Niantic "Hear The Frustration" From Pokémon GO Fans Following Recent Changes
In a very recent post on Facebook, developer Niantic has attempted to address the raging Charizard in the room and tackle the recent Pokémon GO changes that have upset fans.
The removal of the 3-step display is one such change that Niantic admit was "enjoyed by many," but added it was also confusing and "did not meet our underlying product goals." The studio are going to continue improving the feature.
The bigger contention is that other change Niantic implemented for Pokémon GO that effectively neutered third-party support for the game, such as PokéVision.
"We have limited access by third-party services which were interfering with our ability to maintain quality of service for our users and to bring Pokémon GO to users around the world."
Web-based tools and mobile apps have been rendered useless given this change and that means those helpful fan-tools struggle to assist Trainers in their life journey to Catch 'Em All! Server-side alterations are the cause of third-party support throttling.
This is compounded by Pokémon GO's own in-game radar not functioning correctly and where the slack was picked up by others, such as PokéVision, which handily mapped out Pokémon across the globe for Trainers to keep watch on. Niantic is cracking down on any who violate their Terms of Service, which some of these fan-tools have been doing.
Again the frustration stems from Niantic shutting down these apps which only surfaced and became as popular because of Pokémon GO's glitches and broken features. If the studio had of addressed the bugs before enforcing their TOS then the reaction might have been different.
"The large number of users has made the roll-out of Pokémon GO around the world an... interesting… challenge. And we aren’t done yet! Yes, Brazil, we want to bring the game to you (and many other countries where it is not yet available)."
"We have read your posts and emails and we hear the frustration from folks in places where we haven’t launched yet, and from those of you who miss these features. We want you to know that we have been working crazy hours to keep the game running as we continue to launch globally," continued Niantic's post, which has almost 2k comments.
"If you haven’t heard us Tweeting much it’s because we’ve been heads down working on the game. But we’ll do our best going forward to keep you posted on what’s going on."
A Public Service Announcement (PSA) has cropped up on Reddit advising Pokémon GO players on iOS devices how they can refund their in-app purchases given the changes in the game's way of tracking Pokémon and how that adversely affects the product. It doesn't meet the 'underlying product goals' after all. Thanks corporate speak!
