"The unfortunate differences between Niantic and Supercell."

#PokemonGO: (Please be aware that this is a very long argument, but it please give it a shot as it addresses a major point.)Both are game developers. Both have had their successes and misses. But there is a major difference between them both, and if someone from Niantic is reading this, take notes.Supercell's Clash Royale and Niantic's Pokemon GO are two Freemium mobile games. Both have very simple gameplay and both are fun in their own special ways.For those who do not know, Clash Royale is a Live Tower Defense CCG, which before Pokemon GO released was one of the most popular mobile games of all time, and it currently has a daily revenue of about $800,000, 100s of millions of downloads across iOS and Android and a player-base of about 75 million people.Pokemon is one of the most succesful franchises of all time, and in 2016 it was worth $15 Billion. Pokemon GO has made well-over $1 Billion in the past year, and many of us can safely say that it was the talk of the summer.However, if we look down the line, it is safe to say that Clash Royale will be more popular than Pokemon GO. And this is because Supercell are BETTER developers than Niantic; and here is why.Clash Royale has had several balance changes to its various cards within it's lifetime. Every time there is a balance update in this game, the developers put a full change-log up on their forums, Reddit, and in their news section. The game is very fresh and the meta is constantly evolving thanks to a new card release almost every month.Pokemon GO has only had 1 major balance change back in November. It was not announced in any form of depth by Niantic, and it left many players feeling "cheated", as many power-houses took unpredictable hits. It took days for us to realize what had changed.Supercell have been very open to their player-base since Day 1. At the time of writing, the are due to be opening an AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow for the game. If you take a look at their social media, you can see their interactions with the players and fans; laughing at their jokes, reviewing their ideas, etc. A short while ago, they hosted a special challenge to kickstart their annual eSports tournament; the Crown Championship. They intended to charge a 100 Gem (the premium currency, simillar to PokeCoins) fee to participate. This equates to around $1.25. The players told them that this gave many sponsored players a drastic advantage, and shortly after, they changed this admission fee to 10 Gems, so the player could buy 8 entries for just $1, whilst admitting their mistake by saying "You were right.". Furthermore, their support services are always helpful, giving players detailed responses to their problems, and many of them are NOT automated!Niantic are unreasonably cryptic. Almost the only information we learn about new features of this game comes from datamines. I cannot recall them ever talking to their players outside of an update announcement. They only recently began to make blog posts, and even these are very bland and shallow. Let's take the Exclusive Raids feature for example. It was announced 15 days ago. There has been no word on it besides an initial claim that it is on the way. And their support services are abysmal. Responses take days to appear. You're not even gurranteed one! And I am sure they flip a coin before deciding to issue any form of compensation."r"Let's talk about glitches. Clash Royale has had few major glitches in its lifetime. Currently, the game is almost flawless in this aspect, with very few bugs, and many of them have been or are currently device-specific.Pokemon GO is terribly different, and I'm going to list some of the worst.. Grimer's 3D model crashing the game on low end devices.. Pokemon turning into an entirely new species after capture.. Raids being unresponsive, with awful frame-rates to boot.. The last Premier Ball cannot catch the Raid Boss in the Special Challenge.. The old Nearby tracker showing all Pokemon as being "3 footprints" away.. Pokemon models duplicating and merging on screen.. Spark's disappearance.. The avatar model appearing in gargantuan size on the map.. The shop not loading in at all.And the list goes on... and on... Recently, I went out to play the game in a park and I had to reboot it 5 or 6 times because the Sightings function would just disappear and no Pokemon would appear. I simply cannot see how a company which rakes in hundreds of thousands of $ a day makes so many of these mistakes. From a programming perspective, they must have one of the worst programming teams in terms of how they handle bugs and glitches.And finally, we go on to how these developers react to 3rd Party Sites.There is a website called "Stats Royale" which gives players a record of how they are doing in the game, whilst also offering a glimpse of other metrics which are not offered in game. Supercell support this website fully, even promoting it in their News section.Let's take a look at PokeVision. One of the first major tracker apps for Pokemon GO. It was made to offer a replacement of the almost useless tracker feature in game.It was shut down within weeks. Many more trackers were made until the release of the new tracker, and they were all shut down. They do not appreciate the players of the game and the work they have put in to make the game better for all.What real harm do these services do? None. If Clash Royale can promote an external service to track your Chests, then Pokemon GO can promote an external service to view Pokemon IVs.Which leads on to my conclusion. How many of you can safely say that you play this game because of how it looks/plays? Because to me, I only play this game because it is the only iteration of catching Pokemon in the real world, something I was really damn excited for back in September. Now Clash Royale might not be the most innovative concept, but with the way the game is developed, managed and promoted, it will, down the line, be the better game. In fact, it is the better game.And this is down to YOU Niantic. You. The people who are responsible of making this concept live up to what it should be. You have CONSITENTLY failed us as a player base. You have DELIBERATELY made this game more difficult for us to play. You have had LITERALLY no communication with us players. And YOU have ULTIMATELY ruined what could have, and should have, been the most succeful mobile game of all time.And I am going to be COMPLETELY honest. There is no turning back for you. You cannot change. We know how you can change this game. But you will not listen to us.Your development methods are NOT working. You need to FIX them.Put it this way, it's like planning a birthday. Imagine if you had all the money in the world to plan an amazing party for, let's say, a small child. Now, let's bring these two developers into this.Supercell have approached the child upfront and said "For your birthday, we are going to DisneyLand! And we are going to go on all of the attractions and have as much fun as possible!".Meanwhile, Niantic are planning a surprise visit to Chuck E Cheese.This method of marketing and development DOES NOT work and you have proved this. It is time to change. Apologize to us, the players, and do what you promote; real world INTERACTION.You need to fix the game.TL;DR: Supercell are better developers than Niantic, which ultimately leads to their games being better than Pokemon GO in many aspects, despite the magnitude of the Pokemon franchise and concept. Niantic's cryptic developmemt tactics do not work.(Thank you for reading my thoughts. This took a very long time to type on a mobile device. About 1.5 hours. :p) via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2x28e31