"I finally realized that this won't become a real pokemon game"

#PokemonGO: Sorry for rant, downvote if you want. I don't expect anyone to care, but I felt like posting to finalize my goodbye to this game. I guess I just want give myself some closure by making some points about the game's shortcomings.UpdatesThey come at a pretty slow rate for a game that really needed a lot of additions to flesh out. They are small incremental improvements. Some people like that, but for me I feel that that kind of roll out style is fine for a game that already has a lot of content. The fact that Niantic doesn’t communicate much with the player base makes it worse. I feel like I have nothing to look forward to, and speculation just brews in the meanwhile before more underwhelming additions are added. The pace of improvement is too slow.PvP and BattlingThis game won't have it. For starters, the connection is too laggy to even have the simplistic combat against Gyms the game already features. Even if it ran smoothly, the entire system would need to be reworked. Niantic won't do turn-based as they've said they are going to keep it distinct from the main-series to avoid cannibalizing players (likely due to a contractual agreement with the Pokemon Company). To keep the DPS system and improve it so that PvP would be interesting would take a lot of work, and I don’t think they are willing or capable of that. Essentially, I don't see any way that the battling aspect could improve without using turn-based, and they can't do that as I assume the licensing agreement prevents them from implementing too many of the same features as the main games.Another thing, there is hardly any battle strategy in the game, you can't choose your moves, The SE and NVE multipliers are messed up compared to STAB, and Niantic is committed to using a pretty poor stat system as a substitute for the real one. I'm sure stats, CP, and moves will be adjusted with future updates, but nothing significant will change that will radically alter the gameplay. You are still going to tap/swipe to victory with one of your many Vaporeons.TradingThis game won't get it. I've seen a lot of people say they don't want it because of cheaters, even though it is a main feature of the franchise. But it probably won't be implemented because it will make completing the dex easier without having to spend money. This will be another key pokemon feature that is missing from PGo.BreedingMuch like trading, this will make it much easier to get Pokemon that you want, especially if you can breed with Ditto. I saw that gender information was put into the game, but this will probably be more filler information like weight/height.LevelingI hit level 34 a week ago, and before that it had been awhile since I leveled up. This reminded me how little you get for putting in work.1mil xp to go from 33 to 34. 4.75mil xp cumulative. For that, I got: Ultra Ball x10, Max Potion x15, Max Revive x10, Razz Berry x15. Better not spend those 10 Ultra Balls in one place. You unlock new items every 5 levels, which takes forever the higher you go. And that stops once you've gotten to level 30, so...the incentives stop. I mean higher CP pokemon is ok, but, you can get coins with anything. I just go on gym runs at weird times (really late at night works well), drive to each location, knock it down/put something in, and once I've finished my run i collect coins. Nothing stays in, so I repeat the cycle every 24hrs, which nets me the same amount of coins as if my pokemon had just stayed in the gym.Coins are good for buying things to level up or to catch/hatch more pokemon I already have at this point. Leveling is circular, not linear, it doesn’t really lead to anything.ProgressionCandy and stardust, combined with availability, ruined the starters. Starters are given to players as the first pokemon they will use to progress in the game. But the progression system in PGo does not really allow you to level up your starter. If you never found another one in the wild, you couldn’t power up or evolve your starter (until the buddy system, which is a poor replacement for friendship… but ok). Essentially, the concept of a “starter” was killed by the candy/stardust system. Your starter was obsolete by the time you caught other pokemon of the same type at a higher level. Battling does not level up your pokemon, there’s no attachment to using any of them. Further, more powerful pokemon of the same type (except Venusaur, the best grass type all-around) were far more accessible. Vaporeon is much better than Blastoise in every way, but it is very easy to find candy and to evolve (for many at least). I chose Squirtle as my starter, but it was laughably irrelevant as soon as I evolved a Vape, which was very early in the game (like week 1). If you live on the west coast, you have Growlithe everywhere (crazy amounts of spawns in CA). Arcanine is more powerful than Charizard, and only takes 50 candies to evolve.Nothing can be done to fix this imbalance. Niantic won’t just take away the excess of players' OP Vaporeon, and they won’t arbitrarily nerf them significantly either. No one who has invested into certain pokemon will be happy to see them nerfed. The introduction of Gen II is irrelevant, everything you need to battle is already available in Gen I, and some of the best pokemon were widely distributed.Unless you feel you must complete the dex (I don’t, though I finished Gen I), there’s no reason to keep playing. I don’t enjoy collecting hordes of the same pokemon, none of them feel special to me. You catch them, evolve ones with good IVs (if you care about that), discard them if they get bad moves, the entire grind is devoid of any attachment to your pokemon.StoryNiantic treats the game like it is real. The way they post new information on the website, how game mechanics are kept a secret…they don’t want it to be treated as a game, but as this RPG-like experience. Except, there is no storyline, the entire game takes place in a monotonous-overlay of ingress without a shred of interaction with anything, NPC or real players. I mean, would it be so much trouble to have updates relayed by professor willow in-game, instead of reading about his new discoveries on the website?ConclusionMaybe I’m just not cut out for mobile games. I’m sure some people feel that since it is a mobile game, it should be held to a lesser standard or something. Let’s just ignore that modern smartphones have way more horsepower than a 3DS. In my opinion, without the Pokemon name, the game would have been way less successful. People would still play it, Ingress has an active playerbase I’ve heard. However, Niantic would not have enjoyed the level of media coverage and revenue without the power that comes from a major franchise. I just wish they could have respected Pokemon enough to do it justice.Phew, glad I got that off my chest. Anyway, take care guys. If you play to exercise, keep at it. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2j4LIzT