Niantic Addresses Pokémon GO's Removal of 3-step Display and Third-Party App Access

I just hope they bring it back and that it works

While I'm happy they are finally communicating they should have made this clear from the get go. So much of the complaining online would have been reduced just by releasing an offical statement like this before the update.

I don't get what they're saying about the steps feature, they're not even addressing the fact that it was broken? It wasn't confusing when it worked.

"If you haven't heard us Tweeting much it's because we've been heads down working on the game."

You can't honestly tell me that you don't have ONE person who could go to twitter for like 10 seconds just to tweet a quick update?

I'm sorry but I find that stupidly hard to believe considering the fact that they even took the time to write as much as is shown in this article...

If you're working on the game the great, but having 0% communication with your audience through social media is doing them WAY more harm in the long run.

Oh good, Pokémon Go will release in Brazil, Twitter's servers were at risk of crashing from all those people begging for a Brazilian release

@BensonUii I know what you mean, none of us really do know what's actually going on within that company, so we're all really just making blind assumptions, but I still think that some communication would benefit them immensely.

Niantic doesn't seem to be listening to fans... hopefully the company doesn't drive the game to the ground. I'll keep my hopes up.

I'd like a radar that showed the direction where Pokémon were. That would be handy but wouldn't ruin the game by making it too easy.

So instead of fixing something, they remove it. Good job I guess. It must have taken a huge amount of effort.

It's funny they say this "did not meet our underlying product goals" after one month. If it didn't, shouldn't it be dumped sooner?

This "game" is souless cash grab and I can see drop in interest when more and more people will get beyond level 10 and taking notice that pokemons get harder and harder to get, so they can gladly tak your money for berries and greatballs.

@dadajo Yet it was obvious anyway and all the sooks won't believe them anyway.

@KoopaTheGamer "Compass for Pokemon" is an app that does just that.

@Dave24 Ever heard of Pokestops? The idea is to walk from stop to stop and catch Pokemon you want on the way.

I think their excuse for the 3-step thing is nonsense... it wasn't confusing, it just didn't work for most people.
The truth is that they need to fix it, but don't want to leave the lucky players with an unfair advantage in the meantime... that's a perfectly acceptable explanation, and would have gotten far less backlash than the nonsense they came up with.

@MetaRyan That and around 20 more countries, several of them in Latin America. Including Mexico.

Of course, people asking for release on their country are not what causes the server issues. They are just addressing them, so they calm down a little bit. It's not like you can develop and mantain a game like Pokémon Go in hours. It takes months.

@MadAdam81 ever heard they grant you 6 pokeballs, which on higher levels end up being not enough?
It's either buy a hundred or grind pokestop for hour or two.

To be fair, we already know that they were caught off guard by the seer popularity of the app and didn't have the proper resources to begin with. Plus we don't know what the company is actually doing behind the scenes.

And going on that logic, it's possible that they where actually working non-stop since the game was released and the employee's took the weekend off after the update went live. Or maybe not. We don't know.

But at the same time, as I have to agree to everyone else, they should've said something earlier, unless the response we got today was it and they took their time on it. I know, it's mostly not the case, but benefit of the doubt.

Ether way, it's clear that company needs to show more then just words to stop the rapid decline of user playing the game and get them back.
But considering the state of the game right now, they might need more then just a fly TM to get out of this mess.

I'm just glad that I didn't get so invested in this game. I was waiting until the game had the ability to do one on one battles with other trainers.

Has anyone noticed after the update the Pokemon seem to break out of the Pokeballs and/or escape much more frequently than before? Or maybe my level finally got high enough to trigger something. I normally walk in a park where PokeStops are numerous so running out of Pokeballs is never an issue. But it's very annoying.

@Wouwter The steps feature wasn't broken. It simply stopped working due to sheer load against the servers due to the overwhelming demand. That's why it worked in the beginning when the userbase was little compared to now.
And all these 3rd party sites and apps sending millions of requests to these same servers only add to the problems!

