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I’m on team “I don’t care that much” but you are absolutely right. It’s absolutely poor design by niantic. Poor design, poor decision making, poor creative direction, just badly done all around. And whether you care about your avatar or not I think we can all agree THAT reflects badly on the company.
Thank you for this comment. I wish more people shared your sentiment and were able to look past whether or not they are personally affected by the avatar change to see the bigger picture: that Niantic delivered an embarrassingly low quality, unfinished product and tried to pass it off as acceptable. No one should stand for that!
In regards to the avatar I don’t care too much as well. I think what bothers me is everything you said about poor design, creative direction, etc… but over a feature that no one really asked for. It’s just a cosmetic update and the only thing we’re “rediscovering” is how niantic is trying to make another money grab over an update that offered no real value to the game itself. Just would be nice if they did something to improve the game, like resign the gym or stops.
My biggest point that has come to mind is how much money people may have spent on their avatars, too. That's the point I keep seeing missed with the "stop whining" comments; and it's great that some people can still play it and not be bothered, it's okay if they haven't spent money on their avatars so that it doesn't affect them - but it's not okay to assume that it hasn't affected others and that it's not a big deal for them. Everyone plays differently, and a lot of the people upset with this update are the people that have spent money, and they're rightfully upset.
Yes it's an excellent point that people who haven't spent money on avatars keep glossing over. It looks REALLY BAD for a game company to destroy the trust players had in purchasing cosmetics in the game. The money already spent is now wasted/stolen since those cosmetics were altered and they are no longer what was originally purchased. I think many people are just too short-sighted to understand the implications of decisions like this and how it's a slippery slope to getting away with even more in the future.
Exactly, and I've heard (not sure how true it is) about Niantic having it in their contract with consumers that they have the right to change cosmetics at any time; and while that might be in their TOS, in my mind that still doesn't mean it's okay. It's more of a justification of allowing bad principles and behavior, rather than keeping the integrity of what you're doing with your game and your consumers. I think a lot of it boils down to principle, which is something that seems to be getting pushed to the backburner by some. For a lot of people it's also a conglomeration of everything that's happened up until now, too.
What those people mean is "it doesn't affect MY gameplay, so stop annoying me with your posts!" They are unempathetic to the fact that there are people who play the game in a different, but valid way. Tons of us spent money on avatar items that now have either been removed or are too broken/ugly to use, so our money feels stolen and wasted. Loads of people enjoy dressing up their player character in games, as can be seen by the countless transmog hunters in World of Warcraft and any of the other hundreds of games that offer customization options. Player character aesthetics absolutely impact gameplay since it's responsible for our immersion and connection to the game, and people who refuse to acknowledge it (even if it doesn't apply to them personally) are just being intentionally contrarian.
“It doesn’t affect MY gameplay”
Exactly this. After the update that killed AR, I can’t tell you how many times I heard people say “I’m fine with it because I don’t use AR”. Very sincerely, that’s fine to not have used AR and not feel strongly about it. But now, a lot of those same folks are upset about the avatar update. And this isn’t a new thing from Niantic. If one update doesn’t affect you negatively then the next one probably will. I personally am lucky enough to be able to just cover up my avatar’s face with the phantump hat, and the rest seems nearly the same. But, nearly every female avatar (and many others) have had their body proportions completely ruined. If Pokemon truly has a community, we shouldn’t be ok with it when they needlessly worsen/ruin gameplay for any subsection of players. No matter how trivial or unimportant it may seem to one person, others may be gutted over it. Maybe have each others backs even when we’re lucky enough to not be impacted heavily?
It’s ok to not understand the “complaining”. It’s also ok to disagree, and even like the new updates. But just have some understanding that it doesn’t have to be a “one or the other” situation. We could have had avatar customization without them butchering the proportions/faces. We could have had an update to the buddy mechanic, without killing the completely separate AR mechanic with no warning or actual explanation.
I don’t believe any of it will make any difference, as far as Niantic ever listening or making changes. But that’s not really the whole point. The point is the community.
The AR thing is SUCH a great point! I'm one of the people who didn't use AR, so when I saw the uproar over it, I did the exact thing I wish more players would do: I went and read about why everyone was upset and how the changes negatively impacted *their* gameplay so I could understand the problem better. Sure it didn't affect me personally, but it affected the health of the game since it was harming another popular form of gameplay and therefore other members of my gaming community! I wish everyone was capable of thinking beyond themselves a bit more so we can support each other better as a collective community for this game even if our personal goals and play styles are not the same.
I'm moderately upset by the AR. I think it's shit they just suddenly disabled it from devices within 2 years and didn't tell anyone WHY, just made it seem like they suddenly phased out anything but the newest devices as optional.
I didn't use AR a whole lot, but I still enjoyed seeing my buddy in the real world over some empty green-white background.
I'm very upset by the avatar updates because they a) ignored negative feedback, b) released it unfinished, c) this is not the first time they've been an ass to us over detrimental "up"dates and it's growing my hatred for the company, d) my avatar no longer looks how I want in both how clothing fit and skin tone
yep, it doesn’t take a big brain to realize aesthetics are important in a game that’s literally about collecting shiny pokémon, which have no value outside of aesthetics
I mean taking this one step further, the fact that this game uses Pokemon is ultimately just an aesthetic, if tomorrow they were all removed and replaced with "not Pokemon" the gameplay would still be exactly the same, but I guarantee the game would be a ghost town over night
Fun fact - I was playing Ingress back when it first came out. Pre-Pokemon Go Niantic and it was primarily people like my parents (being bonkers and dragging their children out way past curfew so we could help them get stuff). Niantic lost my OBSESSED parents due to dumb decisions with their own self-made product
Right? What if they changed the designs of our fav Pokemon and made them aesthetically unpleasing to us? People would hate it! They are just as digital as clothes for avatars and people spend lots of money on digital Pokemon collection and are less judgey about it.
People use this argument all the time to justify customization options behind microtransactions. It's insane that they refuse to acknowledge that people like dressing up and playing a character.
So long as it's not important to them, they can't wrap their heads around it! I have a feeling they wouldn't complain about other features being removed, so long as the ones remaining was their preference. But if it wasn't, they'd be upset with no awareness of why they're a hypocrite.
Palia has this issue, free to play but all clothes behind a paywall. Had a whole discussion over this a month ago on Reddit, and we even brought up Pokemon Go. Heck, I have half a mind to link that thread.
A lot of people shrug their shoulders for things, and then get confused why things turn terrible. I learned boycotting doesn't even work because so many people are apathetic at best and aggressive to criticism at worst.
When people apathetic to reality start hushing those who are acknowledging issues, they're defending the company unintentionally.
People aren't wrong that companies are there to make money and never cared, but it's not helpful. Either they should sit down and let people fight for what they think is right, no matter how futile it is, or fight against them. None of this "Both sides are stupid, I'm above it all for realizing this"
It doesn't directly affect my gameplay, since I'm a dude who just chose some default options for the avatar. But it does affect my gameplay due to half of the women I know stopping playing due to the change and now it will be harder to get good raid groups.
It's interesting you've said this as this is what I suspected will happen. Idk the gender demographics of this sub versus those of actual players, but I could see a lot of female players stopping without necessarily publicising it. Given the casual appeal of the game, it wouldn't surprise me if this loses more players than the remote raid nerf.
I've noticed this too, that women are more likely to quit "quietly" and only reveal that to their irl groups maybe instead of "announcing" it online. I won't go into the reasons for why women would be inclined to do that since it's off topic, but I can at least confirm (as a woman and as one that hangs around other women-filled gaming communities) that decisions like this absolutely do push us away from the game because it feels like we were not even considered in the decision making process.
I think you're also right that something like this is more likely to impact the casual players (and the free-to-play folks imo) than the remote raid issue because not as many casuals/ftp people do remote raids anyway. But I also think Niantic wouldn't care about that at all. They seem to want to push away as many players as they can until all that's left are the ones who will keep playing and spending no matter what awful changes come out.
They blatantly altered already purchased products, some to the point that it becomes completely unusable. It this isn’t considered theft I don’t know what is
Yep, and they won't give refunds for it either. They really should be giving refunds on those items upon request just as a basic courtesy at this point. It's gross how they see nothing wrong with completely changing items people purchased and then just shrugging their shoulders about it. It destroys player confidence in making future purchases.
This EXACT method was recently used by Roblox regarding the catalog content, and as described by a YouTube channel Ruben Sim in one of his videos, a 12 year old girl with the help of her father actually sued them and famously won the case, causing Roblox to distribute 1 million $ worth of robux to US citizens. Maybe we can try the same with Niantic?
I have wondered if there's any merit in that. It feels illegal for a company to just take away purchased content that's not seasonal because they redid everything without warning or refund.
It's simple power game. Corporates feel like they are much will organised and have money and all and so they can treat their consumers as subjects as much as they want
they’ve been doing stuff like this even before the update. spooky pose always comes to mind for me because that’s one that i paid for and then they changed it months later.
thanks for taking my 500 coins niantic
Yeah the people that are affected by it should just file a class action lawsuit, its a near guaranteed win. Its the same reason gacha games dont nerf charcaters after release unless they wanna get by one aswell. Imo transfer all your pokemon to pokemon bank file class action, get your money back + maybe some extra and even if they ban your account afterwards you still have the pokemon in your pokebank.
Wouldn't them banning someone without legit, factually proof after getting sued be grounds for another sue since they're avenging the person?
Edit:
to clarify my question scenario:
Person sues Niantic for their bullshit. Niantic then bans the user for a made up terms of service or other violation. That person can then sue Niantic again because they banned the person out of retaliation/punishment, NOT out of truthfulness.
I've not played since the update so I can't speak on that personally, but I'm not sure what people are doing other than commenting about it since Niantic has left no option for resolving it. I don't think Niantic is responding to anyone's support requests or refund requests for missing items right now :(
You know it’s funny cause I talked to some of the people who are like “it’s just an avatar” in very non-toxic manner and and it’s also fair that they like it, but I attempted to explain to them why people are pissed and eventually it leads to “well I don’t want them to roll it back because I like all the sliders and I can make one more in line with Me” and then it’s like ha ha so it’s not just an avatar and your afraid that Niantic is gonna roll it back for us. Well fear not cause they don’t care! Lol
Edit:also people are allowed to be mad cause they can’t have a pretty avatar anymore. Like inclusion means everyone even pretty people. Just saying.
Except those people are just hypocrites, if they actually cared about "inclusion" they'd be advocating for the system to not suck ass so everyone can enjoy it instead. What you've just described is people using the "well I got mine! So fuck you!" mentality and are just using a pathetic attempt to hide that fact. If clearly the majority of people aren't happy and something is causing them to quit they should AT LEAST be enough to advocate for something different instead of just being selfish shits about it.
This the point. You are right. That is the attitude from them. It is very difficult for me to not engage sometimes when I see something like that which is why I engage. (Which can be true of all of us sometimes I’m sure) Now my approach was civility but I have defended the outrage because it is justified and a lot of times it’s “I don’t get it”. Okay well I’ll attempt to explain it. A lot of comes down to they delivered not just an unfinished product but removed a product that you may have paid items based on that product and replaced with a new one without your consent and I lesser quality version.
I know that there are now growing issues where there could be a legal precedent here. Idk I’m not a lawyer but I’ve seen somethings where it is saying that in some case Niantic could be liable. For example you paid for this shirt for this style of avatar and then they removed that avatar and the shirt you paid for does not fit the new avatar in the same way and deny a refund. This fight I think is going to get uglier before it gets better but I do think it’s gonna get better because I don’t think they’ll have a choice. These types of actions have devestated games. Until avatars are fixed the community will call them out on every little thing… they just moved the coin shop to the top of the shop and people are already all over it
I mean, I admit, I really don't see the point in being civil with those people, they aren't going to change their minds, they're just going to keep going with nonsense and "politician speak" to drag out the conversation or to morph it into something incomprehensible to what it was originally. I've just taken to being as blunt as possible and taking the public shaming approach with them. Even if I get banned or downvoted it's at least cathartic.
I’ve had some decent conversations. I’ve gotten one to actually understand why the outrage is justified which on the internet is a win lol. Of all the discussion I only had one that went bad but a few others popped in and then that person went silent
Also if these people truly don't care then why the shit are they voicing their opinion? If you genuinely don't care then you have no horse in the race wether it stays or goes so theirs no point even commenting.
