"[Discussion] My Response to Niantic's PoGo Survey"

#PokemonGO: I recently got an email announcing the start of Adventure Week, and at the bottom, a link to fill out a survey. This had a 2000-character limit, which was unfortunate, because it doesn't tell you about it until after you try to submit it. Here's the full body of what I wrote. I figure if no one's gonna read it anyway, I might as well put it somewhere it will get flamed :)This survey was a real eye-opener for me. I play this game multiple hours a day, and yet I have complaints about literally every feature in this game. Why do I even play this game?Oh, I know. It's because I love Pokemon. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that without the Pokemon IP, this game would have been immediately regulated to a niche, fading into obscurity as fast as it hit the scene.With that in mind, I think it's really important to understand just how successful the main Pokemon series games are, and how much better Pokemon Go can be if it would just borrow more things from them.Let's start with type effectiveness. As it stands, STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus) is the same as the Super Effective bonus. This means that a Pokemon with a STAB move will do the same damage as a Super Effective non-STAB move.Because of this, the situations where type effectiveness matters is greatly diminished. For example, my Dragonite with Steel Wing is strictly worse than one with Dragon Tail against a Rock type. Even though Steel is Super Effective against Rock, it gets the same damage multiplier that Dragon Tail does, and because Dragon Tail does more damage overall, it's the superior choice. This diminishes move diversity.Next, let's talk gyms. I know a major rework is coming, but as usual, there is absolutely no communication about it, so I will just highlight the things that are most frustrating to me.First, CP. I understand that it is meant to simplify things so players don't need to get bogged down in the minutiae, but as it stands, it is less than useless. Its only real effect is determining gym placement, but because it weights Attack more than Defense and Stamina, the strongest attackers end up being the "best" defenders in gyms. Doesn't that seem backwards to you?It's ok that glomming all the stats exists, but there also needs to be a way (that's not using a 3rd-party site) to see under the hood. In most games, there is an "advanced display" option that will show more fine-grain details to the hardcore players. Please, I want to see my Pokemon's stats on the screen. And note, I'm not talking about being able to see their IVs! The main series games obfuscates these, too, but they at least show the Pokemon's stats (Attack, Defense, Special Attack, etc) in the display.Second, the prestige formula. Why do I need to have two copies of each Pokemon, one for attacking, and one for prestiging? It makes no sense--there is no difference in gameplay, yet these two are treated as if there is, simply because one involves using Pokemon that are half the CP you want them to be. If a player ever finds themself saying, "damn, my Pokemon is too strong" when fighting, something is wrong.Egg hatching doesn't get to walk away unscathed, either. The current system absolutely must be replaced with breeding. Hardcore players need to be given a way to slowly converge on the ideal Pokemon. The beauty of a great game is that "ideal Pokemon" will mean something different to each player. The game mechanic thus must be flexible enough to allow for such control.Giving out random Pokemon from eggs is the exact opposite from this. Worse yet, it allows players to obtain Pokemon they haven't encountered in the wild. This discourages exploration and cheapens the actual achievement. I would gladly give up my Miltank Pokedex entry in exchange for breeding, where I can actually have a guaranteed way to get a Coutner/Dynamic Punch 90%+ Machamp with a 15 Attack.Note that guaranteed does not mean easy or fast.Even catching wild Pokemon doesn't get an "Excellent" rating from me (pun intended). Ball physics are completely opaque, the tiers for catching (Nice, Great, Excellent) vary per Pokemon (you get an Excellent throw for Slowpoke when the circle is still gigantic), and, oh yeah, Pokemon can flee through a mechanic that is 100% out of the player's control.This mechanic from the Safari Zone is a universally hated mechanic, and most players would use the Missingno glitch (where they would encounter the Pokemon in the Safari Zone, then force that encounter outside it where it couldn't flee) to circumvent it.Lastly, let's talk about cheating. All of the above is written with the assumption of an ideal world where no one cheats. Multiaccounting and spoofing is a real problem that I sympathize with, and one I don't see an easy solution to. In my experience, though, people will always cheat.The solution is not to catch and ban the cheaters, but to make sure that they don't negatively impact your legitimate players and to reduce the incentives to cheat.Why do people use 3rd-party trackers? Because the in-game tracker is not meeting their needs. I argue that a tracker without a teleporter is completely harmless, but that is perhaps a discussion for another time.Why do people teleport? To get Pokemon they otherwise can't. Breeding would reduce this temptation. Instead of teleporting around to find the perfect pokemon, you can keep cycling through eggs until you get it.Why do people multiaccount? Because the current gym system means people who do get an advantage. I'm hoping the gym rework will address this. For example, if the new system removes the practice of "gym shaving", where someone logs into another account only to knock out the gym's lowest Pokemon, then logs back into their main account to put theirs in, it will go a long way towards reducing Multiaccounting.But perhaps the most important question to ask is, why do people complain about cheaters?I think it's because there's currently a scarcity of resources when it comes to gyms. Only 10 players can benefit from a given gym, so when some of those 10 players aren't playing fair, people cry foul because it hurts them. If the cheaters could get their coins and be on their way, letting the rest of the players also get their coins, far fewer people would care that people cheat.Anyway, I have no expectations that this will be read by anyone, but it let me get a lot off my chest. Hopefully this survey doesn't botch the formatting too much and wall of text you. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2qGoAZy