The social aspect is interesting, but we don't have more to say than what other people are saying. Pokemon, stops, and gyms are just person-attractors tuned to the pokemon social currency. So you have like-minded people with a common (if simple) goal sharing physical space much more often than they would on their own.
The lack of significant skill-based input in the game is the primary driver of the socialization. There is no fear of underperformance, which in other arenas is the primary barrier to new players socializing.
I would wager that skill-based input will never be a significant factor in the game, or at least won't be in the foreseeable future, as this narrows the social aspect by re-raising that barrier.
There isn't a lot to say other than that it's a low-level positive force in general social interaction for populated areas.
I feel like there is one important point on the social aspect that I would have liked you to comment on -- by giving people direct reasons to go outside near their home, it's getting a lot of people with depression and other disorders that make it difficult to be social to go outside and talk to people.
However, I think I'm pretty much abandoning Pokemon Go in favor of playing other things - I don't like it enough to play it on its own merits, and so I'm going to rely on other candy boxes for my candy fix (i.e. I'm still playing that idol game Eryn posted about a while ago).
Those aspects are probably better served in a Thursday show.
There is a counter-argument to that which has NOT been addressed much: accessibility.
Should Pokemon go allow players to explore the world from a single location with controls on the phone? The social aspects you describe only occur if the answer to this is "no."
But on the other hand, that makes the game inaccessible to people with limited mobility, preventing them from experiencing the game that everyone else does. But on yet a third hand, if this option were added, then many people with social anxiety who currently are driven outside and then begin interacting would likely use the feature to continue their avoidance.
I'm definitely getting less interested in this game simply because whenever I'm actually outside walking around I can't reliably connect to their servers.
The game is also obtuse as fuck. There is pretty much no way to learn all of the small intricacies of how things work just by tooling around in the app. Therefore, there's this constant word of mouth "oh did you know you can do this?" Teaching people how Pokemon Go works is practically its own oral tradition.
I was so baffled when I randomly saw the "info" button on the menu when I went to go turn off the sound. It's there that they decide to give you the low down on the entire game. But even then they don't really explain the battling at all. They just say you can dodge left and right by swiping and tap to attack.
Well you don't need to know python, you just have to IT guy it a little bit to get it running somewhere. Tried it. Everything around me seems to be the same commons so I really don't know how much I can say about it. I did verify it in that the pokemon that showed up on that near me were in fact there near me.
The lack of significant skill-based input in the game is the primary driver of the socialization. There is no fear of underperformance, which in other arenas is the primary barrier to new players socializing.
I'm curious as to what constitutes "significant" in this case. The battle interface is limited, but dodging attacks is entirely skill-based (I suppose more reflex-based than anything else), and being better at dodging allows you to close a substantial non-skill (i.e. CP) gap. I can defeat Pokemon whose CP are literally double mine by carefully timed dodging.
Of course, lag is a factor, and dodging is literally the only skill based input in the game.
I do agree that the consequences of failure are, by and large, trivial. Losing is an inconvenience more than anything else.
Dodging attacks has little effect compared to CP value outside of a band. Even then, you just have to do it "well enough" to achieve your CP value essentially. No one is really worse at that part than anyone else.
Anyone can beat a pokemon whose CP value is double theirs. That is probably by design. I defy you to do better than that, or for anyone else who plays regularly to do substantially worse.
I don't think the gyms are much worth caring about personally. A dollars worth of coins and some dust. I also believe that "defending" gyms is largely a waste and everyone would be better served in their own interests to just stop by the ones convenient to themselves every once in a while and take it for the tiny reward if they happen to be there anyway.
I wouldn't mind if type multipliers were more significant. Right now opposing types are 0.8 vs 1.2. I'm not opposed to 0.5/1.5. They also double the defenders hit points, but the attacker can dodge. The combination of these effects is that a "good" defender is a ball of HP that might not even be useful as an attacker. Meanwhile, get a vaporeon (water gun) or an alakazham (psycho cut) to grind down even types that are strong against them by dodging and dealing 0.8 damage consistently and quickly.
You could also say that timing of when to use the special attack bar is a teeeeeny tiny skill. Use it to finish off current opponent or save it for start of next? Trivial decision, I know.
