I just don't see how somebody having access to a cluster of Pokéstops (assuming they are all legitimate POI) affects me or why I should be concerned about it. What does affect is when people actually break the terms of service and cheat, because that does have a negative impact on players. Assuming all of those Pokéstops are legitimate POI in the correct places I don't see any problem with them.
I simply call that a double standard. It's against the rules, so take action against it. Regardless of whether they are all right, they should not have existed in the first place without the manipulation and should therefore be cleaned up.
It's a problem because the way in which those stops were created required players to cheat, exploit, and abuse by creating mutiple accounts in order to manipulate Wayfarer, first move or create Wayspots away from their correct location. This is further compounded that these hyper-dense clusters encourages spoofers to go to there to farm for powerful Pokemon that they would not have gotten had they played legitimately, which you will eventually face off against in the Battle League. One form of cheating, exploitation, and abuse leads to another within the game.
Firstly, Pokémon spawn density is tied to mobile signal strength, not Wayspot density. The 3G/4G/5G signal is something outside of the player's control. Secondly, many of the important Pokémon in the Pokémon GO Battle League are Pokémon that cannot be obtained in the wild so it becomes a case of who is willing to spend more money paying for raid passes and hatching eggs.
It doesn't matter how many gyms are in a given area if people aren't willing to spend the money on raid passes. If enough people are willing to spend money on raid passes then I can certainly see why it would be in the interests of Niantic to have more gyms. I can only see mass removal of Wayspots hurting Niantic in the long run.
Outside of Pokémon GO Battle League's Great and Master Leagues, IVs aren't very important. I can have still have lots of fun despite not having every Pokémon in my collection not being the perfect IVs. Most of my time in Pokémon GO is spent soicalising and obtaining golden gym badges.
The spawns do not depend on the cellular signal. And let's be honest, who cares about all this Pokémon stuff in this forum? This is about wayfarers. So back to the topic. Reset the cells and follow the rules.
Hey, you know Spanish Inquisitors tryed to apply the Holy rules, righ?
Nowadays no one tags them as fair, but sadistic.
And that's what happens when you are so obsesed with twisting rules that you rather harm lots of people than being more lenient.
It seems that you aim to worsen the gaming experience (not talking about spoofers) around the world than being lenient. And that's just for the pleasure of feeling powerful. Because you are not an employee nor no one special. You're just a single player among millions around the world.
And this will be my last message here. I think we all have made clear our OPINIONS and it's not up to any of us to take a measure, but Niantic, so going on with the same won't bring anything of interest.
If a higher density of stops and gyms means that Niantic makes more money, why would they not change their spacing algorithm to allow for higher density? Why did Niantic change things to where Wayspots are removed from the game if they moved too close to another Wayspot? In fact, why even have Wayspots tied to real world objects and locations in the first place? I would wager that it is because that there isn't a fanatical incentive to increase the density of stops and gyms and this argument is created for the sole purpose of justifying further cheating, exploitation, and abuse.
I'm not sure if it has been said here before but it seems some people still don't see the problem about PokéStop clusters (I'll stick to talking about Wayspot clusters since that's more of the correct term, the cluster thing is an issue in PoGO as much as it is one in Ingress).
It's not the clusters themselves that are the issue. It is how they came into being: abuse of Niantic Wayfarer.
Wayspots naturally can't appear in any game if they are closer than 20 metres to an already existing Wayspot.
So what you have to do to get a Wayspot cluster is to move things around so they ARE closer than 20 metres to one another, even though they originally weren't.
This can be a legit movement in case a Wayspot is very old and was submitted in the wrong place back then (for example due to a small GPS drift, at least NOT on purpose) and the location is simply being corrected.
Another possibility comes to mind when thinking of an "area"-ish POI, for example a football pitch or a playground. Since moving a Wayspot to a different place (closer to another) is technically not wrong, one can use this tolerance to create a small cluster.
I think no one has anything against Wayspot clusters that come into being through either of these methods.
What is NOT okay is
when a Wayspot is being submitted in the wrong place on PURPOSE to move it later and create a Wayspot cluster (since the Wayspot has to be as close as possible to the correct real-life location of the Wayspot according to Wayfarer guidelines), or
when a Wayspot is moved from the correct (or another wrong) to a WRONG place to create that Wayspot cluster. Bonus points if an additional description edit begs you to "move the marker to x" to get the wrong location enforced.
And I'd say that many clusters we saw reported here in the last few days came into being through an illegit method. Sevilla's Plaza de Espana, for example, probably had the Wayspots in the right place, but from how close they were to each other, they were not spawned naturally, but through shuffling the Wayspot's positions around, thus making it a cluster worth reporting because it was created through abuse of the Wayfarer system.
