"Reminder: 9 out of 52 months of PoGo's existence is now during the pandemic, and many more months of pandemic is ahead."

#PokemonGO: The pandemic started 9 months ago yet now the global daily new cases hover around all time highs and several European countries went back into lockdown mode this week. The most optimistic estimation is that vaccines will start to be distributed by early 2021 and some countries may start to approach herd immunity by the third quarter of 2021 IF (a big if) everything goes well and people may be able to go back to some kind of (new) normal by 2022, maybe.So we have at least over 12 months of pandemic ahead of us, which means by the end of the pandemic the "normal" pre-pandemic PoGo experience will be but a distant memory for even the most veteran players and there will be waves of new PoGo players that have never/rarely experienced that "ancient history". For many, the pandemic version of PoGo with all its "temporary" changes will be THE PoGo they know, like, and are familiar with.Niantic needs to recognize that the pandemic is not over, and will not be over for many months. And they'd better plan the future of the game with that in mind and stop thinking about different temporary perks or fixes and instead design new, at least semi-permanent, features and changes. The remote raiding and the GBL with no walking requirement are a good start but more needs to be done, and I'm a little worried that they might be going in the opposite direction. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2TxNGcH