PokéAdvisor is the Latest Third-Party Pokémon GO Service to Bite the Dust

It's SO sad!

I understand their reasons but they should be focusing on increasing their server capacity instead of blocking fan sites

@plug313 But the company is offering a free-to-play game (assuming you don't use micro-transactions) and is already spending money on servers and their upkeep.

Regardless of whether they make money or not, they are spending money running the serves in the first place. Why would they allow unofficial third-party developers to drain their already limited and undoubtedly expensive server space to run "help apps"?

I appreciate these help apps are beneficial to gamers but it should not come to further expense of the company. I would rather it was done by the company themselves. That way the server draining is done on purpose rather than third-party developers stealing server power.

Never heard of it. Aren't people calculate the IVs on calculator sites?
@plug313 as Grandpa said - servers are expensive.
They found themsleves suprised by the amount of people interested in GO so I bet they invested in some. But I belive soon half of those people move to something else (if they haven't already) freeing up the space, so the logical point is to NOT to add server capacity but just wait for people to leave and cut off other 3rd party sites.

The stupid thing about this is that Niantic are using stats from the update on the 3rd to support their argument, even though a lot of the third party apps were still running fine (albeit a bit slower) until the proper block came into effect on the 5th.

The update on the 3rd also disabled footsteps and caused the escape chance bug they've yet to fix, both of which have caused a lot of people to stop playing the game, which was probably a substantial factor in the drop in server resources being used.

Oh yeah... and apparently they dropped the frequency at which the app updates nearby Pokemon, which would also have caused a drop in server use.

@KTT
You can use other sites to get an approximation of what the IVs are. But it's not really the same. This site pulled the data directly for all of your Pokemon and allowed you to sort them.

See the thing is I understand entirely why they pulled the pin on the other sites. Those ones were quite literally hammering the servers constantly. This site? You log-in once and it pulls your data. The same thing happens when you boot up the game.

Maybe if Niantic was more focused on fixing their bugs and features, these sites would not be as much of a problem. Pokemon GO has become an app where I turn on occasionally when I am somewhere, see if anything is nearby and then put it away. like what sense is there wandering around looking for pokemon when the tracking system doesn't work.

Gotta shut em all down!

Killing the bots, stopping people from cheating and cleaning the servers from all the leechers is essential to keep your game healthy and safe.

Obviously, a lot of people here have little to no experience in MMO's.

Stop crying about your tracking, they said they would fix it. And we never needed tracking in the main series anyway. Just keep running around in the wild grass, you lazy Slowpoke!

@Kroko Actually you've always been able to track Pokemon via the Pokedex in the main series games... it only shows what route they can be found in, but even that's more than what we've got in Pokemon Go at the moment. (And if you think about it, then the third party trackers are actually more traditionally fitting for the series, while the footsteps are more like the radar, which is a relatively new addition in comparison.)
And can you really call it cheating if we were supposed to have a tracking mechanic in the game anyway? It might not be the same as the system we were supposed to have, but when that system isn't working, it's reasonable that we would look to the next best thing as a temporary replacement, which is exactly what the third party trackers were.

Dun, dun, dun. Another one bites the dust.

So instead of fixing problems like the steps, Niantic goes around shutting down sites that aren't harming the game in any way.

Pokemon GO is going to be ruined by Niantic. Plain and simple.

On the Reddit page for PokemonGo, lots of folks are bemoaning the end of all things good and wholesome with this news. Players have lost the ability to look into hidden game data and find their exact IVs, but hearing their complaints you'd think Niantic had just burned their homes down and kicked their puppies.

But there are resources that can calculate approximate IVs (sometimes even exact ones!), and they do it without stealing server/data access. Niantic's actions: 1) threw a wrench in botters' plans (which fans have asked them to do), 2) reduced strain on the game's servers (which fans have asked them to do), and 3) upheld their terms of service (which is fair).

This (over)reaction seems like entitlement syndrome to me.

@mariovslink62 These sites are using Niantic's servers and are putting strain on the servers. One of the reasons why they don't work half of the time. So yes, they are harming the experience.

How about Niantic improve their game instead of taking down sites that people rely on to enjoy it?

@skywake I get that those other sites drained the servers but I think this one could be more more harmful - gameplay wise (not stability wise).
I see it as an equivalent to looking at a poke's stats with PKHeX. And that's not to short from editing or inserting a pokemon. I'm not sure how you can edit (or if you can edit) cloud stored pokes in this app, but some players could get too much advantage.
At least PV served as a replacement for a boken and removed core feature of the game... A crutial thing if you live in Ingress unpopular areas.

