Brace Yourself, The Biggest Pokémon GO Update Yet Is Coming This Week

GEN 2 CONFIRMED YEAH WE WIN BABY YEAH
Now everyone has a chance to capture the best Pokemon known to mankind, that will never be topped by anything in this universe, megaverse, ultraverse or omniverse.

Totodile, of course.

(sorry, couldn't resist!)

Cool

Would be super excited for this... if I could actually play it on my rooted phone.

This is how the game should've launched.

Great to see the update going live soon. While Gen 2 wasn't my favorite, having new Pokemon to collect will be a fresh change among the sea of Pidgeys and Rattata...until it becomes a sea of Sentret and Hoothoot.

@Waninoko you spelt Cyndaquil wrong

Quick buy shares in Niantic!

But what I really want to know is how I'll be able to evolve one of my amazing eevees into an Umbreon.

Good. I think I gathered enough candies to get Slowking, Crobat Bellossom and few others.... Oh wait, now they need evolution items.

I can't help but think that this is just going to kill the game all over again... sure, people will come back to it for gen 2, but adding that many Pokemon all at once will just cause chaos with spawn and gym balancing... they'll just end up quitting again in no time.

They had the right idea when they added just the babies before Christmas... a handful of Pokemon like that didn't cause any problems, and any balancing they needed to do was virtually unnoticeable.

Plus, there's still various bugs that need fixing, cheating to be dealt with, trading and legendaries to be added, as well as other features that could do with improvement before they add that many new Pokemon.

Finally! We haven't stopped playing in our house and appropriately abused the winter and valentines events. I have all starter evolutions now and caught 2 Charizards on the same day!

Very much looking forward to this.

meh... more excited for Breath of the Wild on Switch. Just 15 days and a couple of hours... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Maybe I'll play again when they add Hoenn and Sinnoh in 2029

1. Throws Pokeball at comments
2. ...
3. ...
4. Save corrupted.

Pokemon GO.. it's great to see you again, old friend !!!!

80? Adding that to the baby Pokémon we already have + Togetic, + the 3 Legendary Beasts and Lugia, Ho-oh & Celebi who probably won't be available... that only equals 94. Who are the 6 that are missing? 🤔

For the record... I've got 150 of the 151 Pokemon available in the region (still working on candies for Togetic)... but I still think this is a bad move from Niantic... it's just too much all at once.

MY BODY IS READY!

This is amazing news, I still play P Go. XD

Happy for the current player. I get my mobile gaming time from Fire Emblem Heroes at the moment, but this update is good news.

Been saving candy for the likes of Politoed.
Can't wait. Bring it on!

It's good news of course, coincides with my spring walks that I start taking to burn off winter fat. Color me skeptical on the system being able to handle this of course. We will see.

6 months too late.

Such a shame. I was so hyped for this in 2016. Too late now, with the Switch around the corner and all...

Plus FE Heroes!

Last update made me unearth this game and I'm sure this one definitely will too. I walk to work so hatching eggs is a cinch I have yet to get Togepi though :/

At last. Hopefully we've seen the last of Pidgey and Rattata now. Though I'm still a ways off completing the first gen...

@Baker1000 Yup, now we'll be seeing lots of Sentrets and Hoothoots.

While I don't play this game anymore, I'll always have some of my most memorable experiences in gaming ever associated with Pokemon GO. Seeing literally hordes of people out, running after Pokemon, at all hours of the day and night for almost a month was really unprecedented and amazing to reflect upon.

@Kit
I initially assumed that any new evolutions like that would just require candy. New Eevee evolutions would be part of the pool of random ones and all others that previously couldn't evolve would now have a button for it. However, the official PR from Niantic says otherwise:
"Be on the lookout for new Evolution items at PokéStops, which you’ll need to evolve some Pokémon."

Though, I'm a bit worried. Still haven't finished Kanto dex yet (like seriously, Grimer, Vulpix, does not exist here, not to mention the pokes that need 150 candies to evolve).