My plan with gyms is to take control of very out of the way ones when I come across them in my travels, as they will have little to no turnover, and I can collect every cycle.
I'm of the opinion that you could glue a game on top of the framework pretty easily. I also think they could vastly increase the security on this api. A lot of stuff just does not need to be exposed that is.
Nintendo, with $10B in cash on hand, is likely to spend an awful long time fucking around with hardware products trying to make something work again.
Nintendo is doing the same old F2P game tricks, but with a much softer touch. If you run out of pokeballs trying to catch something (and you have to be really bad at throwing them to ever run out), you just can't catch that Pokemon. You can't launch the store from the catch screen at all. Let's be clear, most games at that point would not only taunt you with he possibility of buying some extra balls with a pop-up, they would probably double the price for that moment.
The store is also largely pointless. There is little worth buying, and most items are not even sold for gold at all. You simply can't buy health items or any balls above the regular pokeball.
I've spent my gym gold on lures, as that is a great component of the game. I love the "buy the next round at the bar" aspect.
The only dickishness is in the egg incubators. $1.50 to hatch three eggs (requiring you to walk between 2km and 10km). You can only ever carry 9 eggs, and can't delete ones you don't want, but can only hatch one at a time for free. 2k eggs are crappy, so when you get flooded with them, I bet people do put down real cash to buy extra incubators and clear out their stock, considering that a 10k eggs is guaranteed to be a very rare Pokemon. Also remember that 5k eggs give you a shit ton of candy for stuff you probably already have two or three of, but were pretty far from evolving.
>and you have to be really bad at throwing them to ever run out
Not if you live in a rural area. Density of stops is pretty relative.
Yeah, this. We have to drive somewhere to get any Pokestop refills. Ont he other hand, we can just take a walk down our street to encounter Pokemon (and not just shitty ones; we've had eevees, bulbasaur, fearow, etc.). It's pretty easy to run out if you don't go somewhere for refills every day.
I've not looked at anything in the game except pokestop swiping and catch Pokemon that show up. If there's more to the game, it's not interested me yet.
As someone who has never played Pokemon, every new monster is a fun discovery. I'm not really interested in dueling or fighting or whatever.
I've now caught Pokemon in five different countries.
You are experiencing the vast majority of what the game has to offer. The only thing additional that you could do without delving in to battle stuff is to start grinding up your duplicate pokemon into candy, and evolving the ones you keep so that they can turn into new awesome pokemon. Also, at some level you start being given eggs that you will have to walk a certain distance with the app open in order to hatch. The longest eggs (10km) guarantee rare stuff.
Yeah... you're getting most of what there is to get out of this game. I imagine the eggs will work pretty well for you. I only hatch like a 2 KM egg/day, but I have friends that get a lot more out of it.
Personally, it's provided Nuri and I with a convenient excuse to go out to some place we don't usually go. Lots of historic sites in the Capital District, and living here, it can be easy to overlook those. So we'll have PoGo dates where we go somewhere, walk around, enjoy each other's company, meet nerds, learn about a neighborhood, and maybe try a restaurant we haven't yet tried.
I have many stories like this already. It's caused my wife and I to change our routine a bit and patronize some of the local downtowns a bit more, take walks at local waterfront parks instead of around the neighborhood, etc.
Last Friday, I went out with a friend b/c we both had the night free from any adult responsibilities. While grabbing dinner, we decided to extend the trip and go explore some areas in search of pokemans. It turned into two hours of me giving him an intense local history lesson as we visited various sites (he moved into same town as me some years ago, but didn't grow up in the area).
And I will join the chorus of people asking to tone it down, because goddamn is Vaporeon just not fun. I can just faceroll Pokemon 400 CP higher than me and have plenty of health left.
If you can faceroll something weak to water twice your CP I think that's fine. Worst thing about the current balance is that you can faceroll things that counter you with ease.
Edit: Not that gym balance is a super important thing at the moment.
