ElegantTrout Plays - Pokemon GO (Early Impressions)
With over 21 million active users and a superabundance of news reports, Pokémon Go has been catching mobile gamers by storm. Did I mention the game just came out on the 6th of July?
In all seriousness, we've been treated to a lot of publications and reports about Pokémon Go. People falling off cliffs, children walking into traffic, robbers using it to lure people into alleyways, record breaking achievements of the game, among many more things. It's easy to see that people are enthralled by it. Captivated.
What I think? It's not about the augmented reality. It's not about being a popular game. It's probably not even the nostalgic value. What I like the most about it is that it actually does bring people together. No bull, and this is coming from someone who prefers to stay at home most of their waking life and avoid general social interactions. It's legitimately great. For the most part, it's harmless and fun. On the off chance it harms someone, it's usually people getting hurt over bad decision making or getting social engineered.
And when I say it brings people together, I don't just mean the Game Boy era millennials. I mean, everybody. I've seen groups organize crawls all over the bay area. I've seen 60-something year olds play it on public transportation. I can't even escape it at work as an IT contractor! Every work place I go, they're bringing up Pokémon in some way. My boss saw there was a charmander somewhere and let everyone go and catch it. That was dope.
What's good so far other than bringing people together? What's bad? What's to come?
For one, there are definitely places that have a severe lack of spawns or PokéStops. This generally means less freebies that are necessary to play the game. You need a steady amount of Pokéballs if you want to catch anything, and it's nice to have potions or revives if you're into battling other players at the gym. Shown above to the left, the general area where I live. To the right, pretty much anywhere near San Francisco's main streets. It's crazy.
Though, I can't complain too hard. Stops refresh every 5 minutes. If you're going to be in an area with 4 nearby stops, you'll be set.
Especially if you come across a place like this to the left. It's pretty much the perfect spot to chill at if there's a bench, and you can use lures on the stops to draw Pokémon in passively. Especially handy for gaining candies for evolving. Though, the more savvy players will hold onto candies until they have a larger amount. This way, they can use a Lucky Egg for double XP -- making evolving give 2,000 XP rather than 1,000 XP. Pretty good deal.
Also, it seems that certain Pokémon are more likely to spawn near habitats that they'd be at. In incredibly hot locations, you'll find more fire types like Magmar. Nearby lakes or other bodies of water, you'll find Dratini. (Dratini so best) Not really an issue, but some people have a really big advantage with spawn locations just because of where they live -- and that seems to be in the richer neighborhoods or main cities.
Nearby my house? Almost nothing. It's where the Pokémon go to die, apparently.
A great thing that was implemented well was the egg system. Just like in the games, you have to travel a certain amount before eggs hatch. Same thing here. A few days ago, I walked over 9 miles. Yesterday, 11 miles. I'm looking at a better figure sometime soon, and this might just be the case for many other people. This can be averted if people just drive around in their cars looking for Pokémon though.
The worst thing? Servers are awful right now, mainly due to the sheer amount of players and even people DDoSing the game. That just sucks, opening it up only to see that the servers are unexpectedly down. But I don't think Niantic thought it'd be this popular, so there's slack cut there. Data drops are 2nd place for worst thing. You think you caught a pokemon? NOPE. Data just dropped out and the screen freezes at the ball, as you think about life and the possibilities of the void that just opened in front of you. Contemplating quantum suicide, you find yourself locked in a puzzle game not unlike 999, where you have to reverse the timeline to one where data doesn't drop and the servers aren't down -- for humanity's sake.
Shopped by yours truly, btw.
One function I think they could add into the game are batch transfers. It gets tedious to select one Pokémon at a time, press the transfer button, then confirm it. Almost all of our phones have the inherent capability of batch deletion or sending in the gallery or saved files. Having that function shouldn't be that difficult, but then again, I don't code much. It would be undoubtedly time-saving though. Sweet, sweet candy production will be brisk and feel modern.
Another function I think they could have is a friends list, of course. They don't have that at the moment -- but I believe someone from Niantic said it would be added sometime in the future, along with leaderboards. In addition to a friends list, customization profiles not unlike Steam's. It'd be cool to show off the medal(s) that we're proud of, the most recent Pokémon we've caught, or the Pokémon we want to display. Or maybe even our best walking day while on Pokémon GO. Maybe it's just me as a stat and option lover, but I genuinely think those things would be great additions.
Anyways, before I wrap this up, note this is an early impression. That means there's more features to come for this game. Niantic said there'll be events for catching rarer Pokémon. That's pretty awesome to add events to this kind of game. Also, they'll add trading, which I think is an essential part to any Pokémon game. I wonder if they'll ever get to the point where we can battle other nearby people? That'd be something I'd love to see.
Early opinion? Sure it's got bugs and crashes, but it's still a hype Pokémon game that's decent for get-togethers and great for exercise. Just, you know, make sure you have the decency to not obstruct other people on streets and watch where you're going. The game doesn't cause that stuff to happen. That's negligence.
Try it out if you haven't yet and are interested. A friend convinced me this way: "You want to play it now so that you're not scrub-tier later." That's one way to get me to play.
... I don't want to be a scrub.