How the spawn rate will be influenced? How hatchlings will be generated? Will they reduce Pidgeys in favor of gen 2, or worse, will they make everything harder to find and catch (more 'mons = less chance to find/hatch something worthy)?

And with those changes, how much longer will I need to play, just to complete Kanto?

Excellent, this is VERY MUCH needed. There are a lot of players who have slowed down a lot because they've been at the end of their Pokédex for a while & this will be the shot of adrenaline they need.

The baby pokémon were great... but that was literally just "buy as many incubators as possible". Without actual catchable pokémon I haven't been bothering with the eggs (otherwise my Pokédex has been complete for over 2 months).

@DragonEleven As I think we've discussed before, Niantic has done a huge amount of work in the background upgrading the spawning system and working on bugs as much as they can... even the annoying bug that closed your music when you opened the game has been fixed. I can understand your concerns, but Niantic has been working on this for a long time, this isn't being rushed out.

And now everyone will be humming this as they look for Pokemon....

https://youtu.be/C2a7GJNZz6c

Awesome news. I been playing solid since they fix the server issues they had over the summer. Caught 11,325 Pokémon since then. Now we get this huge update vs just the 2nd Gen Pokémon. Wonder how the Dynamics of the gyms will change.

@KTT I understand your concerns, it's always difficult for a company like Niantic to balance keeping the faster players interested & not losing the slower ones. I've basically just been using Pokémon Go as a walking companion since I completed my Kanto Dex (sans eggs) months ago.

However, Niantic did do a lot of work upgrading the spawning system (one of the reasons Fastpokémap closed actually) and we're yet to see the benefit. However, with regards to your Pokédex, how far out have you travelled looking for pokés? In my town we pretty much get nothing, however just 2/3 miles down the road in a slightly busier town you can catch pretty much anything with a little persistence.

FYI, the Valentine's Day event ends today at 2pm est, but the 6 hours lure module have been extended to 2/18 at 7pm est.

@Angelic_Lapras_King I think we can upgrade it for this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaXgTzKbdnY

Oh, nice. I just reached level 30 and am still playing daily. Can't wait to catch those new mons!

They took too long, don't even have the game downloaded anymore and I just....do not care anymore.

Finally. I only need three more Pokémon from Gen I, too. Just in time.

@DragonEleven Bad idea? Too much at once? How do you figure? The whole "Gen 1 only" thing has gone on way too long. You might still be missing some Pokémon, but for people who play the game every day, there is precious little to do anymore. Adding nearly 100 new things to catch is definitely necessary at this point, and if anything too little too late.

@DanteSolablood If anything, your points are all the more reason for them to take the addition of new Pokemon slowly... they've put so much work into getting it to where it is now, they shouldn't throw that away by dumping all of the gen 2 Pokemon at once.
Every change they've made to the game has caused more bugs to appear, and this will certainly be no different... and they've barely got the spawns for the current 150+ balanced, but even that could do with more work (it's a lot better than it was, but it's still far from perfect)... imagine what will happen when they have 230+ Pokemon spawns to balance instead.
If they take it slow, releasing just a dozen or so Pokemon at a time, then that will minimise the negative impact, making it easier for them to sort out any bugs or balancing issues that appear, before adding the next group of Pokemon.

@thesilverbrick You obviously didn't see my second comment where I pointed out that I already have 150 of the 151 available in the region... and I do still play every day.
But you seem to have misunderstood my point... I'm not saying that they shouldn't add the Gen 2 Pokemon... only that they shouldn't do it all at once... they do need to add more, but they need to be careful about how they do it, or it could no more harm than good.

@DragonEleven Actually I disagree with you there, Niantic hasn't done a bad job fixing bugs as they have arrived, especially considering they've made considerable changes to the game from spawning, tracking and moving larger chunks of the game server-side. Plus in regards to bugs it's impossible ot predict and test every bug before releasing the update itself.. all drip-feeding updates will do is increase the amount of bug instances people have to suffer. (E.g. Feb update, new bug. March update, old bug fixed, new bug, April update, last bug fixed, new bug... just causes multiple annoyances rather than one)

In regards to spawn balancing I must admit I've probably been quite lucky as I've been able to travel to different places with different spawns quite easily with short bus journies. For me the balancing has been fine... but from what I understand there are almost double the available spawn points that existed when the game launched. This kind of balancing is easy for them to do while the game is live as it's all server-side.

