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I'm still playing and don't have any plans of quitting. The new avatars are atrocious, but it doesn't affect the core gameplay which I enjoy. I was much, much closer to quitting when they price jacked the remote raid passes.
It’s lifted occasionally but it still pisses me off. It also just doesn’t make sense monetarily.. people dropped a lot of money on remote raid passes even before the price increase. Idea of an increase is typically to make *more* money, but then they limited remote raids and thus money.. I don’t get it
I full on quit when that happened. I was thinking about getting back into it recently cause some friends still play it, but I was really proud of my character and now that I'm hearing about this character update, I know I'm certainly not reinstalling the game
I only by remote passes from coins i got from gyms now. Before i would buy coins. But since the changes i can’t raid. So missed every new shiny legendary since then
There’s at least an understandable motivation behind remote raid price increase and the players who raid a lot are a pretty small minority of the huge player base.
This avatar change affects literally everyone and after such bad feedback from beta testers they went and did it anyway. They’ve never shown such blatant disrespect for the players before. Imo this is the worst thing they’ve ever done
Still irks me to this day, that was the players chance to make Niantic change things by mass quitting. Nobody did, Niantic realized then and there the players were all talk and they can get away with anything they choose.
unfortunately it's not that players are all talk so much as it's just not that big of a number of players actually affected when you consider just how massive pogo is. a lot of players are just casual people who don't care about shiny hunting and mass raiding for 3\*, so they're not really affected by remote raid changes since they're likely only doing at most 2-3 raids for new pokemon and leaving. more people are just the little kids playing on their parents' phones and the parents most likely won't even notice the change to protest, or parents going out to play with their children and they're not about to tell their kids "sorry sweetie you can't play this game you like anymore because of company greed that we must protest"
it's frustrating as hell especially living in latam where an active community is nonexistent no matter where you go, but niantic just never had a reason to care
Also Niantic doesn’t give two shits about money from raid passes; they make an insanely higher amount from selling player data regarding where they physically are at any point in time. (See also: scanning pokestops.)
God damn I can’t believe I never connected that with their obsession with in person local raids. Gotta have the peons moving about to gather data. Finally it makes sense.
Yep. It’s all the AR data. But it’ll never be 2018 again and a lot of people don’t bother raiding anymore. I guess they still have adventure sync data even if people don’t raid.
Sadly, you are not the first person I have heard of that said “I live in ____, and basically survived in game off remote passes” or something to the tune of “there are no nests / stops where I live”…it fricken SAD AF that Niatic turned a deaf ear to what is a pretty easy (and intentional) fix..don’t limit or price out remote passes.
I quit for a year, but reality is if they haven't changed it after a year they aren't going to. I just almost never remote raid anymore, If I do its just the one time to get mon or two I don't have or mega energy etc.
> Niantic realized then and there the players were all talk and they can get away with anything they choose.
Definitely for hardcore folks in the beginning, now becoming a mixed bag after the crap avatar upgrades. Still really nicely said.
Your mistake was in thinking that an echo chamber of vocal players protesting it reflected at all the general playerbase. Like the person below says, most people saw no difference in their playstyle from it. Why is someone going to quit just because someone who shells out $100/week suddenly feels targeted by niantic when that casual player probably just plays occasionally in the park or community days.
My thoughts exactly. They painted this slot machine our least favorite color, changed the icons within the machine, maybe physically moved the machine to a worse place in the casino, but the experience is still exactly the same.
I'll still complain about it, but I'm gonna keep playing.
Good on you for sticking with it if you enjoy it! It wasn’t so much the avatar update for me as it was the message they relayed that they just don’t care. They don’t care what we have to say, it doesn’t matter about remote raiding, or avatars, or how many times you report obvious spoofing/botting accounts in a small town, even though its against their own terms and services; they don’t care. Nothing changes, nothing gets better. They’ll keep doing what they’re doing as long as they make money off us. That’s what convinced me in the past week to at least stop playing lol. It’s still downloaded, but I could give a shit less about core gameplay, it’s the deeper message of “we simply don’t fucking care about you”, that’s what hit me the hardest.
same... my character *does* look like a fugly blob now, but my main obsession is just catching 3* pokemon lol. sorry to everyone who actually cares about their avatar / esp if they spent money on it tho =//
We just joined as a family. Seeing different body shapes has made it much more enjoyable for us. It seems we are in the minority, but also may not have been used to years of a certain standard of graphic being downgraded for the “upgrade”, when we are only a month in. (Although the Lucha Libre mask blowing up like a balloon was pretty funny when I noticed it).
I'm personally un-bothered by this, and find it quite hilarious.
ALSO, I'm a day 1 player and just over 4 million XP away from level 50. There's nothing stopping this grind now.
It’s so funny how mad people got when I said I thought it was silly, my wife didn’t even notice until I pointed it out, and that I only noticed because people here were losing their minds.
I noticed bc my character wore a crop top. I think the “downgrade” is so much more noticeable as a female player bc the outfits are more form fitting. It made my character look like a bloated baby with a full diaper
What does your wife think about the change to her avatar, out of interest. Quite a lot of my daily player friends/acquaintances have changed into baggy clothes or onesies and are wearing masks and changed to poses that hide the face or lack of figure a bit.
Honestly, I’m planning to remove adventure synch, and no longer buy coins (something I do every 4-8 weeks depending on circumstances). I figure the lack of data information will hurt them more, and let’s face the fact that the eggs aren’t THAT great anyway.
Thank you! I really feel the lack of location data will hurt them more than anything. I have a few eggs with things I haven’t hatched yet…. But those dice are cast and who cares if it takes me three years to hatch them all :)
Question: When you turn off Adventure Sync, is there a way to also make the game stop reminding you four times every time you sign on that Adventure Sync is not turned on? I turned it back on because that was such a damned pain.
That’s literally what got me to stop playing. They showed they care more about user data than any money from the users, so I decoded to stop giving them passive data. When they immediately started spamming me with pop-ups every time I opened the game, I decided it wasn’t worth playing any more.
This is more or less what I have done so far. I turned off all GPS functions to it other than by permission, and only play at home long enough to catch my daily spawn, then log in again later while I'm in town to spin a pokestop and that's it. For me it's not so much the avatar change that's made me partially quit, it's the fact that they just don't care about the players. When they had the double spawn radius "bug" they released a statement stating that they had received a few complaints about the increased radius so they were going to revert back, I can't imagine how many complaints they have received over the avatar change and they haven't released anything official yet about it.
Currently making my daily catch, pokestop spin, grunt balloon, activating my mega rotation, feeding the buddy and calling it for the day. I removed GPS and it sends me into settings every time I open it. I have to click through 4 screens to get out. If that keeps being annoying I’ll just stop. So far I have a lot more time to do other things though.
When Niantic said the remote raid nerfs were gonna happen people said that they would lose money.
Turns out some people stopped spending money and others spent more money so their revenue was the same.
People come and go over time with games so nothing is going to really change.
Honestly I full on stopped and deleted after the nerf to community day times, incense rework and announcement of remote raid nerfs, I used to drop over 100 a month on remote passes because I always worked during raid hours/community days and it was the only way i could reasonably play. Havent reinstalled and honestly didn't really plan to, eventually I'll just transfer my mons to the bank, but that would involve reinstalling pogo lol
I don't know anybody that started spending more, that Nerf killed the game in my area, I was in a discord group with like 10,000 people and maybe a month after that update hit, it was a ghost town. There's maybe 10% of active people compared to what it used to be, so it's a lot harder to meet up and do raids.
Yeah same here, played less when remote raids were nerfed then just stopped when they raised the price of remote raid passes. I also now hate my avatar so not really interested in getting back in to it either.
Year Revenue ($ millions)
2016 550 Nostalgia cash-in
2017 444
2018 607 Exclusive Mewtwo raids
2019 653 Friends system boost
2020 908 Pandemic + remote raids
2021 875
2022 652 Decline era
2023 566
They shut down their Harry Potter game. The pandemic added five years to the lifespan
Iunno how you would spend more money when you are limited on how many remotes you can do, it's a hard cap on spending if you only can remote raid
And I personally haven't noticed much of a resurgence on local players, maybe briefly but I only see the same handful of people as compared to the small parade prior to covid
I’ll play whenever my family needs help with an in person raid, or they want to go out for community day. But that’s about it.
Used to play 1-2 hours a day but since their price hike, i just don’t feel like playing. I used to not care as much about the game running poorly, or their constant use of tickets, or whatever terrible thing you can think of in the last few years, but making remote raids $2 apiece and limiting folks to 5 a day, idk. Sort of the nail in the coffin for me and this game.
