM on July 16, 2016 [22 favorites]




So I can't get past the "Our servers are humbled by your incredible response, we are working to resolve the issue" screen this morning (first Saturday since press/buzz hit a fever pitch), but in the meantime I suppose I can check out this guide to all the various think-pieces so far, ranked.
posted by blue suede stockings at 8:17 AM on July 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can't get past it either for the most part. There was one brief window where it logged me on, but most of the local gyms were grey. Others in my city say similar things.

Did Europe or Asia come online last night?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:06 AM on July 16, 2016


Yep, servers are down, so why not try this alternative game, Chardonnay Go
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:12 AM on July 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ok good I thought it was just me!
posted by numaner at 9:18 AM on July 16, 2016


> we did the usual walk through the North End, got Modern Pastry, sandwiches from Thinking Cup and olives and bread from our hidden salumeria

That sounds like a lovely time, walking around with people you like in search of stuff. I love those sorts of hunts. The important thing is the time together, not the objects you're (theoretically) looking for.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:30 AM on July 16, 2016 [5 favorites]


Wish Pokémon Go were better? Welcome to Ingress
Better really is relative. Battling for territory sounds like my least favorite game play ever. I actually love that Pokémon Go can be played non-competitively if you want, just capturing creatures and ignoring gyms. Instead of staring at the app doing busywork or nothing, you can just walk until your phone vibrates. Most of the time you can just stop to catch something and keep walking, thus avoiding the zombie phone stare. (Every now and then your family just wants to keep going and you count on them to keep you from walking into things while trying to recapture something that keeps breaking out.) This isn't even a nostalgic game for me -- I knew nothing about Pokémon other than that they were a thing before I started playing. (I think I ordered a few readers or early chapter books for my students once...)

I'll take acquisition of imaginary things and cute photos with animation over battles any day.
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:36 AM on July 16, 2016 [11 favorites]


It's back up, but super slow
posted by numaner at 10:20 AM on July 16, 2016


this guide to all the various think-pieces so far, ranked.

this brings me a lot of joy right now, I love it
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:25 AM on July 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm tempted now and then by social games only to remember that playing with other people online has become a huge anxiety trigger. I have problems with games that I can't socially put on hold for months at a time.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:26 AM on July 16, 2016


Started yesterday and I have a decision to make. I have a Kakuna with like 28 CP and I just captured another Weedle with like 36. Do I transfer it?
posted by soelo at 10:32 AM on July 16, 2016


The game strongly favors catching new, stronger pokemans as you level up, rather than building weak ones up over time.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:37 AM on July 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm tempted now and then by social games only to remember that playing with other people online has become a huge anxiety trigger. I have problems with games that I can't socially put on hold for months at a time.

Hey, I'm the same way and I think this game totally fits. There's no real ongoing social commitment--you can fight gyms for your team, but it's never a "we need YOU!" or "hey, where've you been >:|" vibe from the game. (There are locked Facebook groups in my area for each team to coordinate, but I haven't joined mine because I can't see becoming that committed to it.) it's definitely a thing you can pick up when you feel up to it.
posted by Krom Tatman at 11:32 AM on July 16, 2016


Server is up (though a bit laggy and crashy) in my area, so I'm now a grown-ass individual searching the internet trying to figure out how get the option to leave a Pokemon at a friendly gym (I'm a lover/collector, not a fighter, so the gym thing is not so compelling).
posted by blue suede stockings at 11:55 AM on July 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


I just walked my rec center circuit and beat the hey-diddly-ho out of one of the gyms! It took four tries because servers. But I won! And walked 3/4 of a mile in 95 degree heat so I am gonna go drink some water now because whew. Then go sit at the park with some lure modules.
posted by angeline at 12:27 PM on July 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


you can fight gyms for your team, but it's never a "we need YOU!" or "hey, where've you been

Yeah, with Ingress I was actually scouted and invited to join a team* via IM, and that's where so much pressure came from. Are people (strangers) organizing as teams here? I haven't seem evidence of it, but that's definitely not something I'd be interested in. That's not to say I wouldn't like to be on a "team" of friends casually collecting and battling together, but I'm not interested in defending territory anymore.

Like I mentioned earlier, I really liked the mass raids on enemy territory. In addition to the sculpture garden, there was the time 60 of us took over Hollywood Blvd. Stuff like that. But the panicked "ZOMG the park is turning green we'll be there in ten minutes to pick you up!!!1!" not so much. Maybe it the idea of groups I like, versus teams. And if I could get a break here I would totally post an IRL to go hunting.

On preview/close reading I see that teams are organized. I'm not on fb so I guess I'm not seeing it, which is fine by me.

*The team represented my geographical area, which was part of a very large, well organized, Los Angeles team.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:19 PM on July 16, 2016


I was considering a game that can turn the park into a dungeon crawl. Point your camera at a squirrel, game recognizes it as a dragon and you throw spells at it.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:11 PM on July 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Man, what if the Internet was at it's current epic tut-tut level, but back when texting came out?
posted by ignignokt at 8:16 PM on July 16, 2016 [7 favorites]


Competition actually bugs me less than teamwork. I dislike the pressure of ruining someone else's day if I can't make the schedule or perform at the top of my game.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:18 PM on July 16, 2016


CBrachyrhynchos, that's why I never joined any of the multi-player games at MeFightClub. (Even though no one was ever less than enthusiastic about me joining in.)
posted by Room 641-A at 8:59 PM on July 16, 2016


Yeah, I'm a white human living in a majority black neighborhood (aka, yeah, I am part of some problems in a lotta ways) and I can tell you the game does not at all work the same here as what I read you all are experiencing. On top of fewer stops or whatever, the data coverage is just not adequate. One can sit around for ten minutes or so, looking at a radio-signal thing on the map that is meant to be a pokemon, and never get anything to load. It's also not super awesome to be a female by herself in a busy neighborhood trying to idle somewhere for basically any time at all. The game's broken in a number of ways where I am. This bothers me basically not at all for myself and a whole lot for my neighbors.

I do like that a lot of people seem to be getting out more and having a nice time talking to people. I don't begrudge you your fun even a little; just disappointed everybody doesn't seem to get the chance to be in on it.
posted by lauranesson at 12:41 AM on July 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


If anyone wants to name their Pokemon after Neil C's Pokerap, I've cobbled up a little cheatsheet in Google docs. Save a copy to change sorting, etc.
posted by rifflesby at 1:53 AM on July 17, 2016


So far in NYC I've observed these hotspots:

Bed-Stuy: Doduos
Financial District: Zubats, Clefairys
Battery Park: Magicarp, Psyducks
Prospect Park: Jigglypuffs

(Also my friend told me Inwood Hills Park is full of Hitmonlee.)

Anyone want to add to this list? Or, is there some sort of crowdsourcey database of this info already?
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:27 AM on July 17, 2016


So it seems the servers are down again? Haven't been able to get past loading screen for the past hour
posted by numaner at 12:56 PM on July 17, 2016


Yeah, the servers borked just as an egg was hatching. I lost the egg and the pokewhatever.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:09 PM on July 17, 2016


Anyone want to add to this list? Or, is there some sort of crowdsourcey database of this info already?

Well, if you want Rhydons, Psyducks, or Slowpokes in Portland OR, they hang out down at Waterfront Park between the Maritime museum and fountain plaza.

And if you want a goddamn Doduo they're all at my house.
posted by rifflesby at 2:00 PM on July 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Well, if you want Rhydons, Psyducks, or Slowpokes in Portland OR, they hang out down at Waterfront Park between the Maritime museum and fountain plaza.

Good to know. I saw a Dratini on the "nearby" list on my blue line MAX commute (I think near Beaverton TC), but until the footsteps bug is fixed I wouldn't be able to hunt it down. Have you encountered any?
posted by NMcCoy at 2:36 PM on July 17, 2016


The game just "Officially" hit the Canadian Google Play store. I'm currently at work but on my way home, I plan on testing this game out. Huzzah!
posted by Fizz at 3:23 PM on July 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Raise your hand if you've recently googled "accidentally transferred best pokemon."

RIP, ground-up 1132 Vaporeon.
posted by purpleclover at 3:35 PM on July 17, 2016 [16 favorites]


NMcCoy: One, also at Waterfront Park.
posted by rifflesby at 4:03 PM on July 17, 2016


I happened to be in a Sheetz parking lot a few hours ago and fired up the game and instantly realized how impossible it would be to play it outside of a large urban area. I could see one gym and maybe three stops total.

posting from a Megabus rolling down the PA Turnpike.
posted by octothorpe at 5:08 PM on July 17, 2016


I have left a Flareon at a gym on top of Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland, so I'm dropping the mic and going home.
posted by purpleclover at 7:26 AM on July 18, 2016 [12 favorites]


But is the gym neutral?
posted by Room 641-A at 7:51 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


But is the gym neutral?

The gyms are not that strong and seem to switch frequently here! It is possible the Swiss are concentrating all their aggression Poké-ward, because everything else is as polite and efficient as stereotypes suggest. :)
posted by purpleclover at 8:02 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


We also only just got the game here two days ago, so other than the people who sideloaded the game early there aren't that many tough pokemon around. I'm still waiting to see if the gyms around where I live settle. I live near a tourist area, so there's a lot of foot traffic (and many pokestops!) So far the closest I've come to game-induced social interaction is six of us sitting around a pokestop with a lure set, none of us interacting outside of our friend groups.

My current proudest moment is hunting down a Dragonair by process of elimination, despite the footsteps bug and an ill-timed game freeze.
posted by bettafish at 8:47 AM on July 18, 2016


We got it in California (where we live), and it worked from when we arrived on Saturday. I have definitely seen people walking around playing (in Luzern).

I haven't seen a Dragonair, and I'm a little miffed we didn't see one at Pilatus. (Pilatus is supposedly a dragon haunt; all the logos are dragons.)
posted by purpleclover at 9:45 AM on July 18, 2016


I live and play mostly in NYC, but spend weekends in a small Hudson River town. There is one concentrated area of gyms and Pokestops in the town, but the closest gym or Pokestop is a mile away from me. I barely get any Pokemon when walking around my neighborhood. BUT, there is a grocery store parking lot half a mile away that will immediately spawn 5-6 critters as soon as I pull in. Like two Rattata, a Pidgie, an Evie, a Tauros and a Weedle, all at once. It happens every time (with different Pokemon). It's the weirdest thing, anyone else found a Poke hot spot?
posted by kimdog at 1:09 PM on July 18, 2016


So today the US Capitol has been blue, the red, then blue, and now red again. The CP1127 Flareon reigning there is no match for my CP888 Vaporeon, but there's a crazy storm in DC right now. (But I'm seriously debating taking the tunnel over there...)

Also, if you're in Philadelphia, there's a ton of Magikarps and Psyducks at Penn's Landing. At least when I was there yesterday afternoon.
posted by numaner at 1:56 PM on July 18, 2016


And Capitol Hill is overrun with Doduos, which I'm sure is a statement about our nation's capital and multiple heads.
posted by numaner at 1:57 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


BUT, there is a grocery store parking lot half a mile away that will immediately spawn 5-6 critters as soon as I pull in. Like two Rattata, a Pidgie, an Evie, a Tauros and a Weedle, all at once. It happens every time (with different Pokemon). It's the weirdest thing, anyone else found a Poke hot spot?

Places where people with cellphones cluster together apparently have higher spawn rates.
posted by rifflesby at 2:29 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


per radwolf76's comment, this is how you find out where the weed dealers in your neighborhood live!
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:46 PM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


The place where I ate my lunch today doubles as a gym. Rather irritatingly, it was Mystic, as I am, but held by two Exeggutors at too high a level for me to even try battling to win myself a spot in the gym.

As I ate my sandwich I kept an eye out and watched as it turned into an Instinct holding. When I checked, it was staffed by nothing more than a flapping, gasping Magikarp.

That was hilarious, but I took the place over anyway.
posted by angeline at 2:55 PM on July 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


Since I have no illusions about holding a gym for any significant time, I considered breaking gyms and leaving behind a CP 56 Pigeot* named "lol rekt". Unfortunately it turned out other players can't see your pokemon names, so that let the air out of the joke. :/

*Yeah. Pigeot. 56. It was a disappointing hunt.
posted by rifflesby at 3:05 PM on July 18, 2016


Yep, I've realized recently it's not worth the effort if you have a life to try to hold on to a gym for any significant amount of time. I'm content with my kick ass Vaporeon (its quick attack is faster than others, and it can take on fire pokemon up to 300 CP above it) wiping out a gym and plopping something in there just to get the bonus from the Shop.

So a strategy around that idea is to get strong pokemon, take out several gyms in an area (best to do late at night with less traffic and less competitors), plant your flunkies, and grab the shop bonuses before you get kicked out. Since you have to wait 21 hours before you can get the bonuses again, use that time to hunt/evolve for even stronger pokemon.

I've been playing this thing in a lot of my spare time and I'm almost at lvl 18, but still don't have any pokemon over 1000CP yet. I dunno how these gym leaders are level 20+ with like an 1800CP something.
posted by numaner at 3:29 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Then there's dudes like this guy that makes me want to hit things.
posted by numaner at 3:31 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I'm actually amazed that three hours later, the Flareon I dropped in there seems to still be there? I wiped out two other gyms lately and was booted right back out in a matter of minutes.

I really just did it to grab the Defender bonus, I was three minutes out from the countdown on that.
posted by angeline at 3:39 PM on July 18, 2016


Pokemon just came out yesterday here in Canada so that was my whole day today. I'm playing on hard mode (no data plan), and with the starting handicap of waiting until the official release unlike all the cool kids, so I'm pretty sure I'm never actually gonna be the very best, but I'm having a ton of fun travelling across the land searching far and wide for free wifi. Unfortunately while free wifi is fairly abundant, pokestops reachable by free AND reliable wifi have been tricky. I did find a few good places with wifi that was functional enough to tag some pokestops and even camp out for a few lures (in between the wifi dropping out randomly).

Despite a ton of game glitches and freezing (including one that made me lose an aerodacytl!!!) it was a great day and much more nature-filled than usual! Also pretty hilarious to see the hordes of people very obviously playing pokemon everywhere I went, including the super touristy spots like Parliament Hill.
posted by randomnity at 5:49 PM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is the tracker broken for anyone else? Everything is three paws, but I still get stuff popping up.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:02 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is the tracker broken for anyone else? Everything is three paws, but I still get stuff popping up.

I was just thinking about asking whether anyone else is only ever getting three paws! Even on a reliable connection, I haven't yet seen any 1/2/0 paw pokemon in the nearby box, but I still end up catching the top left 3-paw pokemon semi-often. Not sure if it's a (hopefully temporary) server thing or something on my end...
posted by randomnity at 6:13 PM on July 18, 2016


So far the tracker seems helpful only as a way of knowing what is in the general area, but I haven't really been actively tracking most of them. I know that the ones that are supposed to right here don't always show up.

The server was down again when I left last night. The bus rolled slowly down a street with lots of bars and restaurants and people hanging out and I knew it was back up when I saw people back in groups looking at their phone.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:16 PM on July 18, 2016


Yeah, 3-paws is a known bug :/ They're still properly ordered by proximity (I think), but everything only has 3 footprints. It's been like that for four days.

Hopefully their delay in fixing it has to do with them trying to figure out a better system entirely. Even if it was just more granular (say 3 paws now becomes 5 paws), it'd be a big improvement.
posted by rifflesby at 6:28 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm low-level enough that I am happy to catch anything so the tracking doesn't matter to me, although I am sure if I put more research into things we could tailor our Pokemon Walks to catch even more Pokemon. My daughter still enjoys the walks but there have been mornings where she would rather watch Pokemon on TV than in real life.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:58 PM on July 18, 2016


If you play Ingress, a game very similar to PG (mapping, "stops" etc.,) and also released by Ninantic, look for the dense light clusters on the map. From what I've read, spawn rates are much higher in these spots. I haven't had much of a chance to test it but you can run both apps at the same time.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:37 PM on July 18, 2016


I installed Ingress quite some time ago and even opened it up a few times but didn't go any further. I'll fire it up and see if it helps the Pokemon hunting.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:40 PM on July 18, 2016


Haha!

My 15 year-old daughter and I play and she comes up with some great renames. I renamed my Diglett "PoopRocket". I so wanted to leave him/her/it in a gym for the lolz but yeah, nobody else can see it.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:41 PM on July 18, 2016


Ekans vs my snake tattoo
Bat vs cat

I still totally don't get how gyms work, and why my home gyms aren't any easier. Another downside to heavily populated areas? I mostly like finding and catching them anyway, I just want to figure it out.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:49 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I haven't had much of a chance to test it but you can run both apps at the same time.

Speak for yourself, my iPhone 6 certainly can't and Niantic apps take SO long to load.
posted by Jimbob at 10:48 PM on July 18, 2016


I went and tried the Ingress thing and it worked almost too well. The patch of lights near me wasn't even all that big and I caught five guys right in a row.

Granted it's late, so maybe they'd been gathering there for a while.
posted by rifflesby at 10:50 PM on July 18, 2016


Ok, so the 3 paws is actually a bug, good to know.

The ghastly still eludes me, and I need to make time to hunt one down!
posted by numaner at 11:09 PM on July 18, 2016


I still totally don't get how gyms work, and why my home gyms aren't any easier. Another downside to heavily populated areas?

The good thing about gyms is that you can't do any permanent damage to your poke-creatures by mucking around in gyms. They can always be revived and potioned back to life. That's made me feel a lot freer about just trying them out.

This may be too basic but: Don't be afraid to go against a gym with high CP pokés in it; you can play your top 6 against everything in the gym. And challenges aren't straight CP battles; different characteristics make some creatures much stronger or weaker than others.

