Pokémon Go

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I'm enjoying the game so far...

LOL JK, I live in Canada.

[Mirby]

We tried challenging a Gym only to find an immortal Paras that just wouldn't die.

[Native Jovian]

1 hour ago, Mirby said:

We tried challenging a Gym only to find an immortal Paras that just wouldn't die.

That's a known bug.  (OOOOOOH POKEMON PUNS.  But no, seriously, I've seen people mentioning it elsewhere online.)

I live right across from a shopping center, so there's a pretty good number of stops and gyms within a few minutes' walk of me.  I just hit level five today so I haven't messed with any gyms yet, but so far the game is surprisingly compelling despite the fact that the capturing pokemon gameplay is almost pathetically simple.  (That said, I've run into a few cases where I nailed my target with a pokeball but they escaped and disappeared, and I have no idea why).  Whenever I see a blank silhouette in my nearby pokemon tab, I have to resist the urge to track that sucker down.

[Nutritious]

I'm not a pokemon guy (I think I've played one of the games before), but my friends kept talking about this last week, so I went ahead and got it.  Quite a fun video game that actually makes you want to go get exercise, who knew?

Anyway, I've made it up to level 12 and have put together a decent little stable so for.  Unfortunately, the gyms around me are starting to be populated by super-high players (one has a 1400+ CP pokemon stationed there), while my best range from 450-680.  I'm never going to be hardcore enough to take on stuff like that, likely.

13 hours ago, Native Jovian said:

That's a known bug.  (OOOOOOH POKEMON PUNS.  But no, seriously, I've seen people mentioning it elsewhere online.)

I live right across from a shopping center, so there's a pretty good number of stops and gyms within a few minutes' walk of me.  I just hit level five today so I haven't messed with any gyms yet, but so far the game is surprisingly compelling despite the fact that the capturing pokemon gameplay is almost pathetically simple.  (That said, I've run into a few cases where I nailed my target with a pokeball but they escaped and disappeared, and I have no idea why).  Whenever I see a blank silhouette in my nearby pokemon tab, I have to resist the urge to track that sucker down.

So, it turns out the capturing mechanic is actually slightly more complicated than that.  The color of the ring indicates capturing difficulty (green-easy to red-really hard).  Several factors go into whether or not the capture is successful: the quality of throw, the type of pokeball used, and whether or not a razz berry was used.  Nice or Excellent throws will increase your odds of a capture on tougher targets (curve ball throws may as well but I don't know for sure).  Feeding them a berry first will increase the success rate of your next hit.  Using a better quality ball will cause the ring color to become easier.  If your capture doesn't work, it'll pop back out and may try to escape.  Usually, you'd have several attempts, though.

As far as throwing, I've read the developer said to throw when the ring is at it's smallest, but I'm almost certain at this point the idea is to get the colored ring to match the grey ring at it's widest (meaning you'd throw right at the moment the ring closes in the middle to try to time it).

[Native Jovian]

So, it turns out that my office is a Pokemon Go gold mine.  There's a pokestop within range of where I sit, which means I can farm free stuff all day, but the building itself isn't on the map so the game thinks I'm standing in an open field.  There's a decent chance of running into wild pokemon whenever I open the game to hit the pokestop again.  I've probably caught a dozen pokemon without getting out of my seat this morning.

Of course, the downside is that since I'm at work, I can't leave to go hunt down things that I see in my "nearby" list.  There's been a psyduck one footprint away all morning and it's killing me.

 

Oh, wait, it's lunchtime.  BRB.

[Bleck]

19 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

I'm enjoying the game so far...

LOL JK, I live in Canada.

same

[The Damned]

On 2016-07-10 at 0:27 AM, yangfeili said:

I'm curious if we're going to see some laws coming out of this regarding the right of property owners to control the content of their augmented reality space. I've been talking for a while about how I should go around the neighborhood and offer people $20 to sign away their "virtual adspace rights" to me for when some hypothetical new market is created...

Speaking of... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/gaming/pokemon-go-man-s-house-accidentally-turned-into-a-gym-causing-huge-problems-a7129756.html

Man turned an old church into a house, but the map data used for the game states it as an active church. The developer, Niantic, states that a change of game locations can only be done for safety reasons, but nothing else for "reasons".

[Nutritious]

I was surprised yesterday evening to find this guy outside my front door.  Especially glad I was able to catch him after a few attempts with both berries and Great Balls.

 

[timaeus222]

I get a 'GPS signal not found' message on my iPad 2; Location Services are on. Not sure how that might be a problem, though it seems my avatar isn't responding when I move, or has a delay after I move. I got past the "Catch a Pokemon" screen here after restarting the app, but it's still pretty buggy for me.

Apparently it's not designed to support tablets (yet?).