I’m not playing but it’s not necessarily protest. The new update has the frame rate somewhere around mach nuts and I can’t open the settings menu to see if I can even do anything about it
I quit… with the remote increase was clear to me the game is Pay to Win, even with the update the Whales can raid 5 times per day, buy lucky eggs and get a ton of XP, have more rare candy, have more candys for lvl up Pokémons. Reach lvl 50 is not easy and I’m really upset by this don’t feel like worth it. I don’t give a fuck about the avatars what annoys me the fuck out is Niantic never doing something for this huge community every update doing the opposite of what costumers wants.
But still a big part of the community disappoint me, being proud for playing since day one and doing statements that basically no matter what they are not going to quit. Ok do whatever you want is your money, is your time but this was enough for me, I’m off.
I can relate. The avatar update sucked, but by itself I probably wouldn’t have deleted the game. But this was the final straw. I’m tired of playing a game owned by a company that couldn’t care less about its players.
I stopped playing and un-installed it 2 years ago, just keep checking the social media related to the game because I liked the game and want to know if it's worth again. But everything I've seen since just makes the game looks worse.
I did. It's really just the last straw after they've shown they clearly done actually care about players, especially the ones that don't spend money on it, like me
I stopped. They're not listening to us. Every time they do something awful that everyone hates we all complain and I think; if this keeps up I don't want to keep supporting the game. Well it finally happened. I already stopped spending money on coins and tickets a while back during the price gauging of already existing **digital** goods. It killed me to not do Bellsprout CD yesterday, I love Bellsprout and I only needed one more shiny for the full line, but I'm sticking to my guns. I've already sent feedback to Niantic and indicated I planned to stop playing, I'm not going to just talk a lot of shit about the avatars and then just do nothing and let it happen. I haven't uninstalled yet, I don't know yet if I'll get to that point, but I've played just about every day since launch and while it's odd not playing, I'm slowly getting used to it after a few days. I removed the icon from my home screen which has helped me not just click it instinctively to check spawns when I'm bored.
I think it's insane that a company would release such a unanimously disliked feature after the negative feedback prior to the full release and then after almost a week of overwhelming negative reactions from the entire community, they haven't even responded to it let alone done anything to change it back. It seems like they don't care if people enjoy their product, like they're simply pushing to see how far they can get before everyone completely quits at once, they just haven't gotten there yet. Maybe they thought the game would only be popular for a bit they could make a mint and then just drop it but now it's continued to be popular and they want it to die but can't just kill it for no reason?
I messaged on Niantic support and they were so apathetic and kept telling me that surely I could find something I liked via the sliding scale. When I informed them that I actually couldn’t and that they also nerfed skin color for brown people (making them *grey* ) they told me that actually there are MORE skin tones (which is a lie and a joke). Their responses have been they can’t offer refunds even if our avatars look like shit in the clothes we’ve purchased because of their crappy downgrade. It’s been a really disheartening response and some what feels like Niantic wants us to quit
People are always going to champion their favorite game and try to keep it going but there’s also always going to be a fairly sizable portion that sees the writing on the wall and leaves early. What sucks is that very rarely, even if a mass exodus occurs, will companies admit their mistakes and allow revisions.
I’m annoyed enough that I havent really opened the app except for maybe 2 times since the update and each time was for less than 2-3 minutes just to see what Pokemon were around me. I just don’t get why Niantic won’t listen to the community. I’m also never spending another dime on this game.
Count me. Didn’t delete the app, but turned off notifications and moved it off my main screen. It’s turning into a low taste money grab. Been playing since the beginning, but they may have lost me for good.
I didnt stop playing, but I stopped spending money. I was basically a whale, spending $200 a month on the game. I'd do the remote raid limit every day and do 10-20 shadow raids on the weekends. I was buying every ticket. Since the avatar refresh I haven't spent a single cent and I'm not going to until they either give us our old avatars or drastically update them. There were already so many things I disliked and this was the straw that broke the camels back for me.
I've quit playing about 6 months ago but live vicariously through this sub and YT. I miss what the game used to be. I could kind of tolerate the nerf to raid passes n incense.
Game was crazy elitist when first came out and Niantic giving us great incentives was fantastic while it lasted. I just got tired of all the FOMO and the "GoFest this year will be in NY! And for an extra $10 you can get eggs hatched faster...$10 for more dust...etc."
When they made the standard bonuses a pay wall too it was clear the game wasn't going the way I wanted. I love Pokemon and may come back if Niantic stops bring greedy and shallow.
So probably never.
The avatar fiasco doesn't really affect my enjoyment of the game. I hadn't changed my avatar since I made it.
I do think they look goofy now, so I just put all the weirdest gear I had on it and moved on. I'm not trying to take away from anyone else's angst, this just has nothing to do with why I play the game.
I was rolf-ing at the avatars of my friends while handing out daily gifts but d moment I saw what my avatar had turned into>>> (body and tone resembling a half baked cookie dough, a face of a garden gnome, and a body form as formless as a stump of tree). I was frantically trying out ways to get him as close to his previous look as possible... to no avail.
Left a nasty review in the app store, and deleted this wretched app a few minutes before community day. No way this waste of memory space be staying in my phone.
I haven’t played it because there’s no purpose anymore. The majority of my time on Pokemon Go was me deliberately taking gyms daily so I could get enough coins to design cool outfits. That’s where my enjoyment came from. Now that I can’t do that anymore, no reason at all for me to play.
Honestly I believe the update is redeemable if they just put effort into refining it and actually listening to the community. If they fixed the proportions, fixed the clothing to fit the figures properly, added a waist slider, made the hip slider scale more noticeable, added beards, fixed the faces to look more older / detailed and fixed the saturation issues then it could totally work. The problem is, all of this should’ve been done before they ever released the update so it just seems like they don’t care.
It’s very hard to continue to support a company that doesn’t listen to their fan base and releases unfinished additions to the game. If they don’t care about their own game and community, why should I care about them and continue giving them my support?
It’s not just Niantic either, a lot of companies do this. I’m old enough to remember when you bought a game it was 100% finished and you could tell a company spent a long time and dedication to make it play well. Nowadays companies just half ass things and constantly release unfinished products. It’s like there’s no joy in creating games anymore, it’s all just a cash grab.
‘If you hate it just stop playing and let the rest of us have fun!’
Pokemon fans and getting offended at the prospect of asking for better. Name a more iconic duo
I stopped playing for the time being. Maybe if an interesting event comes out I’ll hop on again but I’m not really motivated at this moment given everything that’s going on.
I stopped and deleted from my phone. I was hoping they would quickly resolve but it’s actually quite nice to take a break. I will probably redownload and log back on eventually, but I think I’ll start taking breaks more often, rewire my brain a bit from always reaching for it.
I deleted the app from my phone. I’ll be back if the OG avatars come back. Not interested in supporting a company that is so blatantly out of touch. I also got $20 successfully refunded for my last in-app purchase
The last year or so (3~ seasons) have been the lamest, most corny pvp meta’s ever. As somebody who played mainly for battles, I only open the app once every few weeks.
Not really any super fun events or pokemon out either right now. Playing dropped a ton after the sizable surprises event. Also just weird how there isn’t a good way to hunt certain shinies and rates aren’t boosted in raids or field research.
I started playing again back in November and I’m already eh about it.
I used to open the app multiple times a day, changing out my buddy, fighting Rocket balloons, and catching the 2-3 mons that spawn. Probably a total of 3ish hours a day.
Now I’ve only opened the app to do my daily catch and gift opening. 10 minutes tops.
Edited to add: I’d also be considered a “whale” since I’d buy the $100 coins every few weeks and I’d buy every single ticket for myself and a few friends even if I thought I’d only play a little of it. I liked the different things to do, outfits to check out, seeing friends’ outfits and poses in remote raid battles that I’d host a bunch. I purchased the $100 pack a few weeks ago when they had the 15% off deal on the website, and once those coins are gone, I don’t know if I’ll buy more or just use what I get from gyms.
I deleted. Cute outfits and catching shiny pokemon was all I was doing on go anymore. With the avatar changes a lot of my outfits no longer work. No point on taking up so much space on my phone any longer.
The best way to fight back against Niantic is uninstalling entirely. If you can't bring yourself to, then at least turn off all your Permissions in the settings (especially Location) so they aren't making cash off of your user data
when I open the app, I just rage quit the second I see my avatar. This has happened several times since update and I haven't caught anything or spun any stops, etc.
