Thanks for posting these, @Branebs. Niantic repeatedly refers to the threefold principles of “exercise, exploration, and real-world social” when defending the changes that have rendered the game unplayable for many. The third is a real laugher. Look at all the images of GO Fest in these articles… crowds of people with faces buried in their phone screens, completely ignoring the people inches away from them in real life.
That is not REAL LIFE SOCIAL, Niantic. Get your heads out of your asses and note the hypocrisy. PoGO’s “social” is not face-to-face, it’s face-to-screen. Whether we’re inches apart or miles.
We interact THROUGH your game, not with your game. Restore the remote play and other quality of life features, please.
Completely agree with you @vorgriff3 .
People are interacting in those live locations because of the demands of the game’s progress requirements, not because they want to discuss.
Rather, we people at forum are interacting with each other, despite being in different continents, without any remote features, just because we want to discuss, not because we are playing !
There were many points which I found misleading for a general player who is not in the city area.
Look at the screenshot below. This is what I can see around my home :
As far as you can see, you will only find empty maps without any POIs.
Now,
He did accepted that rural areas do not have Pokestops, but he didn’t told how the company will mitigate the requirements of Pokestop/Gym for rural player.
All Legendary Pokemon are easily available via raids, but for raids, gyms as well as many high leveled players are necessary, which are not possible in rural areas.
Even for earning Pokecoins, gyms are needed. In my case, I visit to city area once in a week. So that is the only opportunity for me to earn the 50 coins.
Daily incense’s real use for rural players is the provision of getting 30 Pokeballs, apart from that it’s more or less same like normal incense.
Despite being at level 38, I had never experienced how it feels to use lure modules, instead I plug them in the Pokestops while our car passes by the Pokestops in city.
He himself told that rural players should need to visit the city area 
.
Plus, what’s the point in exploring local park ? He is thinking that all local parks are like National Parks, where we have ample opportunities to find wild animals each time we go there.
Again, routes can be explored in region where Pokestops are present, so this feature does nothing for rural player.
Look at the screenshot of my area. Campfire widget is still missing !!
They are not listening to community at all !!
Raids are the only way by which players are guaranteed to get a legendary Pokemon. There are no other ways a rural player can get a legendary Pokemon in this game. Few seasons ago, getting a legendary Pokemon from GBL was doable and acceptable. But since then, no reward for the efforts we put in battles
I had heard that, long time ago, people were getting a legendary Pokemon after collecting stickers for 7-day breakthrough. Even this is yet to be experienced by me…
After that he mentioned Shadow Raids, Showcases, etc-etc… , and all these are possible if we have accessible Pokestops/Gyms.
He told that the company is looking at the interests of casual players, intermediate players and Lv.50 players.
But so far, I feel that game offers the most to players who are beyond level 40. Even the tasks for leveling up beyond 40 requires raids, trades and Pokestops. So in all, they are only focusing on high level players, because they know that those players are the one who will buy their ticketed events.
Only good features which they released are :
-
Map update. Now you can see spawn of many Pokemon around me, but before that only a daily spawn Pokemon was showing up.
-
Mega Evolution System. Even though it serves no purpose outside raids, still it feels good to mega evolve a Pokemon for fun.
Other than these, Niantic took away many good features, and implemented poor features like :
- Legendary Pokemon from GBL.
- Legendary Pokemon from 7-day breakthrough.
- Incense effectiveness.
- Remote Raids and pass costs.
- 1 Pokecoin weekly box.
- GBL Battle Pass. It rewards nothing in comparison with how time we put to win 500 matches in season.
- 30 Ultra Ball box for every CD.
- Repeating the same reward pool again and again in GBL.
- Route Feature.
- No use of best buddy system.
- etc…
So we can clearly see that no. of mistakes outweighs the no. of good features. Therefore, Niantic should need to go through the above paragraph if they really want to improve the game !!
Are decoy grunts a part of this new event? These have almost been the only grunts i have been encountering in the last day (a good 90% of the time its a decoy grunt). Ive just been harvesting bellsprout from them. Is this just some weird glitch? What is meant by “decoy”? Im so confused 
Decoy grunt means you’re looking for the Team GO Rocket boss, Giovanni. The first few times you think you found him, it will turn out to be a grunt, instead.
I don’t think I’ve seen decoys since the last time Giovanni had Shadow Mewtwo as his prize in a Special Research process, though. (No decoys for the Shadow Mewtwo Raids event.)
You could find stuff like this in the forum’s search function. I remember commenting on it a few years ago…
But i dont have the super rocket radar to find him?
No kidding? Is one of your field-research tasks to find the Team GO Rocket Boss?
Yes, i guess that could be the reason, but ive had that research for months and this hasnt happened before today 
Sounds like you still have a mystery on your hands, then. (Sounds different from what I was referring to. Sometimes it seems like they force through a long-overdue research task in a way that seems glaringly artificial. In this case, that would be finding the Boss suddenly, with no decoys.)
What’s happening when you do the quarter hour Balloons?
I get normal grunts a lot more often through the balloons
I am also left handed !!
Showcase-related question: How to tell which Froakie is worth evolving twice to enter into Greninja showcase? No way to tell just by looking, and not realistic to evolve all of them to find one. (It’s not as if I keep more than 1 or 2 evolved forms of this meta-irrelevant mon…)
So just screw it, I guess.
Yes it is annoying not being able to tell easily.
Who has time to run the Math on height and weight to work it out on hundreds of Pokémon.
You could wing it and target XXL’s but I’m not sure if that’s accurate either.
What’s also annoying is when you go to place something in the Showcase you don’t see if your Pokémon are bigger than the ones already in there. Your leaving it purely to chance. You could place your best in there only to find your well down the list. If you go to the next Showcase stop there is no indication on your Pokémon that it’s already placed either. Unless your placing in order of best to 3rd best it’s easy to place the same one in another Showcase and not realise your only in 1 or 2 unless you go to the Today section and scroll all the way to the bottom to check. It can be a lot of messing around if your trying to use strategy to maximise your chances of a win(s).
Once the 3rd one is place in that’s it until end time.
Yesterday I noticed on the Badge Table Summary page that my Vivillon Collector info was out of date. As per the instruction on the Badge Table Summary, I posted my update on the Vivillon Collector page. After which the Badge Table Summary page has no longer been listed in the forum’s contents list on the main page.
A search for “badge summary” found the page; but it’s still not in the main forum page list. Somehow I suspect that isn’t the way it is intended to be…
Thanks, I will make an actualization and try to send it to the top…