In regards to CP balance, we all know that is often adjusted overnight without an update. Likely this requires actual player data to get right & so delaying would be delaying.

Personally I think slowly releasing a dozen pokémon at a time could be a mistake, not only does that potentially reduce the chances of people finding a new pokémon within a decent amount of time (e.g. losing traction) but it would also feel like an artificial limit.

I just need an Aerodactyl and I can stop playing this!!!!
Have no interest in Gen 2 as I'm old and played the originals only until X and Y.
But I always said I'd stop playing once I got as many of Gen 1 as were available, didn't expect Gen 2 to be here before I got there though!!!

Cool

@G0dlike Personally Gen 2 was the generation I liked the least by a long way. However, I'm not patient enough to sit & wait for Gen 3.

@DragonEleven I'd argue the exact opposite. Drip feeding us Gen II Pokémon over a long period of time would be akin to finding needles in haystacks for those who have played the game thoroughly, while 100 new monsters appearing at once makes the game feel essentially new and insures that even long time players will have plenty to do immediately. After all, when Gold and Silver were released Nintendo gave us the 100 new Pokémon all at once and didn't release them slowly over time.

@DanteSolablood
It's not a preference thing, I'm just unfamiliar with Gen 2!
In fairness, I'm one of those 'I remember when there were 151' kinda folks

@G0dlike Each to their own I guess. I remember when there were only 151 as well (bought my first handheld for Pokémon Blue)... I just kept catching more after that.

@DanteSolablood
Same! Loved that Gameboy Pocket.
Think I discovered women shortly after the original Pokémon boom (also team blue) and just kinda drifted away from it

Bring G/S/C to VC to tie in with this update.

A good way for me to distract myself until May I suppose.

...assuming the update doesn't introduce any more major issues. I still can't get into my character profile without the game crashing.

My son and I lost interest unfortunately after a couple weeks. We live in a somewhat rural suburb and the game just really isn't designed to be played in our area. Poke stops are few and far between, not within walking distance and the only Pokémon we see around the house are the usual ratatta etc...

Definitely happy with this. I'm almost finished with collecting the Pokémon already in the game so it comes at just the right moment.

@setezerocinco

Meh... More excited for Breath Of The Wild on Wii U. Just more 15 days and a couple of hours... ( ° ͜ʖ °)

@thesilverbrick I don't think you're thinking the implications of such a huge addition through properly... as this is exactly my point about spawn balancing... dumping another 80 Pokemon into a pool of 150 Pokemon lowers your chance of getting a specific Pokemon from 1/150 to 1/230... that is what will cause it to be like a needle in a haystack, especially with the rare Pokemon.
Adding them in smaller groups would allow them to do exactly what they done with the babies... increased spawn rates for a short period of time before reverting to normal... this makes it easier to catch the new Pokemon for long-term players who have caught most others, while minimising the overall impact on spawn rates for everyone else.
Releasing the Pokemon periodically would also sustain the game much better in the long term... so many players stopped playing when they stopped finding new Pokemon in their local area, but if they keep adding more periodically this would give people a reason to keep playing the game.

And to use your moronic Gold and Silver comparison in a more accurate way... rather than just dumping all of the new Pokemon into Kanto, where you'd have had to search through all of the Pokemon you'd already caught in order to find them, they instead created the Johto region where you could encounter the new Pokemon gradually as you progressed round the region, with a handful of new species being introduced to you in each new route you visited, making it easier to find the new Pokemon, without making the old Pokemon inaccessible.