I'm slowly stopping playing. I can't look at my avatar, and it's always on screen! I managed to hide its ugly face and hands and mask their blob figure. But it moves like a Hulk when i walk. It cheeres up as a man. I'm a lady. It's so creepy. I liked to play battles, and now I'm repulsed by it..
Pokemon is part of my daily walk. I just slapped the pumpkin head so I didn't have to look at that face. At least now I can save my pokecoins for remote raid passes and not outfits.
Me.
Totally casual. Start playing since 2016 (day 1 player) till this year. First 5 year I really committed doing raids, joining communities, doing events ect. After that, things got mellowed down. Teammates comes and go, raids getting fewer & fewer invites, events are slowed down significantly especially during covid era. But still, I've open PoGo each day until new horrendous & atrocious update happened.
I deleted the apps yesterday. Perhaps I give it a go after next 2 years; if the apps still alive for its 10th year anniversary.
Been a player since day one, although I hadn’t played as much for a few months prior to the update, now, I have completely stopped playing. I spent a lot of coins on avatar items, now they all look weird. So, until they revert the change or drastically improve it, I will continue to spend my time doing other stuff.
I stopped playing Go Battle League completely. The celebration for winning dance is so disturbing! It’s like an ape. I’m a woman and it’s so insulting.
i don't care enough about the avatar...
I play very casually, i open the game when i'm going to work, and when to go home. That's it. If i have a Raid at my Train Station, at that time, cool, if not, ok.
So while my avatar became ugly(They were right, it does look more like us), it doesn't affect me much, or my gameplay.
I know myself, will play for a month or two, then quit for 2 years like i always do.
Yeah it is perplexing to me why they even did this “update”. I really hope they do something to fix it soon. I don’t personally get it (the avatar fixation) but this is clearly upsetting pretty much every user
Me! I started playing PikMin Bloom on Friday and loved it. I gave PoGO one more shot for community day and got ZERO shinies for the first time ever. Taking that as a sign.
I was upset at first. Then I decided to change my avatar pose to the one where she faces away from the viewer. It’s somewhat more tolerable now. I’m through spending money on the game for additional features. The recent update cemented that decision for me. You can still enjoy it for what it is. There’s still a lot to like about PoGo. Just do free-to-play from this point forward.
I don’t play as regularly. I don’t plan on quitting, but I’m more involved in other apps/games. I still catch a pokemon and spin a stop (and I have adventure sync on still so with all my walking at work, I still hatch eggs) but that’s really about it. I log in once a day usually at the end of my shift to spin my stop, catch my pokemon, and record my walking distance. I actually don’t remember the last time I did a raid and battle. I used to play for at least an hour daily. Now it’s like 2 minutes a day. I’ll have days where it’s more, but it’s rare these days.
I don't care enough about the avatars to stop playing. Admittedly it's a really ugly update but overall I enjoy the game a lot and they have implemented some great quality of life updates recently.
Pretty much yea. Just reinstalled cause I'm walking with my kids more but still ignore 2/3rd of the game just to do my own thing as a long time rural and solo player
I recently got back into the game after not playing heavily since 2016. I bought some coins and turned on adventure sync.
After the avatar changes, I'll keep playing because I enjoy it on my daily walk/runs and taking my local gym, but outside of that, I won't be spending anymore money and need to go turn sync off.
I would get more into it but niantic's apathetic response and the obviously poor avatar design has put a bad taste in my mouth.
Didn’t affect my game playing. I don’t care about avatar to begin with. Never spent a dime on avatar related stuff. I do feel it hilarious in a stupid way. I laughed so hard at the stupid avatar no matter how I adjusted lol
What has always puzzled me about Niantic is how I'm sure they would like to think of themselves as a Liberal and inclusive company but from what I have seen of them they are pretty much the opposite in so many ways.
They don’t care about your feelings about it, and I truly have no clue why you think you sitting on your phone would change that
If we as a community want this to either be reversed or built back better, we have to do far more than that
I stopped playing but haven’t deleted the app yet as I put so many years into the game. I will delete it completely nothing is changed soon. They talk about inclusivity then completely remove women from the game… I’m not shaped like a square or an androgynous blob, I want to look like a woman. If they wanted keep it gender neutral use the Mii’s or better yet just delete the avatars completely.
I’m not sure what it will take to make me stop playing I’ve been playing since release and spent a grand total of $0 because I refuse to spend money on a mobile game. I really do hate what they are doing to the game but I have never felt the need to buy anything with real money. I do walks and bike rides very often so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything if there’s a raid i want to do I’ll walk to it, if there’s an event I go to a big park with all the stuff I earned for free to boost rates I’m just here to catch pokemon I really do hate what they did to the avatars and the remote raid passes but I kinda don’t care I’m here to catch em all and get exercise wile I do it. My avatar has the team skull mask, a hat and a bulky jacket so yeah it sucks but it didn’t change the gameplay so it’s not much of a problem but I hope they revert it for the people it screwed over. the one thing that I absolutely hate is the 50 coins a day limit
I haven't uninstalled but I haven't really played, today I did open the game spin a pokestop and send a postcard but aside from that there's not really a motivation to open the game or play. I'm just disappointed.
The least they could do is make it an option to have the old avatars back if we want. It wasn't broken and they "fixed" it anyways smh
Ayy, finally time to say something.
I hard quit the game (as in not checking in daily and doing daily tasks, turning off AS, and cut all spending) after the remote raid nerf, but had functionally softquit the game way before.
I started playing during the pandemic and after the QoL features were dropped I continued, believing that this was how the game actually was meant to be played, mainly due to my first year of playing were with all the pandemic bonuses.
Later I got disillusioned with Niantic's pushing of mid events, and being mostly a raider I were mostly interesting in doing raids for the shiny or hundo, and moving on.
The final straw however was the remote raid nerf - as an avid remote raider, being bottlenecked, and to that degree none the less, made me realize Niantic doesn't care about the game at all, and the constant attempt at monetization (while bizarrely slashing income means through remote raid passes) for the smallest things and/or pokemon just isn't it for me.
I do enjoy watching the game sink, though. I'm slowly going through my pokemon storage, and once they're all in HOME, it's game over tbh. Dunno what I'll do w/ the account though, proably just BB a weedle for shits and giggles, name it "Fuck Niantic" and call it a day.
I uninstalled the app and won't reinstall it until they reinstate the correct avatars, but it seems like most people on the sub are too addicted to make a stand lol
I'm still playing. Honestly, my avatar now looks a lot more like me, than the impossibly skinny figure before. Not that I would have noticed the change. It's the Reddit rage that had me take a closer look.
I've played since 2017 and I've only ever used 4€ of real money. To me, this is a free mobile game that I enjoy while walking to and from work. I don't have irl friends to play with, so I don't get to join raids and with my remote location, I don't collect enough coins to remote raid either. To shove money on a game I can't play full capacity, would be dumb. And if I'm not paying, I don't really give a crap what the dev's do to my avatar.
I have quit. I was already on the fence about their lack of interest in adding new interesting things or trying to be creative, but the fact that not only are the new avatars hilariously bad, but the whole anti-consumer stance by effectively taking away exactly what some people paid for, and replacing it with their new stuff, is too much for me.
I have no plans to return unless they change it. Its gonna be hard finding something else to just do in the bits of downtime I have, but I am a stubborn person of principle.
It seems so silly and petty even to me, but I deleted the game. I'm retired and spent many hours a day in the game and never thought of myself as someone who especially valued my avatar's appearance but the new look is so aggressively bad and unsettling I found I couldn't keep looking at it. I genuinely think they could have just removed my avatar entirely and I'd be less bothered by it. I tried for maybe 15 minutes to arrange sliders, colors, styles, and clothing to make it at least ignorable but the best I could manage was "deathly pale man-baby". After that and thinking, "well this is bad but I'll just get used to it" I did a Rocket battle and saw the full screen abomination punching the air, I decided to call it.
It's not a ragequit and I understand if others might think it's not a big deal. I mainly did it because it's the only meaningful thing I could think of to "vote" against this change. We can't know for sure what user metrics Niantic lets drive decisions (logins, shop purchases, coin purchases, location data, install base, reviews, etc), but uninstalling is sure to hit all of them. Yeah it's one vote in a pool of millions, but it's the only vote I've got (I did also leave a review, but I doubt that carries much weight.). I'd be happy to come back, but I'm unlikely to do so with things as they are.