[Kat]

6 minutes ago, timaeus222 said:

I get a 'GPS signal not found' message on my iPad 2; Location Services are on. Not sure how that might be a problem, though it seems my avatar isn't responding when I move.

Is it the iPad2 Wifi or iPad 2 Wifi + 3G? The wifi only model doesn't have actual GPS services whereas the 3G has wifi built into the 3G chip. The game uses GPS services specifically to accurately track where you are, whereas "location services" estimates via the network. I'm not sure if Pokemon Go even supports location services, as the tracking isn't accurate enough for Pokestops and gyms and the like.

[timaeus222]

3 minutes ago, Kat said:

Is it the iPad2 Wifi or iPad 2 Wifi + 3G? The wifi only model doesn't have actual GPS services whereas the 3G has wifi built into the 3G chip. The game uses GPS services specifically to accurately track where you are, whereas "location services" estimates via the network. I'm not sure if Pokemon Go even supports location services, as the tracking isn't accurate enough for Pokestops and gyms and the like.

It's a pretty old iPad, and doesn't have 3G, but I wanted to check it out anyway.

[Liontamer]

On 7/11/2016 at 3:58 PM, The Damned said:

Speaking of... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/gaming/pokemon-go-man-s-house-accidentally-turned-into-a-gym-causing-huge-problems-a7129756.html

Man turned an old church into a house, but the map data used for the game states it as an active church. The developer, Niantic, states that a change of game locations can only be done for safety reasons, but nothing else for "reasons".

That's definitely unfortunate. Niantic should be willing to opt private property locations out.

[The Damned]

And now there are reports of people getting robbed, getting arrested fro trespassing, and walking into walls/cars/open water/etc...

[AngelCityOutlaw]

1 hour ago, The Damned said:

And now there are reports of people getting robbed, getting arrested fro trespassing, and walking into walls/cars/open water/etc...

 

On 9/13/2015 at 1:24 AM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

"They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too."

 

[The Damned]

Oh, just heard about another inappropriate place the game has set as a location. The US Holocaust Memorial.

The staff are a understandably unhappy with people visiting to catch pokémon, what with all the holocaust memoriality.

Niantic definitely screwed up on selecting locations and landmarks in this case. I really hope there isn't a Gym set up in Auschwitz.

[MindWanderer]

2 hours ago, The Damned said:

I really hope there isn't a Gym set up in Auschwitz.

You can get an idea of where Pokemon Go stuff is by looking at the Ingress map, although they're expected to diverge over time, and you can't tell which portals are gyms and which are pokecenters.  But there's nothing at Auschwitz; closest portal is a church a few blocks away.

Hm, there are two portals right outside where I work... maybe I'll start playing this game after all.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

There's a park near my house.

It used to always be empty.

..... it no longer is.

 

Ever.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Saw this on Facebook today and lol'd

 

[TheChargingRhino]

....Lets see....Mickey D's are going to become Gyms...

And two idiots just walked off a cliff while playing- 

More stuff here.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/18/health/the-best-and-worst-pokemon-go-stories-trnd/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlarge

[Kat]

Meanwhile. . .I'm not sure exactly why this Pokestop exists or what it's supposed to be. Since "Awesome" is practically Chumlee's catchphrase I feel like it's a Pawn Stars reference, but I'm sort of in the middle of Oregon and it's at a retail store, so...

[TheChargingRhino]

13 minutes ago, Kat said:

Meanwhile. . .I'm not sure exactly why this Pokestop exists or what it's supposed to be. Since "Awesome" is practically Chumlee's catchphrase I feel like it's a Pawn Stars reference, but I'm sort of in the middle of Oregon and it's at a retail store, so...

....Maybe Chumlee plays Pokemon GO? 

[MindWanderer]

1 hour ago, Kat said:

Meanwhile. . .I'm not sure exactly why this Pokestop exists or what it's supposed to be.

"Why it exists": It's a statue, and the Ingress folks were pretty generous about letting random public works of art become portals, even if they were silly.  I guess whoever submitted it thought the bear statue looked like Chumlee and felt that was an adequate description, and the folks at Niantic thought it was fine.  I have one near me that's not only inside a restaurant (which isn't supposed to be allowed), but the name is in Chinese, with no description at all.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Tried the game out, not really seeing the appeal, honestly. This is the game 10 year old me dreamed of, but 24 year old me lacks the childlike imagination required to suspend my disbelief to really feel like I'm in the game, even if it is AR. I walk, at the very least, 3km every day and now it's like "WHAT TEAM ARE YOU ON!?" and I'm just like "Dude, I'm just out walking. People did this long before Pokemon Go was a thing". Like, I see this quickly getting to the point where I'm not going to be able to even glance at my phone in public without being accosted by a Pokemon Go player.

On the one hand, it's great that a video game about cartoon monsters has inspired people to go outside, but on the other - it's also really sad that it takes a video game about cartoon monsters to inspire people to go outside.