And stopping the 3rd party sites and apps was inevitable, as they were breaking the ToS.
Reverse engineering the code, datamining and then sending requests to Niantic servers and exposing information that should not be directly available to the end user is illegal. So they finally put a stop to it.

Having 3rd party sites reveal the exact location of each and every pokemon was breaking the game! It killed the whole purpose of hunting Pokemon!
Like someone else said in another topic! It's like having the sprites visible in the tall grass in the real pokemon games, telling you exactly where the rare pokemon are and you just walking directly to it, evading the rubish ones.
It would instantly kill the fun of the game and defeat the purpose of the hunt and challenge to find the rare pokemon!

It must have been the stress and pressure at Niantic to meet release deadlines from Nintendo and Pokemon Co., as to why they waited this long to put a stop to these sites and apps I guess. Who knows.

And the sole reason why the steps tracker has been removed, is that it was the quickest dirty way to put a stop to the 3rd parties.

They will have to review their code now, make it more secure and robust ( read: more difficult for the hackers to datamine ), before releasing back the 3 steps tracking in the App.

But as usual People are over dramatising, as it's not like you are totally blind like the loudest protesters make it out to be. The app still shows which Pokemon are near you. Just go and hunt for them!

I am personally more annoyed the Battery Saver feature has been removed, but I guess that feature was somehow tied to the tracking code as well. /sigh

Lot of winning going on guess somethings never change

@ThomasBW84 NL needs a "Weird" article on this I think, curently making the rounds on the usual websites.

"New York Governor bans sex offenders from 'Pokémon Go'"

https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/01/ny-governor-bans-sex-offenders-from-pokemon-go/

And in case you think this is just another of those weird Mail or Mirror articles, here's the official NY State Gov't website:

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-directs-department-corrections-and-community-supervision-restrict-sex-offenders

@Jeronan Thank you for this well-informed breakdown. It's not so bad here on Nintendo Life, but commenters on a slew of other sites are taking these changes far too personally and letting their privilege show way too hard.

@Jeronan That's great and all, but why can't Niantic just say that instead of essentially lying and saying it was confusing. It wasn't confusing, it just stopped working.They're just dancing around the issues, not addressing them.

PS. And for People living in rural areas. I hate it to break it you.

But if you tried Ingress before, which Pokemon GO is based on, made by the same Company.
Then you could have figured it out already that you (and other People living in rural areas) are not the intended audience.

With these type of games, big cities with lots of difference geography, with tons of Points of Interests will always have a huge edge over People living in rural areas, with few geography differences, few Points of Interests, etc.

It's going to be even worse when they launch the big promotional community events, as they will be Limited to few of the biggest most popular cities in the world.
If you are not Lucky enough to live in or near any of those cities, you going to miss out on even more!

So if you cannot cope with these limitations, it's better to walk away now and spare you the stress and frustration, as it's not going to change!

Niantic is not going to compromise the game for millions of players living in big cities (their target audience and with lots of advertising potential and in-app Revenue), to appease the few that live in rural areas. You can forget that.
The Whole deal With Mc.Donalds in Tokyo should be enough of a hint, in what direction Niantic and Pokemon Co. are taking the game.

@Wouwter No Company in the world is going to admit they rushed out an Application to meet an impossible deadline (thank Nintendo and Pokemon Co. for that), that their code is flawed and Client - Server communication not secured/encrypted.

Hence, why sites like Pokevision managed to reverse engineer, data mine and request and expose information through 3rd party apps and sites that should never have been possible in the first Place.

So Niantic is just being political like any other company does. It's their way of explaining and wording it to the general Public and limit the damage.

The people who used pokevision etc and have completed the pokedex so far will likely not pump much into the game until they get pokemon update unless they are grinding to level 40. That's the problem with those sites. It reduces income from game in long run. Something that tells you what direction pokemon are in would in within the game would be handy though.

I believe that they're telling the truth. This global success must be very taxing on them. I think they're removing the footstep feature ONLY FOR NOW until they can get it up and running again, and then they'll patch it back in. In my opinion, people are jumping to conclusions too quickly when they leave bitter replies over the removal of the footsteps.