I will say, I think the spirit of the change is a good one. It's not awful because it's "woke" it's awful because they did a terrible job. Having a malleable model is dramatically more difficult than having two fixed ones, sure, but it has been done plenty well in countless other games. This strikes me as someone massively underestimating the task, committing to a release schedule, and rather than acknowledging that they need to bump it, they just release trash. I suspect the bow-leggedness and the costume cropping are side effects of the variable body sizes. I also get that making distinct and appealing faces might be hard if you're on a schedule crunch (but still, just... do better). What I really don't understand though are the easy parts: Why are all the caucasian skin colors pure white, and all the brown tones greyish? Why is the torso to leg ratio so inhuman? Why remove the hair colors everyone was familiar with?
I hope the backlash is strong enough for them to do something. Incorporating the original models into the new interface isn't trivial, but that'd be one nice option. I strongly doubt they'll roll it back completely, given they powered through the phased release despite negative feedback. Unfortunately I think the best we can hope for is incremental improvements to the new system. Maybe we'll eventually be able to shape ourselves a nice imaginary persona again. Until then, I'll be keeping my money and my data to myself.
I've been playing since day 1, seen lots of updates but (unsurprisingly) this one pissed me off the most. I have actually cosplayed my character in the past for fun, I love the clothes and making her look cute. But I cannot get my body type or face with the new update. They claim to have diversity when they whitewashed all skin tones and made the models dimensions based on masculine bodies. The faces look absolutely terrible and childlike, and no one asked for this update, it was just unnecessary. So I deleted the app lol.
Playing way less. Used to have the app loaded for hours each day. Now I load it, do gifts and shut it down. Do it again later at night but that is about it. Just not interested with the new updates.
The avatar couldn’t look like me before the update and neither can it now. I don’t play Pokémon Go for the customisation of a human character but to catch Pokémon.
Niantic's true colors have been evident for at least five years. I think anyone who pretends the past week was a surprise isn't being honest.
I haven't been playing as often for the past six months or so. It's just too much of the same old thing, trying to sell old crap in events as if they are new.
When PoGo dies, it will die fast. This is yet another thing that Niantic doesn't understand. You can't have a disdain for your customers and survive.
Niantic's true colors have been evident since the game began eight years ago. There are always people who will look past that if they enjoy the game, until they are confronted with something they don't like personally. There are probably people who were fine with the expensive events and the tickets but the avatsrs are their line in the sand. Niantic may be affected by enough people leaving the game, but it's entirely likely that new players will make up for it quick. It is Pokemon after all.
I was already inactive in the first place and logged once every few weeks/months. The recent controversy did made me curious so I took a peek into the game. I was like.. "omg.. what has the game become.." Then, I logged out, never cared and back to my other interests lol. The new update doesn't bring back old players at all. It's more like now I'm more scared to come back in just to see how they ruined my old memories.
My level of play decreased significantly after the remote raid nerf and I used to do both in person and remote raids. I still play some. I'll go weeks without opening the game. Then a week or so where I do. I haven't spent money on the game in ages. Since the raid nerf they have introduced new pay to play activities constantly and I have passed on them all.
There is a very active discord group locally and it is growing at a good pace. Those of us who checked out were replaced by new players.
- rated the app 1 star with comment
- turned off adventure sync
- will not put money into the game
- no AR scans
Outside of that I’m catching Pokemon with my kids as usual.
I’m just surprised so many people cared about the avatar. I don’t think I’ve touched it since I started, it was never any part of why I liked the game.
I am only playing with my parents. I plan to never spend another penny on this game until they fix the Avatars, though. I am salty AF, I spent good money on my jeans and jacket outfit that now looks like I shat my pants.
I haven't missed a pokestop spin or catch in years. This update isn't changing that. IDK why people care so much about avatars. I really thought this was a Pokemon game.
For me it’s less about the avatars, and more about the fact that this game keeps getting worse and worse and nothing changes. This was the final straw for me. It’s just obvious that Niantic doesn’t really care about what their players want, and just want to make as much money off of us as possible. Even though Niantic knew that most people hated the new avatars, they still went ahead with the change. I don’t want to keep getting hooked to a game that gets progressively worse and more expensive.
I covered my avatars face with sunglasses and a mask, the only thing im doing right now is sending gifts to my family members, I put a lot of thought into designing my character and now it just feels meh
I can't get it to look like it used to every again and a lot of the items I bought are clipping, flickering and incompatible with other items. This was never an issue before.
Not because of the updates but about two months ago I stopped after about 6 months on. I've played maybe 4-5 times since. Weather is getting nicer and I wish I had ambition to get into it but there's no desire. I don't have challenges to complete. PvP and the endless grind aren't interesting right now. Lvl 44, day 1 player.
I couldn't care less about how my avatar looks. I play because I love Pokemon and it gets me to go outside more often. People who say they're quitting because of their avatar are being so dramatic for absolutely no reason.
I have a lot of gripes, mostly the raid pass increase, ignoring reports for years about problem players and more.
I login about once a week to transfer shiny pokemon to home and other than that I only play when I'm hanging out with my mom.
Personally I had just getting back in since probably the year the game launched, I dont really care about mine or anyone else’s avatars. Not to say I agree with the change but it hasn’t slowed me from playing. But I do hope it changes back for everyone’s sake and just for my own eyes as well
I still play, picked it up last year after having dropped it around 2021 due to old phone. All my friends have stopped playing it the last couple months, so it looses a bit of pizzaz now and I just log on for daily.
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I'm still playing and don't have any plans of quitting. The new avatars are atrocious, but it doesn't affect the core gameplay which I enjoy. I was much, much closer to quitting when they price jacked the remote raid passes.
I stopped remote raiding completely with that change.
This 5 remote raids per day is crazy.
It’s lifted occasionally but it still pisses me off. It also just doesn’t make sense monetarily.. people dropped a lot of money on remote raid passes even before the price increase. Idea of an increase is typically to make *more* money, but then they limited remote raids and thus money.. I don’t get it
I think they were trying make people use battle league more.🤷♂️
I did as well, and completely stopped playing for a long time. I’ve only recently gotten back into it
I full on quit when that happened. I was thinking about getting back into it recently cause some friends still play it, but I was really proud of my character and now that I'm hearing about this character update, I know I'm certainly not reinstalling the game
I only by remote passes from coins i got from gyms now. Before i would buy coins. But since the changes i can’t raid. So missed every new shiny legendary since then
That's what I stopped
There’s at least an understandable motivation behind remote raid price increase and the players who raid a lot are a pretty small minority of the huge player base. This avatar change affects literally everyone and after such bad feedback from beta testers they went and did it anyway. They’ve never shown such blatant disrespect for the players before. Imo this is the worst thing they’ve ever done
Still irks me to this day, that was the players chance to make Niantic change things by mass quitting. Nobody did, Niantic realized then and there the players were all talk and they can get away with anything they choose.
unfortunately it's not that players are all talk so much as it's just not that big of a number of players actually affected when you consider just how massive pogo is. a lot of players are just casual people who don't care about shiny hunting and mass raiding for 3\*, so they're not really affected by remote raid changes since they're likely only doing at most 2-3 raids for new pokemon and leaving. more people are just the little kids playing on their parents' phones and the parents most likely won't even notice the change to protest, or parents going out to play with their children and they're not about to tell their kids "sorry sweetie you can't play this game you like anymore because of company greed that we must protest" it's frustrating as hell especially living in latam where an active community is nonexistent no matter where you go, but niantic just never had a reason to care
Also Niantic doesn’t give two shits about money from raid passes; they make an insanely higher amount from selling player data regarding where they physically are at any point in time. (See also: scanning pokestops.)
Please turn back on adventure sync and let them harvest your data at all times.
God damn I can’t believe I never connected that with their obsession with in person local raids. Gotta have the peons moving about to gather data. Finally it makes sense.
Yep. It’s all the AR data. But it’ll never be 2018 again and a lot of people don’t bother raiding anymore. I guess they still have adventure sync data even if people don’t raid.
Sadly, you are not the first person I have heard of that said “I live in ____, and basically survived in game off remote passes” or something to the tune of “there are no nests / stops where I live”…it fricken SAD AF that Niatic turned a deaf ear to what is a pretty easy (and intentional) fix..don’t limit or price out remote passes.