That said, at home in California, there were definitely gyms where someone had parked a 2200 Snorlax, and I could never make any progress.
posted by purpleclover at 11:23 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is really fun and I really hope that it gets some updates soon just to bump up some of the obviously worse parts of the app -- a better battery saver mode including some hooks to let the pedometer work when the app's not open would be the top priority for me. My dad and I frequently use my days off from work to go poke around places and recently we've bopped around some national parks (today it was a really nice one in Lowell MA about the mills including a museum where they actually had looms running), using the app as almost a 'point of interest' finder for neat monuments, points of interest, and similar.

The problem is, about halfway through the trips my phone's almost dead and it's a "welp let's hope we don't see anything too interesting because I won't be able to take photos" and a "okay so I can't play the game at all anymore even though you've been very curious about seeing other people out and about doing it too and I'd love to sit back and play too but I just can't"

It's really just so close to being really, really solid and I really hope they can shore it up before everyone loses interest completely.
posted by flatluigi at 11:33 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ridiculous number of Gastlys in central Edinburgh, including two at my desk in the last half hour (thanks, kind soul who stuck a lure on the building's pokestop).

Meanwhile, out where I live it's Drowzee after Drowzee after Drowzee - I caught five in a row today walking to the bus stop. Obviously they've moved out to the suburbs en masse, while the cool Pokémon hang around drinking expensive artisanal beer in the city.
posted by Catseye at 1:04 AM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


So the population around my house has dropped off almost totally. Last week I could sit on my porch and catch three or four an hour without moving and now I don't see one for hours. Did I catch them all?
posted by octothorpe at 4:22 AM on July 19, 2016


How is the game sustainable? Because if someone joins a month from now, how will they get in a gym? Presumably early users would have evolved very powerful Pokemon and be camping in gyms.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:31 AM on July 19, 2016


This is a problem that Ingress had, at least while I was playing it, and I don't know how or if they solved it.
posted by NMcCoy at 5:51 AM on July 19, 2016


In Ingress, everything past level 8 involves comparatively minor upgrades from a gameplay perspective, and level 16 is maxed out (those levels take a few months and a few years of moderate activity to hit, respectively). I enjoy going out with newbies and helping them level up. It's not clear to me yet whether there will be a similar mechanic in Pokemon--if level 50 or something is "topped out". If that's the case, I imagine a lot of people giving magic eggs and low level critters to teammates to help them level and get to the more interesting game mechanics faster.
posted by tchemgrrl at 6:26 AM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


I still don't have a Drowzee; I must live in an area where they're pretty uncommon. But I got my beloved Jigglypuff--and a bonus one to boot--last night, so I am currently pleased with my Poke-progress.

Gyms still sort of confuse me, although my Snorlax appears to still be my best fighter, so he's been the one I've been experimenting with at gyms, mostly.

Otherwise, the Eevee and its brethren seem to be plentiful around here. I currently have a Jolteon, and a Flareon, and we'll see if my luck continues to be good enough to net me the Vaporeon with the next round of evolution. (My thoughts: Probably not, but Vaporeon was always my least favorite of the three original Eevee evolutions, so no worries.)
posted by PearlRose at 7:17 AM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Drowzee seen: 86
Eevee seen: 6

Swap?
posted by pixie at 7:22 AM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


I didn't see any Drowzees in California, but have seen 13-14 in Switzerland, so maybe there's a regional difference?
posted by purpleclover at 8:22 AM on July 19, 2016


I currently have a Jolteon, and a Flareon, and we'll see if my luck continues to be good enough to net me the Vaporeon with the next round of evolution. (My thoughts: Probably not, but Vaporeon was always my least favorite of the three original Eevee evolutions, so no worries.)

Have any of us tried this?
posted by purpleclover at 8:28 AM on July 19, 2016


So this is happening in my city today. I have plans to go check it out with a friend.

I was there for about 30min yesterday afternoon and it was insanely packed (5+ pokestops very close together, and nonstop lures on a cluster of 3 all day...random strangers playing elsewhere in the city kept coming up to us all day, telling us to go to that park). It's gonna be pretty hilarious if 400 people actually do show up today, in addition to the people who are unaware of the event, and just showing up because it's a good spot.

I've never talked to so many random strangers in my life....it's really fun feeling the sense of community. It's a rare thing for me, since I'm a huge loner normally.
posted by randomnity at 9:04 AM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


Have any of us tried this?

Yes. It works.

Two things that will keep new players from being shut out of the gym experience: 1) leveling up is fast at first and then slows down tremendously, which means it won't take them long to catch up, and 2) you send six pokemans on every gym offensive and you only need to take down one defender to lower the gym's points. A low level player with a decent stable of pokes and good supply of healing items can grind down a massively fortified gym with a little patience.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:26 AM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've just realized:

Pokemon Red/Blue had Team Rocket. Diamond/Pearl had Team Galactic. Ruby/Sapphire had Team Aqua vs. Team Magma, fighting over who would get to rule the world. Now there's Team Valor vs. Team Instinct vs. Team Mystic.

Hans... are we the baddies?
posted by rifflesby at 1:28 PM on July 19, 2016 [4 favorites]


How many pokemon have been transferred to this mysterious "Professor" Willow? How much candy has he given out? Did anyone ever ask to see his degree, so that they could verify it was from an accredited institution?

Shake the magic poke- Eight Ball, and I think the answer's going to come up "All Signs Point To Yes".
posted by radwolf76 at 1:40 PM on July 19, 2016 [4 favorites]


I hatched an Onix from an egg and did a fist pump in the middle of the sidewalk hi it's me I'm the gross nerd.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 2:48 PM on July 19, 2016 [4 favorites]




Have any of us tried this?

I didn't get to yet, I might when I try to get a stronger Jolteon. For my 3, they evolved one right after the other, Vaporeon, then Jolteon, then Flareon. Not sure what I did, but maybe I'm just lucky.
posted by numaner at 3:21 PM on July 19, 2016


My first two Evee were both Jolteon, so I tried the naming it Rainer trick for the third, and it did end up a Vaporeon.
posted by tavella at 3:46 PM on July 19, 2016


Yeah, I named an Eevee Rainer, evolved it, and got a Vaporeon.

Which I immediately renamed to "We Get It".
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:48 PM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Christ, can't even get on the server this evening and this has been happening far too often. I wonder if Niantic (the company that makes the game) will improve the server access, but then I remembered "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold".

They don't need to fix the access problem, they just need make it so that enough people are online to sell commercial PokeStops or whatever.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:02 PM on July 19, 2016


They do need people to be online to sell them coins, that's where the money is coming from. Players are paying for it -- maybe not you, but the whale next to you is picking up your slack, that's how F2P games work.
posted by rifflesby at 4:13 PM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


I totally believe that they were blindsided by the game's incredible popularity, but at some point you have to start throwing more iron at it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:14 PM on July 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


It ran really smooth for me this morning, until a little after noon. I guess that's when all the kids woke up. :/
posted by rifflesby at 4:15 PM on July 19, 2016


Oh I spent $10 upping the amount of items I can carry and buying a bunch of incense, but it's getting ridiculous with the servers locking up. Does AT&T vs Verizon matter in America?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:18 PM on July 19, 2016


FYI , you use the transfer function to manage how many copies of particular Pokemon you have. Far better than paying to increase the number of Pokemon you can carry (d'oh).
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:20 PM on July 19, 2016


That works well now, but once your Pokedex is filling out and you're keeping more species around and want extras for leveling/evolving you may find yourself short on space.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:26 PM on July 19, 2016


Personally, ATT coverage is awful in certain areas here (I get almost zero cell reception inside my mom's house) and sometimes I don't know if the problem is ATT or the servers. Or thousands of people descending in my neighborhood on the weekends. Probably a combination of all of the above.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:26 PM on July 19, 2016


The problem is the servers. All the new Japanese players sure aren't overwhelming AT&Ts domestic network.
posted by GuyZero at 5:30 PM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


That works well now, but once your Pokedex is filling out and you're keeping more species around and want extras for leveling/evolving you may find yourself short on space.

Got room for 400 at the moment, that should be just fine for a while.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:41 PM on July 19, 2016


GuyZero, I meant in general, since the game started. (Unless Japanese tourists count? Sincere, if probably stupid, question.)
posted by Room 641-A at 6:48 PM on July 19, 2016


I find the servers are stabilizing a little bit and Japan is in a different time zone anyway, now I'm just mad at myself for cheaping out when buying a smart phone I hate you you piece of junk let me catch pokemon stop crashing
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:52 PM on July 19, 2016


I totally believe that they were blindsided by the game's incredible popularity, but at some point you have to start throwing more iron at it.
I'm sure they're throwing hardware at it, but any software architecture has limits to how well it can scale and especially in a system where everyone is in the "same" world it may not be possible for them to scale it up without rearchitecting parts of the system (unlike, say, something like WoW where each "server" is an individual world which means adding more servers is easy).
posted by borsboom at 7:04 PM on July 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also, no matter how you've coded for horizontal expansion, it's impossible to do truly realistic load testing at this level. And it isn't until that real load hits that some chokepoints may make themselves known.
posted by tavella at 7:54 PM on July 19, 2016 [1 favorite]




So the Pokemon people had high and low traffic estimates... and apparently the high traffic estimates were about 1/10 of what they got. It's failure through success at unprecedented levels. They had to provision an entire twitter's worth of servers in a week although doing it through google's cloud is easier than racking boxes.
posted by GuyZero at 9:59 PM on July 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


Another note, if you don't care about keeping every single specie in your collection, for evolvable types you can keep just one evolution while you farm more of that type. The reason you should keep every type though is that when you don't have one, you can't see the CP of the one you're catching of that same type.
posted by numaner at 10:32 PM on July 19, 2016


So can someone explain how you fight the second (and third) battle at a gym? I've won fights against the first opponent but by then my Pokemon is spent and I can't seem to find a button to switch to a fresh one.
posted by octothorpe at 4:09 AM on July 20, 2016


So can someone explain how you fight the second (and third) battle at a gym? I've won fights against the first opponent but by then my Pokemon is spent and I can't seem to find a button to switch to a fresh one.

If you're "training" (fighting at a gym that's your color) you can only play one dude; that's it. (Use potions, super potions, etc to bring your creature back to full strength after.)

If you're "battling" (challenging a gym of another color), the game automatically subs in your next highest CP dude, up to six. (Don't forget to use a Revive item thingie to bring your fallen dudes back to life or they'll just hang out in your list with gray bars. Then refill with potions.)
posted by purpleclover at 4:19 AM on July 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


So can someone explain how you fight the second (and third) battle at a gym? I've won fights against the first opponent but by then my Pokemon is spent and I can't seem to find a button to switch to a fresh one.

As noted, you're training if you only have one Pokemon. That means you're on the same team as the gym. So what you can do is level up the experience of the gym so it can open a slot for you to join the gym. Then you add one of your Pokemon to the gym and for every day your team holds the gym you get...PokeCoins and other stuff? I think?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:40 AM on July 20, 2016


You get 10 gold coins for every dude you have in a gym, once per 21 hours (but you have to do it manually.)

My Flareon remains on Pilatus, where network connectivity is sketchy.
posted by purpleclover at 4:43 AM on July 20, 2016


No, not for 'every day' you hold a gym BB - you can collect once every 21 hours, meaning that you can collect immediately after putting a guy in a gym. You get 10 coins and 500 stardust per gym, per day, up to 10 gyms.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:43 AM on July 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


No, not for 'every day' you hold a gym BB - you can collect once every 21 hours, meaning that you can collect immediately after putting a guy in a gym.

I don't think so? I just put a Pidgeot in a gym and I do not have 10 coins.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:46 AM on July 20, 2016


Go to Shop and look in the upper right.
posted by purpleclover at 4:47 AM on July 20, 2016


Oh you're right, thanks!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:49 AM on July 20, 2016


Does anyone know if the size of your dude ("XL"/"XS") makes a difference? My high-CP dudes seem to be mostly XS; does that make them bad candidates to evolve?
posted by purpleclover at 4:51 AM on July 20, 2016


Also, once you've leveled up a gym, and joined it, continue training, so that you're at least halfway to the next level. You don't want someone to come along and bring the Prestige level down. And if you continue training, you make it easier for the next team member to level up, which helps secure the gym.

Finally, going for an early walk or run seems to avoid server issues. Probably 'cause most people are busy sleeping or getting ready for work.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:14 AM on July 20, 2016


Does anyone know if the size of your dude ("XL"/"XS") makes a difference? My high-CP dudes seem to be mostly XS; does that make them bad candidates to evolve?

I don't think anyone knows for sure yet; current theories are that XL pokemon either have better stats or more HP, and XS pokemon are better at dodging and have more speed. The other theory is that the stats are just for flavor, since pokemon games have always included height and weight data for the critters.

There is confirmation that collecting specific amounts of XL/XS pokemon can earn you achievements. (I think there's one for XS Rattatas, and maybe one for Pidgeys, too.)
posted by PearlRose at 8:32 AM on July 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh! Sorry about double posting, but I had another thought about optimal Pokemon evolution: It matters more that their CP is when you evolve them, more than their size. For example, evolving a CP 131 Magikarp would easily get you a level 1300 or so Gyarados, while evolving that same Magikarp at CP 30 would get your Gyarados to CP 130, maybe.

So, that said, don't evolve your Pokemon until you're at higher levels if you want to fight in gyms and be competitive, 'cause you'll spend a lot of stardust and candies evolving them, only to catch something much better in the wild more easily.
posted by PearlRose at 8:56 AM on July 20, 2016


Definitely starting to see some gym squatting. There's a Mystic dominated one right where I work, at level five and looking pretty impossible to beat at this point. I'm Team Valor and other than calling up friends who are also Team Valor and coordinating 3-4 of them to spend a half hour or so attacking this gym, it's pointless to spend any time there.

OH WAIT
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:56 AM on July 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


Finally caught a Pikachu this morning. I pondered calling out sick and sprining my son from camp so we could celebrate.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:03 AM on July 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


xs and xl can get changed when the pokemon evolves anyway, so I wouldn't use that to pick which one to evolve
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:34 AM on July 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


I caught a Gyarados in the grassy lot near my office this morning. Just flopping around out there in the grass. This game is a perpetual source of hilarity for me. I love it so.

I had collected a bunch of Magikarp because I was working on the slow evolution method for it but now I am happily envisioning that the process of powering up Gyarados involves throwing it Magikarps to eat.
posted by angeline at 11:31 AM on July 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Haven't read through the whole thread, but per Room 641-A's comment that this would make a good meetup activity, IRL posted for Cambridge (or Boston), MA, USA.
posted by daisyace at 11:47 AM on July 20, 2016


Apparently the Fisherman badge only counts XL Magikarp (I had thought it was broken since it was stuck at 1), and the Youngster badge only counts XS Rattata, but I believe those are the only size related ones so far.
posted by tavella at 11:55 AM on July 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Let me tell you about the new Pokemon I caught this morning!!

COMMENT LOADING
...... ............
posted by Room 641-A at 1:24 PM on July 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


Couple of things:

1.) There is an update but it is for "minor text fixes" and doesn't fix the 3-step bug.
2.) Someone has made a magical map which lets you just see where Pokemon are and their remaining spawn time: PokeVision - it feels a little bit like cheating but I also want to know where the PokeMon are and who are you, Officer Jenny?
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 1:29 PM on July 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


PokeVision is amazing! I might stop using it when they fix the 3-footprint bug, because I thought the hunting aspect was really pretty fun... but until then hot damn.
posted by rifflesby at 1:56 PM on July 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


I so love this game. Today I found a gym near work, in the parking lot of a building for lease. I stopped in, and just as I noticed another car in the lot (both of us parked, of course, don't worry, husband!), the gym turned to Instinct. I looked over at the other car and the woman just stared at me. I smiled. She didn't. So I took that gym back and made it blue. She left. I stayed and battled my own pokemon, raising prestige in the gym, for a few more minutes before putting it away and going to work. Where the project manager immediately told me about what he's learned about evolution and CP. Then my boss posted on FB about being at the state fair and catching a caterpie. One of our developers lives in a nearby neighborhood full of dratinis, and a coworker and I have spent a lunch hour or two over there, wandering with dozens of other people.

My son, who never seems to go out, went to downtown Sacramento and wandered for a couple hours. Talking to people! Doing things! I've seen more parks in our city since starting this, and my husband keeps jokingly grumbling about how I "never wanted to just wander" with him, how "it took a video game" to get me out. And I'm like, "Shut up. We're out, we're together, right?"

Oh and a conversation with my sister via text today:
"How do you evolve them? I could google but its more fun asking."
"You collect candies for each type, and when you have enough you can evolve. Or transfer the extras to the professor for a candy."
"Where does he get the candy?"
"I think he grinds them up into candy."
"Maybe he milks them from their little candy nipples."
posted by routergirl at 4:19 PM on July 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


Someone has made a magical map which lets you just see where Pokemon are and their remaining spawn time: PokeVision...

"The Pokémon Go servers are currently unstable or offline. Scanning will take longer than expected, or fail entirely until the service is restored."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:57 PM on July 20, 2016


Grrrr I planned all special to go to an out of the way park after work, and the servers were fucked the whooooole time
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:30 PM on July 20, 2016


Me too! But then, I just caught two new Pokemon while sitting on my sofa. Maybe they're making up for the outage.
posted by gladly at 6:16 PM on July 20, 2016




So...I checked out that pokevision site for my current location, and either it isn't picking up 90% of the pokemon, or my "nearby" list is total bullshit. Or perhaps very, VERY generous about what "nearby" means....
posted by randomnity at 7:15 PM on July 20, 2016


What I heard is Nearby is up to a kilometer away.
posted by rifflesby at 8:05 PM on July 20, 2016


So I finally got a chance to actively test out Pokevision, and it looks like you're right, Randomnity -- Nearby is totally wrecked. I got entirely accurate catches from the website, with no correlation to what was in my Nearby list.
posted by rifflesby at 12:31 AM on July 21, 2016


...although now it seems to be correctly in line again. Maybe my phone desynced.
posted by rifflesby at 2:12 AM on July 21, 2016


I've restarted the app a few times since last night, and the nearby list always shows way more stuff (right now pokevision has a pidgie, 2 crabbies and a jynx within a km radius of my house...my nearby list is full of various other small pokemon and doesn't include the jynx).

