"[Analysis] A short summary of new PokéStops and Gyms in Pokémon Go"

#PokemonGO: Since it has been exactly 2 months now since many new PokéStops and Gyms disappeared, but Niantic also very recently added some new portals from Ingress as PokéStops into Pokémon Go, I thought that the recent events regarding new Pokéstops or Gyms might be a bit confusing to some players.That’s why I decided to compress every bit of Info we ever got on new Stops and Gyms in the past into a single, comprehensive list for everyone.I'll edit this post with events I've missed, if you write them in the comments.First, the basics:2012: Niantic releases their first game, Ingress. Players are able to submit new locations into the game for the game to work.These locations are called “portals” in Ingress. They are the only in-game structure in that game.2012 – 2015: All Ingress players are able to submit an infinite amount of new portals. Each and every one of these submissions is approved or denied by Niantic employees by hand.Of course, the employees are not able to keep up with all the submissions, which results in a growing backlog of submissions.September 2015: Niantic finally closes the feature to submit new locations entirely. Players are not able to submit new locations for the next 2 years.Summer 2016: Niantic releases their next game: Pokémon Go.This time, the locations are taken directly from Ingress. Only most portals that are too close to another portal do not get imported, as well as sponsored portals.November 2016: Niantic introduces “Operation Portal Recon” (short: OPR) as an invite-only Beta feature for Ingress players level 16. This is the final level in Ingress, similar to level 40 in Pokémon Go.OPR lets players rate open submissions from the backlog with stars from 1 to 5 in multiple categories. If enough players give a certain amount of stars, the submission gets accepted and goes live as a portal. If it fails to do so, the submission gets rejected. In both cases, the player who submitted the candidate gets notified via E-Mail.The year 2017 and the steady development of OPR:March 2017: Niantic opens OPR-invitations to Ingress players level 15.Pokemon Go players notice new stops and gyms appearing all around the world. Of course, these locations are identical to the approved portals from ingress.The synchronization between Ingress and Pokemon Go happens at 6.30PM GMT every Tuesday, once per week. Later, some would appear after only 6 or 4 days, and in June it would only take 24 hours or less, happening at a fixed time, but only on workdays.April 22nd 2017: Niantic opens portal submissions for Brazil and Korea only. Also, only players level 8 or higher are able to submit new locations. At this time, there is no limit to the number of submissions.June 12th 2017: Niantic releases OPR for every Ingress player lvl 15+ without invitation and adds an in game medal for more motivation to rate submissions. 182.000 new locations have been accepted at this point.June 27th 2017: Niantic opens OPR access for every Ingress player lvl 14+. 340.000 new locations have been accepted at this point.July 5th 2017: Niantic opens OPR access for every Ingress player lvl 13+July 11th 2017: Niantic opens OPR access for every Ingress player lvl 12+Pokemon Go players are still reporting new stops and gyms every week.July 22nd 2017: Niantic lets players nominate new Pokéstops in a special Event in Chester.So far, these submissions are still being reviewed by Niantic.August 22nd 2017: Ingress Update gets released with “preparations for re-enabling portal submissions again”.September 2017: Ingress players around the world are reporting no submissions to review in OPR for weeks. The backlog seems to be almost cleared.Recent eventsSeptember 25th 2017: Portal submissions are finally live again for every Ingress player level 11+ with 7 submissions per player every 14 days.So if a candidate gets submitted, the player has to wait exactly 14 days in order to get the next free submission back. Also, players from Brazil and Korea now have the same limitations as the rest of the world.New submissions show up in OPR 1 day later. Some submissions go live within 2 days, others within 14, while some are stuck in limbo or checked by Niantic themselves instead of the crowd.Pokemon Go players are reporting newly added portals as PokéStops and Gyms within 24 hours.October 11th 2017:Every player is only getting 2 items out of PokéStops instead of 3October 11th 2017, 1 hour later:Now, only a few players are still getting 2 items out of PokéStops.Every new PokéStop or Gym that was approved since September 25 suddenly vanishes.October 25th 2017:All players are getting 3 items out of stops again.But every new PokéStop or Gym that was approved since September 25 is still gone.November 10th 2017: Niantic opens up portal submissions for Ingress players level 10+Players from Brazil and Korea are still reporting new Pokestops being added frequently.November 14th 2017: A player from Brazil, redditor and Ingress player writes Niantic support that new portals are not showing up in Pokemon Go and gets 30 new Pokéstops in his town imported from Ingress.November 16th 2017: NianticGeorge answers on the thread that it was just coincidence that he got the 30 stops after writing Niantic Support. He explains that Niantic did a “refresh of the Pokestops and Gyms in some areas”. He also says that he cannot shed much light on the topic of removed PokéStops and Gyms.November 27th 2017: Niantic Support sends a number of automatic Mails to everyone who wrote them about the lack of new Pokestops, despite all the new Ingress portals being live for several weeks.December 1st 2017: Niantic increases the limit of 7 submissions per 14 days to 28 submissions for that weekend only, because of the “EXO5 Anomaly” (An Ingress event, similar to the Safari Zones in Pokemon Go)December 7th 2017: Some ingress portals that got approved on December 7th 2017 actually got imported into Pokemon Go at approximately 6.30pm GMT.Some players reporting multiple submissions of the ones from the weekend before, some only a single one out of 6 that got approved on that date. Other reports indicate a broader timeframe between December 1st and December 7th.Either way, not a single portal that got approved in September, October or November got live (again) in Pokemon Go at that day.In addition to that, many submissions that actually did fall in the chosen timeframe were left out, nevertheless. This indicates that only a very small percentage (like 5% of portals that got approved in December) of a very small sample size of portals got imported into Pokemon Go.December 8th 2017: Niantic forces the new update, releases 50 Pokemon of Generation 3 and activate the new weather feature.No new Pokestops or Gyms got added that day.December 10th 2017: Niantic hands out portal submission forms to players in a special event in LA, similar to the event in Chester back in July.December 11th 2017: Most other portals from the 28 Submission weekend approved on Tursday got imported into Pokemon Go.So Niantic has the ability to port over ingress portals as Pokéstops and Gyms, but they don’t do it in one single swipe and they don’t do it every day. Instead, they only did it in small areas first and then imported a very small percentage globally as a test. They are probably going to release more in a weekly, monthly or unpredictable way.As of right now, it is not clear why they don’t port over the older portals first and instead chose the newest ones that day as a test. It might have been a bug that we got new stops at all, but maybe the bug was that we did only get so few of them.Truth is, we don’t know anything about Niantics plans as of right now. But we are definitely able to conclude from this data that Niantic does in fact care about adding new locations into both of their games. They just do it very carefully and might have to do it slower than most of us would like to.tldr; Niantic is constantly improving on adding new locations into their AR platform. Although many portals are still not showing up as PokéStops or Gyms yet, it seems likely that Niantic is going to import most of them into Pokémon Go, eventually. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2yf57Bn