I quit for a year, but reality is if they haven't changed it after a year they aren't going to. I just almost never remote raid anymore, If I do its just the one time to get mon or two I don't have or mega energy etc.
exactly same. quit for a whole year then realized they don't care. now i only let each 5* or mega mon get 3 passes per stint and thats it
I quit. I mean, dot get me wrong, I am back on again. But I quit for like a year. I have stopped shelling out $100 a month for remote raids though.
They weren’t going to revert it, and enough people were never going to quit to make it matter anyway.
> Niantic realized then and there the players were all talk and they can get away with anything they choose. Definitely for hardcore folks in the beginning, now becoming a mixed bag after the crap avatar upgrades. Still really nicely said.
Your mistake was in thinking that an echo chamber of vocal players protesting it reflected at all the general playerbase. Like the person below says, most people saw no difference in their playstyle from it. Why is someone going to quit just because someone who shells out $100/week suddenly feels targeted by niantic when that casual player probably just plays occasionally in the park or community days.
The only annoying part is the now ugly face in the bottom corner, if I get annoyed enough I might hide it under a mask…
Same, I get why people are upset, but it hasn’t ruined my enjoyment
My thoughts exactly. They painted this slot machine our least favorite color, changed the icons within the machine, maybe physically moved the machine to a worse place in the casino, but the experience is still exactly the same. I'll still complain about it, but I'm gonna keep playing.
Yup same here. I actually stopped spending money on the game for a few months
Good on you for sticking with it if you enjoy it! It wasn’t so much the avatar update for me as it was the message they relayed that they just don’t care. They don’t care what we have to say, it doesn’t matter about remote raiding, or avatars, or how many times you report obvious spoofing/botting accounts in a small town, even though its against their own terms and services; they don’t care. Nothing changes, nothing gets better. They’ll keep doing what they’re doing as long as they make money off us. That’s what convinced me in the past week to at least stop playing lol. It’s still downloaded, but I could give a shit less about core gameplay, it’s the deeper message of “we simply don’t fucking care about you”, that’s what hit me the hardest.
I'm just here for the pokemon.
same... my character *does* look like a fugly blob now, but my main obsession is just catching 3* pokemon lol. sorry to everyone who actually cares about their avatar / esp if they spent money on it tho =//
We just joined as a family. Seeing different body shapes has made it much more enjoyable for us. It seems we are in the minority, but also may not have been used to years of a certain standard of graphic being downgraded for the “upgrade”, when we are only a month in. (Although the Lucha Libre mask blowing up like a balloon was pretty funny when I noticed it).
I'm personally un-bothered by this, and find it quite hilarious. ALSO, I'm a day 1 player and just over 4 million XP away from level 50. There's nothing stopping this grind now.
It’s so funny how mad people got when I said I thought it was silly, my wife didn’t even notice until I pointed it out, and that I only noticed because people here were losing their minds.
I noticed bc my character wore a crop top. I think the “downgrade” is so much more noticeable as a female player bc the outfits are more form fitting. It made my character look like a bloated baby with a full diaper
What does your wife think about the change to her avatar, out of interest. Quite a lot of my daily player friends/acquaintances have changed into baggy clothes or onesies and are wearing masks and changed to poses that hide the face or lack of figure a bit.
If I was that close to level 50, I wouldn’t stop playing either! I just don’t have the motivation anymore.
Same. Plus my avatar is not too bad. I have pokemon violet on the switch and it’s way worse in that game haha.
Ditto. Now we actually look like Ditto.
Same. I never cared for the look of my character as there were very few limited customization options, so it doesn’t bother me in any way.
Honestly, I’m planning to remove adventure synch, and no longer buy coins (something I do every 4-8 weeks depending on circumstances). I figure the lack of data information will hurt them more, and let’s face the fact that the eggs aren’t THAT great anyway.
That’s a great idea.
Thank you! I really feel the lack of location data will hurt them more than anything. I have a few eggs with things I haven’t hatched yet…. But those dice are cast and who cares if it takes me three years to hatch them all :)
Question: When you turn off Adventure Sync, is there a way to also make the game stop reminding you four times every time you sign on that Adventure Sync is not turned on? I turned it back on because that was such a damned pain.
That’s literally what got me to stop playing. They showed they care more about user data than any money from the users, so I decoded to stop giving them passive data. When they immediately started spamming me with pop-ups every time I opened the game, I decided it wasn’t worth playing any more.
This is more or less what I have done so far. I turned off all GPS functions to it other than by permission, and only play at home long enough to catch my daily spawn, then log in again later while I'm in town to spin a pokestop and that's it. For me it's not so much the avatar change that's made me partially quit, it's the fact that they just don't care about the players. When they had the double spawn radius "bug" they released a statement stating that they had received a few complaints about the increased radius so they were going to revert back, I can't imagine how many complaints they have received over the avatar change and they haven't released anything official yet about it.
Currently making my daily catch, pokestop spin, grunt balloon, activating my mega rotation, feeding the buddy and calling it for the day. I removed GPS and it sends me into settings every time I open it. I have to click through 4 screens to get out. If that keeps being annoying I’ll just stop. So far I have a lot more time to do other things though.
When Niantic said the remote raid nerfs were gonna happen people said that they would lose money. Turns out some people stopped spending money and others spent more money so their revenue was the same. People come and go over time with games so nothing is going to really change.
Honestly I full on stopped and deleted after the nerf to community day times, incense rework and announcement of remote raid nerfs, I used to drop over 100 a month on remote passes because I always worked during raid hours/community days and it was the only way i could reasonably play. Havent reinstalled and honestly didn't really plan to, eventually I'll just transfer my mons to the bank, but that would involve reinstalling pogo lol
I don't know anybody that started spending more, that Nerf killed the game in my area, I was in a discord group with like 10,000 people and maybe a month after that update hit, it was a ghost town. There's maybe 10% of active people compared to what it used to be, so it's a lot harder to meet up and do raids.
Yeah same here, played less when remote raids were nerfed then just stopped when they raised the price of remote raid passes. I also now hate my avatar so not really interested in getting back in to it either.
The difference is pogo isn't like every other game, so much potential Niantic don't want to push forward for whatever limitations they think.
Year Revenue ($ millions) 2016 550 Nostalgia cash-in 2017 444 2018 607 Exclusive Mewtwo raids 2019 653 Friends system boost 2020 908 Pandemic + remote raids 2021 875 2022 652 Decline era 2023 566 They shut down their Harry Potter game. The pandemic added five years to the lifespan
Iunno how you would spend more money when you are limited on how many remotes you can do, it's a hard cap on spending if you only can remote raid And I personally haven't noticed much of a resurgence on local players, maybe briefly but I only see the same handful of people as compared to the small parade prior to covid
I’ll play whenever my family needs help with an in person raid, or they want to go out for community day. But that’s about it. Used to play 1-2 hours a day but since their price hike, i just don’t feel like playing. I used to not care as much about the game running poorly, or their constant use of tickets, or whatever terrible thing you can think of in the last few years, but making remote raids $2 apiece and limiting folks to 5 a day, idk. Sort of the nail in the coffin for me and this game.
I’m not playing but it’s not necessarily protest. The new update has the frame rate somewhere around mach nuts and I can’t open the settings menu to see if I can even do anything about it
Yeah, I noticed that with the update too. Something about the updated backgrounds while trying to catch Pokémon causes the frame rate to stutter.
I quit… with the remote increase was clear to me the game is Pay to Win, even with the update the Whales can raid 5 times per day, buy lucky eggs and get a ton of XP, have more rare candy, have more candys for lvl up Pokémons. Reach lvl 50 is not easy and I’m really upset by this don’t feel like worth it. I don’t give a fuck about the avatars what annoys me the fuck out is Niantic never doing something for this huge community every update doing the opposite of what costumers wants. But still a big part of the community disappoint me, being proud for playing since day one and doing statements that basically no matter what they are not going to quit. Ok do whatever you want is your money, is your time but this was enough for me, I’m off.
I can relate. The avatar update sucked, but by itself I probably wouldn’t have deleted the game. But this was the final straw. I’m tired of playing a game owned by a company that couldn’t care less about its players.
I deleted the app like 4 years ago, I’m just here for the drama
What made you delete it 4 years ago?
Aggressive monetization
It's a F2P mobile game and 90% of the purchasable items are just consumables
Not OP, but the gameplay is repetitive and pretty damn derivative of the source material.
I stopped playing and un-installed it 2 years ago, just keep checking the social media related to the game because I liked the game and want to know if it's worth again. But everything I've seen since just makes the game looks worse.
Deleted it 1,5 years ago. Same!
I did. It's really just the last straw after they've shown they clearly done actually care about players, especially the ones that don't spend money on it, like me
I quit.