Not sure which to trust but based on the game issues so far (and my consistent failure to catch anything in the nearby list), I'm guessing it's the nearby list that's wrong. Also, while writing this I caught the pidgie that pokevision said was the only pokemon very close to my house, and my nearby list changed to include pokemon that are still not visible anywhere on pokevision.
posted by randomnity at 7:22 AM on July 21, 2016


Ok have realized that getting new Pokemon isn't the way to go. Instead, get all those sweet, sweet zubats, rattas and pidgeons, collect the stardust and level up/evolve a few key Pokemon.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:30 AM on July 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


Is it just me or is anyone else not getting the alerts for their level up rewards? I'm getting the rewards, I think, but it hasn't done the little "yay you got this stuff for leveling up" thing in a couple of levels now.

On the plus side, yay I leveled up! And found a Sandshrew in my cat's bed and then hatched one from an egg, so, that was a nice morning.
posted by angeline at 8:24 AM on July 21, 2016


Yeah it can be buggy when leveling up and won't show you what you just got. I've had that bite me in the butt when I get to a pokestop and it's like "your bag is full". Then I have to go into my items and start throwing things out I don't even use at the moment, like Revives.
posted by numaner at 10:22 AM on July 21, 2016


I'm curious what people think about the game's longevity. It only officially launched here on Sunday, and I've been playing intermittently, but other users have obviously been using it for longer. What keeps you coming back?

At the moment, the draw for me is seeing my numbers go up, filling out the pokedex, building up candy reserves for evolution. But the highest level of play seems to be the gym battles for now, and they don't seem to be that compelling. Winning a gym lets you show off your username and a defender, and can net you some pokecoins, but they change hands so frequently that I can't see it being something I'll happily walk a few km to do a month from now.

My main point of comparison here is Ingress. The gameplay is superficially similar, but what kept me interested for most of a summer was the territory capture and the leaderboards. If I completed a particularly large control field it had a concrete, visible impact on my team's regional scoring and bumped my name up in the rankings. The idea of supporting my team, even in the very limited way the game mechanics allowed, was enough to get me to regularly hike around for hours on evenings and weekends, or drive to a nearby town to retrieve a portal key.

I'm only starting to get into the gym battles, but the team side of things is a lot lighter and gym victories don't really seem to mean very much. This may be something that Niantic will make changes to in future updates, and since I'm pretty low level I may be missing something compelling. Catching actual Pokemon is obviously nice, and meeting other players in person and having an excuse to get outside for a bit of exercise is great, but do you feel that you'll still be opening the app regularly in a few weeks or months?
posted by figurant at 11:16 AM on July 21, 2016


I'd expect more team events, leaderboard type stuff, later generations of pokemon, etc

seems like rolling out with minimal content and then adding lots and lots of stuff as the player base matures is how it goes with mobile games
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:23 AM on July 21, 2016


I think the point for now is to literally "catch them all". As far as what Brandon said, I mostly agree as a point of leveling up for the time being, since rarer pokemon requires higher levels to easily find and catch. I think the gyms are more of a bragging right as in "haha you can't beat this ridiculously strong pokemon I just plopped down right in your hood", but they're more functional as a way to get gold coins from the shop if you don't want to spend actual cash; those coins in turns are, imo, best used to expand your carrying capacity for more pokemon and items. The lures are nice too but so far I haven't seen them work better to get rare pokemon. The rarest I've got is a Rhyhorn and that popped up out of nowhere in a Philadephia suburb when I was visiting a friend.

So to sum it up, for my style of enjoyment I think I'd rather take the time and try to catch the unseen pokemon for now, while also doing what Brandon's doing and just go after the weaklings for easy catches and evolve them for easy XP to gain levels for more rare pokemon. I'm definitely tired of wasting several pokeballs at a time trying to get a high level but not rare pokemon like Pinsir or Tangela just to find out I've either already got something higher or they're not high enough to even take on any gyms around.
posted by numaner at 12:11 PM on July 21, 2016


Does anyone know - does the pokemon storage upgrade also increase the number of eggs you can carry?
posted by Gordafarin at 12:43 PM on July 21, 2016


So, if you want to play the Arena game and think you can't because your pokemon aren't strong enough: last night I went around and did stuff that included taking down 1700 CP pokemon with single 1100ish pokemon, not even having to switch to another of my 6pack to take them down. There are two secrets: first, understand which types do best against certain types (and remembering that if a pokemon is the same type as their attack, that attack gets plusses), and second understanding which attacks are the best for given pokemon. For example, my Golem with Mud Shot is murderous against Arcanines, and my lightning types are seriously mean against the ever-annoying Vaporeon.

For the first, check this chart. For the second, look at this spreadsheet. It's easier if you make a copy to your own Google Drive to be able to sort it yourself.

Look at your various max evolved pokemon, and figure out which have the best powers for their kind. Use those in arena fights, against their best opponents, and you will punch above your level.
posted by tavella at 12:45 PM on July 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


I've been using this page for battling with types. It's neater summary of those charts and sheets, and you don't have to worry about specific numbers. Here's the direct link to that image halfway down the page which I've been using as a good reference as what to use.
posted by numaner at 1:29 PM on July 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


That covers the type bonuses pretty well, but specific attacks for a type are much better than others. For example, Water Gun and Mud Shot are really overpowered compared to other other possible quick attacks for water and mud types, so you want to use your water or mud type that has those over other options.
posted by tavella at 1:46 PM on July 21, 2016


Does anyone know - does the pokemon storage upgrade also increase the number of eggs you can carry?

Unless they've changed it since the Field Test, it's a limit of 9 eggs regardless of how many storage upgrades you buy.
posted by radwolf76 at 2:23 PM on July 21, 2016


I'm curious what people think about the game's longevity. It only officially launched here on Sunday, and I've been playing intermittently, but other users have obviously been using it for longer. What keeps you coming back?

I've only been playing since Sunday too, and I'm a lot more interested in collecting them than fighting them. Still haven't got round to visiting a gym - I really should give that a try some time...

Right now I like working out how the different kinds are distributed, and how well the biome thing holds up. Sometimes the conventional wisdom seems right - I've caught a lot of Clefairys and Gastlys near churches and cemeteries, a lot of water types near a river, and the one fighting type I have was caught near a big stadium. But other times it really doesn't, like psychic types only appearing in residential areas at night (seriously around here it's Drowzees and the occasional Jynx as far as the eye can see during the day, to the point where the Nearby thing sometimes shows nine drowzees and nothing else, but at night they mostly disappear and herds of doduos roam about). Dragon types near famous places and landmarks? Despite living in one of the most famous-landmark-dense cities in the country, the three I've caught so far were two dratinis on the same unremarkable 60s housing estate and one dragonair at a bus stop near Tesco.
posted by Catseye at 2:35 PM on July 21, 2016


Funny, I keep hearing about places where drowzees are extremely common, and I have literally never seen one. I wonder which surplus pokemons in my area are scarce in others!
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:41 PM on July 21, 2016


Gyms are insidious. I don't feel like I care about gyms, but... I stuck one of my best guys, a 1600 Arcanine, into the Gym near my house, because there happened to be a slot open. Three days later he's still in there, wearing the crown, and I haven't seen a gym last that long unbroken. Makes me feel like a little bit of a badass and I find myself looking at nearby gyms and saying "oh, I could take that."
posted by rifflesby at 2:42 PM on July 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


Funny, I keep hearing about places where drowzees are extremely common, and I have literally never seen one.

I've seen one in the wild, gotten 2 more from eggs. I have a friend in Wisconsin who reports getting them in constant swarms, the way I get doduos, which she never sees.

Every time I hear someone complain of being infested with something, it's one of those two.
posted by rifflesby at 2:48 PM on July 21, 2016


Did anyone else get a bunch of 10k eggs today? I hadn't found one since the one they give you on a new account, until today when I found five.
posted by rifflesby at 2:49 PM on July 21, 2016


numaner: The rarest I've got is a Rhyhorn and that popped up out of nowhere [...] I'm definitely tired of wasting several pokeballs at a time trying to get a high level but not rare pokemon like Pinsir or Tangela

This is my favorite thing about this thread. See, I have gotten 27/28 Rhyhorns -- enough to evolve into a Rhydon -- but I've never even heard of a Tangela. (I'm deliberately not looking them so I can be surprised.) I love hearing what everyone else is finding, and I'd love to see what everyone's top 5 captured and top five elusive misses are. Which medals are you completing, what was the rarest or biggest capture so far?

I would love to see leaderboards for accuracy because that's where I'm a Pokeviking.

MetaFilter: punch above your level.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:54 PM on July 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Abra is definitely the most elusive for me. Even though I'm usually using my best ball and a raspberry, I've only caught 13 out of 19. Magikarp is also oddly capable of escape, despite being so weak, I've lost 3 of them. And I've only seen 4 ghost pokemon in total, despite trying cemeteries.
posted by tavella at 3:02 PM on July 21, 2016


Okay, I'm amused. Just after I posted that, I got a buzz and an Abra had spawned behind my house. Despite using a raspberry and an ultra ball, he fled.
posted by tavella at 3:05 PM on July 21, 2016


What keeps you coming back?

I really like the exploration aspect, but flaky servers have messed with that aspect.

Gyms are odd. I feel silly battling, because it's just tapping the phone a lot. But I like the stardust bonus for keeping a gym, to use evolving things.

But yeah, I do wonder the game will go long term. I'm already grinding stops in a park to get supplies and stardust, that'll get boring real soon now.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:07 PM on July 21, 2016


I quit Ingress because I got bored with the meta-game; fighting over territory annoys rather than enlivens me. I had a ball going to my local gym and losing repeatedly, though, and also cleared out some inventory space. I like how low-stakes it is, frankly. Enough of my life is about impossibly high stacks with no save-point; having something mostly about loving my hoard of pokemon and snuggling the strongest ones really appeals to me.

I'm pretty much anti-competition, though, and the collaborative nature of these sorts of capture-the-flag types just doesn't do anything for me (though I did enjoy the gym battle!). What I'm most looking forward to is raising up rare local pokemon, naming them something cute, and sending them to friends once sharing pokemon opens up. I like that I can hit a bunch of pokestops and end up with a ton of stuff, too; I'm not interested in a grind. There's a line of pokestops in my hometown I plan to follow this weekend.

For people losing rarer pokemon - try some razzberries. I've found they really help (though I lost my Pikachu to a crash TT_TT )
posted by Deoridhe at 4:39 PM on July 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I got to thinking about robocop is bleeding's fancy gym signs from earlier in the thread, and though I haven't decided if I'm actually going to do this myself or not, if you're interested in leaving calling-cards at gyms I found instructions for a relatively straightforward and good-looking origami bird.

(His paper is larger than it needs to be, you could go down to the more standard 15 cm size without problem.)
posted by rifflesby at 5:21 PM on July 21, 2016


I would love to see leaderboards for accuracy because that's where I'm a Pokeviking.

Somehow I've gotten worse at throwing the pokeballs. I cannot hit the broad side of a CP50 Nidoran, and I swear I used to be better at this. Now all my throws curve wildly.
posted by gladly at 5:58 PM on July 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Mashable: You can lock onto a Pokémon by tapping them on the screen. This will close out the 3x3 menu and show you it in the bottom right bar. When you start walking in the right direction of the Pokémon, the bar should start pulsating green.

The number footprints should also start getting smaller the closer you get closer to it, but this feature is still a bit glitchy. Rather, open back up the 3x3 grid and use that as you're walking. If the Pokémon starts rising to the top left, you're walking in the right direction;


A bit glitchy? I had no idea about this. I've never seen it pulse any color, has anyone else?
posted by Room 641-A at 7:22 PM on July 21, 2016


It pulses when it updates, but I don't think it pulses a different colour for the right direction.

The number of footprints thing has been broken for days and the nearby list in general doesn't seem to update correctly anymore so you can't even use the ordering to help.

I wouldn't mind if niantic would atleast update their known issues page but I should be used to the total lack of any response from them from playing ingress.
posted by pixie at 1:11 AM on July 22, 2016


5am EST and the servers are down. Jesus , what the hell are you doing, UK?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:09 AM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Don't blame us! Probably Japan's fault
posted by pixie at 2:34 AM on July 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


I feel like it's the '90s and we have to argue about who's using the phone line for the dial up connection.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:04 AM on July 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


The Pokemon GO trend: What (if anything) it means for railroaders
For those on the transit side of rail, this presents an opportunity to encourage ridership. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (Metro), for instance, has happily hopped on the Pokemon GO trend. The agency last week put out a press release notifying riders that several of its rail stations serve as gyms or Pokestops.

In addition, Metro created a Twitter handle dedicated to updates about the game.
...
However, Metro also cautioned players to remain alert and aware of their surroundings. On Twitter, MTA New York City Transit and several other agencies have issued similar warnings.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't appear to be faring quite so well for freight railroads. A local Fox affiliate in Tulsa, Okla., reported that BNSF Railway Co. is having issues with people walking into one of its yards because it had been designated as a Pokestop. As a result, the railroad has increased security at the yard and plans to issue trespassing notices for players that have wandered in.
The link also has an embedded screenshot from Union Pacific's Facebook feed, with a picture of a crossed out psyduck at a (commuter) rail stop, captioned Pokémon No! in the Pokémon font.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:22 AM on July 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think I might have to give up on this game as "not for my phone" (Moto G). 11:00 last night I tried to do some inventory management and the delays clicking and scrolling were painful.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:55 AM on July 22, 2016


So sick of Rattatas, they much be 30% of the Pokemon I've seen.
posted by octothorpe at 8:32 AM on July 22, 2016


Rattatas are great, you can really stock up on stardust!

The big problem are Rattatas with over 300 CP, that gets a bit tedious.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:25 AM on July 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


To demonstrate just how effective correctly picking type and attacks can be: last night I was picking up dinner when I noticed an arena nearby. Level four, stocked with 2 Arcanines of CP ~1500 and ~1700, and two Dragonites of ~2000 and ~2200. Sounds like it might be a bit of work? I blew through it in three rounds, with only two pokemon of CP ~1300 and ~2000. One of which never went below 2/3 health, and the other still had a quarter health in every round.

Arcanines? My 1300 Golem, who mudshotted them to death at speed. It's ground/rock, so it gets 1.25 for ground attacks, and is 1.25 against fire -- and those are multiplied, so it's half again as powerful as it might be, and Mud Shot is an overpowered attack to boot. Meanwhile, Fire is .8 against rock, and at least one of the Arcanines was using a non fire attack, so no STAB bonus. I barely had to heal the Golem between rounds.

Dragonites? A Lapras using Frost Breath and Blizzard. Ice is 1.25 vs both Flying and Dragon, so the damage is 1.25 *cubed*; nearly twice as effective as base. Still had a quarter of HP left after going through both a same-level Dragonite and a higher level one.

Granted, not everyone is going to be lucky enough to hatch a great Lapras like I did, but there's plenty of options to at least get the STAB and one 1.25 type bonus.
posted by tavella at 10:57 AM on July 22, 2016 [3 favorites]




Yeah I haven't seen anything that great yet. I think I might need to hatch more eggs or something. My problem is there's a heatwave in the mid-atlantic this week so I'm trying to not go outside too much. I can walk around my work building but the wi-fi is iffy.

As far as "elusive" pokemon go. The only two I've seen but not caught is one Charmander and one Venusaur (not a big deal since I'll get enough Bulbasaurs to evolve my Ivysaur into). Here's my pokedex, along with seen/caught. Keep in mind that the "Very common" and "Common" pokemon do not include a bunch that I pass up on the screen. I'll also only list first forms, since second or third numbers could include evolutions, and I haven't kept track of what I evolved vs caught for those. I'll also break this up in sections of rarity. In order of how many caught:

- Very common
Rattata (124/105)
Pidgey (111/98)
Doduo (82/78)
Spearow (62/56)

- Common
Weedle (48/40)
Zubat (46/37)
Caterpie (31/28)
Eevee (29/24) (they're all over the place here, always in my nearby list)

- Just uncommon to make me really try and catch it
Poliwag (19/19)
Venonat (21/18)
Lickitung (20/16)
Goldeen (16/15)
Krabby (17/14)
Bellsprout (13/13)
Horsea (15/13)
Staryu (17/12)

- Occasional
Paras (12/11)
Ekans (10/10)
Exeggcute (11/10)
Pinsir (13/10) (many show up nearby, but they're usually far)
Nidoran female (9/9)
Psyduck (10/9) (many of these were at the waterfront at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia)
Nidoran male (11/8)
Oddish (9/8)
Squirtle (8/7)
Bulbasaur (7/6)

- Rare
Jigglypuff (5/5)
Tangela (5/5) (many show up nearby, but they're always far away from me for some reason)
Magikarp (6/5) (only near bodies of water)
Clefairy (4/3)
Tauros (4/3)
Growlithe (2/2)

- Only once
Sandshrew (1/1)
Vulpix (1/1)
Machop (1/1)
Tentacool (2/2) (1 was hatched)
Geodude (1/1)
Gastly (1/1)
Koffing (1/1)
Rhyhorn (1/1)
Scyther (1/1)

- Only hatched
Slowpoke (1/1)
Drowzee (1/1)
posted by numaner at 12:24 PM on July 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Tavella, in pokemon go the super effective modifiers don't stack, unlike the original games. So ice attacks vs dragonite are still just 1.25 effective.
posted by Mayhembob at 12:42 PM on July 22, 2016


Possibly? I've seen debate about it but I thought the current consensus was that weaknesses do stack. But I'm not following the minmaxing debate closely, just enough to figure out which pokemon to line up against the most common type around here.
posted by tavella at 1:00 PM on July 22, 2016


Thursday nights is the free concert series on the Santa Monica Pier. This is the view looking west; the gym that's farthest away is at the very end of the pier.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:06 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


To support what Room 641-A said, Santa Monica Pier has been a zoo every damn night since this game was released. Hundreds, if not thousands of Pokemon Go players are down there at all friggin' hours. It spawns like crazy, including some rares and just about every possible Water type, so I've braved the crowds a few times.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 1:14 PM on July 22, 2016


We have a spot like that here, in Guadelupe River Park. There's a section where there's something like a dozen pokestops, including an overlapping cluster of four, and it spawns water types including dratini, rock types, and for some reason fire as well, along with a mix of other types. I've picked up a Lickitung there that I haven't seen anywhere else, and at least once an Aerodactyl has spawned. There's usually hundreds of people there in the evenings.
posted by tavella at 1:23 PM on July 22, 2016


And certainly, watching a Lapras tear through two level+ Dragonites with HP to spare does make me think it was running at more than plus one half efficiency.
posted by tavella at 1:25 PM on July 22, 2016


Just after I posted that, I got a buzz and an Abra had spawned behind my house. Despite using a raspberry and an ultra ball, he fled.

