"Apparently, an unpopular opinion: Pokemon Go is bad"

I have been playing Pokemon for quite some time now ('98). I have owned at least one game from every generation, if not all of them. I still have my original gameboy and games, and am still actively working on completing my card collection. I have various books, and toys, and goofball trinkets. One of my early programming projects was a small Pokemon game were you could control sprites and attack, and I've made quite a few pokemon related videos on YouTube. What I'm trying to say is that I, like many of you, love Pokemon.I was very excited to hear about Pokemon Go. The AR, real-world running around, and having gyms all over that you could control all seemed like very cool ideas. And now the game is out and those things are still cool, but the rest of the game is very much not cool.Here are my grievances:Server Issues: If you've tried to play Go at all, you will be well aware of the server issues the game is having. And while that may be "normal" (not good, but not unexpected) for a game that ends up being more popular than expected, Nintendo has faced this issue in the past with Pokemon games and should have learned their lesson.Wild Pokemon Spawn Rate: Really, really hit or miss. I can be actively wandering around for two hours and see nothing, even while using the tracker, and then other times I'll have three at my feet as soon as I open the app. Whatever algorithm they're using for this needs adjustment.Not Enough Battling: If you've played any Pokemon game ever, you should be well aware of how battling is a key component. You get your starter, then you battle. You have to battle to get to the next town. You have to battle to get money. You have to battle to catch Pokemon. You have to battle to advance the story. You have to battle all the time. In Go, the only place you battle is at a gym, and that's if you have one near you or the time to go find one. Very un-Pokemon.Battling is Horrible: Speaking of battling, I'm not sure what to even call the battle format in Go. No in-game prompts to tell you what's going on, then furious screen tapping? Pokemon has been a turn-based combat game for 20 years, and the formula wasn't broken.Redesign of Pokemon Advancement: Obviously, since they chose to remove battling for the most part, they had to change how Pokemon leveled up and evolved. Gating it behind having to catch a ton of one species of Pokemon to evolve one individual Pokemon is just not how it should have been done and very frustrating.Typical Mobile "Game": I hate mobile games. Mainly because most of them are not really games. Minimal gameplay, and then anything real happening gated behind time or resources (that you can't farm) to frustrate the player into buying more of whatever through the in-app store. If you've played Clash of Clans, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And Nintendo has made public statements in the past about how they don't like microtransactions and think games should be play-to-win, not pay-to-win. So what do they do for Go? Hire a standard mobile game development company to make a standard mobile game, complete with standard mobile game bullshit. For the in-game store to even offer something that is 250% of the price of the last main-series Pokemon title is absurd and very non-Nintendo.The AR is good. The real-world running around is good. And after that, finding something else positive to say is difficult. I'm really confused how someone in charge could have looked at this mess and gone "Yeah. That's what we want. Release it." via /r/pokemon http://ift.tt/29xvHNp