"So... what's Niantic's endgame here? (Very Long)"

#PokemonGO: Because of the sort of "backlash against negativity" here, let me first state that I play this game every day with my wife and daughter. We love it. Even when it's extremely annoying, we still pull some fun out of it. That might be because we're doing something in the real world together, but hey, at least the game makes it easier to accomplish that. We already liked taking walks to places we've never been, and geocaching. So this was a no-brainer. I complain not because I want to poop all over Niantic or the game, but because I am genuinely befuddled, frustrated and want the game to be better. I'm sure Niantic does, too. I'm just not convinced we have the same vision for the game in mind.I realize a lot of the game's issues stem from being at such a large scale, but if you're willing to launch in country after country after country after country, then this long after launch I assume you've at least somewhat adjusted for that scale. But I'm no big city network engineer thingamajig, I just take my overalls and my underpants and sit on my porch with my hound dog and my shotgun and play the banjo all night. That said...The game was pretty shallow to begin with. That's fine, it's early on, they probably got pushed to release it early for whatever myriad reasons they had. No problem. I play Early Access games on Steam, I'm entirely used to things being incomplete or even a little broken.With that said... it seems like every single major feature of Pokemon Go is or has been completely borked.Let's list the major features, correct me if I miss any (and I don't consider pie-in-the-sky things like general concepts (i.e. "Pokemon in the real world!") to be actual features):Wander around in the real world, have a map in-game that matches that present you with places of interest as well as Pokemon.The original xxx (151? 142? Something?) first generation Pokemon to capture.A mini-game in order to capture aforementioned Pokemon.Player-owned gyms, which can be fought over for rewards.A player leveling system.A simplified Pokemon leveling system.The places of interest, i.e. Pokestops, giving little rewards so you don't have to use the shop to buy items if you're willing to partake in the "spirit of the game," as John Hanke might put it. (As an aside, this one's actually pretty "noble," as far as monetized F2P development is concerned. I like his moxie here.)While breeding isn't available, egg collecting and hatching is.A tracking tool to hunt down nearby Pokemon, encouraging you to walk around more.And let me just take my little teacher marker here and note anything that has been majorly and negatively effected, or never worked to begin with.Here's the edited list:Wander around in the real world, have a map in-game that matches that present you with places of interest as well as Pokemon.The original xxx (151? 142? Something?) first generation Pokemon to capture. Unless you live in the suburbs. Then enjoy the original 5 Pokemon. Pidgey, Rattata, Zubat, Spearow and in some regions, Drowzee!A mini-game in order to capture aforementioned Pokemon. Flee rate out of control, higher levels having to work harder for the same reward makes no sense, berries might not work, experience bonuses for better catches gone. A lot of stuff to the "main" game mechanic completely busted for a long time now...Player-owned gyms, which can be fought over for rewards. I am of the opinion that everything about the gym system aside from the concept of player-owned gyms is broken. The reward being once a day (whenever you click that button) is sad, you should at least continue to get Stardust. Half the time you can't enter the gym, people can poach them from you and get the reward you spent YOUR time and items earning. Layer on top of all this one of the worst battle systems I have ever experienced in a video game and I am not impressed.A player leveling system. This has a high experience curve and provides almost nothing to the game. You can make your Pokemon stronger, replacing the purpose of old gym badges, but to what end? To go to terrible gym battles? To get cp 400 Pidgeys that knock away 30 Pokeballs then escape? Why am I putting so much effort into catching this damned Pidgey? It's the same candy and stardust amount I got when I was level 1! The only thing levels are actually good for is the rewards they give.A simplified Pokemon leveling system. This one isn't about the level/stat advancement itself, so much as the completely random nature of CP for wild Pokemon. A CP39 Dragonite is great if you just want to fill out your Pokedex, if you want powerful Pokemon (but again... to what end?) it's nothing but a broken heart and 1 extra candy. Fully evolved forms being vastly weaker than their previous stages, yuck! I get that this could happen to some extent in the real games, but c'mon. It's so common it's a joke now.The places of interest, i.e. Pokestops, giving little rewards so you don't have to use the shop to buy items if you're willing to partake in the "spirit of the game," as John Hanke might put it. (As an aside, this one's actually pretty "noble," as far as monetized F2P development is concerned. I like his moxie here.) Pokestops work great! So long as they load in, and also your area has them. They're being removed at an actually alarming rate and if you have key ones in your neighborhood taken away... it might just kill the game for you. Not everyone is willing to drive around town just to get Pokestops. Rural players don't even have that luxury, they're just boned entirely. If you notice player activity in an area that doesn't have Pokestops for X amount of kilometers, add a message on-screen to have players create one and put it in a priority queue! C'mon!While breeding isn't available, egg collecting and hatching is. Egg distance calculations are bogus. It handles turns or circles poorly, and even walking in a straight line can get you only a fraction of what you actually walked. It's really disheartening. I went to the County Fair today at about 3PM. Left at 10:30PM. My step counter says I walked over 25,000 steps. I had an egg at 3.7 out of 5 KM. It did not hatch. It's at like 4.3. We also walked a minimum of 2 miles to a nearby shopping plaza for lunch/to pick up some Arceus promo cards for ORAS/X&Y at a Gamestop. That walk was almost completely a straight line both ways. What the hell??A tracking tool to hunt down nearby Pokemon, encouraging you to walk around more. HahahahahaYeah. I know. Some of these things are being worked on, like the tracker. We finally got communication! That's awesome. Legit awesome, the community did good work finally feeding Niantic the echo drops they so sorely needed, and once Niantic opened up, they did so in a big way, so that's VERY encouraging.But how does almost every single feature of your game get busted, or stay busted for certain regions, so badly? How were flee rates broken so badly? How and why are they STILL broken? That can't be that many lines of code... can it? Do they know their own game so poorly that something so fundamental is a weeklong fix? How did experience bonuses disappear? Why are they still gone?I think it kind of all comes back to the simple fact that Niantic isn't really a game developer. Ingress was kind of a game. Kind of. Pokemon is kind of a game. Kind of. But they're more like excuses to go outside, to learn about your city. But when you try to build a game around that, and don't have game design chops... it just doesn't work, man. I hope Niantic is able to onboard some people who have a deeper understanding of game design and understand how time sensitive major fixes can be, as well as how to rapidly iterate on implementing them.I ain't saying I think it's easy, but I am saying I've seen it handled much better in the past. But hey, we can just keep blaming scale until we lose half the playerbase. That's actually one of my worst fears for the game. Normally I don't care about a game's playerbase, but seeing people out on the street playing and having some chats with them is like half the fun. As much as I dislike the stupid gyms, I really like watching them being fought for so fiercely at all hours of the day. It's so important that the game iterates rapidly to keep people into it.Argh, sorry. Just a long rant. Back to melting Pidgeys. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2bbIR1G