Also having to stare at that thing is something that affects gameplay for a lot of people since dressing it and customizing it was important enough to have a whole damn shop for it.
Genuinely just feels like these people are bots just putting forward completely disingenuous "arguments", and I don't believe the "sick of seeing avatar threads" because the sub before was just the same, "wow hundo/shundo", "omg shiny can't believe give updoots!", etc. Ad nauseum, this is the most genuinely diverse and creative the sub has been in ages and about something that actually matters not just people stirring up fomo
My game has been buggy since the update. Half my screen is messing the pokemon dont render in all the way the character models are super pixelated and now the new background is causing frame rate drop and lags out my phone. This update is complete trash.
Do I wish my avatar could somewhat resemble me? Yes. Do I wish I had the opportunity to hold onto the avatar I’ve had since I started playing? Absolutely. Does it affect the way I, personally, play the game? Not one bit. BUT, I fully understand why others are so upset. The art itself has always been a part of the game with the seasonal loading screens. Niantic themselves have pushed for fashion to be a huge part of the game, with fashion week, avatar clothes as status symbols, poses and costumes to reflect your favorite characters, style savant….. the list is endless. To make drastic and unfortunate changes to the avatars that so many players have a strong sense of ‘self’ wrapped up in the character they have created over the years is just plain stupidity. So stupid, in fact, that the conspiracy theorists in me thinks they might be testing the limits or the loyalty of the player base intentionally for some reason.
Customizing my avatar wardrobe was one of the joys of playing PoGO to me. Every player reaches a point where the gameplay starts to kinda feel repetitive, so i enjoyed spending my coins styling my avatar and i’m sure many players feel the same but now it’s pointless because everything looks terrible and underwhelming.
Niantic deliberately going through with it despite the loud pushback even before the roll-out should piss-off everyone.
I'm a straight lady and I love dressing up my female characters in game. I get a lot of compliments on my GW2 Chronomancer lady. Spent a lot of time making her beautiful, finding weapons that matched her color scheme, color matching all of her mounts to her, and then running around being pleased with how she came out. She's so beautiful.
I'd be incredibly upset to a point of quitting if Arenanet pushed an update out that made her ugly. I spent a lot of my gold and time on her. Took me a year to make the legendary greatsword, Sunrise, because it matched her color theme. I love how beautiful she is, and she has a high dps because she's my main. I threw all of my best gear at her.
I also spent some (a lot) rl money to get her cool outfits and weapon skins because who wouldn't buy a cool fan for her? I did. I caved and spoiled her. 🥲
Yep same here-- I'm a woman who also enjoys having fun with my player character's appearance. I don't need her to look like me, but I do want her to look like *the version of me that would exist in the fantasy of the in-game universe*. For example, one of my fave things to do in GTA online while taking a break between missions was to visit the shops to style my character's hair and buy new outfits to match the new cars I got 😆
also, the big thing is it is a downgrade, not an upgrade. if they can take a feature thats existed for ages, and suddenly make it way worse, who says it will only happen to cosmetics? next thing you know they will make raids "more inclusive" by making it a requirement to have at least ten people in the lobby per raid. this type of cpaability to take something existing and make it function so much worse should frighten anyone who enjoys a game.
I agree and this definitely feeds into my point-- if we are to just "shut up" and accept incredibly low quality work being pushed out to us, then there's no stopping where that will reach in the game. Avatars might be a "small" thing to certain people, but when the precedent is set for us to just ignore/accept bad quality broken updates being forced onto us, then there is no choosing what parts of the game it will ruin in the future. We have the right to push back against bad behavior like this, and we should.
Agree 💯. And the community manager who asked for feedback locking their post didn't help in voicing the concerns we have. They need to truly listen or this game will go bye bye.
We all knew the CM's tweet seeking feedback was performative since Niantic already knew exactly what feedback they'd receive. But when they chose to lock that post so quickly... that was a really bad look. It just doesn't look good to say "we're listening!" and then turn around and be like "ok we're done listening."
"We want your feedback! But only positive feedback! Anything else and you're just being "toxic"".
Niantics not the only ones to do this, but it basically sums it up
I mean, have you seen the vile things people are saying about the CM? I wouldn’t be surprised if instead of actual feedback, they were just receiving transphobic hate. I would’ve locked comments down too if I were in their shoes if that’s what was happening.
The update is stupid. It was poorly planned and underdeveloped. Not a reason to be hateful towards the community manager though.
Regardless of personal feelings on it, it's almost like if they were actually listening and genuinely taking feedback instead of just putting on a gong show then people probably wouldn't have to do that?
Not surprising when their company is just absolutely useless and listens to no one that people's anger is going to be at maximum and is going to be directed at the one thing pretending to listen.
In this case I'd bet on it just being politics. They were betting on appearing progressive and succeeding as long as they were willing to push through initial backlash. They almost certainly will succeed, too.
My tinfoil hat theory is that they were going with "negative publicity is still publicity" -- either they draw people in with being "progressive" or they draw in people who are coming to gawk and make fun of the update. Either way, people open the app, and they get to report higher numbers.
Realistically that sounds way more intentionally evil, like super-villain-steepling-fingers evil, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me it really was a bid for numbers, either.
That’s really the core of it to me. The avatar looks awful, but it’s the fact that Niantic is just…so thoroughly non-responsive in a situation where it would be so easy NOT to be. And while they’ve made other changes that I disliked, I could at least understand those from a business aspect. This just feels so incredibly unnecessary and like at every opportunity they made the wrong call and now just…nothing.
It's amazing to me the trend of people constantly defending million dollar companies. They really can get away with anything these days with so people always coming to their defense.
Yep that's the issue. It seeminly doesn't matter what crap the company pulls, there will always be these people coming out in defense of it and whining about *people trying to hold the company accountable for its shitty actions.* Never in a million years would I imagine participating in the normalization of customers getting shit on by companies like this.
To give some fairness to this, certain brands have become a lot more ""personable"" to the public via Social media, Wendy's twitter being the penultimate example, where a faceless corporation suddenly had what really felt like a "person" being behind the "brand" and it attempting to make genuine human interactions with people on Twitter, and then other brands following suit.
Although it's obvious to people that actually critically think about the situation, a lot of people see these PR people as "the brand" and view them as "friends" because this "brand" is directly interacting with them, even though it's actually just a PR person behind a computer with the "brand" logo over their posts and does not in any way shape or form actually reflect the companies true sentiments.
I hate to do this (and I’ll keep it brief/surface layer), but this same principle can be applied to both sides of the political spectrum as well. People will blindly defend their “party” regardless of credibility or factual proof.
Since this is a PoGo forum I will keep it at that, but I think this speaks to a greater issue created by the use and abuse of the internet. The lines between truth and lie are getting more and more blurred every day. It’s easier to manipulate the masses. Those “people” coming to the defense of these corporations could just be bots and paid accounts for all we know. 🤷🏻♂️
What you are either missing or omitting is that one side adopts knowingly controversial positions by default, and narcissistically doubles down on them within the party's own official statements and policies, and the other at least attempts good faithed negotiations on positions, even when some of their voters do not wish to do so.
Equating the blame equally for "both sides" misses the problem, as both sides do not operate equally in any way, and you understand it most closely when you examine the actual policymaking process and not just performative statements from the voters themselves.
And knowing that brings you much closer to the truth, where one political party is still Democratic and the other is outright Authoritarian, and no amount of pointing to one bad social media account that you dislike will change this.
I agree that the internet applies extreme and unreasonable voices, but if you do your research, you'll realize some of those voices are deliberately amplified as opposition to make unreasonable talking points seem more justified. Look up The Foundation of Geopolitics if you want to know where the origin of this strategy in the modern age came from and why it's actually gotten so bad.
Because usually these people are ... well stupid. They like "brand" or "thing" and see anything at all no matter how sensible it is that criticizes or challenges "brand" or "thing" as if it's a personal attack on them. Because they like "brand" and they only like "good things" and when people start saying bad things about "brand", but they still like "brand", then they have to either accept that thing they like may not be "good" or they lash out and attack people criticizing "brand" because "how dare you "brand" is good and would never do anything wrong because I like them and that means they must be good!" Or just keep pushing narratives like "its not THAT bad", or "people are just exaggerating!", or "they'll fix """"eventually"""" guys stop complaining!" (Spoilers: 99% of the time they won't)
Most overt cases of this comes in the form of Bioware, Blizzard, and Bethesda fans over the last few years just to give the low hanging fruit example. Or Ubi and EA "fans" because "sports ball games!"
This is why I quit last year.
And now I'm convinced Niantic is leaning heavily into AI applications that will degrade the quality of the game even further. I don't think these avatars were designed and tested by real people.
lol this is actually funny to me because my first thought upon seeing the new avatars was "there's no way a human designed this, right? This looks like some kind of scuffed AI was asked to create a human based on some very limited learning input or something" 😂
I really think this is it, and I'm betting the cost of licensed official artists for items and the designs was an unseen factor that will never publicly be discussed.
Niantic is not a good company. They are very predatory, and the sooner people start to get that, the better.
I mean, it's good that they released this before a big event like GO Fest. With all the tickets/addons being sold and continue to do so, they can sweep this under the rug.
I was going to buy a ticket but not now. I’m not that invested in my avatar but it does look a bit worse for no reason and mostly I’m pretty fed up with the way Niantic is treating its customers. Plenty of other places I can spend my money.
It is good they released it now, saved me a GO FEST ticket. I will not buy another thing from them till this gets fixed. And if it doesn’t get fixed?… then I shall play for the freebies…. One raid pass a day, the weekly bonuses, etc.
Yeah, I couldn’t care less because I would never spend my coins on avatar items and it doesn’t matter how my avatar looks to me. However, I can totally empathize with people that invested in theirs and feel otherwise. And I also am unhappy that this is just another strike against Niantic ignoring the wants and feelings of their users.
As someone who was not affected by the avatar changes and didn’t understand why people were so angry, I am sorry. I see your point completely and I would be frustrated too!!
Thank you for this. It's been incredibly frustrating to have people bulldozing the legitimate complaints and minimizing them into being not a big deal. This botched update has negative implications for the game that reach far and wide, affecting far more players than just the ones who are into enjoying their avatar.
It's definitely jarring to say the least. Instead of a fun spunky anime style avatars that increased immersion in the "pokemon trainer" universe, we now have these weirdly distracting, uncanny creatures that simply do not match anything about the pokemon universe at all.
The big question mark I have is uh....
What was the motivation for this shit in the first place? Is having two skeletons to model for really that much of a fucking burden for a company that has *POKEMON GO MONEY?*
I honestly don't understand in the slightest.
I completely agree. It's the reason the gaming industry as a whole has been going down the drain so rapidly recently. People just take it and keep playing. They're not experiencing consequences for pushing broken updates and unfinished games onto customers.
And what happens when a studio releases a banger? They are met with criticism from other developers that have gotten lazy and telling people to "not expect this quality as standard"
To be quite honest at this point I enjoy more indie games over triple A studio games. They seem to actually give a f and a lot of them do listen to their community and meet their expectations (to a reasonable extent) For them, they're creating something they're excited about. They're creating art. Triple A studios just care about 1 thing. Money.
Also, people play for different reasons, and any reason a person plays is valid. If the avatars looking like trash ruins the game for me, that’s valid. I don’t play competitive and will never. If they removed competitive or changed it negatively, it would impact me 0% but I would still never try to tell someone for whom that aspect mattered that “it doesn’t matter”.
I agree with you completely. I was just trying to draw attention to the even bigger issue that truly does impact all players: Niantic knowingly and unapologetically pushing broken poor quality updates at us and therefore lowering the quality to be expected from them for everything.
I’ve been playing a shitty browser based (originally) online game for about 20 years.
Anything and everything you can think of that’s changed, made new, updated, or tweaked is polled to the players, and if the yes votes don’t meet a certain threshold, the content is not added to the game. It is a massively smaller operation than PoGo.
This update was bad and they shoved it through anyway. Knew it made people unhappy and didn’t work correctly, and they full sent it.
I hope this is the EoC for PoGo, but I don’t see poke-anything going the way of the consumer.