Heh. I guess I should feel lucky that I hatched my first egg today (the game was only released in my country Monday? Started playing Tuesday with the kids) and got an Abra then.


Funny, I keep hearing about places where drowzees are extremely common, and I have literally never seen one. I wonder which surplus pokemons in my area are scarce in others!


Drowzees and Hypnos all over my city. Hopefully we can start exchanging them with each other soon.
posted by nubs at 2:23 PM on July 22, 2016


Hopefully we can start exchanging them with each other soon.

I'll start tracking down those Tangelas for you guys!
posted by numaner at 2:43 PM on July 22, 2016


Should you always power up a Pokemon before evolving it?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:52 PM on July 22, 2016


The consensus seems to be no? You don't know what power set a Pokemon will have after evolution, so you want to get them to their final state and then power up the ones that have particularly good power sets.
posted by tavella at 2:54 PM on July 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's ungodly hot here and I want to go out and catch new pokeymans so badly! There's a mall nearby with a couple of lured pokestops and not a single person outside. Santa Monica Pier is sounding like a worthwhile adventure just for the cooler weather alone.

Also a coworker showed me this shot of pokestops in Japan and now I'm angry.

Also also I may or may not be scouting new apartment complexes near multiple stops.
posted by erratic meatsack at 3:09 PM on July 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah Brandon don't power up before evolving.

As far as the current game dynamic goes, you should only care about getting your pokemon stronger to take on gyms. And if so then you gotta work on evolving (which, of course, means catching more). It might have been stated somewhere in this thread, but at the same point on the arc for each pokemon, regardless of which form, it costs the same to power up. And when you evolve, the next form is at the same point on that arc, so evolve first and see if that evolution will be strong enough with the right moves before you spend the candy to power up.
posted by numaner at 3:15 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


don't be mad erratic, but that's how DC looks too (and Capitol Hill actually isn't even as concentrated as other parts), as well as central Philly when I was there. I imagine any big city is like that.
posted by numaner at 3:29 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have only seen a single Rattata in Seattle, and I've never seen a Doduo
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:36 PM on July 22, 2016


Rattatas not hipster enough for Seattle?
posted by numaner at 3:46 PM on July 22, 2016


To support what Room 641-A said, Santa Monica Pier has been a zoo every damn night since this game was released.

Are there any similar hotspots in Portland OR, does anyone know? Pioneer Courthouse Square has three overlapping stops, frequently lured, but I haven't noticed that it's any more active than normal in terms of spawn rates.
posted by rifflesby at 3:46 PM on July 22, 2016


y'all... I need this. I might have to make it out of cardboard. (is it just me or do curveballs become way easier to occur and make your throw go crazy after you've fed them a razzberry?)
posted by numaner at 3:57 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm realizing that one of my joys with this game is that I have very little idea of what I'm capturing/doing means anything at this point. Psyduck! Shelder! Seel! It's just random to me!
posted by nubs at 4:25 PM on July 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


Argh. All my good Pokemon are half dead and all I get from stops are balls.
posted by octothorpe at 6:02 PM on July 22, 2016


Me, I got 122 Revive gems and about 30 of each potion, but really need some Great Balls.

Where's the trading feature?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:29 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I want to share my great balls with the universe.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:42 PM on July 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yeah maybe if my balls were greater, I wouldn't have rattatas bustin em all the time
posted by rifflesby at 7:28 PM on July 22, 2016


I'm in Michigan for the weekend, and its Drowzees as far as the eye can see. I'm starting to understand why they might be annoying to some of you.
posted by PearlRose at 8:54 PM on July 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


A pokestop-heavy boulevard near me was absolutely packed tonight. I've never seen it like that before. And I'm pretty sure I saw what was either a psychotic break or someone in a full squirtle costume.
posted by figurant at 10:07 PM on July 22, 2016




I actually got a bunch out of this Vox article in the sections about how to use the curveball and tips for fighting. I had no idea that the yellow streaks were a warning about incoming attacks.
posted by gladly at 11:06 AM on July 23, 2016 [3 favorites]


Pidgeys run wild in my neighborhood. I just back to town after a week away in a pretty sparsely populated area. I've caught 5 pidgeys in an hour.
posted by soelo at 11:26 AM on July 23, 2016


Jacobin's blog has a new post about Pokemon Go, The Profit in the PokéStop. It's not as provocative as the earlier post, but it also mostly fails to make any particular point. Mostly the author just describes the game mechanics. Also, it mentioned briefly that the suburbs and rural areas are less served by pokestops than urban areas, but fails to mention the racial aspect.

Poor effort all around, really.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:01 AM on July 24, 2016


Can anyone confirm that you don't have to control a gym for the whole 21 hours, just have control of it at then end of the 21 hours?

Also, a 399 CP Pidgey is ridiculous.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:28 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ohh, you have to control it for 21 hours? Is that why I have nothing to show for my few wins? I'm also confused about why gyms have one pokething on the top of the gym but a different pokething once you enter. The battles are making a little bit more sense but I'm really glD I'm having fun doing other things right now.

I actually got a bunch out of this Vox article in the sections about how to use the curveball and tips for fighting.

I didn't know about the curveball trick, thanks. My technique is totally different so I'm not going to try to fix what isn't broken, but the curveball thing did help me catch an orange Onix after wasting a bunch of ultra balls. My technique is to use a high-arcing shot with a soft touch, and that works very well for me. Here's why it works; if you have a heavier touch try a lower angle.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:45 AM on July 24, 2016


Ohh, you have to control it for 21 hours?
You have to control it at the moment you hit the button in the shop. So if the timer has expired, and you have just taken control of a gym, you can hit the button and earn the stardust and coins immediately. So one strategy is to let the timer expire, then go out and do your battling for a bunch of gyms, and then hit the button when you're for that session.
posted by borsboom at 9:55 AM on July 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh, that's changes everything, yet again!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:14 AM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


Anyone confirm a new bug where the App still shows where you are and where you're moving, but the screen remains usable i.e. you can see where you're going but can't do anything?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:47 AM on July 24, 2016


I had that quite a bit last week and only killing the app would fix it for me.
posted by soelo at 10:55 AM on July 24, 2016


I've had that happen a few times too. The app seemed to get out of sync with the servers for some reason and give up.

I'd never bothered to learn how to kill a running app on iOS before this game. Now I'm doing it more times a day than I can count.
posted by figurant at 10:57 AM on July 24, 2016


I had that problem constantly; the only solution I've found is to not have the battery saver on.
posted by nubs at 11:06 AM on July 24, 2016


Yeah whenever I had that happen to me -- since launch, not new -- it was after waking up from more than like a minute in battery-saver mode.

I started just turning my screen brightness way down instead, and no problem since.
posted by rifflesby at 12:19 PM on July 24, 2016


Yes to the freezing, and yes to realizing that it was when waking up and also I had the battery saver on so yes to this thread being a sanity saver. And no to knowing about the timer!
posted by Room 641-A at 1:18 PM on July 24, 2016


Yay, I hatched a CP359 Pikachu from a 2km egg.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:16 AM on July 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Anyone have a glitch were the proximity footprints don't work? Nearby Pokemon show up, but they all have three footprints, and never show less, not matter how much or where I walk. I'm still catching Pokemon, but it makes it really hard to actually go after rare ones that show up as nearby.
posted by kimdog at 6:32 AM on July 25, 2016


kimdog: everyone is experiencing that glitch, as far as I know. Try Pokévision to narrow down their locations.
posted by borsboom at 6:37 AM on July 25, 2016


New strategy! Save Pidgeys, incubate as many eggs at once as I can, then as they near hatching, crack a Lucky Egg, then evolve all those saved Pidgeys while the Lucky Egg gives double XP.

Also, finally found a use for gyms! Battling enemy gyms is another good way to get stardust for evolving the little monsters. Still can't figure out how collecting the gold coins works.

Only 252 Magikarps to go!

Finally, David Attenborough 'narrating' Pokemon Go is as fun as you think.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:51 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Humorous notes: At home, a PokeStop is literally juuuuust out of reach from inside the house. At work, a PokeGym is juuuuust out of reach from inside the building.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:54 AM on July 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm also confused about why gyms have one pokething on the top of the gym but a different pokething once you enter

Gyms can have several pokemon, dependingot on the level of the gym. The most I have seen in one gym is seven pokemon. The highest cp mon will appear atop the gym when you first see other on the map. However, that wil be the last one you battle since you fight the low cp ones first. Once you click on a gym, you can swipe left and right to see all the mons in the gym so you can prepare your team better.

You can 'train' at your own team's Gyms to raise their prestige, and once it goes high enough the level of the gym goes up and you can add your own mon to help defend it (and it counts as capturing a gym when you go to collect the daily bonus) I think the first time a gym is captured it can hold 2 pokemon, so if you go around with a friend you can immediately put two in.
posted by Mayhembob at 7:37 AM on July 25, 2016


Once you click on a gym, you can swipe left and right to see all the mons in the gym so you can prepare your team better.

And yet nothing ive read the last few weeks mentioned this basic bit of info. Thanks, Mayhembob! Actually, thanks for the whole comment, I didn't know any of that. To quote that good vox article that gladly linked to:

1) Locate the Pokémon.
2) Shoot Poké Balls at the Pokémon.
3) Repeat with more balls and more 'mon at new locations.
4) Something something gyms and fighting.

Ok, strategy question: let's take a Pokemon that can evolve twice as an example. I have some Machops, some Machopes, and some Machamps. Is there any reason to hang on to and/or strengthen any of the first two iterations? I've been collecting them all and I currently transfer all of the first two* in service of eventually evolving the second kind into the strongest of the last kind. In other words, why would I want to use a Machomp to battle when I have a Machamp?

PS: I hate spellcheck making retype these names every damn time.

*I keep back two each of them for now; this mostly applies to very popular Pokemon which add up quickly.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:36 AM on July 25, 2016


Ok, strategy question: let's take a Pokemon that can evolve twice as an example. I have some Machops, some Machopes, and some Machamps. Is there any reason to hang on to and/or strengthen any of the first two iterations?

Hang on to your Pidgey's for a while. Then crack an Lucky Egg, which doubles your XP for a half hour, then evolve the hell out of them during that 30 minute window that Lucky Egg is in effective. You'll get 1,000XP per Pidgey, instead of 500XP. Why Pidgey? 'Cause it only costs 12 candies to evolve them and the darn things show up everywhere.

Side Note: Have all at least three EeVees to evolve. Rename them to control what they evolve into. I'm partial to the electric one, which is very effective against the very popular (at least in my town) Water Pokemon.

SUPER IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: Best not to use the rename feature to make goofy names of the 'mons, cause that can backfire in some situations, say a Gym at hospital.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:47 AM on July 25, 2016


I'm back in Florida, and exactly one Drowzee catch short of getting a Hypno. Not bad, considering I was in Michigan for all of two days. Airports are lousy with Pokestops, but the Pokemon catching wasn't very good there, I noticed.

I also finally hatched my very first egg, and it was a CP 42 Rattata, so I suppose the game just likes toying with me. That was a little disappointing.
posted by PearlRose at 8:59 AM on July 25, 2016


I think custom Pokémon names were visible to other players at first, but no longer after one of the updates (disappointing, as all my Pokémons have hilarious and spot-on names that would surely enrich the playing experience of anyone who sees them, but probably for the best).
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:02 AM on July 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Still can't figure out how collecting the gold coins works.

Go to the 'shop' screen. At the top right you'll see a shield with a number in it. It's a zero if you have no pokemon in gyms. If you put a pokemon in one gym, it goes up to one. Etc.

Put pokemon in as many gyms as you can (in NYC they flip within minutes, other areas you can hold a gym for weeks at a time). Then go to the store page and click on the shield to collect 10 coins and 500 dust per gym, for up to 10 gyms. I think you'll also collect automatically after 21 hours, but you don't have to wait! Not enough people know this.

You can collect again any time after 21 hours have elapsed. It will tell you how long you have.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:09 AM on July 25, 2016


Is there any reason to hang on to and/or strengthen any of the first two iterations? I've been collecting them all and I currently transfer all of the first two* in service of eventually evolving the second kind into the strongest of the last kind.

I evolved a Squirtle into a Wartortle. A bit later I caught a Squirtle more powerful than that Wartortle. But the way these guys scale begins to level off - it seems to be logarithmic, like the player levels are.

The best strategy seems to be to catch enough of the lowest level thing to stock up enough candy to evolve them one level and then the next level one after the other. As you do this, reserve the highest-CP ones. That way, of the dozens of [whatever] you've caught, you are guaranteed to begin with the best CP you've ever found, which will evolve into a higher-CP creature than a lower level one would.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:13 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Room 641-A, unless the current form is just about strong enough to take on some gyms, i.e. a CP900 Ivysaur (yes, I've seen it), don't power it up. Save the candies to evolve it, in this case a Venusaur. If you do have a powerful enough one though, weigh the rarity of catching more of that specie to evolve it to the next form versus spending the candy to power it up to take on gyms right now. It's all about your priorities. But if you have stronger pokemon already to take on gyms, definitely save the candies to evolve it.

That Vox article has some good tips, I gotta try the curveball more. I'm losing pokeballs like crazy now that for some reason the straight shot goes wild more often than not. I dunno if it's because of my level or I'm getting more anxious about catching them because there's rarely any greens now, all yellows and oranges.

Also, if anyone is near Pittsburg, PA, a friend on facebook just posted that there's a park there with a ton of Gastlies. (edit: that jerk wouldn't tell his friends which park specifically!)
posted by numaner at 9:40 AM on July 25, 2016


Woo-hoo! I'm at Kaiser waiting for the doctor and I won a gym battle because I now know there is more than one fight and I claimed my 10 points. Thanks all!

say a Gym at hospital.

My first battle was against DebbieRN. I hope she's not our nurse today.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:53 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Best not to use the rename feature to make goofy names of the 'mons, cause that can backfire in some situations, say a Gym at hospital.

Pokemon names can't be seen by other players in gyms -- they just see the generic species names. So goofy names are safe unless you want to make your own screenshots.
posted by tavella at 10:06 AM on July 25, 2016


Is a Lucky Egg something that will drop from a Pokestop?
posted by soelo at 11:11 AM on July 25, 2016


You get Lucky Eggs when you reach Level 9, 10, 15, 20 and 25.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:15 AM on July 25, 2016


Alternately, you can buy them in the store, with either real money or coins gained from battling in a gym.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:16 AM on July 25, 2016


Anyone have a glitch were the proximity footprints don't work? Nearby Pokemon show up, but they all have three footprints, and never show less, not matter how much or where I walk. I'm still catching Pokemon, but it makes it really hard to actually go after rare ones that show up as nearby.

From the accounts of the people who are digging into the game to figure out how it works, the three footsteps "bug" is actually the result of Niantic temporarily disabling the bit of server-side code that processes and updates how many steps to show for each pokemon, instead just reporting "yeah it's three steps away" for everything on your nearby tab. Supposedly, cutting out the calculations for updating the footsteps for every player on the planet saves them quite a few processor cycles while they straighten out the server capacity issues. While this theory has not been officially confirmed by any official Niantic communication, Niantic CEO John Hanke did acknowledge yesterday during a panel at San Diego Comicon's infamous "Hall H" that they "were aware" of that one when asked about the three steps issue and that they were working on it.

(Supposedly this is also why the map that's supposed to show on an individual pokemon's profile that shows you the general area where it was caught, hasn't been displaying.)

Also during his SDCC presentation, Hanke revealed images of what each team leader (hidden in silhouette in the current versions of the app) actually looks like. Reportedly, there will be more interaction with these characters in future updates.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:39 AM on July 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also during his SDCC presentation, Hanke revealed images of what each team leader (hidden in silhouette in the current versions of the app) actually looks like.

Yesssssssssss, my team has the best look!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:00 PM on July 25, 2016


If you mean Blanche, then yes, she looks the best out of them ;)
posted by numaner at 12:03 PM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh wow. That makes a whole lot of sense, thanks Radwolf.

Here's something for minmaxers: it turns out Pokemon have a number of hidden stats -- basically IVs from the regular games. This means a high CP Squirtle (say) is not necessarily better in an absolute sense than a low-CP one, because the low-CP one might have the potential to become much better if powered up. Spreadsheets are evolving that you can use to compare individual pokemon and find the ones you should be levelling/evolving if you want to maximize your guys for fighting.
posted by rifflesby at 12:04 PM on July 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


(link to make a copy of that spreadsheet, if it doesn't give you the Google Sheets file options)
posted by rifflesby at 12:09 PM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


This means a high CP Squirtle (say) is not necessarily better in an absolute sense than a low-CP one, because the low-CP one might have the potential to become much better if

Couple of things I noticed:

1. electric 'mons are super effective against water ones.

