darkSpyro

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I caught a water Pokemon other than Vaporeon and Squirtle today :,)

Quote: StriderSwag

I caught a water Pokemon other than Vaporeon and Squirtle today :,)

who it be

^Thanks Strider. Have 2 eggs right now and wasn't sure just what were in either. Kinda surprised Eevee is as high up as it is since it seems fairly common.

Here's what hatches from each egg, in case nobody knew.

When Eevee evolves is it randomized? Because me and my son both got jolteon

Dang, they are really ripping on this game on the local radio station. Is anyone else hearing a lot of guff for this game on the radio?

Quote: sprocketrocket

When Eevee evolves is it randomized? Because me and my son both got jolteon

yeah it seems to be most likely randomized at this point in time

Shaking your phone helps with eggs if you can't go out for whatever reason

Shaking your phone helps with eggs if you can't go out for whatever reason

Just so you know, there is a way to choose who eevee evolves into.
Name it Pyro for Flareon, Sparky for Jolteon, and Rainer for Vaporeon.

Quote: skylandsfan

Just so you know, there is a way to choose who eevee evolves into.
Name it Pyro for Flareon, Sparky for Jolteon, and Rainer for Vaporeon.

Is this actually real?

Quote: somePerson

Quote: skylandsfan

Just so you know, there is a way to choose who eevee evolves into.
Name it Pyro for Flareon, Sparky for Jolteon, and Rainer for Vaporeon.

Is this actually real?

Yep.
I'd link to the Reddit thread but I'm on mobile just now.

Quote: StriderSwag

Quote: somePerson

Is this actually real?

Yep.
I'd link to the Reddit thread but I'm on mobile just now.

And it has data and statistics to support this claim?

Quote: Seiki

Quote: StriderSwag

Yep.
I'd link to the Reddit thread but I'm on mobile just now.

And it has data and statistics to support this claim?

As far as I know.
A lot of people are backing it up in the comments.
If you guys want a first hand account, I'm going on a long PokeWalk Monday (hopefully to catch a Porygon) so I can probably catch the last few Eevees I need to evolve a Flareon!

First off, the game once again barely gave me any Pokemon for a while. And when it did start giving me some, well...

https://i.imgur.com/8KXka5I.png

Their rings were blank. Tapping on them didn't do anything.

This is what I experienced for the majority of my time using that incense. At one point, I found a Pidgey, but when I caught it, the game gave me an error and booted me back to the map. I only managed to catch a Weedle as the incense wore off.

Additionally, the "Nearby" tracker is completely broken right now. You're supposed to use it to find specific Pokemon you want, but it always shows three feet currently, no matter how close you are to a Pokemon. So yeah, it's pretty much just down to luck when looking for Pokemon right now.

I then started to run into more Pokemon. They actually were showing up now, and I could click on them...but the game would hang on the loading screen until they disappeared. Missed out on a Pidgeotto (sp?) I found because of this.

I only managed to catch a Ratata after that. I technically caught a Pidgey but the game locked up as soon as it went in the ball. This was as I was heading into McDonald's for a snack and a drink. I decided to sit down and use the free Wi-Fi to reboot the game (third time I had to reboot, BTW) faster, but the game wouldn't login even after three attempts. Gave up on it at that point, and now here I am. I did manage to hatch an egg though, and got a Geodude from it. I could have hatched a second one pretty naturally if the game didn't lock up.

I might give it another try tonight as last night wasn't so bad. But if I can't catch anything then I'm not touching the game until they fix it. At the very least, they need to fix the "Nearby" tracker because when that's not working I can't go on any hunts, I can only walk around aimlessly and hope something comes up, and even then, the game crashes half the time or just doesn't load the Pokemon.

Tried the game now that it's out in Ireland.

Game itself is terrible and broken right now. I got an OK run of it last night, but this afternoon was just horrible.

Just gonna copy pasta what I said elsewhere:

Quote:

First off, the game once again barely gave me any Pokemon for a while. And when it did start giving me some, well...

https://i.imgur.com/8KXka5I.png

Their rings were blank. Tapping on them didn't do anything.

This is what I experienced for the majority of my time using that incense. At one point, I found a Pidgey, but when I caught it, the game gave me an error and booted me back to the map. I only managed to catch a Weedle as the incense wore off.

Additionally, the "Nearby" tracker is completely broken right now. You're supposed to use it to find specific Pokemon you want, but it always shows three feet currently, no matter how close you are to a Pokemon. So yeah, it's pretty much just down to luck when looking for Pokemon right now.

I then started to run into more Pokemon. They actually were showing up now, and I could click on them...but the game would hang on the loading screen until they disappeared. Missed out on a Pidgeotto (sp?) I found because of this.

I only managed to catch a Ratata after that. I technically caught a Pidgey but the game locked up as soon as it went in the ball. This was as I was heading into McDonald's for a snack and a drink. I decided to sit down and use the free Wi-Fi to reboot the game (third time I had to reboot, BTW) faster, but the game wouldn't login even after three attempts. Gave up on it at that point, and now here I am. I did manage to hatch an egg though, and got a Geodude from it. I could have hatched a second one pretty naturally if the game didn't lock up.

I might give it another try tonight as last night wasn't so bad. But if I can't catch anything then I'm not touching the game until they fix it. At the very least, they need to fix the "Nearby" tracker because when that's not working I can't go on any hunts, I can only walk around aimlessly and hope something comes up, and even then, the game crashes half the time or just doesn't load the Pokemon.

Playing on a HTC One too so it's not like I have a bad phone or anything.

I guess I'll list my problems with the game now, too.