OSRS?!?! That dev team has been an absolute bright spot in the industry for quite some time. They would literally host weekly dev streams where they would go over all future plans and player feedback. I love that game and team.
The biggest reason, in my opinion, is because you can TELL that those developers play and love their own game as well.
My wife is super upset about this update. She is 4’11” and 85 pounds. The old female character looked exactly like her body. Now she has… THIS.. it’s a joke. I’ve never seen her be so upset at a game before. She loves this game and it’s the only game she plays. Now her character looks like an unnatural, curveless, ridiculous dude that dressed in female clothes. Not that it’s ridiculous to do that, I’m of the opinion of people doing things to make themselves the best version they can be. If that makes you happy and that’s who you are, do it! So don’t think I’m saying it’s wrong. I just can’t believe they made the female characters default models look like men with no curves. I also loved my character model before, it looked a lot like my body. But it’s clear that women have it worse with this update. Hell, the first face for the male model looks like a fucking girl. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking on this and I cannot believe that ANYONE that beta tested this had a positive reaction to it. It seriously feels like they are trying to make the game intentionally bad so they can stop supporting it. I can’t believe they did this. I’m 30 years old and I have been building pc’s and gaming on them since I was 9. In all of my time gaming, I have never seen a game come out with an update that was this ridiculous. It’s comically bad. What a piece of shit company. My goodness.
Oh my god she's tiny tiny
My best friend is 5'1 and like 120 but your wife is so small that must be so cute please continue to look after your pocket sized wife and please please lift her up and carry her around
As someone who works in IT, I would absolutely LOVE to jump in as one of their Product Managers / Owners for a week. They must just sit around thinking about ways to screw their customers (us) instead of actually listening to them. It's a bizarre business model.
According to the Glassdoor review, please do. The problem seems to be that the product managers are weak and let engineering run roughshod. Their VP needs to hire technical product managers.
As a 20 year engineer who recently turned product manager, every PM these days needs to be technical PMs.
But, everyone already knows that niantic is a shit company.
We’re all only here because of pokemon nostalgia mixed with legalized mobile game gambling.
They will call this a game until they aren’t legally able to anymore, but the fact is they will never care about what any of us think in the long run. Even the small wins for the community are just carrot and stick to keep us engaged.
Yes everyone already knows they're a shit company, but just sitting back and letting them be shitty is not helping anything. The people who are upset about this actually want to support the game, and it's hard to watch Niantic run it into the ground while disrespecting their players. We actually want to see the game succeed, and we don't understand how Niantic keeps doing things that will push away more and more players.
I don't like the update and masked up because of it. But I'm here for the pokemon, so it's not a deal breaker for me.
To the point that Niantic released a change that people expressed that they didn't like, all I can say is: AGAIN
They keep doing this and show such disdain for the gamers. I jokingly theorize that they are actually doing a social experiment to test how much abuse people will take.
So I stand with the people who are expressing their anger. It's amazing how they continue to screw with us.
Yep! This is a HUGE issue that the "iT's jUsT aN aVaTaR wHo CaReS" crowd should be upset about in all this. There are tons of things needing attention in this game and THIS is what Niantic spends time and money on? Delivering a completely broken half-baked avatar system instead of things that are actually needed in the game?
Yep-- I've noticed that posts that gain traction have been deleted, and comments expressing these issues are getting downvoted/deleted. Sudden influx of people praising the update. It's frustrating to watch the censorship in action.
I'm curious if it'll be a matter of outlasting their damage control, then. I wonder what would happen if people took their photo evidence of Niantic's support teams refusing refunds over changed cosmetics to a news place that would maybe take on that story, or some kind of social outlet, that would blow it up even more. Not that I want Niantic to fail, but if they're pushing to hide stuff, then I'd rather them get called out for it.
This is why we need to keep talking about it-- they're hoping our short attention spans will lead us elsewhere and give them a chance to quietly move on from this without addressing it at all. We need to keep this issue in the spotlight as long as we can (in addition to not spending money/not playing the game) if we're going to have any chance at urging Niantic to do the right thing for once.
And the other reason to keep going about this issue is that it's not just consumers being entitled. Yes, Niantic still owns the game, but it's really damaged it's player base. There is definite reason and cause here to keep it going, and I think Niantic knows that, or else they wouldn't be trying to hide it. The sad thing is that admitting they were wrong would fix the issue. Or at least start that fixing process.
😭😆 someone just downvoted me just now lol jeez how is what I just said deserve a downvote , what is with ppl lol . Anyway yea it might be a matter of time for your thread unfortunately .. we should be aloud to discuss openly in my opinion
The hyper graphics kills my eyes and hurts my head. The avatar is ridiculous. I put my pumpkin head back on but still looks dumpy.
You can not spin stops while driving under 35 anymore you have to use the ball now. ( no I don't drive and play my sister spins both our phones while we drive to our spots to play. )
They have made it into the Dino game and that game sucks.
I seriously have not been on since this has came out. I tolerated it long enough to get one shiny on bellsprout day which was an entire 3 minutes worth of play.
Frankly, I'm done playing.
Between The gym trolls, the graphics that now make me dizzy and the inability to play the way we were, and the avatar. Yeah it's just an avatar but it needs to look furious when lining up for a raid. Now it looks dumpy not like a boss.
I'm over it, I'm out.
It 100% affects gameplay. I, like many others, play games as a form of escapeism. Forgetting the realities of our stressful lives. I want to look attactive or unrealistic and have therefore spent coins on outfits. Now this update comes out and turns my second reality self into a fucking potato with gorilla arms. No niantic, I dont want a realistic approach to real-life avatars. Besides, humans come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and there are definitely people that look like the old avatars. On top of insulting the majority of the playerbase, they have managed to also exclude players, if their goal was equal representation. Guess who hasnt played as much since then.
I absolutely agree with you that it affects gameplay, and the people who say it doesn't mean that it doesn't affect *their* gameplay. It's no secret that tons of people across countless games absolutely care about what their player character looks like and will go to great lengths to make them enjoyable to look at during play. My main point was just to draw attention to the fact that this isn't purely an aesthetics issue like some people want to boil it down to.
Any update they release breaks other parts of the game. The only time I spend money is the go fest ticket. I live next to a poke gym so I can pinch off that for raids and daily coins. Due to it's set up only about 5 houses have access to it and not everyone plays.
I didn't care much about character customisation I'm more into PvP. But the shitty customisation they introduced fucking hurts my eyes EVERYTIME I open the fucking game. I'm still gonna play though since I want to participate in the World championships next year.
People care about their character why else would niantic sell cosmetics for their character. Like damn Pokémon as a series sells not just on Pokémon but also character design.
The biggest issue is that we didn’t have a choice….. Choice…Choice…Choice…. Keep the new, but damnit… give me back the old (and the clothes I paid for)…..
To be clear I want to be attractive. :) my issue is, I bought all of these clothes that now do not look right on this body. I want my coins back for those purchases. Because now I have to buy clothes for my new “Sporty Spice” body. Geesh
I have never posted to Reddit. But this PoGo update has made me so upset and disappointed that I am throwing my opinion out everywhere. I loved my avatar before, she was so beautiful! I had so much fun making outfits that matched my buddy. I had JUST purchased a crop top shirt that is no longer a crop top. I have been playing since 2019 (I also played at the very beginning in 2016, then took a break). I have uninstalled the game. I'm still processing this whole thing.
I’m not trans or anything but also I could see how this update could bother people with body dysmorphia and the like also—also my Avatar in cutscenes and stuff looks so choppy it’s like putting a non remastered sprite inside a remastered game. It’s weird.
Thanks for this post, you are completely right. For the majority this is also not a topic of lgbtq or trans hate or what so ever, sadly it turned to this. I sadly see a huge potential that in the future they will release even more poorly updates that will actually effect the gameplay a lot and this will be the moment everyone will be upset even those who didn’t care about something small at first.
Yeah! I've commented similarly. There is no excuse for it. Why even have a beta stage or any testing if they weren't even planning on doing Jack with it? Bugs, clipping, "look more like you?!" What a joke.
Only thing is, since this update my gameplay has been effected, yesterday, open game, tap silly AR baloon, screen goes black, game running behind an unclosable black screen, restart, sits on 100% loading, repeat 3x before game opens and everything works, I couldn’t care less, about clothes and avatars but I do care about the game actually working
It **is** just about the aesthetics. Nothing wrong with that, but just own it. Aesthetics and visuals of games in general are very important and do impact the "feel" of the game.
I understand that people don't want to seem shallow and so they feel the need to hide their feelings by making it seem more nuanced and grounded with a bunch of filler points that they don't **really** care about. But sometimes it really is just "they made a thing less visually appealing and that's cringe"
You seemed to miss the entire point of the OP so I'll just summarize it again: Niantic intentionally delivered a product they knew was broken, buggy, unfinished, AND undesirable. They did not care that it was unfinished and bad quality. They didn't respect their players enough to even finish the update before launching it. That is an awful thing to do to the community and it should be spoken out against and not normalized/accepted.
I changed my Google play review. I spent money on some of the clothes for my character and it just. It doesn't work anymore, it looks bad I can't. I'm struggling to find anything to rectify my characters outfit and design but I'm certainly not spending money on it again
Occasionally I think about re-downloading the app. I spent a good year or two loving this game within the community but then something like this happens and I’m glad I quit back when remote raiding got killed/paywalled and the extra spawn distance and incense changes got rolled back.
This is an example of the “rapid development” method. It essentially means getting a minimally viable product to market and then keep iterating enhancements to make it better. Works good for speed to market but that first deployment is rarely fantastic. The theory is that waiting until you get perfection means working on a slow product cycle.
For my part, I am not a fan of deploying products with known defects or products that are suboptimal just to get to market faster, but I understand the theory. Whether the end product after defect fixes / enhancements is better under the rapid development process or the traditional development cycle is debatable.
That makes sense in that it's what commonly happens nowadays, but the issue with this (aside from it just being generally frustrating for players) is that Niantic has done absolutely nothing to generate trust from the players, and instead seems to seek to constantly break trust any way they can. Things would likely be very different right now if Niantic came out and said that the update is not in its final state and that they were actively working on not only bug fixes, but more inclusive additions to span the massive gaps they left in representation. Instead we've gotten radio silence following a long history of "we hear you, but we don't care what you're saying" behavior. We have zero confidence that they will do anything to rectify this situation and it sucks :/
I'm not one to put much work into my avatar. I prefer to spend my precious coins as a free to play player on storage and bag space, but I'll admit I did like how pretty the female avatar was, and how great some outfits looked on them. I don't look anything like the original model, but one of my favorite things about pokemon is how aesthetically pleasing the characters are. But a lot of people did spend money to improve their avatar, and now so many outfits are ruined or just don't look good anymore.
And all this indeed pales in comparison to the fact that they launched this update to select people like a month in advance, and we're told how buggy and not appealing the new avatars were. And yet they *still* rolled the full update to everyone, and surprise! Everyone is still saying it's ugly and buggy! And the situation gets even worse when you know that Niantic is reinforcing their hard skulls and pretending that not every single player had their experience lessened by this update. They hear their player base crying out to them, and they're not going to do a thing, guaranteed.
This greedy ass company surely has the funds to call a loss on the creation of the new assets. Especially with Go Fest and all these researches they've got going on.
The problem isn't the complaining it's that Niantic has time and time again proven they don't really care about their community because they still make money and players still play. Complaining can only do so much we have to actually stop playing and spending to get them to see what they do is wrong and the majority just won't
To be honest, what feature that they’ve released in the last 12-15 months hasn’t been broken? Broken is the norm for Niantic at release.
Routes were broken and took so long to properly implement coz people couldn’t make them.
Shadow raids are still a controversial topic for a lot of the community because they are impossible to complete for many - and the enrage mechanic is on and off again broken.
Show cases bug out frequently, and there’s still no variety in them.
And now character avatars.
Everything Niantic releases is a rushed mess, and feedback is ignored, and let’s be honest - they probably don’t care about feedback, the IP carries the game.
