"The Synergy Of Go Fest Features"

#PokemonGO: Niantic had a fairly content-dense Go Fest. Let's recap they had:Raids for everyone.Wild spawns for everyone.Incense spawns for ticket holders as their method of getting exclusive Pokemon.Rocket Takeover on Sunday.A virtual lounge of sorts, including high scores with friends for tasks featured in the Saturday hours for unlocking bonuses.This meant you had to choose what to interact with, which was generally fine. The game's not designed in a way for good multitasking, the best you get is a Go+/third party peripheral for some catching/spinning if you're busy in a non-catching screen.But the Go Fest redo reminded me of the frustrations incense provides, at least these "super incense". No, I am not saying to nerf them or not have them like this. For the most part it was fine how frequent spawns appeared, especially for our rural friends. The problem is that these spawns could be underneath other Pokemon or right on top of a pokestop or rocket grunt making them nearly impossible to tap in the 30 seconds they were there.So the first thing to really make future events that rely on incense to have less frustration is just make the incensed Pokemon that highest priority object on the map when more than one hitbox is overlapping in the area tapped. I had to actively decide to avoid clusters of lures and natural spawns so that my incense-exclusive Pokemon wouldn't be lost to them.The next is rockets. Rocket takeover in isolation is great. But when players need to restock on pokeballs and berries, anyone without a Go+ is in for a frustrating time of repeatedly dismissing rocket grunt challenges. That aspect of engaging rockets really just needs an overhaul so players can spin the stop and carry on.And thirdly, the virtual lounge. Seemed great, if you weren't playing the game. There was no opportunity or break in content to even look at that for too long. And sadly none of the "records" players could have when competing against their friends were recorded; you'd need to remember with less than a minute left to open that page up and screenshot your standings. Which meant giving up on possibly finding a last minute shiny before biomes rotated. Solution? Just keep the records for every hour viewable for the rest of the evening after Go Fest and then retroactively look at how you did compared to your friends.Niantic can think of a lot of fun things for a paid event, but they don't think through how they all work together. I hope they will next time. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2FLOze5