Very sad to observe that the actions on pursuing Niantic to take away the pokestops at certain areas have caused the local people there in trouble where they have to walk far away for pokestops despite the Covid-19 pandemic are serious in their countries. Besides whistleblowing the way how people played the pokemon go and complaining, why can't think of other ways for Niantic consideration, which may be enlightened the situation?
1) To request Niantic to increase the number of pokestop & gym at your respective area persistently from time to time.
2) To request Niantic to temporary open up on those pokemon which only available at district zones to spawn wildly everywhere instead of merely at special events so that everyone around the world have the chance to catch those pokemon at their local area.
3) To request Niantic to increase chances to catch 100 IV pokemon at respective local area.
4) To request Niantic to increase chances to catch those pokemon adequate enough for pvp at each type of GBL or else.
5) Any other ways to help each players to move on the game development rather than merely set up policy to punish players, which cause players upset and give up the game forever.
Game rules and regulations should be adequate or flexible for players from time to time rather than rigid like a steel or rock, which do not help the game to grow further but cease at certain time. Although there are players might not agree on the aforesaid statement but there are also a lot of players who are not agreed with the whistleblowing actions, which just bias to certain players for their own fun merely.
I'd say that given the moral and ethics of the people who set up that cluster in the first place, it's extremely unlikely that there's any value in keeping any of the POIs. There's bound to be a good amount of fakes and misplaced ones there. Just nuke them all from the database and let the local community recreate the legit ones.
You have no idea. Without the Ingress players, we would not have had any stops and arenas and therefore no spawns or any opportunities to level! So show some gratitude. We owe most of everything to this group of players.
And they are not paid? We can be happy that this game is free to play! That should be enough thanks to us already! Niantic doesn't owe us anything. Rules are rules - and these should be observed! In addition, be happy that you get points and upgrades for submitting and evaluating!
Do you really want us to believe that those cluster of overlapping pokestops are required to play? What happens everywhere else in the world where there are only one Pokestop in each L17 cell?
In any case, taking into account the Covid restrictions, Niantic should take extra effort to remove those saturated zones as they might attract more players according to your statements and so it's better to reduce the concentration of Pokestops because that would prevent that people go there in big groups that aren't recommended in the current pandemic situation.
Although the fact is that such overload is used mainly by spoofers and very few local players would be affected if Niantic would correct the abuse.
If Niantic takes actions to punish places where spoofers go, but also local people, in this pandemic times, people would be angry. Lots of players. And it would damage Pokémon image.
The Pokémon Company won't want the image of their product to be damaged just because a few bored people reporting just to get worse the playability to other players. Get a life. You're not even from the cities or countries where these "exploits" migh have happened. You even admit the POIs are legal, so if Niantic changed the rules AFTERWARDS, what' the problem with you.
Of course Niantic reversed this celebrated by you changes. Why? They don't want a so big backlash from players that could turn into The Pokémon Company ceasing the license eventually.
I see that the spoofers have arrived to defend their actions. No amount of disagreeing with Niantic's spacing algorithm justifies exploiting and cheating to create these large clusters. If you cannot play fairly, then don't play at all.
1) No spoofer here (unless you are taking about the other ones, which I don't know if they are o not, and I doubt you do either), so stop the harassment and "insult" now.
2) Those "spacing" rules were never made public, so, theoretically, they don't exist. The "abuse" of the "algorithm" has always existed, only that not always so obvious because of the amount of players involved in each game. The only thing Niantic could do is to officially release the mechanic, or, if not, just ignore it.
3) That abuse was fixed so it could not happen again.
4) The spacing itself is a shame. You could have 2 historical distinct POIs statues from a well-known sculptor but only 1 will translate to a Pokéstop, meanwhile, you could have a stop of a gazeeboo in you near park, which translates in giving that gazeeboo even more relevance that the aforementioned statue. That's a nonsense. Or even worse, you could have a graffiti POI as a PokéStop in Pokémon Go, but not a cathedral, if they are in the same cell, and the cathedral POI was created afterwards. Again, non sense.