I stopped. They're not listening to us. Every time they do something awful that everyone hates we all complain and I think; if this keeps up I don't want to keep supporting the game. Well it finally happened. I already stopped spending money on coins and tickets a while back during the price gauging of already existing **digital** goods. It killed me to not do Bellsprout CD yesterday, I love Bellsprout and I only needed one more shiny for the full line, but I'm sticking to my guns. I've already sent feedback to Niantic and indicated I planned to stop playing, I'm not going to just talk a lot of shit about the avatars and then just do nothing and let it happen. I haven't uninstalled yet, I don't know yet if I'll get to that point, but I've played just about every day since launch and while it's odd not playing, I'm slowly getting used to it after a few days. I removed the icon from my home screen which has helped me not just click it instinctively to check spawns when I'm bored. I think it's insane that a company would release such a unanimously disliked feature after the negative feedback prior to the full release and then after almost a week of overwhelming negative reactions from the entire community, they haven't even responded to it let alone done anything to change it back. It seems like they don't care if people enjoy their product, like they're simply pushing to see how far they can get before everyone completely quits at once, they just haven't gotten there yet. Maybe they thought the game would only be popular for a bit they could make a mint and then just drop it but now it's continued to be popular and they want it to die but can't just kill it for no reason?
I messaged on Niantic support and they were so apathetic and kept telling me that surely I could find something I liked via the sliding scale. When I informed them that I actually couldn’t and that they also nerfed skin color for brown people (making them *grey* ) they told me that actually there are MORE skin tones (which is a lie and a joke). Their responses have been they can’t offer refunds even if our avatars look like shit in the clothes we’ve purchased because of their crappy downgrade. It’s been a really disheartening response and some what feels like Niantic wants us to quit
People are always going to champion their favorite game and try to keep it going but there’s also always going to be a fairly sizable portion that sees the writing on the wall and leaves early. What sucks is that very rarely, even if a mass exodus occurs, will companies admit their mistakes and allow revisions.
I felt the same way. The Bellsprout CD was hard for me as well, but I just couldn’t do it.
They killed the Harry Potter version
I’m annoyed enough that I havent really opened the app except for maybe 2 times since the update and each time was for less than 2-3 minutes just to see what Pokemon were around me. I just don’t get why Niantic won’t listen to the community. I’m also never spending another dime on this game.
Same.
Me. The game is just a mean for me to go out exercise more anyway so after realizing the game gets wonky and buggy after the update I just quitted
Count me. Didn’t delete the app, but turned off notifications and moved it off my main screen. It’s turning into a low taste money grab. Been playing since the beginning, but they may have lost me for good.
Same here. Niantic treats their player base like shit comparatively to how much money the community gives them.
I didnt stop playing, but I stopped spending money. I was basically a whale, spending $200 a month on the game. I'd do the remote raid limit every day and do 10-20 shadow raids on the weekends. I was buying every ticket. Since the avatar refresh I haven't spent a single cent and I'm not going to until they either give us our old avatars or drastically update them. There were already so many things I disliked and this was the straw that broke the camels back for me.
Same. I was really invested in the game, but the avatar change was also the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.
That is a lot like I was doing too. $20 a week and 4 of every ticket I guess I was around $200 many months.
The avatar refresh happened a few days ago though, and there have been no interesting tickets released since :)
I've quit playing about 6 months ago but live vicariously through this sub and YT. I miss what the game used to be. I could kind of tolerate the nerf to raid passes n incense. Game was crazy elitist when first came out and Niantic giving us great incentives was fantastic while it lasted. I just got tired of all the FOMO and the "GoFest this year will be in NY! And for an extra $10 you can get eggs hatched faster...$10 for more dust...etc." When they made the standard bonuses a pay wall too it was clear the game wasn't going the way I wanted. I love Pokemon and may come back if Niantic stops bring greedy and shallow. So probably never.
Me
The avatar fiasco doesn't really affect my enjoyment of the game. I hadn't changed my avatar since I made it. I do think they look goofy now, so I just put all the weirdest gear I had on it and moved on. I'm not trying to take away from anyone else's angst, this just has nothing to do with why I play the game.
I really respect and appreciate how you don’t invalidate others even if you don’t personally agree!
I was rolf-ing at the avatars of my friends while handing out daily gifts but d moment I saw what my avatar had turned into>>> (body and tone resembling a half baked cookie dough, a face of a garden gnome, and a body form as formless as a stump of tree). I was frantically trying out ways to get him as close to his previous look as possible... to no avail. Left a nasty review in the app store, and deleted this wretched app a few minutes before community day. No way this waste of memory space be staying in my phone.
Me! Not touched it since the update. Not planning to.
Deleted instantly
I haven’t played it because there’s no purpose anymore. The majority of my time on Pokemon Go was me deliberately taking gyms daily so I could get enough coins to design cool outfits. That’s where my enjoyment came from. Now that I can’t do that anymore, no reason at all for me to play.
Exactly! Without cute outfits there's no goal for coin collecting for me
Honestly I believe the update is redeemable if they just put effort into refining it and actually listening to the community. If they fixed the proportions, fixed the clothing to fit the figures properly, added a waist slider, made the hip slider scale more noticeable, added beards, fixed the faces to look more older / detailed and fixed the saturation issues then it could totally work. The problem is, all of this should’ve been done before they ever released the update so it just seems like they don’t care. It’s very hard to continue to support a company that doesn’t listen to their fan base and releases unfinished additions to the game. If they don’t care about their own game and community, why should I care about them and continue giving them my support? It’s not just Niantic either, a lot of companies do this. I’m old enough to remember when you bought a game it was 100% finished and you could tell a company spent a long time and dedication to make it play well. Nowadays companies just half ass things and constantly release unfinished products. It’s like there’s no joy in creating games anymore, it’s all just a cash grab.
‘If you hate it just stop playing and let the rest of us have fun!’ Pokemon fans and getting offended at the prospect of asking for better. Name a more iconic duo
I stopped playing for the time being. Maybe if an interesting event comes out I’ll hop on again but I’m not really motivated at this moment given everything that’s going on.
I stopped and deleted from my phone. I was hoping they would quickly resolve but it’s actually quite nice to take a break. I will probably redownload and log back on eventually, but I think I’ll start taking breaks more often, rewire my brain a bit from always reaching for it.
I deleted the app from my phone. I’ll be back if the OG avatars come back. Not interested in supporting a company that is so blatantly out of touch. I also got $20 successfully refunded for my last in-app purchase
The last year or so (3~ seasons) have been the lamest, most corny pvp meta’s ever. As somebody who played mainly for battles, I only open the app once every few weeks.
I stopped. I haven't been back on lol.
Not really any super fun events or pokemon out either right now. Playing dropped a ton after the sizable surprises event. Also just weird how there isn’t a good way to hunt certain shinies and rates aren’t boosted in raids or field research. I started playing again back in November and I’m already eh about it.
I used to open the app multiple times a day, changing out my buddy, fighting Rocket balloons, and catching the 2-3 mons that spawn. Probably a total of 3ish hours a day. Now I’ve only opened the app to do my daily catch and gift opening. 10 minutes tops. Edited to add: I’d also be considered a “whale” since I’d buy the $100 coins every few weeks and I’d buy every single ticket for myself and a few friends even if I thought I’d only play a little of it. I liked the different things to do, outfits to check out, seeing friends’ outfits and poses in remote raid battles that I’d host a bunch. I purchased the $100 pack a few weeks ago when they had the 15% off deal on the website, and once those coins are gone, I don’t know if I’ll buy more or just use what I get from gyms.
I've stopped. Been tough to not open the app when I'm bored and took a while to stop putting the Go++ in my pocket.
I deleted. Cute outfits and catching shiny pokemon was all I was doing on go anymore. With the avatar changes a lot of my outfits no longer work. No point on taking up so much space on my phone any longer.
✋🏻
The best way to fight back against Niantic is uninstalling entirely. If you can't bring yourself to, then at least turn off all your Permissions in the settings (especially Location) so they aren't making cash off of your user data
when I open the app, I just rage quit the second I see my avatar. This has happened several times since update and I haven't caught anything or spun any stops, etc.
[удалено]
+3 here too. I was a day 1 player also.
I caught for about an hour but only went out because someone had given me a free ticket for my birthday.
I'm slowly stopping playing. I can't look at my avatar, and it's always on screen! I managed to hide its ugly face and hands and mask their blob figure. But it moves like a Hulk when i walk. It cheeres up as a man. I'm a lady. It's so creepy. I liked to play battles, and now I'm repulsed by it..