2. Scyther is also deadly against water 'mons. I had a 900CP one that put a serious hurt on a 1700CP Larpas. It gave a 1300 Vaporeon a pretty good battle too.

3. If you get a Snorlax, he's pretty powerful

4. The exact same Pokemon tend to have little effect on each other if they battle.

5. Magikarps are absolutely devastating against no one.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:25 PM on July 25, 2016


Yep! The ultracomplex Rock-Paper-Scissors is pretty important. I keep a copy of this chart on my phone for ease of reference.

Note that it's the type of the attacking 'mon's move versus the type of the defending 'mon itself. For example, a Psyduck is water type, but its base attack move might be "Zen Headbutt", which is Psychic type, therefore it's good against fighting and poison types, not fire/ground/rock, but it will defend well against those types of moves.
posted by rifflesby at 12:30 PM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


And there's also STAB - Same Type Attack Bonus. Yeah, you might have a Psyduck that knows Zen Headbutt, but an Abra of the same Combat Power will be 25% more effective at the same move, on top of the bonuses from the ultracomplex rock-paper-scissors.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:36 PM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Brandon, your Scyther kicks the Lapras' butt most likely because it has Steel Wing as its quick move, which is a Steel attack, and Lapras is not just a Water type, but also Ice, which is weak against Steel types. As for that Vaporeon, they're evenly match, in that there are no weaknesses against each other, so it comes out to your battling skills, in which case you might just be really good!
posted by numaner at 1:01 PM on July 25, 2016


See, I'm just not that into the fine details (no offense to those who are). I only have a vague knowledge of the various types and studying the charts and characters to see who's best against what just bores me to tears (at least at this point).

I just need more Snorlax and Eevee candy, ok?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:19 PM on July 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yeah, this is stuff that's really not necessary to worry about unless you're interested in high-end competitive play. It's like, say, studying the meta and top-tier netdecks in Hearthstone -- plenty of fun to be had without getting into the nitty-gritty.
posted by rifflesby at 1:26 PM on July 25, 2016


Hang on to your Pidgey's for a while.

I know this is the example everyone uses because they're so popular, but I've seen/caught 26/23 Pidgies vs 105/90 Sandshews. Same principle, I know, but I think I've seen half those Pidgies just in the last few days. Count me in as someone eager to start trading.

I'm with Brandon on the details, but it's a slippery slope for me because if I'm going to battle even casually then I'm going to start to want to know what I'm doing. That's where I'm at right now, (and having the charts help!) but at some point it starts to seem like work. I get the attraction, though! My ex-sql-bf basically played Mafia Wars as a means to play the real game called "spreadsheets."

Also, it kind of looks like some of these guys are getting raptured when you catch them at the right angle.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:58 PM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've seen/caught 26/23 Pidgies vs 105/90 Sandshews.

Ha, I was soooo excited when I hatched a sandshrew last night because I've never seen one spawn in my city on either the nearby screen or pokevision. Don't seem to be hardly any fire or ground pokemon in general here.

Absolutely drowned in drowzees, though....I have 6 hypnos now, all higher than all but 2 of my other pokemon, and I've ground up at least as many lower level hypnos along with countless drowzees. And it takes 50 of the little bastards' candies to evolve. I'm pretty sure I've caught more drowzees than pidgeys, rats or weedles (possibly even more than all 3 combined, or maybe it just feels that way...my pokedex is glitched so I can't see how many I've actually caught).
posted by randomnity at 2:31 PM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


We need a variant of Pokemon Go designed for when driving, usually with one of those car mounts for your phone. It could be called either Pokemon Go Faster! or Pokemon Go Splat! or similar.

You catch the pokemon by running over them because it'd be unsafe to stop on the highway and we do not want to restrict the game to surface streets. In fact, I'm thinking the pokemon gain initial levels the faster you hit them.

I'd image this version would be a hit with Americans who drive all the time, but maybe a bike version would fare equally well with Europeans.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:19 PM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Pokemon Go’s first death, as warning issued about landmines

Also, we wondered if Pokemon Go might be a subtle move to make street level drug dealing harder to detect.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:30 PM on July 25, 2016


(more recent version of the IV Calculator spreadsheet)
posted by rifflesby at 5:44 PM on July 25, 2016


Who is we?
posted by soelo at 6:05 PM on July 25, 2016


I am currently in a small town on the Shetland Islands, many hundreds of miles from any big population centre and with more seabirds and sheep than people, and it is the best Pokemon-hunting place I have found yet. Magnemites and Voltorbs everywhere! Water-types near the sea, Ponytas and Vulpixes at the docks, Geodudes and Clefairys and Squirtles all over the place. I've also picked up a Dratini, a Persian, a Cubone and a Pikachu.

This is so great it almost makes up for accidentally transferring the Mr Mime I hatched last night.
posted by Catseye at 5:36 AM on July 26, 2016 [11 favorites]


My current questions:
- Do different mons of the same species have the same maximum CP or does max CP vary based on weight or height (or some other mysterious factor)? If I had infinite stardust and candy, would my 301 Taurous power up to be equal to my 898 Taurous?

- I think I could probably delve into the spreadsheets for this, but: Do unevolved standard and special attack types and numbers predict evolved ones? My anecdotal playing around with evolving seems not to be revealing any patterns.
posted by purpleclover at 10:14 AM on July 26, 2016




Purpleclover, max CP varies based on the hidden IV stats and level that the spreadsheets can show you. It's possible that your 301 Tauros would become better than your 898, if you spend the stardust and candy to level it up that far -- the 898 may have weaker stats, but higher CP because it was pre-levelled-up when you caught it.
posted by rifflesby at 12:17 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


However, leveling up is really expensive for stardust, so I wouldn't bother using IV unless you are trying to pick between two pokemons with ideal powersets and fairly close levels.
posted by tavella at 12:27 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Thanks!

Er, what does IV mean?
posted by purpleclover at 12:36 PM on July 26, 2016


It stands for Individual Values, a term used for similar hidden stats in the mainline Pokemon games.
posted by rifflesby at 12:48 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


it's like a whole different language!
posted by numaner at 12:55 PM on July 26, 2016


YOU GUYS, I THINK THE EEVEE TRICK IS GONE.

I just evolved an Eevee, renamed Rainer, and it is a Jolteon.
posted by purpleclover at 1:26 PM on July 26, 2016


Wait, never mind. I think I renamed and then evolved too fast, meaning the change didn't register on the server.
posted by purpleclover at 1:28 PM on July 26, 2016


I successfully got a Jolteon once using the name trick, but subsequent efforts have resulted in a small but growing army of Vaporeons. Sigh.
posted by angeline at 1:30 PM on July 26, 2016


Was it your first go at a Vaporeon? I've been told the trick only works for your first one of each of the three. But my own first attempt at a Jolteon turned into a Flareon, so :puzzled_shrug:

I also named and then evolved fairly quickly, so maybe server time is the issue? Or maybe it's not a 100% chance? No idea.
posted by rifflesby at 1:30 PM on July 26, 2016


It definitely worked for me, for both a Vaporeon and a Flareon, but I named them a while before I evolved them and had restarted the app in between.
posted by tavella at 1:32 PM on July 26, 2016


oh crap, I've been hunting more Eevees to get a decent Jolteon (I got a Sparky all ready to go, just need them candies!).
posted by numaner at 1:35 PM on July 26, 2016


It would have been my third Vaporeon. I think the issue was renaming->evolving without restarting.

Dang, it was a good Eevee, though.
posted by purpleclover at 1:38 PM on July 26, 2016


It's not clear if the renaming trick works beyond one chance, I think? But if you try again I would definitely rename and restart first.
posted by tavella at 1:46 PM on July 26, 2016


I just use them as gym defenders. They seem to be okay at it, so it's no waste, I have a nice little gang!
posted by angeline at 1:46 PM on July 26, 2016


I use them as Jim attackers. Seriously, Jim is a real jerk, someone needs to take him down.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:55 PM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's not clear if the renaming trick works beyond one chance, I think? But if you try again I would definitely rename and restart first.

I was imprecise: It definitely can work more than once. I've evolved three Vaporeons. The first was luck (and it was tragically ground-up in a transferring accident), but the second and third were using the Rainer trick.

I will try again, after I catch more eevees.
posted by purpleclover at 2:06 PM on July 26, 2016


Fun Fact: The site of the old Danvers State Hospital, the insane asylum that helped inspire Arkham Asylum and was the setting for Session 9, is also a nest of Hitmonlees. I shall go park there soon and build a fighting force of unusual magnitude.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:26 PM on July 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was briefly at the Google office in Zurich last week and it was full of Gastlies.

Draw your own conclusions.
posted by purpleclover at 8:04 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ahhh! Green rings started radiating out from the radar box thing. I know it's worked for others already so maybe they're fixing things in general.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:35 PM on July 26, 2016


Yeah I've been noticing that too, but I think it's an effect of when the paw prints were working correctly, at least noticing that you are moving but not really helping you figure out if you're heading in the right direction.
posted by numaner at 8:43 PM on July 26, 2016




I need to come up with a horrible pun for a team name for a city-wide PokeWalk this weekend. Must combine the right about of tryhard coolness with pokemon hunting nerdity. Best so far is "I Want to be your Joey Cubone" from that obviously well known band, Scyther-Chansey.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:22 AM on July 27, 2016


I love the part of this game where different types of Pokemon appear based on geographic area. Doduos appear around our mall, while Rattata and Pidgeys are pretty common at my home and work. Zubats, Weedles, Caterpies, Spearows and Eevees are pretty close behind, with Bellsprouts, Nidorans, Paras, and Oddish behind that.

I was excited to take this game on vacation last week. We drove from mid-Missouri to NW Iowa. Turns out Drowzees are thick on the ground in many parts of Iowa, though I still have not seen one in Missouri anywhere.
I spent the week at a lakeside house, hoping that I'd catch a ton of water Pokemon. I was surprised and disappointed that it didn't seem to work out that way. Even using incense, I mostly caught the usual Pidgeys and Rattata. I even set off incense while on a boat in the middle of a big lake, and I still caught Weedles and Spearows! But as the week wore on, I noticed that my use of the app in the area around our lakeside house seemed to improve the game. I caught more wild Pokemon while walking to hatch eggs, and more water Pokemon appeared while I was using incense. But I guess I've caught Poliwags and Goldeen in the middle of campus (nowhere near any body of water).
[I had a fantastic vacation, in case you're tempted to scold me for spending all my time on Pokemon, which I did not.]
posted by aabbbiee at 9:32 AM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


I checked Pokemon Go from the middle of Monterey Bay in a kayak with my phone in a dry bag and I was really, really disappointed that I wasn't surrounded by Magikarps. Like, bitterly so.
posted by GuyZero at 10:16 AM on July 27, 2016 [8 favorites]


I'm planning on spending an hour or so hanging out at a local pier in the evening and definitely feel that I am owed tons of Magikarp and Dratini or three.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:34 AM on July 27, 2016


The lake at one of the larger parks in my city is lousy with Psyducks right alongside the real ducks that usually occupy its murky depths.
posted by angeline at 10:58 AM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


Holy crap, someone has a 2065CP Dragonite at the gym by work that is juuuust out of reach. I've never wanted to take a half day for such a minor reason. Except for that time when McRib came back.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:01 AM on July 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


Holy crap, someone has a 2065CP Dragonite at the gym by work that is juuuust out of reach. I've never wanted to take a half day for such a minor reason. Except for that time when McRib came back.

Yesterday at about 10:00 PokeVision reported a Gyrados had spawned about two miles from work, with 3:00 before it despawned. I seriously considered taking an early lunch and speeding through the neighborhood to see if I could make it.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:33 AM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


Goddamn it, somebody killed it off and 2000CP Exeggutor up, who is also on my team. They couldn't have waited two hours? !
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:01 PM on July 27, 2016


the longest I've ever held a gym was about 10 hours, it was around 9 PM to about 7 AM the next morning, at one of the busiest metro stops in DC.
posted by numaner at 12:57 PM on July 27, 2016


It'll be great when such games can interact more with the real world, like some guy in a Pikachu onesie jumps out of the bushes and beats up your uber-powerful pokemon by punching randomly in the air because obviously he has unlimited HP due to being in the real world or whatever.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:24 PM on July 27, 2016


Just this morning, I managed to hold a gym for the 21 hours, but it was more a fluke of it being a weekday and people weren't trying to hit every gym they could.

I would have cleaned up too, there were multiple gyms owned by my team, which would have been fairly easy to join and then hit that sweet, sweet COLLECT NOW button. But the servers were acting up and I only managed to get into two of them before having to go to work.

It'll be great when such games can interact more with the real world...

If you look at the maps in the game, it's clear that they can tell where buildings are and even the shape of them. It'll be interesting when those 3D objects are incorporated into a game, so you'll have things hiding behind or between buildings.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:29 PM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


I ran out of pokeballs last night for the first time. I just stood in my driveway all stunned. I couldn't catch anything until this morning on the way into work because my commute is pretty pokestopless and I only have 20 coins. I am back over 60 after lunch, though.
posted by soelo at 2:44 PM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I just dumped fifty Revives out of my expanded bag because while I do use them, I need ball space more.
posted by angeline at 6:18 PM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've still got a stop accessible from home so supplies aren't a problem but the number of Pokemon around here has totally dried up. I go for hours without one showing up.
posted by octothorpe at 8:57 PM on July 27, 2016


Nothing quite like going out of your way to win a gym, then going to collect the money on all your gyms and having the servers crash and be locked out.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:29 AM on July 28, 2016


Someone in my local gym last night is level THIRTY-TWO. How is that even possible? Have they been GPS spoofing or dropping $100 on lucky eggs or what?
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:36 AM on July 28, 2016


Yeah, i'm at level 22 and starting to think "fuck this shit," partially because of strange server crashes and partially because the game dynamics are breaking down. I leveled up from 21, where 75000XP was needed by doing the Lucky Egg and evolving Pidgey/Caterpie trick, but that was grueling in the sense of just pointing and clicking. It takes a special kind of person to repeatedly do to reach higher levels.

I tried to catch a 209CP Spearow with a razz bery and a ultra ball and it still escaped. Meanwhile I caught a 907 Weezing with the same equipment. Why are 300 level Pidgeys appearing, shouldn't I be seeing more powerful Pokemon instead of low level ones that have more CP? Why am I still getting a shit ton of regular balls, which I have to keep deleting because they take up space, when Great and Ultra Balls are what's needed for higher level stuff?

Plus, there are only so times I can walk around the city, you know? Could expand to other places via day trips which include other things, but that seems kinda silly
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:56 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've definitely calmed down a bit since hitting 20, but I still walk my dog a couple miles each night so before we leave I look at PokeVision and walk towards any new pokemon I haven't caught before. I'll probably reach a point where I've caught everything possible/practical and lose steam from there, but that would probably take a while and hopefully they fix things by then or release new features or something.
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:05 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm hoping that they release an update soon with bug fixes. I'm also hoping that they start expanding the game with more features.
posted by octothorpe at 8:26 AM on July 28, 2016


Are there any instructions on how to install this game so that it cannot seize control of your google account?

I once heard references to side loading along to prevent it accessing your google account, but ignored it because not a game player myself. Yet, now friends are asking the "security dude friend" about it. And I cannot exactly say "pull out your handy $50 used Android tablet that you never exposed to personally identifying information, register it with a throw away google account from a cafe wifi hotspot, etc."
posted by jeffburdges at 8:39 AM on July 28, 2016


The Google account thing was a fuckup in what it asked for access to, which was patched like a week ago.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:44 AM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Are there any instructions on how to install this game so that it cannot seize control of your google account?

What exactly do you mean? The game hasn't seized anything.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:44 AM on July 28, 2016


In addition to what Pope Guilty mentioned about the update, Google also de-privleged the OAuth tokens that had been improperly issued under the version before the update was released.

Furthermore, if there's a concern about any future screw ups some how opening access back up to one's google account, there's also an option of opening an account through Nintendo's Pokemon Trainer's Club, and using that to sign into Pokemon Go instead of a google account.
posted by radwolf76 at 8:52 AM on July 28, 2016


So a 756CP Pidgeot just showed up. I whipped out an Ultra ball, which I have only 9 of and a razzberry (only 8 of those), But I have 46 regular balls!

The colored circle was not green or orange, but red. Even if I managed to get it using one ball, I'd still only get 100XP and maybe a bonus for a nice or great throw. I'd get the same points for a 10CP Pidgey and that is just wrong.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:57 AM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


I totally agree that xp bonus should scale with CP/difficulty, because 100 is so paltry when you get over 20 or so, but instead of it making me upset now I just don't care about any pidgey/rattata/zubat over 200 CP. They get one pokeball and if it breaks out I just walk away from it. It's not worth the time and items.
posted by DynamiteToast at 9:20 AM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


Fyi, i captured it using a regular ball with a regular through, even though several great and ultra balls got it. Sheesh!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:52 AM on July 28, 2016


Speaking of bonuses, two days ago I uneventfully captured another Sandshrew (~300CP) and when the screen popped up I got the 100XP for the capture and the 10XP for whichever throw I used, but I also got an unexplained bonus 100XP. It showed up under the capture and above the throw bonus, and it was simply labeled "bonus." It really stood out sounding think I've seen it before. It's not really searchable, does anyone know what that's for?

