"Letter to Niantic"

#PokemonGO: Letter to Niantic.You can read and see that a big part of your player base is upset with the way you are releasing certain Pokémon and the way you are excluding players that can’t afford a trip. Also, it is so easy to see how you are trying to cash in by making players buy raid passes and guess which Gym Mewtwo is going to be at. Not only that unless we also get 100% catch rate on Mewtwo like you gave people at the Japan event we are going to waste even more passes and time trying to find another raid afterward. (This isn’t just for Mewtwo, but legendaries in the future.)My advice would be to look at other forms of Mass Multiplayer Games. I understand this is a mobile game, but it is still Mass Multiplayer. I don’t know if you are planning to support this game in the long term, but I don’t think to have large portions of your player base drop because they don’t feel supported is a good plan for that.I understand your desire for this game you want to bring people together and get them outside. However; living in a city with an amazingly high crime rate also one that declared bankruptcy. The last thing I want to do is be walking around with my phone and battery pack out in bad areas. Also, there aren’t that many that play anyways.Rural and county players are screwed unless they drive long distances and you have shown a clear lack of support for them with the events you have put on. They turn to spoofing or cheating to try and play your game without spending what could be a lot of money for some families and then you turn around and get upset when you give them little other choices.Advice.Make raids scale. If a legendary pop up at a rural gym and only three people are there to play the boss should be weaker so those people can complete it. The counter to people saying “Well then people will just fight the boss with less on purpose” is the boss they capture is much lower starting CP. They can still level it up by candy and participate in more raids which they now feel they can complete without gathering 15 people. They also buy more passes because they can actually use their free pass and feel a reward instead of just saying “no point in using this there are only 5 of us here.”Look at other MMO games or games that are popular out there. World of Warcraft, for example, love it or hate it; it has had a long life. They also do one major thing you do not. They support the community that wants to build add-ons and apps around the game. Stop worrying about third party IV calculators the truth is people are using excel spreadsheet calculators anyway. Those people some very big YouTubers and aren’t getting “Shadow ban” or in trouble and they make videos about using it. So instead of fighting it embrace the third party and let your fans and community make your game richer.Stop regional events it’s a cool idea and with the theme of Pokémon anime and game, but it falls short in a real life environment. In reality, people can’t afford to take off any time they want and fly to Japan or Europe to catch Pokémon. If you want to have live events great have them, but don’t make it mandatory to attend to catch a legendary Pokémon and don’t make it a 100% catch rate PAY TO WIN much? Have the live event, but at the same time release it worldwide. The people that want to go to the live event for community great they can still go, but you avoid a few things. One fan that can’t go don’t feel left out and forgotten about, fans don’t feel like you are after one big money grab, fans feel like they can still participate in the event, and fans that want to go to the live event can still go if they want.Add in an optional subscription model. Nothing big I know you're seeing money signs, but remember it’s still a mobile game and you still have a lot of issues with it. Make it like 5$ a month and each week players get a bundle for their subscription like raid passes, balls, and potions. Along with that, you can increase their storage space by a certain amount as long as they have that subscription.FIX THE GAME. Instead of pushing out legendary after legendary fix your servers make sure the game can handle large events. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to raid and as soon as it starts you get a network error. The whole raid has to back out and start again. Fix the base game and its issues that build or complicated stuff from a stable platform.To fix the bad spawns for rural and secluded players. Put events like the fire and water event on a weekly rotation. Not like nests, but each week or every other week make it so ghost and psychic Pokemon spawn more than the next week fire and water, and so on. That way players get a good mix in their area even if they live in bad Biomes. I don’t mean spawns like we saw in Japan where they are everywhere, but just more frequent.I know a lot of people won’t agree with any of these ideas and maybe some will. This isn’t a letter of me threatening to quit your game or even to stop playing. I want to see the game become more successful in the long run and stick around. It just feels the way you’re going about most things right now is putting blinders on and just moving how you want to move without listening much to the community. Also, the game is easy to slant in the favor of money. You obviously can’t run the game without money and I get that it's why I use money in the shop to help support it, but when it comes to the core game make it less about money and more about the players. Make money stuff cosmetic like dressing up your buddy or increasing storage. You have a great community that wants to make the game fun embrace that. I hope people read this and give good suggestions and helpful feedback. To all the players we got to work together and come up with ideas to help make this game better. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2vCrrFJ