Yet Zaragoza and many places over the world still had clustered Pokestops due to abuse. Niantic only fix to the newer ones but not to the massive clusters that was previously made before the fix.
Since the discussion went wild and out-of-topic, @NianticCasey-ING@NianticEG and others would you shut this discussion down and clean all those massive clusters right now?
The majority of people what use that location and have been complaining about its "disappearance" have all been spoofers.
Whether Niantic acknowledged the details of the spacing algorithm is irrelevant. Just because it hasn't been published doesn't mean it doesn't exist. These locations were created through wayfarer abuse, either by moving Wayspots far enough away so that they would be converted into Pokestops or gyms or purposely mis-located in a spot away from the physical location of the object, then moved it back later. Niantic has already defined this behavior as abuse and large clusters like this one could not have occurred in any other way.
Just because the problem was "fixed" elsewhere doesn't mean that you get to continue to benefit from clear cases of abuse. Just because you received stolen property doesn't mean you get to keep it.
This point is completely irrelevant and does not justify abuse, exploitation, and cheating. If you cannot play within Niantic's frameworks and rules, then don't play at all. And the algorithms used to determine stop/portal/Wayspot density is very much part of that framework.
2) Just because they don't detail how the system works doesn't mean at all that the rules don't exist. It only means that they can have whatever rules that they want and so if the want to change them at any time they don't have to give any explanation. You know that the rules exist and that in order to avoid them people found a loophole. Due to the abuse of that loophole now Niantic has been forced to enforce the rules.
3) No, the abuse still exists as long as such places remain active. They have prevented further abuse, but they haven't cleaned up the existing ones.
1) Then you are granted the permission to make that assumption?... Mmm, no.
2) Of course is relevant, because in the past (not the abuse of this method), people didn't know that was not recommended. It was possible and Niantic did not do anything. Was after the exposure of a ¿Thai? road full of gyms when they made adjustments. They did not care before that, so I don't get why you do while THEY don't. NOW Nianctic has said this is an abuse not before, so that not make "abusers" those who did that before that statement.
3) When they implemented the "solution" they did not retroactive apply it to existing pokéstops, basically you cannot decide which is right or which is wrong, and which deserve to stay more than others, that's why they didn't nor will do anything.
4) Of course it's not irrelevant, because it shows the problem behind a S2-hidden mapping. They should make all theis games work the same way. It's stupid you waste a request in Pokémon GO in a perfectly valid POI, that it translates into a portal in Ingress, but it does not the same in Pokémom, because you have another stop just in the other border of the same S2 cell that you shouldn't have to be aware of its existence. That's what made people "abuse" of the system. They wasted petitions that turned OK in a game they don't play but not in the one they are playing without any advice or tip that why some might appear and some not. That's completely insane.
Only the people that abused that and spoofers would be angry.
But this is an interesting point:
Hey @NianticCasey-ING Does Niantic or the Pokemon Company allow the usage of cheats?
There's no need for you to reply as actions speak louder than words, according to your actions in the following days we can see the outcome. Either you clean up all the abuse or you allow cheaters and spoofers to run rampant on the game and we can tell anyone that the actions on Pokemon Go are dictated by the cheaters. That would be a really interesting article (or series of articles) for so many media sites related to gaming, I see so much click potential.
Thank you @JoanBenz-ING for bringing this to our attention.
I'll also add that The Pokemon Company is very much involved in setting the spacing algorithm used by Pokemon Go. This was made abundantly clear when Niantic doubled down on it earlier this year rather than adopting the spacing algorithms used by HPWU and Catan. It means that Niantic couldn't get TPC's permission to change the algorithm and allow for higher Pokestop density.
Even so, these locations are far beyond what HPWU's and Catan's spacing algorithms would even allow, and there is no justification to have that many Wayspots packed that closely together nor does it justify the abuse and exploitation that occurred to obtain such a dense population of Wayspots.
Let me answer for them (the obvious answer), till even if a forum admin answer they would be nothing more than a forum admin.
Any enterprise look for profit. If they see that people avoiding the game rules make them lose money, they will take actions.
