"Impressions after a day with the tracker"

#PokemonGO: Been testing the tracker all day in a small town but one that has quite a lot of pokestops. I went through 3 stages of: first super excitement, then dawning disappointment as I realized its (large) flaws, and then a grudging acknowledment that it did find me a couple good things. In random order:The bad you've all heard about: first bad thing, the "nearby" pokemon that you are given locations of are not near! Most of mine seem about half a mile away, which is pretty far. So much so that I rented a bike today - first time I've been biking since the game came out. The tracker is quite useable with a bike, but, imho, pretty worthless without one. (Before I rented the bike today, it took me fifteen minutes roundtrip to get one pokemon, and that was with jogging most of the way, waiting at a few lights etc.)Second bad thing is that the local "sightings" (which are actually nearby) have been reduced to 3. I pretty much stopped paying attention to local sightings... that feature just seems gone.Odd thing: I noticed that though I'm in range of maybe 20 pokestops in terms of tracker area, the "nearby" (pokemon whose exact locations you're given) were mostly from the same 5 pokestops over and over. None of the 5 are sponsored; none are even near a business, so I don't know if these just happen to be the stops with a ton of close spawn points?One thing I really didn't expect was that most of the pokemon whose locations I'm given are commons. The tracker has access to such a wide area that I estimate it must be selecting from some 50-80 pokemon (estimating from local spawn point density) to pick the 6 it's showing me, but there doesn't seem to be much or any attempt to prioritize rarity. Over and over again I'm shown the locations of very distant pidgeys, paras, rattata.So it mostly felt like this:Me: I wonder if there's anything rare near meTracker: Dunno about that! No idea! But here's the exact location of a few pidgeys and rattata that are all half a mile away!!!!! Isn't that exciting? ...Hey, why aren't you running over there?Like, big whoop, right? Never have I been so vividly aware that most pokemon are simply not worthwhile enough for me make a 15 min dedicated trip. A list of "worth the trip" pokemon quickly formed up in my mind and I was a little startled to discover it's a very short list! (Rares, good gym fighters, and lower evolutions that give candy to max my gym fighters... that's about it.)And twice this happened:Tracker: Here's the exact locations of three pidgeys and a weedle and two rattata! Wooo! refresh Oh and a Chansey.Me: What?Tracker: Three pidgeys and a weedle and a rattata! ... also a Chansey, I almost forgot.I actually got TWO Chanseys today with the tracker. (I've only caught 1 before, ever.) I also scored a couple of mildly useful, locally rare pokemon that I haven't seen in multiple weeks, like a Poliwag and an Exeggcute.The two Chanseys made me feel that the tracker does have some use. (They also made me wonder: Maybe rares are prioritized after all? Or at least the mega-rares?) But it's so erratic. Mostly it's the "WOOO a PIDGEY half a mile away, WOOO!!" over and over. It's like walking around with a five year old who keeps showing you crap he picks up, pebbles and stuff, and you want to just ignore him - except that once (or twice) a day he finds a fifty dollar bill. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2fPZcOs