Updates: the green lines I mentioned on Tuesday disappeared from the radar the next day and the gym that appeared out of nowhere that I mentioned ages ago also disappeared the next day. Also, on Monday I mentioned I'd seen 105 Sandshrews. I've had played at all since then and I'm up to 123. I guess these are my pidgies.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:57 AM on July 28, 2016


Speaking of bonuses, two days ago I uneventfully captured another Sandshrew (~300CP) and when the screen popped up I got the 100XP for the capture and the 10XP for whichever throw I used, but I also got an unexplained bonus 100XP. It showed up under the capture and above the throw bonus, and it was simply labeled "bonus." It really stood out sounding think I've seen it before. It's not really searchable, does anyone know what that's for?

I believe you get a 100XP bonus when you catch your 100th Pokemon of that type, check if it's that.
posted by DynamiteToast at 9:59 AM on July 28, 2016


Yeah, i'm at level 22 and starting to think "fuck this shit," partially because of strange server crashes and partially because the game dynamics are breaking down. I leveled up from 21, where 75000XP was needed by doing the Lucky Egg and evolving Pidgey/Caterpie trick, but that was grueling in the sense of just pointing and clicking. It takes a special kind of person to repeatedly do to reach higher levels.

Yep, same, down to the leveling up to 22 last night with a lucky egg and pidgey/weedle evolves. When I saw that you need 100,000 points to get to the next level: heavy sigh.

I am seeing more interesting dudes (my 4-year-old failed to catch a 1000+ Scyther yesterday as he played with my game in the backseat while I was driving), so that's interesting. And I've decided to spend my gold on egg incubators, because I seem to get interesting dudes from eggs.
posted by purpleclover at 11:09 AM on July 28, 2016


Oh, thanks for the 100xp bonus explanation: I was wondering about that!
posted by purpleclover at 11:10 AM on July 28, 2016


Oh, yes, I bet that's it and I just got the timing wrong in my comments.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:16 AM on July 28, 2016


In the Pokemon world are there any super powerful trainers out there who can take on all comers? In the cartoons Ash/Satoshi always seems to be able to make a good account of himself. So maybe by making it hard to level up at the higher levels they are keeping a level of parity that is reflective of the Pokemon world.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:48 AM on July 28, 2016


Plus just basic long-term goals. If you can hit the level cap in the first month, where do you go from there?

(Incidentally the level cap is currently 40, at 5 million xp.)
posted by rifflesby at 12:45 PM on July 28, 2016




I think a lot depends on whether you're a milestone player or an experience player. I'm leveling slowly because I'm having fun wandering around and practicing my curve shot, and while I'm kissing being out of balls a lot, it just means I need to spend an evening downtown spinning pokestops. I think people much more focused on the metagame will lose interest a lot faster because it's relatively light on that - there isn't a story, there isn't a real PVP, etc...

This isn't a critique, but I think people play very differently and I tend to be a replayer to begin with, so this suits my style.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:11 PM on July 28, 2016


Hey if a Pokemon escapes you can feed it another razz berry and try again.
posted by tilde at 4:13 PM on July 28, 2016


So there's this playwright/director I know who is also an English professor at Princeton; he's started playing Pokemon Go and talking about it on Facebook and it's basically the best thing ever:
"Pokemon Go Journal Day 1:
So my understanding is that one captures the Pokemon creatures for further study. So are there Pokemon autopsies?

"Day 2 - So essentially we are capturing the Pokemon critters for some professor's "research".... What are the professor's credentials? Does he have a Ph.D.? Is he an adjunct or tenure-stream?... Are we doing this for an accredited institution? Is there grant funding?

"Day Three - I have some concerns regarding Pokemon civil liberties. Do the Pokemon critters have 4th Amendment rights? Are they Mirandized inside the Pokemon Balls after capture?

"Day 4 - Today, my thoughts turn to Pokemon and the dialectic. It seems to me that the Pokemon world is rigidly hierarchal with specific value -- expressed through the argot of capital as "candy" and "combat power" -- placed upon the Pokemon. Who determines this value system? Is it the imperialistic state of the autocratic professor and his minions??..."
For background - this guy is almost stereotypically "academic-guy-in-tweed" in his character. I think he only delved into this because some of his students kept coming in to catch Pokemon in his office and he had to ask them what the hell was going on. (Those of you with long memories may remember a comment I made about an English Professor who had to give one of his students a mini-tutorial in American History during a class; this is the same guy.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:12 AM on July 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


After a few days of being unable to play, either because of time pressures or the servers being down when I could play, I skipped catching my first train this morning to finish off catching a Gulbat on the platform. I think the outright most powerful Pokemon I have caught to this point.
posted by nubs at 8:22 AM on July 29, 2016


So my understanding is that one captures the Pokemon creatures for further study. So are there Pokemon autopsies?

A friend we were dragging into the cult, er game, wanted to discuss the morality of capturing wild animals, then training them to fight each other for human benefit.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:26 AM on July 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's the Roman arenas all over again. Beyond the capturing and the fighting, what are the ethical implications of evolving them? Have we thought about that? Who are we to play god to these virtual creatures?
posted by nubs at 8:40 AM on July 29, 2016


Man have y'all even watched the anime? There's definitely an episode in season one about the morality of forcing Pikachu to evolve, and Ash lets him choose for himself.
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:46 AM on July 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


But does Ash ever stop capturing them or does he continue to make the conscious choice to willfully hunt and capture wild animals for his own gain and then offer them a choice?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:54 AM on July 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


I feel like an idiot for asking such a basic question, but I don't seem to be able to master the basic throwing-a-ball-to-catch-a-Pokemon technique. Sometimes I catch a Pokemon on the first throw; sometimes it takes ten tries. I've read this Polygon article and also a Vox one, but none of it seems to make any difference. What's the secret here?
posted by yankeefog at 8:58 AM on July 29, 2016


Man have y'all even watched the anime? There's definitely an episode in season one about the morality of forcing Pikachu to evolve, and Ash lets him choose for himself.

Man, I have no clue. I only put it on my phone because my 10 year old and 7 year old are wild about it, and it was a way to get them out for walks and whatever this summer, and now I find myself capturing pokemon on my work commute. At this point my wife is more in the know about this game and associated bits than I am, which is a complete reversal of my usual geek life. I'm kinda enjoying it.
posted by nubs at 10:19 AM on July 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


What's the secret here?

There's either a glitch or a purposeful bit of coding to make the throwing/catching inconsistent. I suspect its the latter, to introduce a bit of randomness to catching, but it's annoying as hell.

Another basic question. When I click on the screen and a blue circle appears, that doesn't means anything except nothing is there right? I can't click on a spot where leaves are rustling and pull up an actual Pokeman, right?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:57 AM on July 29, 2016


What's the secret here?

Are you talking throwing technique -- like, you're missing too often? Or do you mean you're hitting but the pokemon breaks loose?

If it's the former: it's really just practice I guess. Getting a feel for judging the distance and how hard/long you need to flick to get the ball there, and doing it as straight up the phone as possible. Or, if you're going for curve balls (and I definitely recommend getting good at throwing curve balls, because it eliminates the problem of balls constantly curving off course at higher difficulty levels), hitting the right angle and strength so it curves to the right spot.

If it's the latter: I think it's mostly just chance. Pokemon have a base catch % stat, which is modified by their CP and the quality of pokeball you're using, and that result is shown to you as the color of the target circle from green to red. Throwing a berry improves it further, but you have to re-berry after each breakout. Niantic have said that you want the ball to hit when the target circle is as small as possible, so that throw timing plays into it as well.

Some people have said it's more important to land the ball inside the target ring, and therefore you should balance how small you let the target ring get versus your ability to land the ball inside it. I don't think that's real per se, but I do think you get a catch rate bonus if you land a nice/great/excellent shot, and it feels like you also get a slight catch rate bonus for hitting with a curveball (which is another reason to practice throwing curveballs).

But at the end of the day, what you end up with is a certain percentage chance of the guy escaping, and sometimes the dice just don't roll in your favor.
posted by rifflesby at 11:02 AM on July 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


Brandon: Yeah, I think that just means "We are acknowledging that you tapped the screen."
posted by rifflesby at 11:07 AM on July 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


Another basic question. When I click on the screen and a blue circle appears, that doesn't means anything except nothing is there right? I can't click on a spot where leaves are rustling and pull up an actual Pokeman, right?

You cannot, however the blue circle does have a function. If you click (and hold) again in the blue circle, then move your finger up or down you can zoom in or out of the map with just one finger.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:33 AM on July 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


Another help for throwing is raspberries, but you can only use one on a pokemon and they seem to only be good for one throw. But if they escape, you can use another. I just started getting Great Balls yesterday and they help a ton with the higher level ones.
posted by soelo at 1:01 PM on July 29, 2016




I'm kind of a fan of this Dublin-based Youtube "random hipsters try things" Buzzfeed-clone channel; they just put out their take on Pokemon Go.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:02 PM on July 30, 2016


The nest shift destroyed that Hitmonlee nest. Looks like the Charmander one is still active, though.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:33 PM on July 30, 2016




Changelog below:
Avatars can now be re-customized from the Trainer profile screen
Adjusted battle move damage values for some Pokémon
Refined certain Gym animations
Improved memory issues
Removed footprints of nearby Pokémon
Modified battle damage calculation
Various bug fixes during wild Pokémon encounter
Updated Pokémon details screen
Updated achievement medal images
Fixed issues with displaying certain map features
Minor text fixes

Undocumented Changes:
Removed Battery Saver Mode from the iOS version
Favoriting a Pokemon prevents transferring
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:20 PM on July 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


They got rid of that weird blank space between the powers and the transfer button too.
posted by octothorpe at 6:27 PM on July 30, 2016


Very early on, that was a map showing where you caught that Pokemon. Apparently the map hits were enough of a load that they killed it early.

I'm annoyed about the footprints, though. That was what encouraged me to go chase one down and get little bursts of exercise during the seat.
posted by tavella at 6:34 PM on July 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


Favoriting a Pokemon prevents transferring

Too late for some of my guys, but I'm so glad they added this.
posted by gladly at 9:22 PM on July 30, 2016


RIP, Pokevision.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:00 AM on July 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


Bummer. The best thing about Pokevision was seeing what other countries were getting. Sydney Austrailia was awash in Drowzees! London had a DuDrio infestation!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:08 AM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Looks like they also reduced the scan radius from 100m to 70m.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:16 AM on July 31, 2016


Updated on iOS but now I have the whited-out map box and I transfer button (not marked favorite.)
posted by Room 641-A at 5:24 AM on July 31, 2016


robocop is bleeding: "RIP, Pokevision."

I was surprised that it lasted as long as it did.
posted by octothorpe at 5:26 AM on July 31, 2016


They broke the third-party "tell where Pokemon are" apps, reduced the action radius, and they removed rather than fixed footsteps. So hey, just wander around blindly until maybe a Pokemon appears. Maybe.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:37 AM on July 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


On the plus side, every time I open the updated App I get a reminder!
"Don't drive and play"
"Be aware of your surroundings"
"Don't trespass"

Also, I can redo the hair on my Avatar! There's so much win here, it's unreal.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:40 AM on July 31, 2016


Ah, transfer and favorite have moved to a menu in the lower right corner. That will be better once the muscle memory sinks in.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:19 AM on July 31, 2016


Sooo, what about that radar(never mind the problems and now gone footprints)?

When its closed, it'll just show 3 nearby Pokeman, left to right. When you open the full radar, with 3x3 grid, the top row will show that same row, but right to left. Does that make sense?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:58 AM on July 31, 2016


New with the update: new screen when the program loads now say "Do not trespass while playing Pokemon." Or "Do not play Pokemom Go while driving." There may be others.

I had a brief respite yesterday so I took an early morning walk on the Santa Monica Pier. I found a bunch of new Pokemon, evolved a whole bunch I was saving up, and hatched two eggs. Using a lucky egg I was able to gain about 40K , which brings me 3/4 of the way to level 21. I ran out of balls for the first time, and while there were many Pokestops to re-up at the new Pokemon I missed never showed back up. For the record, the Hitmonchan is the hardest one I've captured yet, and a 1246CP Magmar is the highest CP Pokemon I've captured in the wild. I really can't wait until I have time to explore other areas!

New Pokemon (* = at least one hatched or evolved): Kakuna*, Pidgeot*, Golduck*, Weepinbell, Shellder, Hitmonchan, Koffing, Jynx, Magmar, Vaporeon*, Kabutops*

New Pokemon in the wild, missed because I ran out of balls: Drowsee, Seaking, Staryu,
posted by Room 641-A at 2:07 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Pokemon Nests (spots where a particular breed spawns frequently and regularly) have recently changed -- same locations, but different breeds. It's theorized that this "migration" is going to be a regular thing, to keep the catching landscape from getting too stagnant.

I think they may have retuned the regionally extremely common Doduo/Drowzee spawns as well, as I haven't seen a single doduo since the migration, and my neighborhood used to be choked with them. Anyone have a similar experience?

Also, anyone using the IV spreadsheet I posted earlier might want to have a look at this. It's a website that reads your Pokemon data from the PGO server and shows you all your IVs without you having to individually type in the stats.
posted by rifflesby at 2:20 PM on July 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


Thanks, rifflesby. I was wondering about both aspects -- the throwing and the keeping the Pokemon inside the egg-- so your answer was doubly helpful.
posted by yankeefog at 2:21 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, anyone using the IV spreadsheet I posted earlier might want to have a look at this.

That site is cool, thanks. The spreadsheet you linked to is private now, btw, I forgot to mention it.

So are the top 10 with IV scores the best ones to fight or the best ones to power up? Interestingly (I'm not sure if this is actually interesting) but the 10 highest CP pokemons I have run from 1556 to 1007 but the highest the web site ranked are 734-102.

The stats on the highest one, a CP379 Hitmonlee, are: HP 45, IVScore 97.8%, Attack 15, Defense 15, Stamina 14. Seems like a good one to,power up but I really can't tell.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:57 PM on July 31, 2016


If they're high CP, they're good for fighting. Otherwise they're good for powering up until they're high CP, IF they're not so low CP it would take all your stardust/candy to do it. If you're on the fence, you can use their move loadout as a tiebreaker.

(disclaimer: some people are saying moves are actually more important than IVs; I haven't delved deeply enough into the competitive scene to say.)
posted by rifflesby at 3:11 PM on July 31, 2016


For further reading, incidentally, r/TheSilphRoad is well-moderated and is shaping up to be a pretty good community that disdains the standard reddit/gamer crapfest.
posted by rifflesby at 3:17 PM on July 31, 2016


I'm annoyed with this update.

If they're going to shut down 3rd party stuff, they need to fix their goddamn tracker. There's already a bunch of idiots getting hurt by chasing after pokemon, without the tracker and Pokevision I can imagine a bunch of them getting more hurt.

Did they actually reduce the action radius? Or did you mean the radius of nearby pokemon? If it's the former that's really fucking stupid, just giving more reasons for people to trespass.

And they still haven't fixed HP sorting. Whenever you sort by that it's just sorted by CP.
posted by numaner at 4:04 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think they may have retuned the regionally extremely common Doduo/Drowzee spawns as well, as I haven't seen a single doduo since the migration, and my neighborhood used to be choked with them. Anyone have a similar experience?

Yeah I think that's why on Friday I barely saw any Doduos where I work, but Voltorbs started popping up everywhere. Also saw more Sandshrews than usual but they were all far from me. But now that we don't have Pokevision anymore I'm going to be way less inclined to keep track of that for you guys. Like Brandon said, it was neat to see what other areas were getting.
posted by numaner at 4:06 PM on July 31, 2016


If they're going to shut down 3rd party stuff, they need to fix their goddamn tracker. There's already a bunch of idiots getting hurt by chasing after pokemon, without the tracker and Pokevision I can imagine a bunch of them getting more hurt.

From what I hear, the issues with the tracker and with the third party stuff were that they both caused absolutely massive server loads.

I totally disagree with the rest of your premise - the tracker and Pokevision would seem to encourage trespassing and entering dangerous areas WAY more than their absence would! Wandering around aimlessly continues to just be wandering around aimlessly, but if you KNOW there's a Blastoise in that abandoned factory? You're going into that abandoned factory.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:12 PM on July 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ooh you can change your avi's looks now! It's in the new menu pop up in your profile, along with the journal now. It looks like maybe the journal stores more, too?
posted by Room 641-A at 6:31 PM on July 31, 2016


The journal still ignores anything that happens in the gym so there's no way to know how long your guy lasted or who kicked him out.
posted by octothorpe at 6:47 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Unfortunately, between the footprints being gone and pokevision being killed, the only effective way to get a variety of pokemon is to park yourself under a cluster of lured pokestops. Which kind of kills a lot of the fun.

It would help if the nearest nine radar was at all accurate in order. Today, I turned on the game in a parking lot, there was a Graveler at my feet and Venomat at the edge of my circle... and one of them showed up as third-farthest and one was showing as eighth.
posted by tavella at 7:11 PM on July 31, 2016


Unfortunately, between the footprints being gone and pokevision being killed, the only effective way to get a variety of pokemon is to park yourself under a cluster of lured pokestops. Which kind of kills a lot of the fun.

That doesn't seem the case for me? Yeah, I miss the few times I actually got to hunt down a Pokemon by tracking them, but there's still some stuff to do in the game. Just walking around the city is still pretty great, doing it with the game offers a different way of seeing things. Yes, that'll only last so long, just saying its not all bad. Yet.

Gyms are still weird. There's no record of what you've done (that we can see), so its all just fading memories. Trying to hold a gym isn't fun. Though oddly enough, I've had a Flareon stuck in a gym for SIX DAYS, 'cause its packed with other high CP players, that no one seems to want to challenge. I'd like to upgrade it, but there's no way to do that or pull it out of there (I think).

Shutting down Pokevision
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:33 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm more than a little annoyed at how little bonus there is for battling in a gym. It's usually less than the XP you get from getting supplies from a stop.
posted by octothorpe at 7:39 PM on July 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


Though oddly enough, I've had a Flareon stuck in a gym for SIX DAYS, 'cause its packed with other high CP players, that no one seems to want to challenge.