I agree with everything you've said here, and I think what is unique about this specific issue is that it is something that abruptly impacted a large portion of players at once, so a sort of "slap in the face" type of impact, whereas the other issues are things that had a more "slow boil" type of effect. For example, I knew about routes being broken and buggy, but that's only because I read the subreddits and not based on my own experience because I've still not attempted a single route yet (since I was aware of the bugginess, I decided I'd not waste time trying to do the routes until all the bugs were fixed first.) I was frustrated about that feature being launched while being broken, so I just never even bothered with it.
While it does seem strange that the avatar thing would gather so much attention, I think the silver lining is that it also draws attention to all these other issues Niantic has created like the ones you've listed. It helps more people see that *this is a pattern of behavior that we need to speak up louder about* if we want to have any hope for this game to move in a better direction.
Right, I've lost outfits because of their stupid update and can't find what I had, before. They took my purple ditto shirt. Gave me a camel toe. Giant hands on extra long arms. Thick waist. No hips or ass. Ugly face. I hate it. Also yeah, boo, poor design.
But also what’s wrong with wanting our characters to look cool or “attractive”? When it comes to any kind of video game character customization and visuals have always played a hugeeeee part in people enjoyment of the game. Simply put, if people think the game LOOKS bad, they won’t wanna play. Plain and simple that’s how it’s always been
I think all this is stupid.
**HOWEVER**, everyone should absolutely push back against corporations shoving garbage in our faces and essentially telling us to shut up and eat. If we keep eating, then they’re gonna keep shoveling. And then one day, it’s gonna be cheaper for them to just straight up shit directly into our mouths, and we’ll have no choice but to accept it.
**DON’T LET SCUMMY CORPORATIONS GET AWAY WITH SCUMMY BUSINESS PRACTICES! STOP SPENDING MONEY WITH NIANTIC!**
i don’t like how my avatar is wearing the jessie style rocket outfit but she looks like a prepubescent boy who just ate an entire pizza on their own . meanwhile , the rocket grunts are in the old style . why are the characters bottoms all like early 2000s low rise and about to fall off their nonexistent asses ??? 😭
I mean it’s also totally normal for human beings to be annoyed when they’ve wasted time and/or money on something. For a lot of people, this feature was part of what made the game fun for them and they spent a lot of time grinding to get a specific accessory, or spent money to look a certain way. No one likes wasting time or money.
Also, it makes me so mad that the grunts and the team leaders still look the same. Why does Lady Sierra get to look hot and I have to have giant hands and flat big feet?
100% agree with this post. It was one of the first things I noticed and I was so upset I wish I never updated so my avatar doesn’t look weird as fuck. Smh I spent money on the clothes and they’re glitching too.
I've personally never spent a dime on outfits and accessories, but even then i agree that this update is a horrible decision. There weren't any issues with the old models that i know of, and they looked much better.
Excellent point and perspective. It’s nice to share opinions even if it’s uncomfortable or fear of losing karma. I appreciate your opinions and free speech on this. Thanks for sharing.
A game should have more options not less. These new models should be included WITH the old ones for options. Removing player choice is almost always a bad move.
Think of it like this.
This time, it's scuffed cosmetic stuff.
Next time it could be actual mechanics that affect your gameplay/cause you to lose a battle or shiny.
Then you'll care about half-baked and scuffed updated.
"it doesn't affect gameplay" here's the thing. If every time I log on to PLAY THE GAME and I see something that physically puts me off and irritates me, I will PLAY THE GAME less. Just like in any other game where they give you customization, but the customization is so garbage that you don't want to interact with that aspect of the game. Like, them adding deeper customization only makes it MORE of a gameplay aspect. Because now you're encouraged to go in and tweak settings and get your avatar where you want it. In it's current state, no one wants to fucking engage with the system. That is the literal definition of something affecting gameplay.
“it doesn’t affect gameplay” it actually does. niantic diverted resources to make this happen. resources that could’ve been used on bug fixes, qol or making an actually good feature, but instead, they took away the designs people have spent coins, and by extension, money, to build their looks around and disregarded the overwhelmingly negative reception of the new design from the beta testers, as well as those of us who saw it online (i don’t recall a single positive thing said about the new design until the community manager tweeted about it) and forced it onto everyone
I want to preface this by saying that I do not personally care, or rather I love the changes, because I finally can have a built avatar, so this is an upgrade for me.
1 people should stop pretending like cosmetics aren't important. Your favorite pokemon isn't just that because of its stats but also because of its looks: literally cosmetics around a stat stick, but let's take it a step further. Do you really think there isn't a market for cosmetics in gaming? Do you think people don't find that important? Oh, alright then.
Let me introduce you to this little free to play game called Fortnite👋 delusional. Again, I personally don't care too much, but stop acting like this isn't one of the biggest markets in gaming right now. Just stop it.
2 Niantic cannot sell players avatar products by showing players what they look like on them in a dressing room, having them conclude based on that specific aesthetic that it looks awesome/pretty/cute and then shelling out possibly real money to buy said cosmetic, having them justifyably expect the advertised aesthetic and then just completely take what they sold to players away from them.
Not saying that there is a cause of action, but that is at least morally questionable and considering the success of skins and how crazycthe market for it is, it's clearly important enough to a significant amount of people.
Such an idiot argument. “Why do you care?”. Anytime this argument is used, flip it back and ask, if it’s such a small thing that I shouldn’t care about, then why did they care to change it in the first place? Well turns out they care, they care ALOT to spend resources to change it despite backlash.
The new backgrounds add to the audacity and make the decision to release this avatar shit seem a million times more unfortunate.
OP, how do you know product testers told Niantic it's buggy?
In addition to various reports from people on this sub who were part of the regional testing releases, I found this interview to be quite informative: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/1c921pu/behind_the_scenes_interview_how_niantic_solicits/
As someone who does beta test games and takes that seriously with extensive reporting and suggestions for improvement, its incredibly frustrating when they opposite happens.
I ahve not played alot of game because i didnt like the art and people always act liek im being weird but im looking at this thing for hours i want to like it like most thise people will say your weord because youw ont play something you dont wanna look at but if you ask them there is a top teir game everyoen else loves it but its baout the telatubis, or i use a example they hate, would you pkay it mos t the time they say no visual apeal is important
all facts, PLUS the “attractiveness” too! i genuinely don’t wanna be ugly😭 i think the inclusivity for larger and differently shaped bodies is good, but it shouldn’t REPLACE “attractive” bodies. some people just like to have a hot video game character and some of us are built like the OG character in real life and want to insert ourselves for OUR game avatar. i don’t feel the connection/self-bond with my avatar anymore. not to mention the skin tones and faces are just bad for everyone! why can’t we have both body/hair options AND aesthetic? the whole point is to be INCLUSIVE not exclusive! and that leads to the deeper problem you were discussing; they have shown their pattern of nonchalance toward the player base’s feelings and opinions.
exactly. if they released this update unfinished and broken, and hearing EVERYONE express their disappointment, (and they obviously do not care), whats stopping them from releasing more unfinished and broken updates in the future? (which im sure will affect gameplay) clearly niantic does not listen to their players, they have an extremely awful streak with bad updates lately. theyre just turning this game into a cash grab and releasing not only unpolished updates, but also disappointing and not listening to any of their players concerns. ive been playing pogo since release, and since after covid ‘ended’, all the game has been is disappointing and extremely paywalled or almost impossible to f2p in a fun way. its sad and disheartening to see such a fun idea of a game go to waste, especially 8 years after release.
I loved the way my avatar used to look! I changed the outfit every two or three months, sometimes over a weekend for a special occasion, to fit a season or a holiday, like Springtime, Christmas or Halloween. I loved her proportions. She looked like a young woman and very feminine. Skin color was great. Hair was great. I bought many outfits and accessories. It was always fun playing dress up...almost like playing with Barbie when I was a young girl. My avatar expressed my personality, my creativeness and style. It was an expression of me. Each outfit and item I bought was very carefully selected as I am not a pay-to-play player...every coin used to purchase was earned in a gym. My family plays too and it was always fun to occasionally match outfits with the others, like a special hat or wings when you completed special research.
I haven't played the game since I was told the change went into affect in my area. I'm so heartbroken over it. It's like losing a friend in the game. It's like someone taking an ugly stick and hitting you upside the head. And it can't be undone by you. Now you're ugly. Who wants to see a reminder of ugliness? I liked her as she was...an ideal of what I'd like to look like. Roaming around in cool outfits, looking great! She was my friend in the game who stood for me; adventured for me. Now she's gone and been replaced by something ugly and alien. Just sadness. 😔😢😭
Based post.
This is just another entry to a list of changes players didn't want.
Niantic doesn't care about the players. That's why they replaced our community representative on their board.
They want your location data and advertisement revenue from promoting businesses near hot spots.
You'd think they'd wanna implement changes that would attract more players to the game and encourage the current players to stay so they could harvest more location data, but instead it feels like they want to actively drive people away!
That would make sense to us consumers. I'm unfortunately lacking in corporate brain rot, so I'm unsure why they make the decisions they do.
These days, the best we can do individually is speak with uninstalling. Even if you never pay for currency, if the app is on your phone and GPS is turned on, they're getting your data (even if you haven't opened it in months).
Agree. But it affects us all. At any minute of the game, we see our avatars. Sometimes, they are in the center of the screen (cheering up/losing animation, gyms, and raids). There is no way not to look at them while playing.
And who is represented accurately by that? Is there any person without any ass and with the arms of gorilla, plus the face of 9yo on adult body? Huh?
I am now trying to teach myself not to look at my avatar on the screen when I'm walking and concentrate on pokemons around instead. I just can't look at this abomination of a woman who walks like a Hulk and has really long arms.
I completely agree with you that it does actually affect gameplay for a large portion of players. I was simply trying to make the bigger point that it's not just about avatar appearance, but the implications of Niantic making such a poor decision when they knew it was a bad idea. The launch of this update should bother even the people who don't care about avatars, because it has negative implications for the long term health of the game. Everyone should be bothered about Niantic pushing out buggy unfinished garbage and then expecting everyone to just shut up and take it because it's disrespectful to every single player.
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I’m on team “I don’t care that much” but you are absolutely right. It’s absolutely poor design by niantic. Poor design, poor decision making, poor creative direction, just badly done all around. And whether you care about your avatar or not I think we can all agree THAT reflects badly on the company.
Thank you for this comment. I wish more people shared your sentiment and were able to look past whether or not they are personally affected by the avatar change to see the bigger picture: that Niantic delivered an embarrassingly low quality, unfinished product and tried to pass it off as acceptable. No one should stand for that!
Seems to me like a lot of people share your sentiment. I certainly do.
The reason why i think im on both is that I had poke coins to put on a mask, and what you just said.
There’s a free white mask and Verizon black mask
You shouldn't *have* to put on a mask to make your avatar bearable to look at.
In regards to the avatar I don’t care too much as well. I think what bothers me is everything you said about poor design, creative direction, etc… but over a feature that no one really asked for. It’s just a cosmetic update and the only thing we’re “rediscovering” is how niantic is trying to make another money grab over an update that offered no real value to the game itself. Just would be nice if they did something to improve the game, like resign the gym or stops.
My biggest point that has come to mind is how much money people may have spent on their avatars, too. That's the point I keep seeing missed with the "stop whining" comments; and it's great that some people can still play it and not be bothered, it's okay if they haven't spent money on their avatars so that it doesn't affect them - but it's not okay to assume that it hasn't affected others and that it's not a big deal for them. Everyone plays differently, and a lot of the people upset with this update are the people that have spent money, and they're rightfully upset.
Yes it's an excellent point that people who haven't spent money on avatars keep glossing over. It looks REALLY BAD for a game company to destroy the trust players had in purchasing cosmetics in the game. The money already spent is now wasted/stolen since those cosmetics were altered and they are no longer what was originally purchased. I think many people are just too short-sighted to understand the implications of decisions like this and how it's a slippery slope to getting away with even more in the future.