On the other hand, if they see that a few people avoiding their rules make them aearn money, they'll look the other way.
It's simple.
If they think that they could lose more than win when taking an action, they will not do that.
Of course Niantic or The Pokémon Company official position will be against cheating, but only for ceremony's sake. Spoofers still roam through the world and in the console games people can create perfect Pokémon from scratch even in the new generation.
Even if it is true that TPC and Niantic can make more money by allowing cheating, abuse, and exploitation within Pokemon Go, it would completely trash their reputations and far fewer company will want to do business with them either as a licensor or a Wayspot sponsor. And reputation is far more valuable in the long term then short term profits (unless you are EA).
As valid a theory is that the decision makers at Niantic are not willing to dedicate resources to change the spacing algorithms (and the other play mechanism changes it'd cause/require).
I doubt it. Their reputation is not bad at all, and the spoofers (to name one of theese abuses) have been here since day 1.
To put it simply, other companies, sponsors and people give value to the number of active players, events and rating about the game. Little to no one pay attention to rants started by people more Catholict than the Pope, even more when those cheats don't affect at all your game experience.
It is really interesting how you all crave for "in game" justice while you permit and clap a direct blackmail/threat to the company that makes this games.
Ellos siempre querrán tener la razón, me dan risa sinceramente sus comentarios intentando defender lo indefendible y defender el abuso, por mí parte Yo creo que tienes toda la razón en denunciar casos así, de abuso masivo para que no se repitan y para que se tome de ejemplo que el abuso no lleva a nada positivo, se que lloverán "discrepar" por decir mí opinión pero eso me fortalece ahora hay que dejar que crean que ganaron pero en realidad, tarde o temprano todos los lugares creados con abuso desaparecerán del mapa y ese día van a aprender las cosas como son.
@NianticCasey-ING If you let abuse go unpunished you will scare away reviewers. At least the good ones. And if you want to know where that leads to take a good look at all those threads in the Invalid Wayspot Appeals section. So that's that for your "precious" database.
Not exactly sure who gains from the mass removal of Wayspots. I'm sure locals use these areas just as much, if not more than, spoofers. For me there's far bigger issues than Pokéstop clusters, as far as I know not against the terms of service of Pokésmon GO.
I was on the Pokémon GO Battle League today and somebody used three protect shields which is obviously cheating and I remembered why I don't like Pokémon GO Battle League (I'm only doing it to get the super-effective charged attacks I need for getting to level forty-three). This has been an issue for as long as the Pokémon GO Battle League has been around and yet nothing has been done about it as far as I can tell. I'm sure people would much rather Niantic focuses what little resources it may or may not have on making the game-play experience more enjoyable.
I don't like spoofers as much as the next person; it's incredibly annoying when I've walked all the way to get to a gym only to be booted out by a spoofer. Yet, don't see what's to be gained by sucking-up to Niantic. There's more important problems than some cluster of Pokéstops.
Well know more in about 1 1/2 hours when the map updates. It seemed they came back with the daily update. Maybe they will fix it today. If not, the lack of response to this thread is answer enough.
Spoofing is ok and manipulation of the POI system is acceptable.
Since I hadn't been using Pokémon GO Battle League in so long, I assume the major problems had been fixed but it seems there's still a number of issues with it. I asked in the local Pokémon GO group and it seems others have had bad experiences too. This thread feels like cheap point scoring when there are still major issues that need to be addressed within the game (e.g. still waiting for Kecleon so I can get Platinum Hoenn badge) and they're releasing Kalos even though plently of Unova is still missing from the game.
Using the fallacy of relative privation (aka the appeal to "worse" problems or “not as bad as”) to create a false dilemma is not a good argumentative technique. Just because there may be other problems with cheating, exploiting, and abuse elsewhere in Pokemon Go doesn't mean that Niantic should ignore this cases of cheating, exploiting, and abuse.
Reviewers were already bored by the time lapse taken to approve (or reject) their submisions versus the time spent reviewing other people's ones. So no, no one will miss a bunch more of reviewers given the pseudo-halt status of reaching a decission for a portal.
