A lot of critical things have been said about Pokemon Go and Niantic in the past. Professionals that tried to defend certain UI elements still had plenty of suggestions a non-professional could have made. Same goes for players and professionals that noted the need for quests. In fact, Niantic’s insistence on doing local events instead of global events created some huge PR problems, and that’s without noting that, for a social game, the game actually lacked a lot of social features. But there’s a weird thing: Niantic’s addressed many of those issues. Several are ones I’ve previously suggested. There’ve been several UI improvements, new quests, at least two events per month since February 2018 that aren’t just cash shop sales, and a push towards community building. It’s far from perfect, like the glaring omission of in-game communication or a social media connection, but we’ll ignore that for now. What I want to focus on is how Niantic’s taken feedback and enhanced Pokemon Go. The Generation 3 transformation It feels to me as if everything changed with Niantic’s Generation 3 update. The update brought new Pokemon and new mechanics, much like Gen 2, but while Gen 2 added nearly all the Gen 2 Pokemon at once with some “gamey” mechanics, Gen 3 was a revolution. With more than 220 ‘mon available already, Niantic wisely released the new Pokemon in batches. While refusing to release all the Pokemon at once may seem stingy, it worked wonders. Niantic had already released a few Gen 3 monsters during Halloween, which is… [Read full story]
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