Obviously, having IVs or just Base Stats visible from the beginning would be preferable.
In the main series you have access to poke's IVs, albeit it's limited as of gen VI.

This is really unfortunate. It's so time consuming to calculate IVs manually - and the worst part is, it's usually not very accurate. Pokeadvisor gave us EXACT IVs and really helped with the decision making process of what pokemon to keep/transfer.

It's a shame that Niantic will probably never give us the ability to read these hidden attributes in-game, and we are all doomed to the extreme time-wasting chore of manually inputting numbers in a spreadsheet just to know which pokemon to throw away.

What is even more frustrating is that pokeadvisor (to my knowledge) used up VERY little server resources. In fact, people calculating IVs will now use up MORE server resources because we're going to have the app open 24/7 while we're calculating our IVs.

What you have to remember is people using the 3rd party sites were not buying in game products as they were told exactly where Pokemon were.

This being a f2p game means that base were not contributing to the revenue.

So I doubt they care if turning these off makes those people stop playing - they weren't the target audience. They were basically leaches - in a way.

Gotta Block 'Em All

The only thing I wonder is what is the scale of the graph. Without a vertical scale it's meaningless. The cropping they use shows a 66% drop, but is that really 0 at the bottom and is each line a linear representation of data (as opposed to a log or exp scale). Say each bar represents 100k queries and the bottom of the graph is 10mil. That means a trivial amount of change.

I never used PokeAdvisor but I do go on a site that also calculate IV and other stuffs without going onto Niantic's servers (I think). They will have a better chance at survival.

Personally with this type of game, I rather catch a Pokemon with a high CP (+1300)for my trainer lvl and ok IV then the same Pokemon with less then 1000 CP but near perfect IV. Just thinking of the Candies and Stardust being saved, especially for the rare ones.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE What's your problem with this game, dude? Why are you so against it's existence?

That graph is suspiciously lacking. Why is there no "Y" scale to indicate how many thousands/hundreds of thousands/millions of queries were involved? That graph looks manipulated to possibly make the problem look more severe than it really was.

@KTT
Well you couldn't edit them for one. Also there are two ways you can do this without the site anyway. The first one is by using one of the many calculators out there. It'll give you an idea of what sort of range the Pokemon is in.

Alternatively you could just catch a bunch and compare their CP values as you catch them. As long as the ones you catch are a similar level? The one with the higher CP will usually have the better IVs. Most people will do something like that anyways. Combine that with one of those calculators? You're basically doing what this site did anyways.

I did use this site once before it was taken down. I went through and transferred everything that was in the bottom 50% It turns out that some of my best Pokemon in terms of IVs were the eevees I evolved. Which makes sense given how relatively common they are and how many you need to get all three.

@skywake The methods you described I compare to IV checking ingame and IV calculators on Serebii or such. This site however looks like Pokesav to me. I guess it was fine if it didn't allow to edit pokes... Just looking at them. But how can you grarantee that someone wouldn't hack this thing someday?
As I said, I'm not sure how it worked and how you can hack this game. But I belive this site could guide some cheating users to break the game.

As for me, I'm catching pokes and compare which poke's hemisphere is less full at the same, or similar, amount of CP, and check the HP. With some IV calc check if I really need to get more info. That said, I prefer power up something that has already filled hemisphere as Stardust and candies are too sparse. I don't get many pokemon anyway so I can't fuss about.

@KTT
The site basically pretended to be the game client. All of this information is available to every user it's just not displayed by the game. The game instead merges it all into one number. So I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that it's somehow hacking the game. Especially given that you can do similar things through other methods.

If anything the site levelled the playing field a bit. I'm not going to bother going through and putting the stats of each Pokemon into a calculator. Some people will but I'm not going to bother. This site? It put it all up there for everyone to see. Levelling the playing field.

@skywake By hacking didn't mean the site. I mean the temptation and open possibilities it could give to hackers.
Well, I guess if it was harmless - just peeking at the stats - with no options to edit the stuff, then it could pass.

But why not use the other offline alternatives? They exist, and you are certain you don't break TOS. You just use your visible ingame data.
The broken radar had no alternatives (apparently it is less broken now but haven't got the time to test it) so people kept using PV and similar sites for lack of other, in game related, choices.