Comments
Very sad to observe that the actions on pursuing Niantic to take away the pokestops at certain areas have caused the local people there in trouble where they have to walk far away for pokestops despite the Covid-19 pandemic are serious in their countries. Besides whistleblowing the way how people played the pokemon go and complaining, why can't think of other ways for Niantic consideration, which may be enlightened the situation?
1) To request Niantic to increase the number of pokestop & gym at your respective area persistently from time to time.
2) To request Niantic to temporary open up on those pokemon which only available at district zones to spawn wildly everywhere instead of merely at special events so that everyone around the world have the chance to catch those pokemon at their local area.
3) To request Niantic to increase chances to catch 100 IV pokemon at respective local area.
4) To request Niantic to increase chances to catch those pokemon adequate enough for pvp at each type of GBL or else.
5) Any other ways to help each players to move on the game development rather than merely set up policy to punish players, which cause players upset and give up the game forever.
Game rules and regulations should be adequate or flexible for players from time to time rather than rigid like a steel or rock, which do not help the game to grow further but cease at certain time. Although there are players might not agree on the aforesaid statement but there are also a lot of players who are not agreed with the whistleblowing actions, which just bias to certain players for their own fun merely.
Thanks & Regards.
I'd say that given the moral and ethics of the people who set up that cluster in the first place, it's extremely unlikely that there's any value in keeping any of the POIs. There's bound to be a good amount of fakes and misplaced ones there. Just nuke them all from the database and let the local community recreate the legit ones.
Really Appreciated you came here but at last all the removed clusters came back... Niantic just bows down to Spoofers
Then quit the game and play any Pokemon console games instead. Thank you.
You have no idea. Without the Ingress players, we would not have had any stops and arenas and therefore no spawns or any opportunities to level! So show some gratitude. We owe most of everything to this group of players.
And they are not paid? We can be happy that this game is free to play! That should be enough thanks to us already! Niantic doesn't owe us anything. Rules are rules - and these should be observed! In addition, be happy that you get points and upgrades for submitting and evaluating!
Wow man.
Do you really want us to believe that those cluster of overlapping pokestops are required to play? What happens everywhere else in the world where there are only one Pokestop in each L17 cell?
In any case, taking into account the Covid restrictions, Niantic should take extra effort to remove those saturated zones as they might attract more players according to your statements and so it's better to reduce the concentration of Pokestops because that would prevent that people go there in big groups that aren't recommended in the current pandemic situation.
Although the fact is that such overload is used mainly by spoofers and very few local players would be affected if Niantic would correct the abuse.
You are forgetting a really important thing.
Pokémon does NOT belong to Niantic. Period.
If Niantic takes actions to punish places where spoofers go, but also local people, in this pandemic times, people would be angry. Lots of players. And it would damage Pokémon image.
The Pokémon Company won't want the image of their product to be damaged just because a few bored people reporting just to get worse the playability to other players. Get a life. You're not even from the cities or countries where these "exploits" migh have happened. You even admit the POIs are legal, so if Niantic changed the rules AFTERWARDS, what' the problem with you.
Of course Niantic reversed this celebrated by you changes. Why? They don't want a so big backlash from players that could turn into The Pokémon Company ceasing the license eventually.
Your translation is wrong, what makes your point false. You are changing the cause and the consequence.
It says:
"As they don't accept my [shitty] proposals (cause), I'll report Plaza de España"(consequence).
I see that the spoofers have arrived to defend their actions. No amount of disagreeing with Niantic's spacing algorithm justifies exploiting and cheating to create these large clusters. If you cannot play fairly, then don't play at all.
I totally agree with you. Hopefully Niantic will speak up again and do something about the other places you have listed.
1) No spoofer here (unless you are taking about the other ones, which I don't know if they are o not, and I doubt you do either), so stop the harassment and "insult" now.
2) Those "spacing" rules were never made public, so, theoretically, they don't exist. The "abuse" of the "algorithm" has always existed, only that not always so obvious because of the amount of players involved in each game. The only thing Niantic could do is to officially release the mechanic, or, if not, just ignore it.