Comments
But, you have to learn how to use Python, which I unfortunately do not know how.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongodev/comments/4t80df/wip_pokemon_go_map_visualization_google_maps_view/d5feu2f?st=iqtsngmd&sh=1a3e519e
The lack of significant skill-based input in the game is the primary driver of the socialization. There is no fear of underperformance, which in other arenas is the primary barrier to new players socializing.
I would wager that skill-based input will never be a significant factor in the game, or at least won't be in the foreseeable future, as this narrows the social aspect by re-raising that barrier.
There isn't a lot to say other than that it's a low-level positive force in general social interaction for populated areas.
However, I think I'm pretty much abandoning Pokemon Go in favor of playing other things - I don't like it enough to play it on its own merits, and so I'm going to rely on other candy boxes for my candy fix (i.e. I'm still playing that idol game Eryn posted about a while ago).
There is a counter-argument to that which has NOT been addressed much: accessibility.
Should Pokemon go allow players to explore the world from a single location with controls on the phone? The social aspects you describe only occur if the answer to this is "no."
But on the other hand, that makes the game inaccessible to people with limited mobility, preventing them from experiencing the game that everyone else does. But on yet a third hand, if this option were added, then many people with social anxiety who currently are driven outside and then begin interacting would likely use the feature to continue their avoidance.
Of course, lag is a factor, and dodging is literally the only skill based input in the game.
I do agree that the consequences of failure are, by and large, trivial. Losing is an inconvenience more than anything else.
Anyone can beat a pokemon whose CP value is double theirs. That is probably by design. I defy you to do better than that, or for anyone else who plays regularly to do substantially worse.
I wouldn't mind if type multipliers were more significant. Right now opposing types are 0.8 vs 1.2. I'm not opposed to 0.5/1.5. They also double the defenders hit points, but the attacker can dodge. The combination of these effects is that a "good" defender is a ball of HP that might not even be useful as an attacker. Meanwhile, get a vaporeon (water gun) or an alakazham (psycho cut) to grind down even types that are strong against them by dodging and dealing 0.8 damage consistently and quickly.
Basically, it's not much of a game at the moment.
My plan with gyms is to take control of very out of the way ones when I come across them in my travels, as they will have little to no turnover, and I can collect every cycle.
Or Nintendo doubles DOWN on hardware sales...
Nintendo is doing the same old F2P game tricks, but with a much softer touch. If you run out of pokeballs trying to catch something (and you have to be really bad at throwing them to ever run out), you just can't catch that Pokemon. You can't launch the store from the catch screen at all. Let's be clear, most games at that point would not only taunt you with he possibility of buying some extra balls with a pop-up, they would probably double the price for that moment.
The store is also largely pointless. There is little worth buying, and most items are not even sold for gold at all. You simply can't buy health items or any balls above the regular pokeball.
I've spent my gym gold on lures, as that is a great component of the game. I love the "buy the next round at the bar" aspect.
The only dickishness is in the egg incubators. $1.50 to hatch three eggs (requiring you to walk between 2km and 10km). You can only ever carry 9 eggs, and can't delete ones you don't want, but can only hatch one at a time for free. 2k eggs are crappy, so when you get flooded with them, I bet people do put down real cash to buy extra incubators and clear out their stock, considering that a 10k eggs is guaranteed to be a very rare Pokemon. Also remember that 5k eggs give you a shit ton of candy for stuff you probably already have two or three of, but were pretty far from evolving.
Not if you live in a rural area. Density of stops is pretty relative.
http://vt.tumblr.com/tumblr_oalpulkUoC1rzn9vf_480.mp4#_=_
As someone who has never played Pokemon, every new monster is a fun discovery. I'm not really interested in dueling or fighting or whatever.
I've now caught Pokemon in five different countries.
And then we also get pogeymans and balls.
Last Friday, I went out with a friend b/c we both had the night free from any adult responsibilities. While grabbing dinner, we decided to extend the trip and go explore some areas in search of pokemans. It turned into two hours of me giving him an intense local history lesson as we visited various sites (he moved into same town as me some years ago, but didn't grow up in the area).
And I will join the chorus of people asking to tone it down, because goddamn is Vaporeon just not fun. I can just faceroll Pokemon 400 CP higher than me and have plenty of health left.
Edit: Not that gym balance is a super important thing at the moment.