@Enigk Exactly!

Pokemon GO is a Free 2 Play game. It has huge upkeep costs on the immense server infrastructe required to host such a game. Not to mention, the License fees to be paid to Pokemon Co., which get a percentage cut of all Income.
Then, on iOS, you have Apple taking a 40% cut on all micro transactions!

So they are highly dependend on micro transactions to acquire Income for the employees salaries and paying the upkeep of the servers at Amazon. ( as I believe they were using Amazon Cloud services )
They now try to broker deals with Companies through advertised Poke stops and Poke gyms, like the McDonalds one in Tokyo, to reduce the pressure and dependency on Micro transactions (most definitely also due to the fact of the huge cut Apple takes from these).

As the CEO of Niantic was suprisingly honest in saying that he was worried to put too much pressure ingame on customers to spend Money.
This is a major issue with lots of F2P MMORPG's these days and why I loathe them and avoid them like the plague. As in general, games designed around a cash shop aren't always exactly fun to play when you are constantly running into Pay walls.
Tons of mobile games are like this and are utter trash!

Pokemon GO is very light when it comes to throwing paywalls at you, as I have yet to spend a single dime in the game so far.

@Jeronan Well, they could just say the truth and explain it was way more popular than they ever expected (explaining the load on the servers and why steps aren't working etc.). Can't fault them for that, this thing is yuge.

Translation - they want to sell (through in-game purchases) some kind of tracking device.

@FantasiaWHT They don't need to do that and won't.
They already selling incense modules in the shop to put on you or to place in Poke stops, to attract pokemon to your location, without having to walk a single step.

Not to mention it would backfire like no tomorrow and will be instant death of the game.
It would be a total PR disaster, to remove such a big feature after several months and then put it back in as a paid feature.

They simply removed it for now, to put a stop the 3rd party sites and apps.

Incense and Lures don't really help you find those rarer pokemon. And the feature that was in never worked properly anyway.

Why would anyone use Poke trackers for this game? Totally takes the fun out of it.

@BensonUii

Really though they have to have a sales/marketing team that solely exists for communication and that team should have regular communication with the developers. I mean it's not like they just decided to remove things an hour before it released. Certainly this update has been planned for a while and communication with consumers should have been planned to coincide with the update good or bad.

So I'm not disagreeing with you that there is alot involved in the message. But I'm still surprised they weren't on top of it.

I can just imagine how many whiners flipped out at the update. NOOOO I NEED TO CATCH MY IMAGINARY POKEMON!!! People need to chill out. Just enjoy the game.

@jeronan First of all...great posts! Very detailed and well written. You make some very good points!

Second, the third party sites breaking the game is just your opinion. As long as there is no tracker, there should be some way of finding Pokemon other than just wandering around aimlessly. It is still a challenge to beat the timer to a specific location to grab a Pokemon. It's not like they appear right in your lap and are there for 30 minutes. If there is one thing Pokevision taught me was why it was tricky to find them even with the rudimentary tracker that somewhat worked when the app first launched. Then it inexplicably stopped working and there was not even a response on their "known issues" page for a couple weeks! Sure, it's a free to play game, but don't they want to encourage support so gamers feel good to spend money on the product? At the moment, I do not feel inclined to spend anything on this to support it because they are not doing anything for me but making the experience less enjoyable.

If Niantic is so busy fixing an issue, they should not spend precious time shutting down useful sites and instead use a fraction of that time to communicate more clearly with fans.

My opinion is that they should encourage these sites to exist while they fix the issue. For now, early adopters would have an advantage finding Pokemon. Once the issue is fixed, then ask them to shut down. Most of them would just shut down on their own if there were a legitimate way to find Pokemon.

In the end, it IS just a game...a broken game, that could be fun if some things were changed. I am sure they will do their best to fix these issues, and in time, they may make this the app that they intended and we would like to see.

It's just a shame they hooked so many people and then ruined it with some poor communication, odd decisions, and knee-jerk reactions to sites that are just trying to help.