You know that you can press "Shop" and collect 10 coins every 21 hours for each Pokemon you have protecting a gym, right?

I'm more than a little annoyed at how little bonus there is for battling in a gym.

Ugh, yes. Considering it's the only form of combat in the game, you get a ridiculously small amount of xp from it. It should give you much more, or at least move your Pokemon farther towards the right side of its arc.
posted by booksherpa at 7:44 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


It would be at least be very nice if battling in your own team's gym did actually train up your pokemon, considering that they actually call it "training" and all. And considering how brutal hard it is, since you only get one guy vs. 6 for attacking.
posted by rifflesby at 8:06 PM on July 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


You know that you can press "Shop" and collect 10 coins every 21 hours for each Pokemon you have protecting a gym, right?

Yes, plus some stardust. The odd part is that i kinda want it back, to evolve it. Been six days, it needs to come home! Or something, just strange to have one of your "characters" doing nothing except collecting money.

It would be useful to be able to stuff a gym yourself, with multiple Pokemon of your own. But i'd abuse the hell out of that.

And the XP rewards for gym battling are ridiculously low. Training just isn't worth it, unless you come along at the right time to open up a slot or there's several of you going in a gym.

Also, the game LOVES to give you eggs. I bought a bunch of incubators to see what would happen (and time them to hatch together, when a Lucky Egg is working). Almost right after a regular egg would hatch, i'd get another, like clockwork.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:15 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


It would be at least be very nice if battling in your own team's gym did actually train up your pokemon, considering that they actually call it "training" and all. And considering how brutal hard it is, since you only get one guy vs. 6 for attacking.

Oh it's actually not doing that? I thought I just didn't understand what was happening. I mean, I guess I still don't, but I was expecting it to do the other thing. Also, I have something like -2000 gym points. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by Room 641-A at 8:38 PM on July 31, 2016


I think they may have retuned the regionally extremely common Doduo/Drowzee spawns as well, as I haven't seen a single doduo since the migration, and my neighborhood used to be choked with them. Anyone have a similar experience?

I'm in a Drowzee area, and I caught my very first wild Doduo today.
posted by Gordafarin at 1:12 AM on August 1, 2016


As someone who's been manually entering a spreadsheet to test IVs, that PokeAdvisor site is a godsend. Also it's great to check that you're not throwing away any really good pidgeys/caterpies, which I would never take the time to check anyways. Thanks for that link.
posted by DynamiteToast at 7:53 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I totally disagree with the rest of your premise - the tracker and Pokevision would seem to encourage trespassing and entering dangerous areas WAY more than their absence would! Wandering around aimlessly continues to just be wandering around aimlessly, but if you KNOW there's a Blastoise in that abandoned factory? You're going into that abandoned factory.

I suppose it's different mindsets/maturity. I'm old enough to know not to risk getting arrested for a pokemon. But I'm more likely to trespass to confirm a suspicion rather than running around blindly hoping for the best.
posted by numaner at 8:27 AM on August 1, 2016


There's a discussion here about possible pokevision alternatives
posted by numaner at 9:00 AM on August 1, 2016


I downloaded the Pokemon compass one from that link. It feels the least "cheaty" of any of the helpers I've used, since it just tells you what direction the pokemon is in (and how far, but it's in meters so that's basically a made up unit of measurement like the pawprints to this american). So now I just use the main app, and if I see something I want to catch I pull up the compass and get a direction to walk in.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:50 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


On the plus side, all the Jinxes at my work seem to have become Scythers.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:18 PM on August 1, 2016


I downloaded the Pokemon compass one from that link.

Hopefully there's an iOS version soon, the in-game tracker is not only crippled but inconsistent as hell. It's repeatedly showing me Pokemon that don't appear close in the tracker.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:02 PM on August 1, 2016


I've caught 78 Rattatas and 70 Zubats. I am so sick of both of those things.
posted by octothorpe at 4:49 PM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Brandon I was having the same issue today, a Pinsir right next to me was like 4th or 5th in the list.

And two new problems:

I no longer get throwing bonuses except for curve balls. I've finally got my timing down for Great throws and this shit happens.

A friend said his whole profile is gone. Reseted his avatar and Jess at level 1 (was at 21). He doesn't have two accounts, only the Google one.
posted by numaner at 5:10 PM on August 1, 2016


Okay! The pokeadvisor site is fascinating, but may be too much info for me.

Current questions:
- IV remains constant through evolutions, right? Does it affect how much CP your evolved dude gets?
- I have a 541 CP Eevee that's 88.9% and a 650 Eevee that's 80%. Should I evolve the lower guy?

Thank you, PokeFriends!
posted by purpleclover at 5:49 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Um, what's 'IV'? Is it pronounced like the letters 'i' and 'v'?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:35 PM on August 1, 2016


Individual value, a thing I only learned when I asked upthread.
posted by purpleclover at 6:46 PM on August 1, 2016


(I guess it's a thing people who played the previous Pokemon games know about. I myself am 37, so too old for them.)
posted by purpleclover at 6:49 PM on August 1, 2016


I'm 40. Nobody's too old for Pokemon, unless joy is a thing you grow out of. ;)

To answer your questions:
- IV does remain the same when evolving. A pokemon's current CP is derived (somehow, I don't know the formula) from the IVs and the pokemon's Level (which isn't shown to you numerically, but it's the arc behind the pokemon on its status screen, increased by Powering it Up). As you increase Level, its CP increases, and the maximum CP is determined by the IVs.

Think of it like this: each species has a range from X to Y, where X is the minimum CP of the worst pokemon of that species, and Y is the maximum CP of the best of that species. An individual pokemon's IVs determine where in that range is located a smaller subrange, X' to Y', which is the minimum and maximum CP for that particular pokemon. The pokemon's Level determines where the pokemon is on that subrange. If that makes sense.

There's slightly more to this, because IV isn't a single stat, it's three: Strength, Stamina, and Defense. And they apply in different ways in combat. But that's getting deeper into the nitty-gritty details than I've personally dared to tread. Looking at a guy and saying "Oh, his IVs are 92%, sweet!", that's plenty enough minmaxing for me.

- The 88.9% has the capacity to be better, but you'll have to power him up more to get him to full power. Here's a post about levelling costs.

The 80% is still pretty good. Speaking personally, I would evolve the 88.9, but keep the 80% around in case you haven't found a better one by the time you have enough candy to evolve with again.
posted by rifflesby at 9:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, I left out a point. When you evolve, the pokemon's level and IVs don't change, so the location of X' and Y' and the pokemon's location on that subscale doesn't change. But you've upgraded the guy to a more powerful guy, so the values of X and Y are higher, so the evolved form has a proportionally higher CP.
posted by rifflesby at 10:04 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've caught 78 Rattatas and 70 Zubats. I am so sick of both of those things.

Welcome to the world of ᴘᴏᴋéᴍᴏɴ!
posted by Gordafarin at 2:47 AM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Well, shoot. They removed all the Pokestops from my workplace, so that severely limits things.
posted by PearlRose at 6:12 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


How does that happen? Can companies request removal? (FWIW, the gym I mentioned waaaay up there that appeared out of nowhere disappeared the very next day.)
posted by Room 641-A at 6:50 AM on August 2, 2016


There have been some reports of gyms/pokestops disappearing. The local one I heard about was a cemetery, and we assumed it was by request. I think they are clearing ones that are not publicly accessible, too, which might apply to your workplace.
posted by tchemgrrl at 7:03 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


On their support web page, one of the categories on their Submit A Request button is to Report an issue with a Gym or Pokestop. From there, there's a link for requesting removal. The categories on the removal form are Dangerous, Not at this Location, Private Property, and Other.
posted by radwolf76 at 7:16 AM on August 2, 2016


I don't know if Ingress ever sped up the process, because I only played for the first 3-6 months or so, but in Ingress when you requested a gym I think it took 3 weeks to go through the approval process. So we're coming up on a month after the game came out, these might be places that requested from the beginning to be removed.
posted by DynamiteToast at 7:51 AM on August 2, 2016


I work in a semi-secure location, and the people who work in the front have been bombarded with requests from the public, asking to get into the building to check out the Pokestops. I'm not surprised our locations were taken away, but darn it, I liked the convenience of it.
posted by PearlRose at 8:01 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


rifflesby, I didn't mean to sound dismissive. You are just so knowledgeable I figured you played as a kid. I really appreciate your help.
posted by purpleclover at 8:13 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


The closest stop to my house is an old Sinclair station with its green dinosaur out front. It closed down recently and there is construction around it so I haven't been to it in a while. I did notice people standing around in the nearest parking lot, so maybe they can reach it from there. I just hope it doesn't get removed if no one can reach it right now, since I am sure another store will take its place.
posted by soelo at 8:25 AM on August 2, 2016


rifflesby, doesn't your own level also affect the maximum CP? I've gotten the message that I couldn't power up a pokemon more because I need to level up more. How does that figure along with the IV values?
posted by numaner at 9:03 AM on August 2, 2016


So, I ran my guys through PokéAdvisor, and I discovered they were all garbage in terms of IV. BUT I can still pretty handily take down most of the gyms near me with some grit and potions.

I'm definitely going to use the IV values to pick which guys to keep and evolve in the future, and I did have some moments of grief about the fact that I used to live near a Tauros nest, so I had like 15 of them, which I culled down to six, and they are ALL garbage IVs and the nest is now all Pinsirs, so my dream of Tauros dominance is dead.

I think the thing where it's possible to fight down gyms that seem too hard partly has to do with the fact that the game favors real players over the computer (which is good!) and also that I'm an adult woman who works part-time from home and I'm playing against a bunch of 12-year-olds who are home from school.

In summary: Adults rule, kids drool.
posted by purpleclover at 10:35 AM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


That PokéAdvisor is a real eye-opener. I feel like the CEO who just brought in the outside consultants and now a bunch of pokemans who thought their jobs were safe are about to get some real bad news
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:59 AM on August 2, 2016 [15 favorites]


purpleclover: I used to live near a Tauros nest, so I had like 15 of them, which I culled down to six, and they are ALL garbage IVs and the nest is now all Pinsirs, so my dream of Tauros dominance is dead

My understanding is that pokemon that spawn in a nest will always have lower IVs. Nests are great for collecting a lot of a single type, which gives you a bunch of candy, but wild caught pokemon will generally always have better IVs.
posted by Arbac at 11:59 AM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Are these Tauros organic and free-range?
posted by GuyZero at 12:02 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


My understanding is that pokemon that spawn in a nest will always have lower IVs. Nests are great for collecting a lot of a single type, which gives you a bunch of candy, but wild caught pokemon will generally always have better IVs.

That explains why the Pinsirs are also terrible! Thanks!
posted by purpleclover at 12:41 PM on August 2, 2016


I think my Pinsir with the best IV was a hatched one. Also, that means aaall my Dotrios are crap.
posted by numaner at 12:56 PM on August 2, 2016


rifflesby, doesn't your own level also affect the maximum CP? I've gotten the message that I couldn't power up a pokemon more because I need to level up more. How does that figure along with the IV values?

It does, yeah -- a Pokemon's maximum level is twice your own level. So in the sense of my X-Y analogy, your level determines the length of subrange X' to Y'.
posted by rifflesby at 1:11 PM on August 2, 2016


So I'm at level 18 and starting to encounter a higher level evolve species and am totally unable to catch them. They escape from the balls 100% of the time.
posted by octothorpe at 1:18 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


#, I really had to step up my throwing game. I was kind of half-assing it till about level 17 and now I actually have to concentrate.
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:24 PM on August 2, 2016


So does the way you throw effect whether they stay in the ball or not? I'm not having problems hitting them, it's getting them to stay hit that seems to be the issue.
posted by octothorpe at 1:33 PM on August 2, 2016


From what I can understand at this point, the colored circle that gets smaller/larger is green-yellow-orange-red in increasing difficulty. You have to hit within the circle. The smaller the circle is when you hit it, the better chance you have to keep the 'mon in the ball.

I pretty much end up using razz berries for anything I really want and that + great ball for stuff I'd die without.
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:37 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've heard different things on whether or not you need to land the ball within the colored circle. Niantic has said that you do want the colored circle to be as small as possible though.

Definitely the major points are what kind of ball you're using and Razzberries. Possibly you also get a bonus for hitting with a curveball and/or a Nice/Great/Excellent shot.
posted by rifflesby at 1:55 PM on August 2, 2016


So does the way you throw effect whether they stay in the ball or not?

Nope. It simply effects whether you catch them at this point, but that's no guarantee on whether they'll stay in there. Using an Ultra or Great ball seems to help, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be a goddamn rhyme or reason about what fucking pokemon stay in the goddamn ball after you've caught their sorry ass.

No, I'm not bitter about this, why the fuck you ask?

You just wait into you you keep encountering Pidgeys that need a razzberry and great ball and still break out, after a nice, excellent or great throw. Sometimes. Then the little shits scamper off and you're left with six less balls that the game dribbles out to you like it personally costing it.

Don't get me started on why Revives can't be used as potions, especially when you're all out potions from battling, excuse me, training on our own damn team and getting like 25XP for each Pokemon you beat.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:13 PM on August 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


WHO COULD EVER POSSIBLY USE ALL THESE REVIVES
posted by purpleclover at 2:25 PM on August 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


I mean as long as we're getting all anecdotal here, I'm level 21 and don't feel like catching pokemon is significantly harder after the last update. I think they might jump around a bit more but I also catch sub 200 CP pokemon all the time on the first pokeball...
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:31 PM on August 2, 2016


WHO COULD EVER POSSIBLY USE ALL THESE REVIVES

people who throw their underpowered pokemon against insurmountable odds aka me
posted by GuyZero at 2:32 PM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I feel like they jump around a lot more but otherwise I think I agree, DynamiteToast.
posted by rifflesby at 2:38 PM on August 2, 2016


It feels like they fixed the problem where razzberrys would cause a ball to curve. But the Pokemon seem more onery, attacking you so that there's no longer an imaginary circle for the ball to fall into, it only hits the Pokemon, an therefore does nothing.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:44 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I feel like they jump around a lot more but otherwise I think I agree, DynamiteToast.

The only reason I was less sure on that is I was used to using the method pre-patch where you just would flick the ball as soon as it popped up, guaranteeing a catch (though not that they'd stay in), so I wasn't sure if I just wasn't seeing their normal pattern as much.
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:45 PM on August 2, 2016


It feels like they fixed the problem where razzberrys would cause a ball to curve.

omg it wasn't just me
posted by Room 641-A at 3:17 PM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


But the Pokemon seem more onery, attacking you so that there's no longer an imaginary circle for the ball to fall into, it only hits the Pokemon, an therefore does nothing.

*shakes tiny fist* graaaaaaaaaar
posted by angeline at 7:07 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


yeah I had a decent CP Nidoran (F) that made me use up like 4 great balls and 2 ultras after already wasting like 10 regular balls, and like 8 razzberries on top of that. JUST for it to run the fuck away! I was piiiiissed. I think I flipped off my phone too. Like, I actually hit it maybe with a third of all those balls. It jumped over like all of my great balls, and of course busted out of even the 1 ultra that connected, and all the other times were just back to back "attacks" that knocked the balls away.

They definitely changed something to make all of the pokemon be standing further back in the throwing field. And this goddamn game has nothing to give you a clue how far back each of them are, so most of them you gotta waste the first ball just checking. I've been having a really tough time throwing accurately at Goldeens and Poliwags because of that. The only consistent ones seems to be the tiny bugs and the Ratatas that are always like right in front of you. I'm not even sure if it's the recent update or because I'm at lvl 22.

Aaaand on top of that after they bust out of the ball the first time they're not standing at the same distance!

*flips off phone some more*
posted by numaner at 8:02 PM on August 2, 2016


I haven't tried this yet, but I hear when the pokemon gets further away after a breakout, you can reset that by turning the AR on and off again.
posted by rifflesby at 8:43 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'll have to try that. Thanks!
posted by numaner at 8:52 PM on August 2, 2016


purpleclover: "WHO COULD EVER POSSIBLY USE ALL THESE REVIVES"

I've easily thrown out 100 revives because my bag was full and I'll never use them.
posted by octothorpe at 4:52 AM on August 3, 2016


Yeah, I currently have 92 Revives, 6 potions, 2 Super Potions and 1 Hyper Potion. Throw in the fact that training at a gym doesn't cause a Pokemon to faint and one wonders what the fuck they're supposed to do with this, go inside and read a book?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:00 AM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


In dire need of (super/hyper) potions over here, sitting on 100 revives I haven't used in ages.
posted by Gordafarin at 6:09 AM on August 3, 2016


I fight in the gym at work for exactly as along as it takes me to add a pokemon to the gym, immediately go to the shop and cash in my 10 pokecoins and then ignore it for another 21 hours.
posted by octothorpe at 6:25 AM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is there any other reason to fight in gyms? The xp is useless and there don't seem to be any other rewards.
posted by octothorpe at 6:26 AM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


The only reason I've fought in a gym is to see if I can leave Pokemon there. The 500 stardust and 10 coins is a decent reward, and I imagine if you could get those daily for leaving your guy in there, it's even more worthwhile. I've only managed to do it three times, and each time, my Pokes lasted only a few hours. My team (Instinct) is also really scarce where I am, so if you're on a popular team with a lot of gyms, it might be easier to do.
posted by gladly at 7:05 AM on August 3, 2016


Is there any other reason to fight in gyms? The xp is useless and there don't seem to be any other rewards.

There's a mild ego boost for leaving your most unusual or strongest dude in a gym for others to find. I like to look in gyms and see stuff I've never encountered before.