@DragonEleven What you're concerned about actually happened to the proper Pokémon RPG games. As they added more and more monsters, finding specific ones became more difficult, but in a way, that made it more exciting when you came upon something rare.
But to a long time frequent player like you or me, adding, say, 10 monsters at a time actually would make finding new ones more difficult. You and I already have most of the first generation, and I don't want to keep sifting through a bunch of old Pokémon to find a couple new ones. I personally would rather increase the odds of finding new Pokémon by getting them all at once. Simple fractions will show you that to long time, dedicated players, releasing them all at once yields more excitement. Adding 10 monsters, for example would mean a one in 16 chance of happening upon anything new. I don't know about you, but I am fatigued with seeing so many Pidgey and Rattata. I would much rather sort through Hoothoot or Sentret to find other new ones or the old ones I have missed. Adding all 100 of them at once increases your odds of finding something new to two out of five. Far more exciting and a far more compelling reason to pick up the game again. I don't want to have to sift through a bunch of repeats to find new Pokémon over the course of a year or so. That sounds incredibly boring and unnecessarily dragged out. This is the best way to do it, especially since it mirrors the way they did it in the RPGs.

And as a sidenote, there's no need to use insulting words like "moronic". We are all mature adults here, and I actually thought we were having a civil discussion between two intelligent people who don't have to resort to insults to make a point.

@DanteSolablood A smaller number of annoyances over a longer period of time is far better than a large number of annoyances all at once... a smaller number of annoyances you can put up with... a larger number of annoyances could make the game unplayable, and did so with a number of people around launch, who haven't played the game since as a result.

More spawn points does not make spawns more balanced, it only increases the number of unbalanced spawns... and your experience of spawns is almost the polar opposite of mine, which just supports my point about the balancing... in my town the variety of Pokemon is pretty limited... nests never seem to offer anything particularly rare, and I haven't seen some species outside of eggs since the first few weeks of the game being released.
CP-wise their adjustments so far have been rather ineffective, and actually quite harmful to gyms as a result... when the game was first released there was a round a dozen species of Pokemon that were frequently put on gyms... now we're down to about half a dozen, making it even more unbalanced in favour of those Pokemon.
And as your point about the chance of finding new Pokemon, I used the example of the babies for a reason... they were given an increased appearance rate for a week after they were released... making them easier to find... the same could be done with other new additions if done in small groups, completely solving that issue.

@thesilverbrick Finding specific Pokemon in the main series games has never gotten any more difficult... you you're not making a shred of sense there... different Pokemon were available in different regions... you just had to look in the right place.
And to repeat myself... by adding Pokemon in smaller groups they could increase the spawn rates of the new Pokemon for a short period of time to make it easier to find the new Pokemon than if they added them all at once.
If they release them all at once, then your chance to find a new Pokemon would drop exponentially in no time, but a periodic release with increased chance would keep your chance of finding a new Pokemon higher than normal as long as they kept adding new Pokemon... just think about how easy it has been to find the pink Pokemon during the valentines event.

Awesome, as Gen 2 is home to some of my very favorites. I'll probably get back to playing the game more, though I never bothered to finish the Kanto Pokédex... Oh well.

Definitely feels like they waited too long to implement this. Gen 8 will be out in the mainline games by the time we get Gen 7 in GO.

@DragonEleven Actually your experience of spawn points is very similar to mine, my actual town has very limited spawns & only kicks up pidgeys, rattatas and gastlys. The thing is that "balance" does not mean every town gets their "fair share" of rare pokémon (which seems to be what you're implying). As I said the only reason I found rarer Pokémon was from travelling to other towns... one of the actual points of the game. You know, going to new places, travelling and meeting new people? Not staying in one place & waiting for a particular pokémon to roll through your home town.

This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the game.

With regards to bugs, you assume that a larger update would result in more bugs/glitches, this is not necessarily the case, especially as we've had very large updates with practically no additional game issues. These bugs are only found when the updates are released so the realistic scenarios are:

1) Large release, bugs found, large team work on them & fixed within week (a week seems to be their standard response time).

2) Four releases, bugs found, one week per bug fix meaning approximately four months experienced issues.

And that's of course presuming that there are bugs & that they are actually annoying ones.