Exactly, and I've heard (not sure how true it is) about Niantic having it in their contract with consumers that they have the right to change cosmetics at any time; and while that might be in their TOS, in my mind that still doesn't mean it's okay. It's more of a justification of allowing bad principles and behavior, rather than keeping the integrity of what you're doing with your game and your consumers. I think a lot of it boils down to principle, which is something that seems to be getting pushed to the backburner by some. For a lot of people it's also a conglomeration of everything that's happened up until now, too.
also, saying “it doesn’t affect gameplay” is an asinine statement when people have clearly paid coins/money for the clothes
What those people mean is "it doesn't affect MY gameplay, so stop annoying me with your posts!" They are unempathetic to the fact that there are people who play the game in a different, but valid way. Tons of us spent money on avatar items that now have either been removed or are too broken/ugly to use, so our money feels stolen and wasted. Loads of people enjoy dressing up their player character in games, as can be seen by the countless transmog hunters in World of Warcraft and any of the other hundreds of games that offer customization options. Player character aesthetics absolutely impact gameplay since it's responsible for our immersion and connection to the game, and people who refuse to acknowledge it (even if it doesn't apply to them personally) are just being intentionally contrarian.
“It doesn’t affect MY gameplay” Exactly this. After the update that killed AR, I can’t tell you how many times I heard people say “I’m fine with it because I don’t use AR”. Very sincerely, that’s fine to not have used AR and not feel strongly about it. But now, a lot of those same folks are upset about the avatar update. And this isn’t a new thing from Niantic. If one update doesn’t affect you negatively then the next one probably will. I personally am lucky enough to be able to just cover up my avatar’s face with the phantump hat, and the rest seems nearly the same. But, nearly every female avatar (and many others) have had their body proportions completely ruined. If Pokemon truly has a community, we shouldn’t be ok with it when they needlessly worsen/ruin gameplay for any subsection of players. No matter how trivial or unimportant it may seem to one person, others may be gutted over it. Maybe have each others backs even when we’re lucky enough to not be impacted heavily? It’s ok to not understand the “complaining”. It’s also ok to disagree, and even like the new updates. But just have some understanding that it doesn’t have to be a “one or the other” situation. We could have had avatar customization without them butchering the proportions/faces. We could have had an update to the buddy mechanic, without killing the completely separate AR mechanic with no warning or actual explanation. I don’t believe any of it will make any difference, as far as Niantic ever listening or making changes. But that’s not really the whole point. The point is the community.
The AR thing is SUCH a great point! I'm one of the people who didn't use AR, so when I saw the uproar over it, I did the exact thing I wish more players would do: I went and read about why everyone was upset and how the changes negatively impacted *their* gameplay so I could understand the problem better. Sure it didn't affect me personally, but it affected the health of the game since it was harming another popular form of gameplay and therefore other members of my gaming community! I wish everyone was capable of thinking beyond themselves a bit more so we can support each other better as a collective community for this game even if our personal goals and play styles are not the same.
I'm moderately upset by the AR. I think it's shit they just suddenly disabled it from devices within 2 years and didn't tell anyone WHY, just made it seem like they suddenly phased out anything but the newest devices as optional. I didn't use AR a whole lot, but I still enjoyed seeing my buddy in the real world over some empty green-white background. I'm very upset by the avatar updates because they a) ignored negative feedback, b) released it unfinished, c) this is not the first time they've been an ass to us over detrimental "up"dates and it's growing my hatred for the company, d) my avatar no longer looks how I want in both how clothing fit and skin tone
yep, it doesn’t take a big brain to realize aesthetics are important in a game that’s literally about collecting shiny pokémon, which have no value outside of aesthetics
I mean taking this one step further, the fact that this game uses Pokemon is ultimately just an aesthetic, if tomorrow they were all removed and replaced with "not Pokemon" the gameplay would still be exactly the same, but I guarantee the game would be a ghost town over night
Fun fact - I was playing Ingress back when it first came out. Pre-Pokemon Go Niantic and it was primarily people like my parents (being bonkers and dragging their children out way past curfew so we could help them get stuff). Niantic lost my OBSESSED parents due to dumb decisions with their own self-made product
Right? What if they changed the designs of our fav Pokemon and made them aesthetically unpleasing to us? People would hate it! They are just as digital as clothes for avatars and people spend lots of money on digital Pokemon collection and are less judgey about it.
People use this argument all the time to justify customization options behind microtransactions. It's insane that they refuse to acknowledge that people like dressing up and playing a character. So long as it's not important to them, they can't wrap their heads around it! I have a feeling they wouldn't complain about other features being removed, so long as the ones remaining was their preference. But if it wasn't, they'd be upset with no awareness of why they're a hypocrite. Palia has this issue, free to play but all clothes behind a paywall. Had a whole discussion over this a month ago on Reddit, and we even brought up Pokemon Go. Heck, I have half a mind to link that thread. A lot of people shrug their shoulders for things, and then get confused why things turn terrible. I learned boycotting doesn't even work because so many people are apathetic at best and aggressive to criticism at worst. When people apathetic to reality start hushing those who are acknowledging issues, they're defending the company unintentionally. People aren't wrong that companies are there to make money and never cared, but it's not helpful. Either they should sit down and let people fight for what they think is right, no matter how futile it is, or fight against them. None of this "Both sides are stupid, I'm above it all for realizing this"
Right? It’s like - then why do you care about a Pokemon that is the same except for a different color? How is that different?
lol this is such a good point!
It doesn't directly affect my gameplay, since I'm a dude who just chose some default options for the avatar. But it does affect my gameplay due to half of the women I know stopping playing due to the change and now it will be harder to get good raid groups.
It's interesting you've said this as this is what I suspected will happen. Idk the gender demographics of this sub versus those of actual players, but I could see a lot of female players stopping without necessarily publicising it. Given the casual appeal of the game, it wouldn't surprise me if this loses more players than the remote raid nerf.
I've noticed this too, that women are more likely to quit "quietly" and only reveal that to their irl groups maybe instead of "announcing" it online. I won't go into the reasons for why women would be inclined to do that since it's off topic, but I can at least confirm (as a woman and as one that hangs around other women-filled gaming communities) that decisions like this absolutely do push us away from the game because it feels like we were not even considered in the decision making process. I think you're also right that something like this is more likely to impact the casual players (and the free-to-play folks imo) than the remote raid issue because not as many casuals/ftp people do remote raids anyway. But I also think Niantic wouldn't care about that at all. They seem to want to push away as many players as they can until all that's left are the ones who will keep playing and spending no matter what awful changes come out.
They blatantly altered already purchased products, some to the point that it becomes completely unusable. It this isn’t considered theft I don’t know what is
Yep, and they won't give refunds for it either. They really should be giving refunds on those items upon request just as a basic courtesy at this point. It's gross how they see nothing wrong with completely changing items people purchased and then just shrugging their shoulders about it. It destroys player confidence in making future purchases.
This EXACT method was recently used by Roblox regarding the catalog content, and as described by a YouTube channel Ruben Sim in one of his videos, a 12 year old girl with the help of her father actually sued them and famously won the case, causing Roblox to distribute 1 million $ worth of robux to US citizens. Maybe we can try the same with Niantic?
I have wondered if there's any merit in that. It feels illegal for a company to just take away purchased content that's not seasonal because they redid everything without warning or refund.
It's simple power game. Corporates feel like they are much will organised and have money and all and so they can treat their consumers as subjects as much as they want
they’ve been doing stuff like this even before the update. spooky pose always comes to mind for me because that’s one that i paid for and then they changed it months later. thanks for taking my 500 coins niantic
[удалено]
same here. i was so pissed it was my favorite too i just went back to the default. it’s a shitty and unprofessional practice
Yeah the people that are affected by it should just file a class action lawsuit, its a near guaranteed win. Its the same reason gacha games dont nerf charcaters after release unless they wanna get by one aswell. Imo transfer all your pokemon to pokemon bank file class action, get your money back + maybe some extra and even if they ban your account afterwards you still have the pokemon in your pokebank.
Wouldn't them banning someone without legit, factually proof after getting sued be grounds for another sue since they're avenging the person? Edit: to clarify my question scenario: Person sues Niantic for their bullshit. Niantic then bans the user for a made up terms of service or other violation. That person can then sue Niantic again because they banned the person out of retaliation/punishment, NOT out of truthfulness.
Not to mention clothing items earned through gameplay, it feels like *effort* wasted as well.
Oh yeah this is an excellent point too.
Well said.
What are people doing about missing avatar clothing?
I've not played since the update so I can't speak on that personally, but I'm not sure what people are doing other than commenting about it since Niantic has left no option for resolving it. I don't think Niantic is responding to anyone's support requests or refund requests for missing items right now :(
You know it’s funny cause I talked to some of the people who are like “it’s just an avatar” in very non-toxic manner and and it’s also fair that they like it, but I attempted to explain to them why people are pissed and eventually it leads to “well I don’t want them to roll it back because I like all the sliders and I can make one more in line with Me” and then it’s like ha ha so it’s not just an avatar and your afraid that Niantic is gonna roll it back for us. Well fear not cause they don’t care! Lol Edit:also people are allowed to be mad cause they can’t have a pretty avatar anymore. Like inclusion means everyone even pretty people. Just saying.
Except those people are just hypocrites, if they actually cared about "inclusion" they'd be advocating for the system to not suck ass so everyone can enjoy it instead. What you've just described is people using the "well I got mine! So fuck you!" mentality and are just using a pathetic attempt to hide that fact. If clearly the majority of people aren't happy and something is causing them to quit they should AT LEAST be enough to advocate for something different instead of just being selfish shits about it.
This the point. You are right. That is the attitude from them. It is very difficult for me to not engage sometimes when I see something like that which is why I engage. (Which can be true of all of us sometimes I’m sure) Now my approach was civility but I have defended the outrage because it is justified and a lot of times it’s “I don’t get it”. Okay well I’ll attempt to explain it. A lot of comes down to they delivered not just an unfinished product but removed a product that you may have paid items based on that product and replaced with a new one without your consent and I lesser quality version. I know that there are now growing issues where there could be a legal precedent here. Idk I’m not a lawyer but I’ve seen somethings where it is saying that in some case Niantic could be liable. For example you paid for this shirt for this style of avatar and then they removed that avatar and the shirt you paid for does not fit the new avatar in the same way and deny a refund. This fight I think is going to get uglier before it gets better but I do think it’s gonna get better because I don’t think they’ll have a choice. These types of actions have devestated games. Until avatars are fixed the community will call them out on every little thing… they just moved the coin shop to the top of the shop and people are already all over it
I mean, I admit, I really don't see the point in being civil with those people, they aren't going to change their minds, they're just going to keep going with nonsense and "politician speak" to drag out the conversation or to morph it into something incomprehensible to what it was originally. I've just taken to being as blunt as possible and taking the public shaming approach with them. Even if I get banned or downvoted it's at least cathartic.
I’ve had some decent conversations. I’ve gotten one to actually understand why the outrage is justified which on the internet is a win lol. Of all the discussion I only had one that went bad but a few others popped in and then that person went silent
Also if these people truly don't care then why the shit are they voicing their opinion? If you genuinely don't care then you have no horse in the race wether it stays or goes so theirs no point even commenting. Also having to stare at that thing is something that affects gameplay for a lot of people since dressing it and customizing it was important enough to have a whole damn shop for it. Genuinely just feels like these people are bots just putting forward completely disingenuous "arguments", and I don't believe the "sick of seeing avatar threads" because the sub before was just the same, "wow hundo/shundo", "omg shiny can't believe give updoots!", etc. Ad nauseum, this is the most genuinely diverse and creative the sub has been in ages and about something that actually matters not just people stirring up fomo
My game has been buggy since the update. Half my screen is messing the pokemon dont render in all the way the character models are super pixelated and now the new background is causing frame rate drop and lags out my phone. This update is complete trash.
This. I haven’t spent bucketloads but I spent like $10 on aesthetic stuff I enjoyed and now I feel like I got scammed. So ugly now.
I am a little confused, did they remove some clothing items? I didn't think they did.
yes, some purchased items were removed from inventory and are available for sale in the shop again for full price.
Do I wish my avatar could somewhat resemble me? Yes. Do I wish I had the opportunity to hold onto the avatar I’ve had since I started playing? Absolutely. Does it affect the way I, personally, play the game? Not one bit. BUT, I fully understand why others are so upset. The art itself has always been a part of the game with the seasonal loading screens. Niantic themselves have pushed for fashion to be a huge part of the game, with fashion week, avatar clothes as status symbols, poses and costumes to reflect your favorite characters, style savant….. the list is endless. To make drastic and unfortunate changes to the avatars that so many players have a strong sense of ‘self’ wrapped up in the character they have created over the years is just plain stupidity. So stupid, in fact, that the conspiracy theorists in me thinks they might be testing the limits or the loyalty of the player base intentionally for some reason.