I don't see what everyone's in such a huff about. Yeah, it sucks not having the footprints, but it was broken anyway; taking that out hasn't really changed anything. The third party stuff, oh well? Suck it up and play the game like it's meant to be played? That's like throwing a hissy fit when Nintendo patches a console to remove Homebrew functionality. So sorry you have to play things they way they were intended.

Pokemon Go is great. It's far FAR from perfect, but I've thoroughly enjoyed it despite the plethora of bugs and less-than-functional features.

Niantic can easily creates a fake steps-meter randomly displayed steps required and no one will know the difference.

I'm impressed with the improvements in app stability. The three-step thing never worked for me and the battery saver always crashed the app when I woke it, so removing those things seems to have been a good move.

@ElkinFencer10
People have different ways to enjoy a game that doesn't involve playing it the way its intended. It's like getting mad at competitive Smash players for playing the game differently, instead of playing it the way Smash was intended.

@bezerker99 Not everyone enjoys a game the same.

@mariovslink62 Niantic owns the game. They make the rules. The end.

You either accept it or uninstall and walk away.

If playing Smash bros. differently and it´s against the rules, Nintendo will patch it too and in other online games you just get outright banned.

It´s always the same in other online games, where people cheat, exploit and get caught. Throwing a huge fit online on the internet how they are innocent and the game allowing them to cheat and exploit bugs, so they didn´t deserve to be banned. yadayadayada.

Refuses to clearly say if they are working for a replacement for the 3 step tracking system further reinforcing the belief that they don't plan to replace it with anything and just plan to never allow Pokemon to be tracked.

People wouldn't be driven to 3rd party tracking sites in the first place if the game had a competent tracking system of its own.

Tries to change the subject to something positive and about how they are "working hard".

Niantic, speaking like a politician, answers the complaints without actually answering anything, and acts like everything is fine.

@Jeronan
Sorry but the nearby function doesn't show anything accurately. First off, pokemon I catch, as in obviously as "nearby" as it gets most of the time aren't even on the nearby list. I hunt with friends, as in within close proximity to each other and our "nearby" lists are almost completely different. When it is minimized, it supposedly shows the nearest 3 pokemon, but when I open the nearby tracker their order is completely different. So what I am saying is, it is near worthless. If they want people to keep playing they need to give us some kind of help pointing us in the right direction, even if it gives a range in meters like within 10-20 meters from us so we know if we are at least heading towards or away. Or even better allow us to choose what we want to show on the nearby tracker. Removing the things that aren't hard to find, which will put less effort on the servers having to show everything that is nearby(normally just pidgeys, ratattas, weedles).

I kinda have the feeling that the 3-steps was removed because they are going to somehow add that to the pokemon Go watch thing(which is developed by Nintendo I believe) and make us pay for it...Just a guess.

@zeldazero I fear you are correct :/

Personally it doesn’t bug me one bit since my main goal is not to catch them all but improve my trainer’s level so I’m better prepared for the future with catching and training Pokémon with higher CP. Plus I live in a urban agglomeration place so I’ll be insulting those that live in rural and some suburb areas if I did whine.

It is a bummer those 3rd party trackers have to go but I always think of them as bots putting extra stress on the servers, one of them even encourage user to create another account in order to use it. The part about '3-step' display still leaves me optimistic that they are working to improve it and not just getting rid of the feature like so many on the web are posting.

@zeldazero Well that is strange, for me it does.

I have caught another three pokemon to work and on way home today and all three showed on the "nearby" tracker. Only once yesterday I caught a pokemon that didn´t show on the "nearby" tracker until after I catched it.

So could just as well be server load issues again, not updating the app frequently enough. As pokemon spawn/despawn all the time.
So could very well be they reduced the update frequency of the "nearby" tracker to reduce server load, but in return cause out of date info from time to time.

And seriously Zeldazero, wearing a tinfoil hat or something? Have you seen the track band? It´s just going to be an overpriced Notification band telling you a pokemon is nearby, so you don´t constantly have to have your phone in your hand and/or look on the screen.