As for the drip-feeding idea, if we ignore how badly that would go down PR-wise (much like eggs, which many people were very disappointed with hoping for the full Gen 2) and the fact that releasing a dozen at a time with increased spawn rates would likely make them too easy to catch... but you then have the issue of towns that only tend to get pidgeys & rattatas will STILL only see pidgeys & rattatas (and maybe 1 of the months dozen). In the Valentine's event I still had to travel to a much larger town to find exeggcute/clefairy.

The increased chance is still only an increased chance under the same spawning rules... much like the eggs & valentines/halloween event people could still go the whole event without seeing a single ONE of the new pokémon. However... if they are released in one go MORE places will see new pokémon around the same time.

Basically you're simultaneously killing the hype, making people annoyed with glitches over a much longer period of time and ENSURING people will go possibly weeks without seeing any new pokémon. there are so many problems with your "solution".

Plus it does seem to be centred around your own personal experience, which does include denying & then protesting Gen 2 for a long time.

@DragonEleven Again, no need for hostility. In later games they have become more difficult to find. For instance, contrast finding Ledyba in Gold and Silver with tracking one down in Sun and Moon (there's a marked difference in spawn rates and location variety). With an increasingly bloated number of Pokémon in the games, individual monsters can't possibly appear in the exact same frequency they used to. Some have been relegated to single routes or low spawn rates (to accommodate more species in a single route) whereas in older games they appeared seemingly everywhere.

But that's beside the point. I can't see any reason why a devoted player of the game would want to be drip fed new Pokémon. I (and every other devoted player) have just about everything from the first generation, so I want to see as little of it as possible. Having to continue to filter through A game that still spawns 80 to 90% generation one Pokémon would be very repetitive and boring. The people who haven't finished collecting Gen One yet either live in areas where it will never be possible or they don't care about the game as much. The dedicated players, who are the ones who net the most income for Niantic, want more, and not just a little. I don't know if you recall, but the player base of the game was really upset when they were just given a half dozen baby Pokémon from generation two a few months back. Nobody liked being drip fed, and nobody wants that again. You are the only person I have seen so far that feels the way you do. Granted, you're entitled to your opinion, it's just not grounded in good business PR sense.

Doesn't matter what they do. Their game is already broken because of how Niantic is. They ruined their game and no expansion of content will ever bring the old userbase back.

@RadioHedgeFund I deleted this long ago but do they still have that "if you live in rural areas there will be no pokemon available to you" bullcrap?

Finally! If only it wasn't so cold...

@Markiemania95 Not counting the mentioned legendaries, like you said, 94 Johto Pokémon will be made available. Subtract the baby Pokémon (Magby, Igglybuff, Smoochum, Cleffa, Elekid, and Togepi) because they're already available, that equals 88 new Pokémon. They said 80+ so it makes sense.

@GoshDangTravino I think you misunderstood my post. There's 100 Gen II Pokémon altogether, but if they're only adding 80 new Pokémon, there'll still be 6 missing from GO. I was wondering who those 6 would be.

EDIT: If they said 80+ that changes everything, but I can't see that anywhere.

@Markiemania95 yes, there are 100 Gen 2 Pokémon. Chances are, they won't be adding the six legendaries yet. 94 Pokémon without them. They already added in the six baby Pokémon so they won't be adding them in again, of course. That makes 88 Pokémon. They said, in early trailer, over 80 Pokémon will be added in, not exactly 80. That just usually accounts for laziness on their part. "ehhh, it's somewhere over 80 so let's just say that"

I think aside from the legendaries we have yet to see and the legendaries from gen 2 we probably won't ever see, that the Johto Dex will otherwise be complete.

@GoshDangTravino I understand the maths, it was just the fact that in most places they've been saying 80, which left that gap of 6. I just went and had a look at the original trailer though, and the caption does indeed say over 80, so I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing that out 🙂

A really smart move for Nintendo would be to release Gold, Silver and Crystal to the 3DS eShop next week. Hopefully they've had the ports finished and lined up ready to go as soon as this was announced...but I'm not holding out much hope.