3) That abuse was fixed so it could not happen again.
4) The spacing itself is a shame. You could have 2 historical distinct POIs statues from a well-known sculptor but only 1 will translate to a Pokéstop, meanwhile, you could have a stop of a gazeeboo in you near park, which translates in giving that gazeeboo even more relevance that the aforementioned statue. That's a nonsense. Or even worse, you could have a graffiti POI as a PokéStop in Pokémon Go, but not a cathedral, if they are in the same cell, and the cathedral POI was created afterwards. Again, non sense.
Yet Zaragoza and many places over the world still had clustered Pokestops due to abuse. Niantic only fix to the newer ones but not to the massive clusters that was previously made before the fix.
Since the discussion went wild and out-of-topic, @NianticCasey-ING @NianticEG and others would you shut this discussion down and clean all those massive clusters right now?
2) Just because they don't detail how the system works doesn't mean at all that the rules don't exist. It only means that they can have whatever rules that they want and so if the want to change them at any time they don't have to give any explanation. You know that the rules exist and that in order to avoid them people found a loophole. Due to the abuse of that loophole now Niantic has been forced to enforce the rules.
3) No, the abuse still exists as long as such places remain active. They have prevented further abuse, but they haven't cleaned up the existing ones.
1) Then you are granted the permission to make that assumption?... Mmm, no.
2) Of course is relevant, because in the past (not the abuse of this method), people didn't know that was not recommended. It was possible and Niantic did not do anything. Was after the exposure of a ¿Thai? road full of gyms when they made adjustments. They did not care before that, so I don't get why you do while THEY don't. NOW Nianctic has said this is an abuse not before, so that not make "abusers" those who did that before that statement.
3) When they implemented the "solution" they did not retroactive apply it to existing pokéstops, basically you cannot decide which is right or which is wrong, and which deserve to stay more than others, that's why they didn't nor will do anything.
4) Of course it's not irrelevant, because it shows the problem behind a S2-hidden mapping. They should make all theis games work the same way. It's stupid you waste a request in Pokémon GO in a perfectly valid POI, that it translates into a portal in Ingress, but it does not the same in Pokémom, because you have another stop just in the other border of the same S2 cell that you shouldn't have to be aware of its existence. That's what made people "abuse" of the system. They wasted petitions that turned OK in a game they don't play but not in the one they are playing without any advice or tip that why some might appear and some not. That's completely insane.
Only the people that abused that and spoofers would be angry.
But this is an interesting point:
Hey @NianticCasey-ING Does Niantic or the Pokemon Company allow the usage of cheats?
There's no need for you to reply as actions speak louder than words, according to your actions in the following days we can see the outcome. Either you clean up all the abuse or you allow cheaters and spoofers to run rampant on the game and we can tell anyone that the actions on Pokemon Go are dictated by the cheaters. That would be a really interesting article (or series of articles) for so many media sites related to gaming, I see so much click potential.
Thank you @JoanBenz-ING for bringing this to our attention.
I'll also add that The Pokemon Company is very much involved in setting the spacing algorithm used by Pokemon Go. This was made abundantly clear when Niantic doubled down on it earlier this year rather than adopting the spacing algorithms used by HPWU and Catan. It means that Niantic couldn't get TPC's permission to change the algorithm and allow for higher Pokestop density.
Even so, these locations are far beyond what HPWU's and Catan's spacing algorithms would even allow, and there is no justification to have that many Wayspots packed that closely together nor does it justify the abuse and exploitation that occurred to obtain such a dense population of Wayspots.
Let me answer for them (the obvious answer), till even if a forum admin answer they would be nothing more than a forum admin.
Any enterprise look for profit. If they see that people avoiding the game rules make them lose money, they will take actions.
On the other hand, if they see that a few people avoiding their rules make them aearn money, they'll look the other way.
It's simple.
If they think that they could lose more than win when taking an action, they will not do that.