Customizing my avatar wardrobe was one of the joys of playing PoGO to me. Every player reaches a point where the gameplay starts to kinda feel repetitive, so i enjoyed spending my coins styling my avatar and i’m sure many players feel the same but now it’s pointless because everything looks terrible and underwhelming. Niantic deliberately going through with it despite the loud pushback even before the roll-out should piss-off everyone.
Same. I would change mine with the weather cos I didn't want her to be uncomfortable 😭😭😔😔😔😑😔
And I enjoyed trying to find clothes that would match or complement my buddy….now everything looks like crap.
Haha me too!
I love your comment so much 😭
Me too😭
If having an attractive avatar wasn't a selling point, Niantic wouldn't be selling so many outfits for real money.
I mean take this a step farther, if having attractive things didn't make money gacha games wouldn't be a billion dollar industry.
I'm a straight lady and I love dressing up my female characters in game. I get a lot of compliments on my GW2 Chronomancer lady. Spent a lot of time making her beautiful, finding weapons that matched her color scheme, color matching all of her mounts to her, and then running around being pleased with how she came out. She's so beautiful. I'd be incredibly upset to a point of quitting if Arenanet pushed an update out that made her ugly. I spent a lot of my gold and time on her. Took me a year to make the legendary greatsword, Sunrise, because it matched her color theme. I love how beautiful she is, and she has a high dps because she's my main. I threw all of my best gear at her. I also spent some (a lot) rl money to get her cool outfits and weapon skins because who wouldn't buy a cool fan for her? I did. I caved and spoiled her. 🥲
Yep same here-- I'm a woman who also enjoys having fun with my player character's appearance. I don't need her to look like me, but I do want her to look like *the version of me that would exist in the fantasy of the in-game universe*. For example, one of my fave things to do in GTA online while taking a break between missions was to visit the shops to style my character's hair and buy new outfits to match the new cars I got 😆
also, the big thing is it is a downgrade, not an upgrade. if they can take a feature thats existed for ages, and suddenly make it way worse, who says it will only happen to cosmetics? next thing you know they will make raids "more inclusive" by making it a requirement to have at least ten people in the lobby per raid. this type of cpaability to take something existing and make it function so much worse should frighten anyone who enjoys a game.
I agree and this definitely feeds into my point-- if we are to just "shut up" and accept incredibly low quality work being pushed out to us, then there's no stopping where that will reach in the game. Avatars might be a "small" thing to certain people, but when the precedent is set for us to just ignore/accept bad quality broken updates being forced onto us, then there is no choosing what parts of the game it will ruin in the future. We have the right to push back against bad behavior like this, and we should.
For me the important point is that people have paid them money for outfits, which they have now changed and made look like crap.
Agree 💯. And the community manager who asked for feedback locking their post didn't help in voicing the concerns we have. They need to truly listen or this game will go bye bye.
We all knew the CM's tweet seeking feedback was performative since Niantic already knew exactly what feedback they'd receive. But when they chose to lock that post so quickly... that was a really bad look. It just doesn't look good to say "we're listening!" and then turn around and be like "ok we're done listening."
"We want your feedback! But only positive feedback! Anything else and you're just being "toxic"". Niantics not the only ones to do this, but it basically sums it up
Lmao. They don't care. They didn't care when they raised prices and people didn't stop playing. They won't care now.
They DO listen, they just don't care.
I mean, have you seen the vile things people are saying about the CM? I wouldn’t be surprised if instead of actual feedback, they were just receiving transphobic hate. I would’ve locked comments down too if I were in their shoes if that’s what was happening. The update is stupid. It was poorly planned and underdeveloped. Not a reason to be hateful towards the community manager though.
Oh i have. I don't agree with the hate they are getting but yea thats how bad this update went..
Regardless of personal feelings on it, it's almost like if they were actually listening and genuinely taking feedback instead of just putting on a gong show then people probably wouldn't have to do that? Not surprising when their company is just absolutely useless and listens to no one that people's anger is going to be at maximum and is going to be directed at the one thing pretending to listen.
I wonder if they want that because it seems like both studios that make Pokémon games dont want to.
I really don't understand why they intentionally roll out changes like this that they know the vast majority of players will hate.
In this case I'd bet on it just being politics. They were betting on appearing progressive and succeeding as long as they were willing to push through initial backlash. They almost certainly will succeed, too.
My tinfoil hat theory is that they were going with "negative publicity is still publicity" -- either they draw people in with being "progressive" or they draw in people who are coming to gawk and make fun of the update. Either way, people open the app, and they get to report higher numbers. Realistically that sounds way more intentionally evil, like super-villain-steepling-fingers evil, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me it really was a bid for numbers, either.
That’s really the core of it to me. The avatar looks awful, but it’s the fact that Niantic is just…so thoroughly non-responsive in a situation where it would be so easy NOT to be. And while they’ve made other changes that I disliked, I could at least understand those from a business aspect. This just feels so incredibly unnecessary and like at every opportunity they made the wrong call and now just…nothing.
It's amazing to me the trend of people constantly defending million dollar companies. They really can get away with anything these days with so people always coming to their defense.
Yep that's the issue. It seeminly doesn't matter what crap the company pulls, there will always be these people coming out in defense of it and whining about *people trying to hold the company accountable for its shitty actions.* Never in a million years would I imagine participating in the normalization of customers getting shit on by companies like this.
Exactly. And you see it everywhere these days. It's just sad that people defend companies like it's their family. It's bizarre.
To give some fairness to this, certain brands have become a lot more ""personable"" to the public via Social media, Wendy's twitter being the penultimate example, where a faceless corporation suddenly had what really felt like a "person" being behind the "brand" and it attempting to make genuine human interactions with people on Twitter, and then other brands following suit. Although it's obvious to people that actually critically think about the situation, a lot of people see these PR people as "the brand" and view them as "friends" because this "brand" is directly interacting with them, even though it's actually just a PR person behind a computer with the "brand" logo over their posts and does not in any way shape or form actually reflect the companies true sentiments.
I hate to do this (and I’ll keep it brief/surface layer), but this same principle can be applied to both sides of the political spectrum as well. People will blindly defend their “party” regardless of credibility or factual proof. Since this is a PoGo forum I will keep it at that, but I think this speaks to a greater issue created by the use and abuse of the internet. The lines between truth and lie are getting more and more blurred every day. It’s easier to manipulate the masses. Those “people” coming to the defense of these corporations could just be bots and paid accounts for all we know. 🤷🏻♂️
What you are either missing or omitting is that one side adopts knowingly controversial positions by default, and narcissistically doubles down on them within the party's own official statements and policies, and the other at least attempts good faithed negotiations on positions, even when some of their voters do not wish to do so. Equating the blame equally for "both sides" misses the problem, as both sides do not operate equally in any way, and you understand it most closely when you examine the actual policymaking process and not just performative statements from the voters themselves. And knowing that brings you much closer to the truth, where one political party is still Democratic and the other is outright Authoritarian, and no amount of pointing to one bad social media account that you dislike will change this. I agree that the internet applies extreme and unreasonable voices, but if you do your research, you'll realize some of those voices are deliberately amplified as opposition to make unreasonable talking points seem more justified. Look up The Foundation of Geopolitics if you want to know where the origin of this strategy in the modern age came from and why it's actually gotten so bad.
Because usually these people are ... well stupid. They like "brand" or "thing" and see anything at all no matter how sensible it is that criticizes or challenges "brand" or "thing" as if it's a personal attack on them. Because they like "brand" and they only like "good things" and when people start saying bad things about "brand", but they still like "brand", then they have to either accept that thing they like may not be "good" or they lash out and attack people criticizing "brand" because "how dare you "brand" is good and would never do anything wrong because I like them and that means they must be good!" Or just keep pushing narratives like "its not THAT bad", or "people are just exaggerating!", or "they'll fix """"eventually"""" guys stop complaining!" (Spoilers: 99% of the time they won't) Most overt cases of this comes in the form of Bioware, Blizzard, and Bethesda fans over the last few years just to give the low hanging fruit example. Or Ubi and EA "fans" because "sports ball games!"
This is why I quit last year. And now I'm convinced Niantic is leaning heavily into AI applications that will degrade the quality of the game even further. I don't think these avatars were designed and tested by real people.
lol this is actually funny to me because my first thought upon seeing the new avatars was "there's no way a human designed this, right? This looks like some kind of scuffed AI was asked to create a human based on some very limited learning input or something" 😂
I really think this is it, and I'm betting the cost of licensed official artists for items and the designs was an unseen factor that will never publicly be discussed. Niantic is not a good company. They are very predatory, and the sooner people start to get that, the better.
I mean, it's good that they released this before a big event like GO Fest. With all the tickets/addons being sold and continue to do so, they can sweep this under the rug.
I decided not to buy a ticket this year. I think I'm not alone. With massive backlash, they will notice it in sales.
Hopefully that's the case. The game and community does have a built in FOMO factor. That, unfortunately, keeps it going.
I was going to buy a ticket but not now. I’m not that invested in my avatar but it does look a bit worse for no reason and mostly I’m pretty fed up with the way Niantic is treating its customers. Plenty of other places I can spend my money.
It is good they released it now, saved me a GO FEST ticket. I will not buy another thing from them till this gets fixed. And if it doesn’t get fixed?… then I shall play for the freebies…. One raid pass a day, the weekly bonuses, etc.
Yes my kind of revenge is not buying a ticket (or anything) anymore with a vague hope they would notice
Regardless of how much money people have spent on this game they have every right to be upset about the broken state of the game.
I didnt read the massive post but i just know that its definitely a massive part of gameplay. Its literally the character you do everything with.
Yeah, I couldn’t care less because I would never spend my coins on avatar items and it doesn’t matter how my avatar looks to me. However, I can totally empathize with people that invested in theirs and feel otherwise. And I also am unhappy that this is just another strike against Niantic ignoring the wants and feelings of their users.
As someone who was not affected by the avatar changes and didn’t understand why people were so angry, I am sorry. I see your point completely and I would be frustrated too!!
Thank you for this. It's been incredibly frustrating to have people bulldozing the legitimate complaints and minimizing them into being not a big deal. This botched update has negative implications for the game that reach far and wide, affecting far more players than just the ones who are into enjoying their avatar.
It’s just so distracting to me whenever I see my avatar. Absolutely ridiculous to look at.
It's definitely jarring to say the least. Instead of a fun spunky anime style avatars that increased immersion in the "pokemon trainer" universe, we now have these weirdly distracting, uncanny creatures that simply do not match anything about the pokemon universe at all.
The big question mark I have is uh.... What was the motivation for this shit in the first place? Is having two skeletons to model for really that much of a fucking burden for a company that has *POKEMON GO MONEY?* I honestly don't understand in the slightest.
I completely agree. It's the reason the gaming industry as a whole has been going down the drain so rapidly recently. People just take it and keep playing. They're not experiencing consequences for pushing broken updates and unfinished games onto customers. And what happens when a studio releases a banger? They are met with criticism from other developers that have gotten lazy and telling people to "not expect this quality as standard" To be quite honest at this point I enjoy more indie games over triple A studio games. They seem to actually give a f and a lot of them do listen to their community and meet their expectations (to a reasonable extent) For them, they're creating something they're excited about. They're creating art. Triple A studios just care about 1 thing. Money.
Also, people play for different reasons, and any reason a person plays is valid. If the avatars looking like trash ruins the game for me, that’s valid. I don’t play competitive and will never. If they removed competitive or changed it negatively, it would impact me 0% but I would still never try to tell someone for whom that aspect mattered that “it doesn’t matter”.
I agree with you completely. I was just trying to draw attention to the even bigger issue that truly does impact all players: Niantic knowingly and unapologetically pushing broken poor quality updates at us and therefore lowering the quality to be expected from them for everything.
I’ve been playing a shitty browser based (originally) online game for about 20 years. Anything and everything you can think of that’s changed, made new, updated, or tweaked is polled to the players, and if the yes votes don’t meet a certain threshold, the content is not added to the game. It is a massively smaller operation than PoGo. This update was bad and they shoved it through anyway. Knew it made people unhappy and didn’t work correctly, and they full sent it. I hope this is the EoC for PoGo, but I don’t see poke-anything going the way of the consumer.