Sounds interesting. Maybe I'll get back into it but I sure wish they would fix the Apple Watch app. It's terrible. Sometimes only works for a few seconds before it bombs out. Once I walked like 3 km and it didn't add it to my egg distance. So I gave up on the whole game.

@Igetin Magisk is not compatible with my Samsung Galaxy note 5 for whatever reason. Something to to do with how Samsung does their phones.

Yay, I love a lot of the gen 2 pokemon. I wonder how often they'll spawn, and whether or not I'll still be swamped with Pidgey and Rattata.

@Igetin I have not, I'll give it a shot and let you know how it works. Thanks for the tip.

@DragonEleven There's always generation 3

@Markiemania95 Of course! I also wanted it cleared up for anyone else who may be confused as well ✌🏻😁

@thesilverbrick Pokemon have different rarities in different locations... that is a factor that the main series games and Pokemon GO share... but that does not mean that they have gotten rarer over time... that only means that Ledyba are more common in Johto than in Alola... if we were to return to Johto, we'd find them to be just as common as they always were there.

I can't believe you're so blind that you can't see that what I'm proposing is the very solution to the problem that you want to avoid.
By adding them all at once, you're looking at a maximum of around 30% chance of encountering a new Pokemon.
But by adding them 10 at a time, every 2 weeks, with encounter chance boosted by 10x for the first week of each (my estimate of the boost given by events), you're looking at the chance going up to around 50% every time new Pokemon are added.
This gives both a higher chance of encountering new Pokemon and a longer period of having more to do... exactly what both of us want... you're just too fixated on getting them all at once to realise that.
And you say that people complained about only getting the babies before... but was it really that bad? How many of the babies have you gotten since then? How many in the first month? ...or week, even? If you are a devoted player like you claim, then I'm guessing you got them pretty quickly. I'd gotten all but one of them in the first two weeks, and I was even ill for the majority of the time their chance was boosted. So can you really complain about that approach to adding new Pokemon?

@DragonEleven I guess this is where we agree to disagree. I (personally) see zero advantage to releasing Gen 2 in waves. It only serves to dilute the experience, and is out of line with the way Pokemon have always been introduced in the main games. I want Gen 2 instantly integrated into the game, as it means the game is now 40% new, instead of the same old game with ten or so new Pokémon popping up a lot. It will also make catching rare Pokémon feel cheaper. For example, I had a treasured Porygon I was lucky enough to hatch and after this recent event it's just another boring old Pokémon everyone caught a dozen of. Releasing Gen 2 in waves of super abundant Pokémon takes the thrill of the hunt away, and it fails to provide any noticeable advantage.

I was so mad when they disabled driving with the Pokemon Go Plus watch!

Pokemon Go is dead

@thesilverbrick Seems we've been agreeing on a lot of points, does seem DragonEleven simply stops replying to people when they make a good point.

@DanteSolablood I live in a city with ~750k citizents, with tons of architectural and ancient monuments, quite a cultural centre filled with universities. The farest I have to go, is the city centre. Going anywhere in the oposite direction equals less and less spawns and spots. Unless I travel to the capital (which is about 300km from here), I have no other equaly large and dense city near me.
Central Europe isn't exactly the most supported region, being it Pokemon GO or Nintendo
Thanks for you concern, though!

@Jayronauron Got the same bug. Cannot see the profile, nor the buddy poke :/

@KTT They started rolling out a new update yesterday, and after installing it I discovered that it fixed that bug, which is a relief. Gave me a chance to put on some new teal-colored clothes for my avatar too.

@DanteSolablood It seems you're right. His devotion to ideas that make little to no sense is baffling. I see no practical advantage to releasing Gen 2 gradually over time. In fact, it would do far more harm than good, if the reaction to the baby Pokémon release last year was any indication.

At the end of the day, though, there's no reason for me to get worked up, since Niantic apparently has their head on straight and is releasing the entire generation at once, which is what I, you and practically everyone else wants. Crisis averted.

@Jayronauron Hey, that's a great news! I stopped playing for a while, till the weather gets better, but that fix is welcome!