Pokémon GO's Nearby Tracking Feature Now Live In The UK

It's also live in the Netherlands

Pokemon is real

It's working for me in Germany.

Yep got it here in the UK too.

Germany confirmed =D

Excellent, would like to give Niantic props... but they arrrre kind of putting something back into the game that they removed a while ago. I'll high-five them when the new stuff arrives.

This is a welcome addition. Hopefully everywhere else gets it soon. I'm not sure how useful it'll be yet, especially in areas with few pokestops.

I've got it; I'm looking forward to testing it properly later but at a glance it seems good for me at least. It seems like it kind of screws over the people who aren't in large cities with loads of Pokestops though... but for us Londoners, hooray!

Its live where Im at in the states now also , So far I like it, nice update .

Just opened up the app here in Western Massachusetts and the tracking system is updated. Pretty sweet and about damn time.

Y NO BRAZIL?

I dont understand the praise? From what I've read, and my own experience today, for the 90% of people that don't live in the centre of a major city with an abundance of Pokestops, the game is virtually unplayable now.

Before I would reliably get 4-9 sightings around my home area, and moving only 20 or 30 metres would refresh what was in the area. In practise, I could frequently guess which rarer Pokemon would spawn at what spawn point.

This morning Im getting no sightings until I'm on top of the Pokemon and they have actually spawned. In many cases Pokemon who have spawned and are still close enough to be caught disappear from the sightings if a nearby spawnpoint is available.

Effectively, in areas without massive clusters of Pokestops, ie, everywhere in at least a 30 mile radius of me, and most likely the vast majority of the surface of the Earth no less, you've gone from being able to see what is roughly in your vacinity with no way of narrowing it down, to being completely blind to what is available until you are on top of it.

Which is the opposite of a tracking system.

It's live in NYC. Quite a surprise opening my phone and seeing that, thought it would take longer to roll out on the east side. Good on you Niantic.

I see they also brought the footprints back, even though it reads as 3 for all, especially the pokemon right next to you. Guess they are still working on that.

@Subtle24 Smaller towns have fewer pokémon anyway, I don't live in a major city either... but I never did the majority of my Pokémon hunting in my town as you either used a 3rd party tracker or learned to love pidgeys.

BTW, it's not just major cities that have lots of pokéstops, the place I go pokémon hunting is barely a town but has a huge amount of pokéstops. I spend about 30/40 minutes on the bus to get there & it's worth it.

I genuinely appreciate that the old "nearby" was useful for telling what is immediately nearby, but what is Niantic to do? They get hammered for no tracking system & now they're being hammered for implementing a tracking system.

I've asked for opinions on this on my local Pokémon Go Facebook page, I'd be interested to see what proportion of players love the new tracker compared to those who dislike it.

Not in the town centre today, so can't test it out properly... but it's just as crap as I was expecting in the suburbs due to the lack of PokéStops.

They needed to just fix the original tracking system rather than tying it to PokéStops... and that shouldn't have been too hard to do considering it was the huge number of players at launch that was causing the problem.

@DragonEleven It depends, while there are less players in the UK/US playing since the original tracking system was cut, Pokémon Go has been released in multiple more countries since then to.

I agree though, would be better to make the "nearby" & newer tracking system something you could toggle. One for small towns & another for small towns with a lot of stops.

....Is it that hard to put the footsteps back? :/

@DanteSolablood I appreciate what youre saying, I really do. Damned if they do and damned if they don't.

What Im saying is, the "sightings" feature is still there. Its not been totally removed, like the footsteps were. Id just like it to work like it did when there are no Pokestops even on the map. The Pokestop addition means little to me, but I can see why others can make excellent use of it.

I presume there is a reason for the change, but it is extremely detremental to my own ability to play the game. Even the ability to switch between the two systems would sate me, if they couldnt get it to work as on cohesive system.

As for the viability of hunting grounds, I live in a large English town, 20 minutes to travel straight across by car, but no particularly large clusters of pokestops anywhere. The largest one I can think of is 3, with a fourth close by.

Most of the places in town are not that reliable for anything not a pidgey, but, for whatever reason, in the half mile of estate I live on, and over the last few months, I have consistantly been able to catch Omanyte, Kabutos, Dratinis, Charmanders, Squirtles, many of the pokemon in the 120s, as well as a huge variety of others.

In fact the only "normal" two and three stage evolutions I dont have many at all of are Growlithe, Grimer, Geodude and Poliwag.

My point is the majority of my hunting has been done by walking around my estate for an hour or so a day. I can continue to do that of course. The new system just makes it much harder to know what Im going to stumble on.

@Subtle24 Thanks, where this is something individual to people's situation I didn't want to come across as saying I was "right". If it does help, the system seems to work on "what stop is closest to the pokémon", not "this is what is close to the nearby stops".

I was out earlier and saw that a Lickitung showing near a stop just over a mile away stayed on the screen... but the stop behind it changed to a different one. This doesn't help MUCH if you only have a few stops but means that a Pokémon that is close can be triangulated.

@Subtle24 I'm right there with you. I live in a decent sized metropolitan area in the US, but all the Pokestops near my house are about a block away. While previously I could walk around my neighborhood and find Pokemon, now I'm just blind as to what could be near me.
Besides, it might be meaningful if they made more rare Pokemon spawn at Pokestops, but when I look at the nearby thing and it says Pidgey and Rattata are at my closest stops, I think to myself, "Well, that's pointless."

@FiveDigitLP I'm pleased to report that when I woke up this morning the tracking seems to be working in my area. Hopefully yours does/will too. When I travelled further afield near a Pokestop it would only show me one Ratatta near there when I enlarged the screen, despite me still being able to see a second Ratatta and a Meowth when it was minimised, so sightings are still not working near pokestops, but hopefully its all just a glitch, and not how the new system is meant to work at all, thankfully.