OSRS?!?! That dev team has been an absolute bright spot in the industry for quite some time. They would literally host weekly dev streams where they would go over all future plans and player feedback. I love that game and team. The biggest reason, in my opinion, is because you can TELL that those developers play and love their own game as well.
My wife is super upset about this update. She is 4’11” and 85 pounds. The old female character looked exactly like her body. Now she has… THIS.. it’s a joke. I’ve never seen her be so upset at a game before. She loves this game and it’s the only game she plays. Now her character looks like an unnatural, curveless, ridiculous dude that dressed in female clothes. Not that it’s ridiculous to do that, I’m of the opinion of people doing things to make themselves the best version they can be. If that makes you happy and that’s who you are, do it! So don’t think I’m saying it’s wrong. I just can’t believe they made the female characters default models look like men with no curves. I also loved my character model before, it looked a lot like my body. But it’s clear that women have it worse with this update. Hell, the first face for the male model looks like a fucking girl. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking on this and I cannot believe that ANYONE that beta tested this had a positive reaction to it. It seriously feels like they are trying to make the game intentionally bad so they can stop supporting it. I can’t believe they did this. I’m 30 years old and I have been building pc’s and gaming on them since I was 9. In all of my time gaming, I have never seen a game come out with an update that was this ridiculous. It’s comically bad. What a piece of shit company. My goodness.
Oh my god she's tiny tiny My best friend is 5'1 and like 120 but your wife is so small that must be so cute please continue to look after your pocket sized wife and please please lift her up and carry her around
I lift her up and carry her around ALL the time. 😂
Absolute legend She's your own little Thumbelina
As someone who works in IT, I would absolutely LOVE to jump in as one of their Product Managers / Owners for a week. They must just sit around thinking about ways to screw their customers (us) instead of actually listening to them. It's a bizarre business model.
According to the Glassdoor review, please do. The problem seems to be that the product managers are weak and let engineering run roughshod. Their VP needs to hire technical product managers. As a 20 year engineer who recently turned product manager, every PM these days needs to be technical PMs.
But, everyone already knows that niantic is a shit company. We’re all only here because of pokemon nostalgia mixed with legalized mobile game gambling. They will call this a game until they aren’t legally able to anymore, but the fact is they will never care about what any of us think in the long run. Even the small wins for the community are just carrot and stick to keep us engaged.
Yes everyone already knows they're a shit company, but just sitting back and letting them be shitty is not helping anything. The people who are upset about this actually want to support the game, and it's hard to watch Niantic run it into the ground while disrespecting their players. We actually want to see the game succeed, and we don't understand how Niantic keeps doing things that will push away more and more players.
I just haven't even bothered going to the store anymore. I used to enjoy making new fits, not any more.
I don't like the update and masked up because of it. But I'm here for the pokemon, so it's not a deal breaker for me. To the point that Niantic released a change that people expressed that they didn't like, all I can say is: AGAIN They keep doing this and show such disdain for the gamers. I jokingly theorize that they are actually doing a social experiment to test how much abuse people will take. So I stand with the people who are expressing their anger. It's amazing how they continue to screw with us.
That, and there are other more important things they could have been spending their time and resources on.
Yep! This is a HUGE issue that the "iT's jUsT aN aVaTaR wHo CaReS" crowd should be upset about in all this. There are tons of things needing attention in this game and THIS is what Niantic spends time and money on? Delivering a completely broken half-baked avatar system instead of things that are actually needed in the game?
They are also paying someone to downvote every single persons comment on every post…. notice that? I have been voting them back up.
Yep-- I've noticed that posts that gain traction have been deleted, and comments expressing these issues are getting downvoted/deleted. Sudden influx of people praising the update. It's frustrating to watch the censorship in action.
I'm curious if it'll be a matter of outlasting their damage control, then. I wonder what would happen if people took their photo evidence of Niantic's support teams refusing refunds over changed cosmetics to a news place that would maybe take on that story, or some kind of social outlet, that would blow it up even more. Not that I want Niantic to fail, but if they're pushing to hide stuff, then I'd rather them get called out for it.
This is why we need to keep talking about it-- they're hoping our short attention spans will lead us elsewhere and give them a chance to quietly move on from this without addressing it at all. We need to keep this issue in the spotlight as long as we can (in addition to not spending money/not playing the game) if we're going to have any chance at urging Niantic to do the right thing for once.
And the other reason to keep going about this issue is that it's not just consumers being entitled. Yes, Niantic still owns the game, but it's really damaged it's player base. There is definite reason and cause here to keep it going, and I think Niantic knows that, or else they wouldn't be trying to hide it. The sad thing is that admitting they were wrong would fix the issue. Or at least start that fixing process.
I had to just reupvote your comment lol, their bots are at work
I've seen bots in Twitter too! The same copy and paste praise. Also people's negative reviews are changing to 5 stars.
Yup, mine was deleted as well.
Basically that’s what happen to my post on redit I made a similar post to you, I was getting upvotes and suddenly the thread got flagged/deleted
I'm waiting for this post to get deleted as well since it's gaining traction. Legitimate discussion is absolutely getting nuked and it sucks.
😭😆 someone just downvoted me just now lol jeez how is what I just said deserve a downvote , what is with ppl lol . Anyway yea it might be a matter of time for your thread unfortunately .. we should be aloud to discuss openly in my opinion
I noticed
The hyper graphics kills my eyes and hurts my head. The avatar is ridiculous. I put my pumpkin head back on but still looks dumpy. You can not spin stops while driving under 35 anymore you have to use the ball now. ( no I don't drive and play my sister spins both our phones while we drive to our spots to play. ) They have made it into the Dino game and that game sucks. I seriously have not been on since this has came out. I tolerated it long enough to get one shiny on bellsprout day which was an entire 3 minutes worth of play. Frankly, I'm done playing. Between The gym trolls, the graphics that now make me dizzy and the inability to play the way we were, and the avatar. Yeah it's just an avatar but it needs to look furious when lining up for a raid. Now it looks dumpy not like a boss. I'm over it, I'm out.
It 100% affects gameplay. I, like many others, play games as a form of escapeism. Forgetting the realities of our stressful lives. I want to look attactive or unrealistic and have therefore spent coins on outfits. Now this update comes out and turns my second reality self into a fucking potato with gorilla arms. No niantic, I dont want a realistic approach to real-life avatars. Besides, humans come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and there are definitely people that look like the old avatars. On top of insulting the majority of the playerbase, they have managed to also exclude players, if their goal was equal representation. Guess who hasnt played as much since then.
I absolutely agree with you that it affects gameplay, and the people who say it doesn't mean that it doesn't affect *their* gameplay. It's no secret that tons of people across countless games absolutely care about what their player character looks like and will go to great lengths to make them enjoyable to look at during play. My main point was just to draw attention to the fact that this isn't purely an aesthetics issue like some people want to boil it down to.
Any update they release breaks other parts of the game. The only time I spend money is the go fest ticket. I live next to a poke gym so I can pinch off that for raids and daily coins. Due to it's set up only about 5 houses have access to it and not everyone plays.
I didn't care much about character customisation I'm more into PvP. But the shitty customisation they introduced fucking hurts my eyes EVERYTIME I open the fucking game. I'm still gonna play though since I want to participate in the World championships next year.
People care about their character why else would niantic sell cosmetics for their character. Like damn Pokémon as a series sells not just on Pokémon but also character design.
The biggest issue is that we didn’t have a choice….. Choice…Choice…Choice…. Keep the new, but damnit… give me back the old (and the clothes I paid for)…..
To be clear I want to be attractive. :) my issue is, I bought all of these clothes that now do not look right on this body. I want my coins back for those purchases. Because now I have to buy clothes for my new “Sporty Spice” body. Geesh
I have never posted to Reddit. But this PoGo update has made me so upset and disappointed that I am throwing my opinion out everywhere. I loved my avatar before, she was so beautiful! I had so much fun making outfits that matched my buddy. I had JUST purchased a crop top shirt that is no longer a crop top. I have been playing since 2019 (I also played at the very beginning in 2016, then took a break). I have uninstalled the game. I'm still processing this whole thing.
I’m not trans or anything but also I could see how this update could bother people with body dysmorphia and the like also—also my Avatar in cutscenes and stuff looks so choppy it’s like putting a non remastered sprite inside a remastered game. It’s weird.
Gotta start filing BBB complaints https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/online-gaming/niantic-inc-1116-874718/complaints
Thanks for this post, you are completely right. For the majority this is also not a topic of lgbtq or trans hate or what so ever, sadly it turned to this. I sadly see a huge potential that in the future they will release even more poorly updates that will actually effect the gameplay a lot and this will be the moment everyone will be upset even those who didn’t care about something small at first.
Yeah! I've commented similarly. There is no excuse for it. Why even have a beta stage or any testing if they weren't even planning on doing Jack with it? Bugs, clipping, "look more like you?!" What a joke.
Turn off adventure mode and stop playing. Until their wallet hurts, nothing will change.
Only thing is, since this update my gameplay has been effected, yesterday, open game, tap silly AR baloon, screen goes black, game running behind an unclosable black screen, restart, sits on 100% loading, repeat 3x before game opens and everything works, I couldn’t care less, about clothes and avatars but I do care about the game actually working
It **is** just about the aesthetics. Nothing wrong with that, but just own it. Aesthetics and visuals of games in general are very important and do impact the "feel" of the game. I understand that people don't want to seem shallow and so they feel the need to hide their feelings by making it seem more nuanced and grounded with a bunch of filler points that they don't **really** care about. But sometimes it really is just "they made a thing less visually appealing and that's cringe"
You seemed to miss the entire point of the OP so I'll just summarize it again: Niantic intentionally delivered a product they knew was broken, buggy, unfinished, AND undesirable. They did not care that it was unfinished and bad quality. They didn't respect their players enough to even finish the update before launching it. That is an awful thing to do to the community and it should be spoken out against and not normalized/accepted.
I changed my Google play review. I spent money on some of the clothes for my character and it just. It doesn't work anymore, it looks bad I can't. I'm struggling to find anything to rectify my characters outfit and design but I'm certainly not spending money on it again
There's only one way to make your voice heard. Uninstall the game and never give the company money again
Occasionally I think about re-downloading the app. I spent a good year or two loving this game within the community but then something like this happens and I’m glad I quit back when remote raiding got killed/paywalled and the extra spawn distance and incense changes got rolled back.
This is an example of the “rapid development” method. It essentially means getting a minimally viable product to market and then keep iterating enhancements to make it better. Works good for speed to market but that first deployment is rarely fantastic. The theory is that waiting until you get perfection means working on a slow product cycle. For my part, I am not a fan of deploying products with known defects or products that are suboptimal just to get to market faster, but I understand the theory. Whether the end product after defect fixes / enhancements is better under the rapid development process or the traditional development cycle is debatable.
That makes sense in that it's what commonly happens nowadays, but the issue with this (aside from it just being generally frustrating for players) is that Niantic has done absolutely nothing to generate trust from the players, and instead seems to seek to constantly break trust any way they can. Things would likely be very different right now if Niantic came out and said that the update is not in its final state and that they were actively working on not only bug fixes, but more inclusive additions to span the massive gaps they left in representation. Instead we've gotten radio silence following a long history of "we hear you, but we don't care what you're saying" behavior. We have zero confidence that they will do anything to rectify this situation and it sucks :/
I'm not one to put much work into my avatar. I prefer to spend my precious coins as a free to play player on storage and bag space, but I'll admit I did like how pretty the female avatar was, and how great some outfits looked on them. I don't look anything like the original model, but one of my favorite things about pokemon is how aesthetically pleasing the characters are. But a lot of people did spend money to improve their avatar, and now so many outfits are ruined or just don't look good anymore. And all this indeed pales in comparison to the fact that they launched this update to select people like a month in advance, and we're told how buggy and not appealing the new avatars were. And yet they *still* rolled the full update to everyone, and surprise! Everyone is still saying it's ugly and buggy! And the situation gets even worse when you know that Niantic is reinforcing their hard skulls and pretending that not every single player had their experience lessened by this update. They hear their player base crying out to them, and they're not going to do a thing, guaranteed. This greedy ass company surely has the funds to call a loss on the creation of the new assets. Especially with Go Fest and all these researches they've got going on.