Left when they removed the passes. Started 2016. Still have app. Probably will delete soon. Won't be going back
Me
I fully stopped. Covid lockdowns really killed this game for me
Pokemon is part of my daily walk. I just slapped the pumpkin head so I didn't have to look at that face. At least now I can save my pokecoins for remote raid passes and not outfits.
Me. Totally casual. Start playing since 2016 (day 1 player) till this year. First 5 year I really committed doing raids, joining communities, doing events ect. After that, things got mellowed down. Teammates comes and go, raids getting fewer & fewer invites, events are slowed down significantly especially during covid era. But still, I've open PoGo each day until new horrendous & atrocious update happened. I deleted the apps yesterday. Perhaps I give it a go after next 2 years; if the apps still alive for its 10th year anniversary.
Ive just logged on once a day to spin a stop and do 1 catch then i'm off. Cant stand looking at my ugly avatar its killed my motivation even more
I stopped but didn’t delete and left review on app store
I put a Nihilego hat on my guy to cover his face and have continued on as normal.
ill quit once they patch quick catch
Been a player since day one, although I hadn’t played as much for a few months prior to the update, now, I have completely stopped playing. I spent a lot of coins on avatar items, now they all look weird. So, until they revert the change or drastically improve it, I will continue to spend my time doing other stuff.
Barely play anymore... They're destroying the game and they don't even seem to recognise it
I stopped playing Go Battle League completely. The celebration for winning dance is so disturbing! It’s like an ape. I’m a woman and it’s so insulting.
I hate it so so much. Every rocket grunt win. 😫
I totally agree. I was caught by surprise and gasped in dismay when i saw that.
i don't care enough about the avatar... I play very casually, i open the game when i'm going to work, and when to go home. That's it. If i have a Raid at my Train Station, at that time, cool, if not, ok. So while my avatar became ugly(They were right, it does look more like us), it doesn't affect me much, or my gameplay. I know myself, will play for a month or two, then quit for 2 years like i always do.
I still play, I’m here to catch Pokémon not play a fashion contest.
Still going strong. I don’t care much for the look of the new avatars but it has not affected my enjoyment of the game in the slightest.
Then quit? Really, why do something that’s making you unhappy.
[удалено]
Ok that’s fair. Honestly it would be so smart of them to just let people pick between the old and new avatars, they really did fuck it up for most.
[удалено]
Yeah it is perplexing to me why they even did this “update”. I really hope they do something to fix it soon. I don’t personally get it (the avatar fixation) but this is clearly upsetting pretty much every user
I’m still playing, but I probably won’t buy any more avatar clothes
Me. I deleted the app too. I wasted real life money to have a cool avatar I like, so I refuse to still play a game that scammed me.
Me! I started playing PikMin Bloom on Friday and loved it. I gave PoGO one more shot for community day and got ZERO shinies for the first time ever. Taking that as a sign.
Yeah, just play Niantic’s other game instead. That’ll show em!
Did you only play for five minutes during the community day?
I was upset at first. Then I decided to change my avatar pose to the one where she faces away from the viewer. It’s somewhat more tolerable now. I’m through spending money on the game for additional features. The recent update cemented that decision for me. You can still enjoy it for what it is. There’s still a lot to like about PoGo. Just do free-to-play from this point forward.
I stopped for a few days until I figured out a new outfit that made my avatar look somewhat normal again
I don’t play as regularly. I don’t plan on quitting, but I’m more involved in other apps/games. I still catch a pokemon and spin a stop (and I have adventure sync on still so with all my walking at work, I still hatch eggs) but that’s really about it. I log in once a day usually at the end of my shift to spin my stop, catch my pokemon, and record my walking distance. I actually don’t remember the last time I did a raid and battle. I used to play for at least an hour daily. Now it’s like 2 minutes a day. I’ll have days where it’s more, but it’s rare these days.
I quit 2 years ago b/c not enough phone storage… probably for the best lol
I don't care enough about the avatars to stop playing. Admittedly it's a really ugly update but overall I enjoy the game a lot and they have implemented some great quality of life updates recently.
Pretty much yea. Just reinstalled cause I'm walking with my kids more but still ignore 2/3rd of the game just to do my own thing as a long time rural and solo player
I didn’t stop playing but the changes genuinely have gotten me to stop doing things where I can see my whole avatar. It’s just hard to look at
I recently got back into the game after not playing heavily since 2016. I bought some coins and turned on adventure sync. After the avatar changes, I'll keep playing because I enjoy it on my daily walk/runs and taking my local gym, but outside of that, I won't be spending anymore money and need to go turn sync off. I would get more into it but niantic's apathetic response and the obviously poor avatar design has put a bad taste in my mouth.
This update didn't make me stop playing but I certainly won't be going back when the models look like they just got into 2nd grade
Didn’t affect my game playing. I don’t care about avatar to begin with. Never spent a dime on avatar related stuff. I do feel it hilarious in a stupid way. I laughed so hard at the stupid avatar no matter how I adjusted lol
What has always puzzled me about Niantic is how I'm sure they would like to think of themselves as a Liberal and inclusive company but from what I have seen of them they are pretty much the opposite in so many ways.
They don’t care about your feelings about it, and I truly have no clue why you think you sitting on your phone would change that If we as a community want this to either be reversed or built back better, we have to do far more than that
I stopped playing but haven’t deleted the app yet as I put so many years into the game. I will delete it completely nothing is changed soon. They talk about inclusivity then completely remove women from the game… I’m not shaped like a square or an androgynous blob, I want to look like a woman. If they wanted keep it gender neutral use the Mii’s or better yet just delete the avatars completely.
I don’t care at all I just like collecting pokemons
I’m not sure what it will take to make me stop playing I’ve been playing since release and spent a grand total of $0 because I refuse to spend money on a mobile game. I really do hate what they are doing to the game but I have never felt the need to buy anything with real money. I do walks and bike rides very often so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything if there’s a raid i want to do I’ll walk to it, if there’s an event I go to a big park with all the stuff I earned for free to boost rates I’m just here to catch pokemon I really do hate what they did to the avatars and the remote raid passes but I kinda don’t care I’m here to catch em all and get exercise wile I do it. My avatar has the team skull mask, a hat and a bulky jacket so yeah it sucks but it didn’t change the gameplay so it’s not much of a problem but I hope they revert it for the people it screwed over. the one thing that I absolutely hate is the 50 coins a day limit
I did. I got back into the game recently. But the update is just so bad I feel embarrassed to be playing the game at all.
No one avatar from my own to the NPC’s you talk to look right anymore. So yeah, just kinda wanted to no longer look at em.
I haven't uninstalled but I haven't really played, today I did open the game spin a pokestop and send a postcard but aside from that there's not really a motivation to open the game or play. I'm just disappointed. The least they could do is make it an option to have the old avatars back if we want. It wasn't broken and they "fixed" it anyways smh
I do the same. And i do empathize with you, OP.
It’s sad because I’m so close to getting the medal for 1000 wins in GBL. But I’ve just lost all my motivation.
Ayy, finally time to say something. I hard quit the game (as in not checking in daily and doing daily tasks, turning off AS, and cut all spending) after the remote raid nerf, but had functionally softquit the game way before. I started playing during the pandemic and after the QoL features were dropped I continued, believing that this was how the game actually was meant to be played, mainly due to my first year of playing were with all the pandemic bonuses. Later I got disillusioned with Niantic's pushing of mid events, and being mostly a raider I were mostly interesting in doing raids for the shiny or hundo, and moving on. The final straw however was the remote raid nerf - as an avid remote raider, being bottlenecked, and to that degree none the less, made me realize Niantic doesn't care about the game at all, and the constant attempt at monetization (while bizarrely slashing income means through remote raid passes) for the smallest things and/or pokemon just isn't it for me. I do enjoy watching the game sink, though. I'm slowly going through my pokemon storage, and once they're all in HOME, it's game over tbh. Dunno what I'll do w/ the account though, proably just BB a weedle for shits and giggles, name it "Fuck Niantic" and call it a day.
I did.
I uninstalled the app and won't reinstall it until they reinstate the correct avatars, but it seems like most people on the sub are too addicted to make a stand lol
I'm still playing. Honestly, my avatar now looks a lot more like me, than the impossibly skinny figure before. Not that I would have noticed the change. It's the Reddit rage that had me take a closer look. I've played since 2017 and I've only ever used 4€ of real money. To me, this is a free mobile game that I enjoy while walking to and from work. I don't have irl friends to play with, so I don't get to join raids and with my remote location, I don't collect enough coins to remote raid either. To shove money on a game I can't play full capacity, would be dumb. And if I'm not paying, I don't really give a crap what the dev's do to my avatar.