Of course Niantic or The Pokémon Company official position will be against cheating, but only for ceremony's sake. Spoofers still roam through the world and in the console games people can create perfect Pokémon from scratch even in the new generation.
Even if it is true that TPC and Niantic can make more money by allowing cheating, abuse, and exploitation within Pokemon Go, it would completely trash their reputations and far fewer company will want to do business with them either as a licensor or a Wayspot sponsor. And reputation is far more valuable in the long term then short term profits (unless you are EA).
IIRC you had no actual proof for your theory.
As valid a theory is that the decision makers at Niantic are not willing to dedicate resources to change the spacing algorithms (and the other play mechanism changes it'd cause/require).
I doubt it. Their reputation is not bad at all, and the spoofers (to name one of theese abuses) have been here since day 1.
To put it simply, other companies, sponsors and people give value to the number of active players, events and rating about the game. Little to no one pay attention to rants started by people more Catholict than the Pope, even more when those cheats don't affect at all your game experience.
And I forgot to mention this.
It is really interesting how you all crave for "in game" justice while you permit and clap a direct blackmail/threat to the company that makes this games.
You should revise your moral and ethic.
Ellos siempre querrán tener la razón, me dan risa sinceramente sus comentarios intentando defender lo indefendible y defender el abuso, por mí parte Yo creo que tienes toda la razón en denunciar casos así, de abuso masivo para que no se repitan y para que se tome de ejemplo que el abuso no lleva a nada positivo, se que lloverán "discrepar" por decir mí opinión pero eso me fortalece ahora hay que dejar que crean que ganaron pero en realidad, tarde o temprano todos los lugares creados con abuso desaparecerán del mapa y ese día van a aprender las cosas como son.
@NianticCasey-ING If you let abuse go unpunished you will scare away reviewers. At least the good ones. And if you want to know where that leads to take a good look at all those threads in the Invalid Wayspot Appeals section. So that's that for your "precious" database.
Not exactly sure who gains from the mass removal of Wayspots. I'm sure locals use these areas just as much, if not more than, spoofers. For me there's far bigger issues than Pokéstop clusters, as far as I know not against the terms of service of Pokésmon GO.
I was on the Pokémon GO Battle League today and somebody used three protect shields which is obviously cheating and I remembered why I don't like Pokémon GO Battle League (I'm only doing it to get the super-effective charged attacks I need for getting to level forty-three). This has been an issue for as long as the Pokémon GO Battle League has been around and yet nothing has been done about it as far as I can tell. I'm sure people would much rather Niantic focuses what little resources it may or may not have on making the game-play experience more enjoyable.
I don't like spoofers as much as the next person; it's incredibly annoying when I've walked all the way to get to a gym only to be booted out by a spoofer. Yet, don't see what's to be gained by sucking-up to Niantic. There's more important problems than some cluster of Pokéstops.
I agree that there are more important things, but the problem shouldn't be ignored.
Well know more in about 1 1/2 hours when the map updates. It seemed they came back with the daily update. Maybe they will fix it today. If not, the lack of response to this thread is answer enough.
Spoofing is ok and manipulation of the POI system is acceptable.
Since I hadn't been using Pokémon GO Battle League in so long, I assume the major problems had been fixed but it seems there's still a number of issues with it. I asked in the local Pokémon GO group and it seems others have had bad experiences too. This thread feels like cheap point scoring when there are still major issues that need to be addressed within the game (e.g. still waiting for Kecleon so I can get Platinum Hoenn badge) and they're releasing Kalos even though plently of Unova is still missing from the game.
Using the fallacy of relative privation (aka the appeal to "worse" problems or “not as bad as”) to create a false dilemma is not a good argumentative technique. Just because there may be other problems with cheating, exploiting, and abuse elsewhere in Pokemon Go doesn't mean that Niantic should ignore this cases of cheating, exploiting, and abuse.
Reviewers were already bored by the time lapse taken to approve (or reject) their submisions versus the time spent reviewing other people's ones. So no, no one will miss a bunch more of reviewers given the pseudo-halt status of reaching a decission for a portal.