Stealth release!
(or, more in game, “Niantic uses Quick Attack!”)
Just downloaded.
Might have to wait 'til lunch to play. But I’m excited for my new time waster.
Got it too. It kind of annoys me that it’s based on the Ingress maps because now everything is populated according to what people found popular when Ingress was the thing. So my neighborhood barely has two things in it while my work location, which is in a smaller town by far, is stuffed FULL of gyms and pokestops because some Ingress player lived over here and not in my neighborhood.
I was lucky enough that one pokestop and one gym is within a couple blocks of my house. Sucks for the rest of the neighborhood though because they have to walk here every day.
Can you spam the various landmarks for their wares?
I have two loot locations here at work, and if I could get stuff from them every day…that would be just aces.
This game will cause many accidents…I caught 6 pokemon on the 15 minute drive to work. I really like the model and will get out my bike late tonight, ride around my suburban/rural neighborhood and try to catch enough ghastlys to get a gengar.
Ahh! love it.
They do in fact recharge their wares about every 5 minutes :eek:
When my GPS location is a little off center at home I can grab stuff from my local pokestop while sitting in my bedroom, which is nice.
I signed up to see what the fuss is about. I caught a couple of pokemon and I visited a few spots (there are a bunch around me), but then I got booted and I can’t log in anymore.
I can’t seem to find/catch anything.
I got my starter and literally one other one. I got one showing up on my screen, but when I tap him it doesn’t do anything…maybe I’m not close enough?
I’ve got you beat I got the starter and I’ve gotten zero more in the last 4 hours since I downloaded. Honestly I’m not sure what the point of the game is at this point. Can I fight with my Pokemon or is this purely a collect them all game? I’m sure most of my problem is I’m out in the middle of no where for the next several days I’ll probably have more success when I go into town tonight and maybe I can figure stuff out.
The servers are having problems keeping up with demand. It will probably work better in a week or so.
I, for one, am going to be severely annoyed if my 3 AM drives around town taking down the Enlightenment’s portals is going to be compromised by people trying to catch 'em all. 
That’s what in Ingress we call a couch portal.
It seems where you are makes a big difference. I managed to log in using google instead (essentially starting over) but where I am there are tons of spot things and pokemon (at least for now). I managed to catch a bunch of pokemon (many duplicates) and to level 3 before getting booted again.
A lot of these spots are pretty much BS in terms of significance. But I guess that works for me.
Sometimes I look at the map and I see what looks like leaves brustling up…does that mean there’s a Pokemon there?
Also, how did they determine the landmarks? I find it really weird that they used two from the random-ass building from work, and there is one there that doesn’t even exist.
These were leveraged from data used by Ingress, the earlier Augmented Reality game from Niantic. Niantic in turn started Ingress with information from hmdb.org, the Historical Markers database, and then allowed players to nominate additional “portal,” candidates.
If the game does not let you tap on pokemon, or the pokesotps don’t load when you tap on them, then you need to restart the game as it’s had a communication error with the server. After restart you should be able to get it to work normally at least for a little bit. Pokemon should be fairly available everywhere, but if you’re experiencing a server issue none will appear, and if they do appear you won’t be able to interact with them. The servers are experiencing heavy load so for many people their connection is going in and out. I have to restart frequently - maybe every 20 minutes or so - to restore my connection.
But yes, the game isn’t incredibly complex and there is a strong “catch 'em all” vibe, so if you don’t like collecting pokemon and sometimes trying to capture a gym point, it’s not the game for you. There is no direct player vs player battling. Not sure if they ever plan to implement that, either.
Yes, grass rustling means there’s a pokemon there. If you’re standing right next to a grass rustle and no pokemon will appear, you have a sever error and should restart the game. I often have a pokemon immediately pop up after a game restart as the pokemon has “been there” all along but the communication errors got in the way.
FYI, I’ve heard that better pokemon tend to show up the higher trainer level you are. So it won’t just be Pidgeys forever. Higher trainer level also means it’s easier to catch higher level pokemon without them escaping.
Yeah, not sure I have any idea what I’m doing. I caught Squirtle, then I went to catch a Zubat. If I fling a Pokeball at it, it misses. If I hover our him, there’s a green circle that keeps moving in around him. What am I supposed to do?
I’ve gotten pretty good at bopping pokemon on the head with the ball. That seems to work for me.
My pokemon hunting got interrupted by a (presumably) mandatory request that I join a team. It seems pretty random, do I just pick one?
You can just get a “nice!” 10 EXP bonus for throwing a pokeball when the circle is at it’s fullest or smallest. Otherwise the green circle means nothing - you just have to hit the pokemon with the pokeball. Zubats, due to flying and overall flapping about, are just notorious for being harder to hit than the average pokemon standing on the ground.
You may encounter a pokemon with a yellow or red ring. This means they’re much harder to catch and will escape most pokeballs.
Everyone in the world picks one of the three teams. Then you fight for gym territory to represent your team. It’s pretty arbitrary unless you and your friends all want to team up and try to swamp gyms for yourselves. The only thing you do on a team is support similar-colored gyms or battle against opposing-color gyms. It otherwise has no other effect on gameplay. You cannot switch your team at the moment.
ETA: You throw pokeballs by flicking them upward. I wish the game came with…ANY sort of tutorial? Even I was confused initially. You just flick upward. You don’t have to wind up by pulling backward.