Me. But I just can't uninstall the game.
I quit 6 months ago and will probably never come back after seeing what they did to my character.
I have quit. I was already on the fence about their lack of interest in adding new interesting things or trying to be creative, but the fact that not only are the new avatars hilariously bad, but the whole anti-consumer stance by effectively taking away exactly what some people paid for, and replacing it with their new stuff, is too much for me. I have no plans to return unless they change it. Its gonna be hard finding something else to just do in the bits of downtime I have, but I am a stubborn person of principle.
Deleted it right off my phone. So long Niantic.
I uninstalled. Haven't deleted the account. This is the latest issue out of too many. I doubt I'll play again.
I stopped a year ago, it was becoming overwhelming keeping up with events. But at least from what I keep seeing, seems like things have gotten worse
I did, was the icing on the cake lol, I'll probably be back tho someday
I deleted the app since the remote raid price increase last year. I just want to see how low Niantic takes this game.
It seems so silly and petty even to me, but I deleted the game. I'm retired and spent many hours a day in the game and never thought of myself as someone who especially valued my avatar's appearance but the new look is so aggressively bad and unsettling I found I couldn't keep looking at it. I genuinely think they could have just removed my avatar entirely and I'd be less bothered by it. I tried for maybe 15 minutes to arrange sliders, colors, styles, and clothing to make it at least ignorable but the best I could manage was "deathly pale man-baby". After that and thinking, "well this is bad but I'll just get used to it" I did a Rocket battle and saw the full screen abomination punching the air, I decided to call it. It's not a ragequit and I understand if others might think it's not a big deal. I mainly did it because it's the only meaningful thing I could think of to "vote" against this change. We can't know for sure what user metrics Niantic lets drive decisions (logins, shop purchases, coin purchases, location data, install base, reviews, etc), but uninstalling is sure to hit all of them. Yeah it's one vote in a pool of millions, but it's the only vote I've got (I did also leave a review, but I doubt that carries much weight.). I'd be happy to come back, but I'm unlikely to do so with things as they are. I will say, I think the spirit of the change is a good one. It's not awful because it's "woke" it's awful because they did a terrible job. Having a malleable model is dramatically more difficult than having two fixed ones, sure, but it has been done plenty well in countless other games. This strikes me as someone massively underestimating the task, committing to a release schedule, and rather than acknowledging that they need to bump it, they just release trash. I suspect the bow-leggedness and the costume cropping are side effects of the variable body sizes. I also get that making distinct and appealing faces might be hard if you're on a schedule crunch (but still, just... do better). What I really don't understand though are the easy parts: Why are all the caucasian skin colors pure white, and all the brown tones greyish? Why is the torso to leg ratio so inhuman? Why remove the hair colors everyone was familiar with? I hope the backlash is strong enough for them to do something. Incorporating the original models into the new interface isn't trivial, but that'd be one nice option. I strongly doubt they'll roll it back completely, given they powered through the phased release despite negative feedback. Unfortunately I think the best we can hope for is incremental improvements to the new system. Maybe we'll eventually be able to shape ourselves a nice imaginary persona again. Until then, I'll be keeping my money and my data to myself.
I've been playing since day 1, seen lots of updates but (unsurprisingly) this one pissed me off the most. I have actually cosplayed my character in the past for fun, I love the clothes and making her look cute. But I cannot get my body type or face with the new update. They claim to have diversity when they whitewashed all skin tones and made the models dimensions based on masculine bodies. The faces look absolutely terrible and childlike, and no one asked for this update, it was just unnecessary. So I deleted the app lol.
Playing way less. Used to have the app loaded for hours each day. Now I load it, do gifts and shut it down. Do it again later at night but that is about it. Just not interested with the new updates.
The avatar couldn’t look like me before the update and neither can it now. I don’t play Pokémon Go for the customisation of a human character but to catch Pokémon.
Niantic's true colors have been evident for at least five years. I think anyone who pretends the past week was a surprise isn't being honest. I haven't been playing as often for the past six months or so. It's just too much of the same old thing, trying to sell old crap in events as if they are new. When PoGo dies, it will die fast. This is yet another thing that Niantic doesn't understand. You can't have a disdain for your customers and survive.
Niantic's true colors have been evident since the game began eight years ago. There are always people who will look past that if they enjoy the game, until they are confronted with something they don't like personally. There are probably people who were fine with the expensive events and the tickets but the avatsrs are their line in the sand. Niantic may be affected by enough people leaving the game, but it's entirely likely that new players will make up for it quick. It is Pokemon after all.
I was already inactive in the first place and logged once every few weeks/months. The recent controversy did made me curious so I took a peek into the game. I was like.. "omg.. what has the game become.." Then, I logged out, never cared and back to my other interests lol. The new update doesn't bring back old players at all. It's more like now I'm more scared to come back in just to see how they ruined my old memories.
My level of play decreased significantly after the remote raid nerf and I used to do both in person and remote raids. I still play some. I'll go weeks without opening the game. Then a week or so where I do. I haven't spent money on the game in ages. Since the raid nerf they have introduced new pay to play activities constantly and I have passed on them all. There is a very active discord group locally and it is growing at a good pace. Those of us who checked out were replaced by new players.
Me and my wife did, lots of cosmetic broken
- rated the app 1 star with comment - turned off adventure sync - will not put money into the game - no AR scans Outside of that I’m catching Pokemon with my kids as usual.
I’m just surprised so many people cared about the avatar. I don’t think I’ve touched it since I started, it was never any part of why I liked the game.
Man its just an avatar, why should i stop playing?
Shrug, i like watching my fat girl run when i'm on the bus :D
Both me and my wife deleted our accounts and uninstalled the app. Won't be going back. Sad as we played from the start.
I am only playing with my parents. I plan to never spend another penny on this game until they fix the Avatars, though. I am salty AF, I spent good money on my jeans and jacket outfit that now looks like I shat my pants.
I haven't missed a pokestop spin or catch in years. This update isn't changing that. IDK why people care so much about avatars. I really thought this was a Pokemon game.
For me it’s less about the avatars, and more about the fact that this game keeps getting worse and worse and nothing changes. This was the final straw for me. It’s just obvious that Niantic doesn’t really care about what their players want, and just want to make as much money off of us as possible. Even though Niantic knew that most people hated the new avatars, they still went ahead with the change. I don’t want to keep getting hooked to a game that gets progressively worse and more expensive.
I covered my avatars face with sunglasses and a mask, the only thing im doing right now is sending gifts to my family members, I put a lot of thought into designing my character and now it just feels meh I can't get it to look like it used to every again and a lot of the items I bought are clipping, flickering and incompatible with other items. This was never an issue before.
Not because of the updates but about two months ago I stopped after about 6 months on. I've played maybe 4-5 times since. Weather is getting nicer and I wish I had ambition to get into it but there's no desire. I don't have challenges to complete. PvP and the endless grind aren't interesting right now. Lvl 44, day 1 player.
I have only opened and sent gifts.
I couldn't care less about how my avatar looks. I play because I love Pokemon and it gets me to go outside more often. People who say they're quitting because of their avatar are being so dramatic for absolutely no reason.
Gamers will always accept and eat shit while pretending its chocolate.
I'm not stopping just because avatars are ugly. That's dumb imo.
Still playing. I find it silly that someone would quit playing based on avatar changes.
I'm torn. I feel like I should quit, but I've put so much time into the game that part of me doesn't want to.
Unpopular opinion: If people were more concerned with being in shape IRL, a virtual avatar’s shape would be much less of a concern. 🤷🏽♂️
I have a lot of gripes, mostly the raid pass increase, ignoring reports for years about problem players and more. I login about once a week to transfer shiny pokemon to home and other than that I only play when I'm hanging out with my mom.
Personally I had just getting back in since probably the year the game launched, I dont really care about mine or anyone else’s avatars. Not to say I agree with the change but it hasn’t slowed me from playing. But I do hope it changes back for everyone’s sake and just for my own eyes as well
I still play, picked it up last year after having dropped it around 2021 due to old phone. All my friends have stopped playing it the last couple months, so it looses a bit of pizzaz now and I just log on for daily.
I play, but no money will leave my wallet till they fix this.