Yesterday I found a Beedrill, but the game froze as I caught it. This has happened to almost every Pokemon I've tried to catch, so I haven't made much progress. I can't sign in, either. Shoutout to the five or so accounts I've made with one email address

The game has so much potential, but it's glitchy on both devices I've tried - my iPhone 4S and my dad's Sony Experia X3(?). Servers have been down since last night, and at this point I've pretty much given up.

Reveal Spoiler

Oh, and has anyone tried playing this game on a boat? I managed to do it briefly, it's really fun, seeing yourself run across the ocean

Quote: StriderSwag

Quote: Seiki

And it has data and statistics to support this claim?

As far as I know.
A lot of people are backing it up in the comments.
If you guys want a first hand account, I'm going on a long PokeWalk Monday (hopefully to catch a Porygon) so I can probably catch the last few Eevees I need to evolve a Flareon!

I blew through all of my Eevee candies this afternoon and got a Vaporeon without trying any techniques.

Let me know how it goes.

I've been reading all the rage posts today about the servers being down because of the Canadian release, and believe me, I am just as eager to get back into the game and continue playing as the rest of you, but I wanted to inject a little perspective into the matter.

I recently left a job in game development, so I know a bit about what it's like to work on an app like this, certainly not of this scale, but game dev culture is pretty similar no matter where you go, and I promise you that right now the Niantic dev team is on ****ing fire. They are on fire, and they probably have been since the release. If you think the Niantic team is sitting back, laughing at the server issues while money rolls in, you couldn't be farther from the truth.

I know it's easy to call out Niantic and accuse them of being ****ty and that they don't care about their players, even though they're raking in the money, etc, but there are a few other things to consider here.

• The Niantic Team is definitely working their asses off, and has been for a long time.
  
• We don't know how much money Niantic is making, what kind of cut they share with Nintendo (it could honestly be pretty small), and even so, the people doing the hard work in fixing the bugs are probably not rolling in huge bonuses.
  
• The people making this game are probably just as hyped as we are about it; it's been their baby through the development phase, and they probably see all the Niantic bashing that is going on on the internet, but can't respond to it.
  
• A lot of the top-level decisions might be out of their hands (like whether to divert energy to server issues or world-wide release). Further I guarantee you that someone at the high level of Nintendo is pressing down the knife hard to get the game in world-wide release, regardless of bugs because of how much money it's making.
  

The dev team right now probably haven't gone home since the release, have barely slept, haven't seen their families, and eat when they get 1 minute of breathing room. I'm not trying to use hyperbole here either. This is what it's like to work in the game industry. This is what is was like for my team. When something goes live with bugs, obviously upper management is not pleased, so Producers are urged to crack the whip hard/do whatever it takes to get it fixed. This means no one go homes until it's fixed. Your kid has a play tonight you were hoping to make it to? Too bad, this bug has to get fixed and shipped.

Further, they're not purposely trying to release more bugs with new updates, this is just the nature of things when there's huge pressure on a development team and quick turn-arounds are expected. Things get rushed through an already stressed, over-tired programmer, get pushed to QA, who also go through it as fast as they can since they are given a deadline, and flagged issues get fixed as quickly as possible and OH LOOK WE'RE PUSHING IT LIVE, OH GOD.

Fixing bugs without re-introducing new ones takes a certain amount of time, it's not just one programmer opening up the code-base and making a quick one-line change. It has to go through this entire funnel, and I promise you, the faster it goes through this funnel, the more things get missed, and go live broken.

Also, they can't just magically hire more programmers to get the bugs fixed faster. A normal hiring process is usually at least a month in length, with multiple interviews. I'm sure Niantic is under super heavy security clauses because of their involvement with Pokemon, so that's going to restrict their ability to hire even further. A new hire needs to be properly vetted, and even after you get them in the door, you can't just throw a programmer into a brand new code-base and expect them to understand and start fixing bugs immediately. They have to take time to understand how the code was written so they can contribute meaningfully without introducing more bugs. Should they have foreseen this and hired more developers ahead of time? Probably, but also it probably wasn't in their budget for a game that they had no idea how well it would do. I don't think they could have expected the explosion of excitement it generated.

Game developers sacrifice a lot to make these games, even when it was in development I'm sure they experienced lots of crunch (working late for a continuous period day after day with no extra pay) to hit their milestones and get the game out on time. Because of this they probably feel a strong link with their company (Niantic) and the game they made, and a lot of them take it personally when people start throwing accusations like "Niantic doesn't care about their players, they're just getting rich off of us," around. Since they're working with/under these mammoth companies (Nintendo/Google) there is probably a very strict policy on how they communicate with the public. They see what we're all saying, but they probably are not allowed to respond.

So let's be the awesome community we have been so far (helping people, sticking up for other players, picking up trash, etc,) and inject a little bit of kindness into our hopes for the game issues and long-term health of the game!

TL;DR: The servers will be back up soon, take a breath, and remember that a very dedicated group of people behind the scenes sacrificed a lot to make this game for us, that has brought us so much joy. A lot of this things we are seeing either take time to fix, or are probably out of their hands. They might need a little encouragement right now; hug a game dev today.

I mean I'm aware of what game development is like too. And I'm not angry at Niantic.

But they billed this as the "final" product, the release build. They had a closed beta so issues there are one thing.

But no matter how hard things are, you don't cut them slack. They presented a vision for a product and the final (release) version doesn't match it at all. Of course it will be criticised. Especially when it costs phone credit to play the game for many people. And a lot of battery power.

I feel like they could have avoided this if less things were tied to the server.