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Pokémon GO’s “Task Force,” an internal group of developer Niantic that hopes to respond to player feedback, has issued a statement to players to offer updates on its progress.
As you may recall, Pokémon GO players regrouped last month after being frustrated and upset by Niantic’s decision to roll back changes originally added to help players stay safe during the pandemic. In open letters to the company, fans hoped to let Niantic see that the changes – including an increased interaction radius for PokéStops – had benefits that go beyond the pandemic, wanting to see them stay in the game. Permanently.
The task force was quickly set up to address these concerns and it was recently announced that the increased radius will now remain intact. This, along with other seasonal bonus and communication promises, was detailed in today’s statement. Here is it in full, written by executive producer Steve Wang:
“First of all, I want to thank you for your patience. Your passion and concerns have not escaped us over the past few weeks, and our internal working group has spent a lot of time discussing the changes we have made to distances. PokéStop and Gym interaction interaction Now we want to give you an update as promised.
What we heard from the community
PokéStops and Gyms are a way to entice Trainers to go out and explore new places, walk an extra mile or two, and meet other people. It has been inspiring to see so many players from all over the world come together thanks to this design. To me, that means Pokémon GO is important to a lot of people, and it means Trainers have expressed concerns because they care about the game.We listened to player feedback and also hosted four panel discussions where I chatted with over 30 community leaders from around the world (thank you all for participating!). The two main themes we heard were:
– The 80 yard interaction radius for PokéStops and Gyms has been an incredibly positive improvement in quality of life over the past year and a half.
– Niantic has a lot of room for improvement in terms of communication with our players.
PokéStop and Gym interaction distance
We understand that the increased interaction distance of 80 meters has become a welcome benefit for many players – this is clear from the feedback we have received from the community. So we want to keep it: as announced last week, 80 yards (not 40 yards) will now be the base interaction radius for PokéStops and Gyms around the world.
We still believe in the importance of discovering interesting places and things in the real world, and we don’t want to lose sight of that. The team and I look forward to developing new ways to motivate and reward trainers for their exploration and exercise in the real world. Thanks to the working group, we have new ideas to explore and look forward to sharing more in the months to come.
Seasonal Global Bonuses
We recently had a tough learning experience when we had to quickly adjust the game settings for New Zealand in response to their lockdown. This experience taught us that we are not going to be able to effectively adjust the country-by-country experience in real time. Starting with the Season of Mischief, all bonuses will be set globally and directly related to the seasons in Pokémon GO.
Communication
We should communicate and engage more with the trainers. Hope that with your patience and understanding we can do better here. There are many ways we can improve, but to get started, we make the following commitments to you:
– Starting in October, we’ll start posting a Dev Diary every two months to share the latest game priorities, events, and features.
– We will be setting up regular conversations with community leaders to continue the dialogue we started this month.
– We will continue our work of updating the Known Issues page and in these efforts we will prioritize greater visibility into the status of existing bugs for trainers.
We love how passionate Pokémon GO Trainers are about this game, and we want you to know how passionate we are about the game and the community as well. The lack of communication regarding the PokéStop and Gym interaction radius was not handled well on our part, and it was a great learning experience on how to better interact with our players in the future. Our top priority is and always has been to bring people out into the real world and to bond with each other in a human way. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us – you will hear from us soon. “
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