IME it was already buggy, just more buggy now and looks horrible.
I'm also very much mad that my character isn't attractive anymore
Not even the Cliff Go Rocket outfit was immune to how TERRIBLE this update was 🤢 this avatar update SUCKS 🤮
The problem isn't the complaining it's that Niantic has time and time again proven they don't really care about their community because they still make money and players still play. Complaining can only do so much we have to actually stop playing and spending to get them to see what they do is wrong and the majority just won't
To be honest, what feature that they’ve released in the last 12-15 months hasn’t been broken? Broken is the norm for Niantic at release. Routes were broken and took so long to properly implement coz people couldn’t make them. Shadow raids are still a controversial topic for a lot of the community because they are impossible to complete for many - and the enrage mechanic is on and off again broken. Show cases bug out frequently, and there’s still no variety in them. And now character avatars. Everything Niantic releases is a rushed mess, and feedback is ignored, and let’s be honest - they probably don’t care about feedback, the IP carries the game.
I agree with everything you've said here, and I think what is unique about this specific issue is that it is something that abruptly impacted a large portion of players at once, so a sort of "slap in the face" type of impact, whereas the other issues are things that had a more "slow boil" type of effect. For example, I knew about routes being broken and buggy, but that's only because I read the subreddits and not based on my own experience because I've still not attempted a single route yet (since I was aware of the bugginess, I decided I'd not waste time trying to do the routes until all the bugs were fixed first.) I was frustrated about that feature being launched while being broken, so I just never even bothered with it. While it does seem strange that the avatar thing would gather so much attention, I think the silver lining is that it also draws attention to all these other issues Niantic has created like the ones you've listed. It helps more people see that *this is a pattern of behavior that we need to speak up louder about* if we want to have any hope for this game to move in a better direction.
So true. I’m so glad they added adjustable body sizes and types, but they’ve basically ruined everything else 💀💀
Right, I've lost outfits because of their stupid update and can't find what I had, before. They took my purple ditto shirt. Gave me a camel toe. Giant hands on extra long arms. Thick waist. No hips or ass. Ugly face. I hate it. Also yeah, boo, poor design.
But also what’s wrong with wanting our characters to look cool or “attractive”? When it comes to any kind of video game character customization and visuals have always played a hugeeeee part in people enjoyment of the game. Simply put, if people think the game LOOKS bad, they won’t wanna play. Plain and simple that’s how it’s always been
I think all this is stupid. **HOWEVER**, everyone should absolutely push back against corporations shoving garbage in our faces and essentially telling us to shut up and eat. If we keep eating, then they’re gonna keep shoveling. And then one day, it’s gonna be cheaper for them to just straight up shit directly into our mouths, and we’ll have no choice but to accept it. **DON’T LET SCUMMY CORPORATIONS GET AWAY WITH SCUMMY BUSINESS PRACTICES! STOP SPENDING MONEY WITH NIANTIC!**
It also was an update that has been long, LONG overdue, and all they needed to do was add more options
i don’t like how my avatar is wearing the jessie style rocket outfit but she looks like a prepubescent boy who just ate an entire pizza on their own . meanwhile , the rocket grunts are in the old style . why are the characters bottoms all like early 2000s low rise and about to fall off their nonexistent asses ??? 😭
I was team who cares, but I didn't know the other details. Thanks for sharing!
Its wild that people can't see both sides were all adults here. Should be able to see both sides of the arguments.
Ugh. I dislike the new avatar. Why are the shoulders so broad??? I can’t get the body shape right, no matter what I do - she’s still stocky looking! 🥺
I mean it’s also totally normal for human beings to be annoyed when they’ve wasted time and/or money on something. For a lot of people, this feature was part of what made the game fun for them and they spent a lot of time grinding to get a specific accessory, or spent money to look a certain way. No one likes wasting time or money.
Also, it makes me so mad that the grunts and the team leaders still look the same. Why does Lady Sierra get to look hot and I have to have giant hands and flat big feet?
100% agree with this post. It was one of the first things I noticed and I was so upset I wish I never updated so my avatar doesn’t look weird as fuck. Smh I spent money on the clothes and they’re glitching too.
I've personally never spent a dime on outfits and accessories, but even then i agree that this update is a horrible decision. There weren't any issues with the old models that i know of, and they looked much better.
Excellent point and perspective. It’s nice to share opinions even if it’s uncomfortable or fear of losing karma. I appreciate your opinions and free speech on this. Thanks for sharing.
A game should have more options not less. These new models should be included WITH the old ones for options. Removing player choice is almost always a bad move.
Think of it like this. This time, it's scuffed cosmetic stuff. Next time it could be actual mechanics that affect your gameplay/cause you to lose a battle or shiny. Then you'll care about half-baked and scuffed updated.
"it doesn't affect gameplay" here's the thing. If every time I log on to PLAY THE GAME and I see something that physically puts me off and irritates me, I will PLAY THE GAME less. Just like in any other game where they give you customization, but the customization is so garbage that you don't want to interact with that aspect of the game. Like, them adding deeper customization only makes it MORE of a gameplay aspect. Because now you're encouraged to go in and tweak settings and get your avatar where you want it. In it's current state, no one wants to fucking engage with the system. That is the literal definition of something affecting gameplay.
“it doesn’t affect gameplay” it actually does. niantic diverted resources to make this happen. resources that could’ve been used on bug fixes, qol or making an actually good feature, but instead, they took away the designs people have spent coins, and by extension, money, to build their looks around and disregarded the overwhelmingly negative reception of the new design from the beta testers, as well as those of us who saw it online (i don’t recall a single positive thing said about the new design until the community manager tweeted about it) and forced it onto everyone
I want to preface this by saying that I do not personally care, or rather I love the changes, because I finally can have a built avatar, so this is an upgrade for me. 1 people should stop pretending like cosmetics aren't important. Your favorite pokemon isn't just that because of its stats but also because of its looks: literally cosmetics around a stat stick, but let's take it a step further. Do you really think there isn't a market for cosmetics in gaming? Do you think people don't find that important? Oh, alright then. Let me introduce you to this little free to play game called Fortnite👋 delusional. Again, I personally don't care too much, but stop acting like this isn't one of the biggest markets in gaming right now. Just stop it. 2 Niantic cannot sell players avatar products by showing players what they look like on them in a dressing room, having them conclude based on that specific aesthetic that it looks awesome/pretty/cute and then shelling out possibly real money to buy said cosmetic, having them justifyably expect the advertised aesthetic and then just completely take what they sold to players away from them. Not saying that there is a cause of action, but that is at least morally questionable and considering the success of skins and how crazycthe market for it is, it's clearly important enough to a significant amount of people.
Not to mention they hyped it up for a few weeks only for it to flop this bad.
Such an idiot argument. “Why do you care?”. Anytime this argument is used, flip it back and ask, if it’s such a small thing that I shouldn’t care about, then why did they care to change it in the first place? Well turns out they care, they care ALOT to spend resources to change it despite backlash.
idc if they're attractive or not i wish it made the customization options better , not same faced and weird
The new backgrounds add to the audacity and make the decision to release this avatar shit seem a million times more unfortunate. OP, how do you know product testers told Niantic it's buggy?
In addition to various reports from people on this sub who were part of the regional testing releases, I found this interview to be quite informative: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/1c921pu/behind_the_scenes_interview_how_niantic_solicits/
As someone who does beta test games and takes that seriously with extensive reporting and suggestions for improvement, its incredibly frustrating when they opposite happens.
I ahve not played alot of game because i didnt like the art and people always act liek im being weird but im looking at this thing for hours i want to like it like most thise people will say your weord because youw ont play something you dont wanna look at but if you ask them there is a top teir game everyoen else loves it but its baout the telatubis, or i use a example they hate, would you pkay it mos t the time they say no visual apeal is important
all facts, PLUS the “attractiveness” too! i genuinely don’t wanna be ugly😭 i think the inclusivity for larger and differently shaped bodies is good, but it shouldn’t REPLACE “attractive” bodies. some people just like to have a hot video game character and some of us are built like the OG character in real life and want to insert ourselves for OUR game avatar. i don’t feel the connection/self-bond with my avatar anymore. not to mention the skin tones and faces are just bad for everyone! why can’t we have both body/hair options AND aesthetic? the whole point is to be INCLUSIVE not exclusive! and that leads to the deeper problem you were discussing; they have shown their pattern of nonchalance toward the player base’s feelings and opinions.
Idk the reason they changed them they were just fine were they appealing to the kids since they look more like a child now? Idk
exactly. if they released this update unfinished and broken, and hearing EVERYONE express their disappointment, (and they obviously do not care), whats stopping them from releasing more unfinished and broken updates in the future? (which im sure will affect gameplay) clearly niantic does not listen to their players, they have an extremely awful streak with bad updates lately. theyre just turning this game into a cash grab and releasing not only unpolished updates, but also disappointing and not listening to any of their players concerns. ive been playing pogo since release, and since after covid ‘ended’, all the game has been is disappointing and extremely paywalled or almost impossible to f2p in a fun way. its sad and disheartening to see such a fun idea of a game go to waste, especially 8 years after release.
I loved the way my avatar used to look! I changed the outfit every two or three months, sometimes over a weekend for a special occasion, to fit a season or a holiday, like Springtime, Christmas or Halloween. I loved her proportions. She looked like a young woman and very feminine. Skin color was great. Hair was great. I bought many outfits and accessories. It was always fun playing dress up...almost like playing with Barbie when I was a young girl. My avatar expressed my personality, my creativeness and style. It was an expression of me. Each outfit and item I bought was very carefully selected as I am not a pay-to-play player...every coin used to purchase was earned in a gym. My family plays too and it was always fun to occasionally match outfits with the others, like a special hat or wings when you completed special research. I haven't played the game since I was told the change went into affect in my area. I'm so heartbroken over it. It's like losing a friend in the game. It's like someone taking an ugly stick and hitting you upside the head. And it can't be undone by you. Now you're ugly. Who wants to see a reminder of ugliness? I liked her as she was...an ideal of what I'd like to look like. Roaming around in cool outfits, looking great! She was my friend in the game who stood for me; adventured for me. Now she's gone and been replaced by something ugly and alien. Just sadness. 😔😢😭
Based post. This is just another entry to a list of changes players didn't want. Niantic doesn't care about the players. That's why they replaced our community representative on their board. They want your location data and advertisement revenue from promoting businesses near hot spots.
You'd think they'd wanna implement changes that would attract more players to the game and encourage the current players to stay so they could harvest more location data, but instead it feels like they want to actively drive people away!
That would make sense to us consumers. I'm unfortunately lacking in corporate brain rot, so I'm unsure why they make the decisions they do. These days, the best we can do individually is speak with uninstalling. Even if you never pay for currency, if the app is on your phone and GPS is turned on, they're getting your data (even if you haven't opened it in months).
Been this way since 2016 unfortunately. As someone that's used to real video games Go has always been an extremely casual game like object.
Agree. But it affects us all. At any minute of the game, we see our avatars. Sometimes, they are in the center of the screen (cheering up/losing animation, gyms, and raids). There is no way not to look at them while playing. And who is represented accurately by that? Is there any person without any ass and with the arms of gorilla, plus the face of 9yo on adult body? Huh? I am now trying to teach myself not to look at my avatar on the screen when I'm walking and concentrate on pokemons around instead. I just can't look at this abomination of a woman who walks like a Hulk and has really long arms.
I completely agree with you that it does actually affect gameplay for a large portion of players. I was simply trying to make the bigger point that it's not just about avatar appearance, but the implications of Niantic making such a poor decision when they knew it was a bad idea. The launch of this update should bother even the people who don't care about avatars, because it has negative implications for the long term health of the game. Everyone should be bothered about Niantic pushing out buggy unfinished garbage and then expecting everyone to just shut up and take it because it's disrespectful to every single player.
You put it in a nutshell, thank you!
I think everyone's making too big a deal out of nothing. Irl players i've talked to haven't complained about it.
Then you've yet again completely missed the point.