You don´t have to do that now either if you have vibration enabled as the App will then let the phone give a vibration alert when a pokemon spawns.
That is exactly how I use the App right now. Just have the phone in my hand without looking until I get a vibration alert.

@Acein210
Yep, isn't it kinda convenient it was delayed...

@Jeronan
Yes I have seen the band, and what it was "initially" suppose to do, but it was delayed, and the possible reason may have something to do with better tracking using it. But I am sorry, what good will it be to walk around with a hideous watch(seriously they could make it less childish looking) while your phone is in your pocket if you are actually out hunting pokemon? Is your phone too heavy for you? I go out for the sole purpose of hunting pokemon, I'm not putting my phone in and out of my pocket every time something pops up that's pointless...unless this watch is going to actually show you what is nearby before I pull my phone out. But to each their own..

@zeldazero They already said why it was delayed.

They are currently dealing with all the bugs in the App, the server issues and still trying to launch the app in other countries.

Seeing how barebones the App currently is, the bugs still in it and the server issues. I wouldn´t be suprised the Poke band isn´t working properly either and bugged in the App.

You people are looking way too much into it, throwing up all kinds of conspiracy theories.

Let´s just wait and see shall we?
If they indeed are going to return the In-App tracking feature as a paid extra feature, I will be first in line to protest and hit them where it hurts. Uninstalling the app and walk away, without ever spending a dime in the app.

At least they're communicating with people.

Nothing worse than to feel like complaints are falling on deaf ears.

I don't really understand the three footprints thing, it already wasn't working(atleast when it launched here the UK) and only ever showed three frontprints so them removing the footprints made absolutely no difference.

From what I've played this week I was no more likely to find a specific Pokemon this week than last week and I'm no less able to determine how close each listed as nearby is.

Some people were either gifted Articunos from Niantic or they caught it through a glitch!

I don't understand why they thought the previous tracking system was confusing, but glad to hear they are trying to make a new one.

@Dr_Lugae It worked the first week or two only

@Lunarsickness Hate to burst your bubble, but it's a fake. Article up on SlashGear.

What i don't get:
If there are a vocal group of users out there who enjoy a feature and others simply "don't get it"...why not leave it in if it doesnt break anything ?

From what i've heard from different folks and based on Niantics general reactions to the community...this isn't really shaping up to keep its initial hype going for way longer.

It seems their actions, update decisions and support already alienated a small amount of players.
Lets hope they can save themselves from a "hype crush" that early on...

Sounds like they're generally just saying a whole lot of nothing. Other then we will release it to Brazil.

They didn't address the problem in words at all. Ah well, I really don't care much either way, it's nothing more but a fun lil distraction for my kid.

"Please, understand"...

@JasonLee99 yes. Before it didn't take 5 pokeballs to catch a pidgey. And you'd think that at lvl 19 a pidgey would be easier to catch.

Just saw the thread on Reddit about people reporting the Pokemon are harder to catch after the update. Yeah, it's real. I noticed pretty quick when I had 2 Pokemon break out and escape after 5 minutes of playing the first time after the update. That rarely happened before. That's awful sneaky of Niantic, trying to get people to deplete their Pokeball stash.

One thing about Niantic, they never do anything quickly.

Another thing about Niantic, they're known to change the rules of the game when it suits them.

I just want to point out that the nearby/footprint system was highly inconsistent. I mean from day 1 there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how it works. So if they are truly looking to fix it, then kudos.

Second: while I don't think Niantic was required to come out and be entirely transparent, a quick tweet merely saying "We hear your complaints and will address them at a later date" would have probably been sufficient. Not totally comforting. But something.

With all that being said, I have no problem with these sites being shut down. With all the games flaws and quirks, I've enjoyed thus far.

Last: Where are these Great Balls everyone keeps talking about? Are they unlocked after a certain level? I'm only on 12, but have yet to see one.

@FatherChesz I just read an article on NL that Niantic took back people's Articunos so how is this fake? https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/08/pokemon_go_rolls_out_in_latin_america_as_niantic_reclaims_legendary_pokemon