But no, not really.
posted by purpleclover at 7:52 AM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


YOU ARE A 200 SOMETHING SQUIRTLE! WHY THE F DO YOU HAVE A RED CIRCLE AND HOW THE HELL DID YOU BUST OUT OF TWO GREAT BALLS BACKED BY RAZZ BERRIES AND THEN HAVE THE NERVE TO RUN AWAY??? FUCK EVERYTHING FOREVER

...

oh hey another Tangela!
posted by numaner at 9:25 AM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


I consistently keep my Revives at around 20, I never need more than that for when I make the time to go to a Gym to get my daily shop reward.

I think I spend more time cursing at this game than actually playing it. What with all the chaotic catching, the inconsistent GPS going in and out, the Gym battles bugging out (after they supposedly fixed things), and now the tracker issues.

Whyyyy can't I quit?
posted by numaner at 9:28 AM on August 3, 2016


Because you haven't caught them all.
posted by angeline at 9:41 AM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]



WHO COULD EVER POSSIBLY USE ALL THESE REVIVES

people who throw their underpowered pokemon against insurmountable odds aka me


After playing around with it today, this is somewhat viable strategy. I've been taking 4-5 lower powered PokenMon into gyms, leaving the last 1-2 slots for a the most powerful. The lower guys do a decent job of fighting through lower levels or weakening a really powerful 'mon, so that my upper powered 'mon can easily take them out.

But the XP rewards are still shit.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:02 AM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


All XP rewards are more-or-less shit. I await a detailed economic analysis breaking down each XP generating activity by its rewards vs time and supply inputs.
posted by GuyZero at 10:06 AM on August 3, 2016


I'm a hair shy of level 22 and I'm finding that Pokemon are a little feistier but they escape most all the time. I've bonked Sandshrews right on the nose 10 times in a row and still had it escape. So, not really harder to hit, just harder to catch.

I'm not really noticing a change in the types of Pokemon I'm getting except maybe a few more of the rarer ones that I've already seen. I can't find a definition of a nest so I'm not sure if I have any, but if it's whatever spawns these endless Sandshrews and Geodudes and Growlithes then that hasn't changed.

I've pretty much given up on gyms. I think I have a basic understanding of them now but it's so crowded that even if I've won, someone else claims it before I can even check if I got some coins. If I'm captive, waiting somewhere, fine, it just doesn't seem that productive. (Unless you're doing it for the prestige, which is a different, understandable, animal.

About the IV scores, I've got 10 at 90%+ and I'm going to just try to build those up. My Hitmonlee is 97.7% but I've only seen two, so no candy to power up. Now I'm just confused if I should be evolving the lesser Pokemon for XP or transfer them for candy to power up.

I'm slightly bored since I'm restricted to this very small geographical area for now.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:43 AM on August 3, 2016


Yeah, the shine is starting to fade for me as well. However, I am enjoying getting up and going for a walk and listening to audiobooks for an hour every morning, so I might as well keep collecting guys. It'll keep me going 'til new updates come out and they hopefully fix tracking.
posted by rifflesby at 12:25 PM on August 3, 2016


Now I'm just confused if I should be evolving the lesser Pokemon for XP or transfer them for candy to power up.

yeah this was always my dilemma. I've been erring on the side of evolving for XP since that's still the most significant source of XP unless you catch continuously. However for ones with high potentials like Eevees, Magikarp, or Dratini (but I haven't gotten any of these yet), I would only evolve the highest IV and/or CP ones and transfer the rest for candies to power up the evolved forms.
posted by numaner at 12:38 PM on August 3, 2016


It's a fantastic social idea with a so so implementation that was caught unaware and made by a company that disdains communication. I'm interested to see what a different company will do.

Imagine a Star Wars theme, pretending its diferent planets, maybe along with the seasons. Hoth in the winter, ewok planet in spring etc etc. imagine at-ats on your horizon.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:44 PM on August 3, 2016


a Paras popped up, then my avatar GPS-glitched and ran away from it, causing a Krabby to pop up, then the Paras shrunk and dragged into the screen!
posted by numaner at 2:38 PM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh and the game bugged out so nothing is clickable, had to restart.
posted by numaner at 2:43 PM on August 3, 2016




i wanna catch one of those dragons
posted by purpleclover at 3:34 PM on August 3, 2016


Currently sitting at a restaurant that is a gym. Every time I start fighting, it errors out. I feel like I have a chance at beating at least one Pokemon. I may need to go outside in case it is a network problem.
posted by soelo at 4:38 PM on August 3, 2016




This game feels like there are about a dozen features commented out in the source code because they couldn't get them to work.
posted by octothorpe at 7:14 PM on August 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


I caught my first Dratini today!!
posted by numaner at 7:41 PM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


I am trying to get to the Manager page on PokeAdvisor and it says I have to log in. I am logged in. Did they kill that, too?
posted by soelo at 7:52 PM on August 3, 2016


I'm enjoying Pokemon Go and wandering around however it's quite annoying that I can't use the app between about 10am and 6pm due to server crashes. This means I can't catch Pokemon on my breaks or after work. I'm in Australia and imagine the servers crash because somewhere else is waking up or finishing work between those times...
posted by poxandplague at 8:32 PM on August 3, 2016


soelo: it still works in Safari on iOS. Maybe the owner is tweaking it or something.
posted by rifflesby at 8:52 PM on August 3, 2016


Ah, it works in desktop Safari too. Much more convenient, I was afraid I'd have to keep switching phone apps.
posted by rifflesby at 8:54 PM on August 3, 2016


Aaaand now it works for me in Firefox too. Guess it was just a temporary thing after all.
posted by rifflesby at 8:57 PM on August 3, 2016


welp, Compass just had to change their code because Niantic did something, and it's currently not working. that was fast.
posted by numaner at 9:11 PM on August 3, 2016


Found almost no Pokemon today. I wonder if we've over-pokehunted them to the point of a pokelogical collapse.

Remember, pokextinction is forever...
posted by happyroach at 10:33 PM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Compass just had to change their code because Niantic did something

Yeah, the app update that they put out a few days ago changed how it talks to the servers, and now that nearly everyone has been updated and they've locked the old version of the app out, they flipped a switch serverside that softbanned any inbound server calls that aren't using the new validation method. This is guaranteed to break third-party tools until they figure it out.

And while I'm sure they don't want the extra server load from all the scanner tools, their main target is the bots and location spoofers. Those directly impact the ability of Niantic to credibly sell corporate sponsors on the idea that they can drive verifiable foot traffic to particular real world locations.

Niantic believes that the real money in location aware gaming isn't going to come from the playerbase and microtransactions, but from businesses paying them to deliver players to their doorstep. If those businesses get wind that a significant portion of player accounts are actually bots or location spoofers, what Niantic is trying to sell gets de-valued.

"But they're hemoraging players by concentrating on the bot/spoofer problem and not fixing the tracking!" you say. Yeah, but considering how huge it blew up, even if only 1 in 10 players is still playing a month from now, that's still a nice sizable demographic they can offer up to a sponsoring company. Ingress has a fraction of the playerbase that PoGO had, and they still had a decent list of sponsors: Jamba Juice, ZipCar, Duane Reade, AXA Insurance, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Lawson convenience stores, JCDecaux Advertising... and those are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head who had their locations made into Ingress portals. There were other companies like HINT Water and Anker who worked out other ways to get Ingress players to buy their product.

And imagine if they were to call up Target, and say "What if at 10am local time on Black Friday, we were to make every Target store a spawn point for a Mew for a half hour?" I guarantee you that the 1 in 10 players who stick with it even through the bugs are going to go so insane about it, they're going to bring back in at least a portion of those other 9 who left.

But that's all dependent on them solving the core issue of the Bot/Spoofer Problem: how to validate whether a remote connection is actually a device in the hands of a real person actually at a location. It's a problem that has implications that go beyond location-aware gaming, and if it seems like Niantic is acting cavalier in their handling of the Pokemon License, it's because they know that this is a huge opportunity for them to gather more data and hone their cheat-detection routines so that their next product is even better.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:36 PM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ingress has a fraction of the playerbase that PoGO had, and they still had a decent list of sponsors: Jamba Juice

I am so dumb sometimes! In Ingress there's a Jamba Juice on my turf and I always thought it was such a strange place for a portal. I didn't know there were sponsors and it never occurred to me that was why Jamba Juice is a portal. Seriously; really dumb.

FWIW I caught about 10 of my everyday Pokemon on the way home and all but a Cubone took only one throw. I used a Razz Berry and an Ultra Ball on a Fucking Zubat but maybe I didn't need them. It sure seemed like a change from recent days when it took multiple throws to catch anything.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:58 PM on August 3, 2016


Here's a helpful tip that's maybe obvious in retrospect, but I didn't think of it before I saw it pointed out on reddit -- if you're throwing curve balls, you don't have to throw from the middle of the screen where the ball starts. Drag the ball to the lower corner opposite your throwing direction, and then do your spin and throw. This gives you a bunch of extra space to throw in, which gives you the momentum to hit pokemon standing further away like zubats.
posted by rifflesby at 12:19 AM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


you should never need a razzberry backed ultra ball on a fucking zubat.
posted by numaner at 6:16 AM on August 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


yeah rifflesby that's how I've been throwing lately, learned it from that Vox article above, still manage to miss a bunch because I can't judge the distance :-/ , but it's a much more intuitive motion for my thumb than trying to keep a straight throw in one line and get the distance.
posted by numaner at 6:18 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


welp, Compass just had to change their code because Niantic did something, and it's currently not working. that was fast.

Compass was never even close to as good as Pokevision, or even the original 3-steps depending on how fast it would scan, but at least if you had to catch a pokemon you saw nearby you could. Last night after it went down I was walking and finally saw my first Snorlax on my nearby list and it was so instantly demoralizing. I just kinda walked in circles in my neighborhood for 15 minutes and then it despawned.

After I hit level 20 the next goal I set was expanding my pokedex, but if there's no reliable way to do that by actually finding new pokemon, then I guess I'm now just in a holding pattern til they fix stuff...
posted by DynamiteToast at 6:40 AM on August 4, 2016


Pokémon revenge in Basel
posted by jeffburdges at 6:44 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


On the other hand, thank god for PokeAdvisor which just let me know I caught a 15/15/14 Pidgey that I probably would've candied.
posted by DynamiteToast at 7:15 AM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm not thrilled with the idea that all capturing and evolving I've done so far might not have meant a whole lot.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:01 AM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


What do you mean?
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:13 AM on August 4, 2016


Oh, having already evolved several 'mon, it's disheartening to hear that HP or CP may not matter as much as one thought and instead there's hidden values that matter more.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:15 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


FWIW, the IVs are only really significant if you're powering up to the max - if you're not planning to power it up to the end of the arc (or, like me, perpetually lacking in stardust), then CP is still a decent measure of strength.
posted by Gordafarin at 8:23 AM on August 4, 2016


Ah I see what you mean. I don't know, as a min-maxer I just view it as one more thing to try towards so it doesn't bother me much that someday I'll likely get a better Exeggutor.
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:27 AM on August 4, 2016


you should never need a razzberry backed ultra ball on a fucking zubat.

I have over 100 Razz Berrys and 20-100 Pokestops steps from my house and my mom's. I need the room in my backpack!
posted by Room 641-A at 8:49 AM on August 4, 2016


I meant to add that I think PokeAdvisor is awesome but for someone who isn't really battling I think it's become a distraction and a handbrake since I'm not evolving until I have time to check the site. I'm going to keep the top 10 IV Pokemon and work at powering them up a bit but I think I'll stick to collecting and evolving for now, especially since there seems no way to hold a gym around here for more than a minute or two (which is great if you like battling!)
posted by Room 641-A at 8:53 AM on August 4, 2016


The Local Teens have packed the gyms around here with 2000+ CP Dragonites. Shit's insane. Some of these people are level 35!
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:55 AM on August 4, 2016


I've noticed several friends are interested in just collecting and evolving (which I sort of learn towards), but that there doesn't seem to mechanisms in the game to push that track. Perhaps if one could build a gym or house for displaying one's Pokemon? I don't know how that fits into scheme of things, especially with this being a decades old franchise.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:01 AM on August 4, 2016


The third or fourth generation of the game did start letting you have a secret hideaway, I remember one being in a tree somewhere? I agree that they should definitely have a way for you to brag about your pokemon, or show off. Maybe a feature where you could declare a gym nearest your home as your home gym, and when people battled at it they could see your character and favorite 6 pokemon, similar to in the lore if the protagonist came to your town (or route) he might see you training in your local gym?
posted by DynamiteToast at 9:09 AM on August 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Having damn Pidgeys or Weedles escape from the ball eight times in a row and then timeout and vaporize really puts a damper on my interest in this game.
posted by octothorpe at 9:12 AM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


I have 0 potions and 104 revives.
posted by purpleclover at 12:16 PM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


I like to decide when I first see the pokemon how many balls I'll use, and run once I pass the quota. It really cuts down on the rage for me, since it highlights all the times I caught a pidgey in one ball when I was willing to spend 3, and prevents losing too many resources when it's not worth it even if you do catch it.

My limits mostly depend on how plentiful balls are for me at the moment (i.e. draining balls while camping lures vs. hitting so many stops I'm at my minimum desired potions/revives/raspberries and am actually deleting regular balls for space). I'll also spend more on the good XP grinders (pidgeys, rats, bugs). Even the really junk pokemon (50-candy evolves that are bad fighters, evolved pokemon that are much lower than ones I have already, etc) I'll usually gamble 1 regular pokeball on, unless I'm lure-camping while desperately low on balls. It's not a huge waste and I've caught some surprisingly high pokemon that way (I think my record so far is a 959 Jynx, unfortunately with terrible IVs).

Another thing I like to do if I'm low on good balls is open with a regular pokeball even on the good stuff because ever since the patch it seems like it's way harder to tell the right distance (right? it's not all in my head?) and I often over or undershoot the first ball now. I'll almost always get the second one on target, though. And I feel really dumb when I miss and waste an ultra ball...
posted by randomnity at 12:24 PM on August 4, 2016


I caught a Dragonite today! With a CP of.... drum roll...

46.

So he's just going to stay in my collection as a pet, and I hope he doesn't get bullied too badly by the pidgeys.
posted by Catseye at 1:10 PM on August 4, 2016 [8 favorites]


Curious, were you near a body of water when you caught him?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:28 PM on August 4, 2016


Nope, nowhere near. He was hanging out at a lured Pokestop on a busy street.
posted by Catseye at 1:31 PM on August 4, 2016


As Jeffburges linked above, you really ought to watch the marauding gang of pickachus take their revenge in Basel.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 1:57 PM on August 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


Having damn Pidgeys or Weedles escape from the ball eight times in a row and then timeout and vaporize really puts a damper on my interest in this game.

Good news:
posted by rifflesby at 2:18 PM on August 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


ever since the patch it seems like it's way harder to tell the right distance (right? it's not all in my head?) and I often over or undershoot the first ball now.

Nope, not your imagination. But good that they're fixing it.

I'm in Montreal right now, just caught my first Shelder!
posted by numaner at 4:49 PM on August 4, 2016


rifflesby: "Having damn Pidgeys or Weedles escape from the ball eight times in a row and then timeout and vaporize really puts a damper on my interest in this game.

Good news:
"

I may quit until that fix goes in. It's just not worth wasting ten balls for a Pidgey.
posted by octothorpe at 5:26 PM on August 4, 2016


Pidgey has feelings and resents that.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:20 PM on August 4, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm completely discouraged. All the gyms around my hotel are led by level 30+'s with 3000+CP Pokemon.

At least there's a pokestop right in the lobby!
posted by numaner at 7:16 AM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


None of the official or unofficial fixes are working for me to restore access to my Pokemon account. Oh well. I have a ticket in, but given the horrid response time to issues back when they were Ingress @ Google, I'm not holding my breath.
posted by tilde at 12:15 PM on August 5, 2016


It seems like a lot of my pokeballs are glitchy today. I'm hitting the targets but they look like they're going through the Pokemon and disappearing or disappearing right as it hits the target.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:05 PM on August 5, 2016


A Snorlax FINALLY landed in my lap - well, on my plate of truffle fries - and I still couldn't manage to catch him and I am moping.

Did catch a fancy flaming pony though, and finally enough Psyducks to upgrade one into a Golduck so there's that.
posted by angeline at 9:29 PM on August 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


I evolved a magikarp!
posted by purpleclover at 8:22 AM on August 6, 2016 [9 favorites]


Cool, What's it CP and HP?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:45 AM on August 6, 2016


It was a cp 143 Magikarp that became a 1517 CP/120 HP Gyrados. (It had an IV of 91.1 percent as a Magikarp. I haven't run it back through PokeAdvisor yet because I want to be happy about it. :) PS: I live by San Francisco Bay, and my kid has gone to camp next to the bay for the past two weeks.

PokeAdvisor has expanded its functionality to include some specifics about attacks that are slightly more optimizey than I am right now.
posted by purpleclover at 10:26 AM on August 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


That's 400 Magikarp! Oh! Magic Harp :D
posted by Room 641-A at 3:37 PM on August 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


My daughter caught a Pikachu today and was so freaking happy about it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:09 PM on August 6, 2016 [7 favorites]


I've been using Poke Radar and Skipladder (via lifehacker) and didn't realize they haven't been mentioned here yet. The app works well.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:55 PM on August 6, 2016


I finally got my pokedex to 100 tonight after catching an omanyte and an electrode! How's everyone else doing?
posted by randomnity at 10:32 PM on August 6, 2016


Oh, hey, is this thread closing soon? We should continue the conversation.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:30 AM on August 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Let's go capture the election threads!

I'm at 90/94 Pokemon caught, which is more than I expected. My newest acquisitions are a Ghastly and a Grimace Grimer. I also caught a Pikachu on the pier. Here is some guy looking at the ocean without realizing the real view was right behind him all along.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:56 AM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'll make a new thread and we'll continue the Pokedex discuss there, yes?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:57 AM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]




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