I don't care if it worsens the gaming experience, because rules are rules. I also prefer quality over quantity. And am I not special? Sorry, but every person is unique, some more than others.
I really hope it will be your last message because you are just writing a bunch of nonsense and defending the scammers instead of Niantic. Because if Niantic doesn't act, it's up to us - the players, to take action and bring the issues up.
In terms of the cells, we kept being told (by people with blind faith in Niantic) it's not so easy for Niantic to change it and that Pokemon GO was rushed during initial development. Assuming the game was rushed then perhaps the cell size is on the list of things to be fixed eventually.
In reality, they don't need to change the cell spacing because they could change the ratio of gyms to Pokestops in a given area (although it would be great if they would reduce the cell sizes for Wayspots because it would reduce the inclination of some people to move Wayspots back and forth). As to why they have not done this? Perhaps they have thought about it but figured it might make it too easy for people to get Pokecoins.
It's a simple matter of changing one value in the algorithm. If Niantic cannot change it, then it is because they are contractually obligated by TPC to maintain the preset spacing algorithm. Thus hyper-dense clusters, such as Zaragoza, would be a direct violation of that contract and Nianatic could risk losing its license.
Sorry about breaking what I said before, but this is not about right o wrong things, about fair and unfair, your post is just nonsense.
You just show that you have no idea not only about developing (modifying just one "value" in one "algorithm" lol) but about contractual relationships. Sometimes is better to keep your mouth closed instead of make a fool of yourself.
Niantic won't do anything about it. But I find it entertaining how I sometimes get 9-10 dislikes here and others who support the abuse the same number of likes, but always from the same accounts. Any unknown ingress accounts that have not done anything and that nobody knows. Probably the accounts that were used for this abuse.
Opino lo mismo sobre tu comentario, aún no le veo el sentído a defender el abuso y hacer el ridículo en el intento. PD: sus "No me gusta" no me afectan, me fortalezen
The fact you think people are unemployed and wishing to get hired by niantic is laughable. Im fully employed and i generally try to comment on threads to help people. Niantic could get rid of those clusters to maintain fairplay all around but they chose not to and its quite obvious lol.
ive never seen a bunch of people who are commenting now ever on any thread here which makes me wonder lol
I also wanted to clarify one thing which I just remembered. There's a spoofer in my town and Pokestop density makes no difference to him. He's shown me how the spoofing software works and he can teleport to any Pokemon he wants and it shows him the IVs.
If you believe reporting Pokestop clusters is going to make the life of spoofer that much harder then you are sorely mistaken. The guy can even teleport to shiny Pokemon. He's shown me and it is disheartening how brazen he is about it. But I realise that for Niantic to restrict spoofers it's going to mean they would need to snoop around in my phone and I wouldn't like a company having such power.
Perhaps a compromise can be reached, such as two Wayspots per S17 cell? In many villages near me, they are denied a gym because everything interesting is packed closely together. I believe by reporting Pokestop clusters it will affect local players more than spoofer.
The problem is, whenever anyone makes a rule, someone won’t be happy.
Theoretically Niantic can pack as many stops in as you like but there will be someone from a densely populated area who then complains that it is a pain in the ar$e to tap Pokémon to catch as there are too many stops and gyms in the way. When one spawns right under one now, I am forever accidentally tapping the stop instead of the Pokémon or vice versa.
Also, it doesn’t fix the issue of it’s easier to play in cities. Those in cities, who play PoGo not Ingress, who avoid submitting things if it’s not in it’s own cell, will now submit the things they avoided doubling the number of stops in the city.
All this, of course, is assuming it is Niantic’s decision that is and not TPC’s.
If you've played much HPWU in a dense area you probably know how hard it is to tap on some of the things in that game. You sometimes have to zoom all the way in and still have a high probability of ****-fingering it and getting the wrong thing.
If you've played Ingress with a bunch of stuff dropped on the ground you probably have encountered the same thing... aiming for a capsule and getting a portal, or aiming for a portal and getting a key that somebody dropped.
In PoGo it's simply better, because nearly evryone uses Go Plus or its automatic stepbrothers ....
So your argument wont convince anyone of the other side of the discussion, because the tryhards, who create and/or farm these cluster stops, most likely all use these gadgets ...
To throw my 50ct in this discussion: I'm not neither pro nor contra in discussion about clusters. A bit of clustering is okay, in my oppinion. The big question is, how that happened to build them. A bit of playing with the degrees of freedom of wayspots, that have an area is fully okay for me. Few more stops than usually possible dont hurt anyone. But the examples above, like Sevilla or the Zaragoza spot with lots of graffitis around a soccer yard are hard abuse of the system. Those need to be removed and the creators need to be banned from wayfarer; and they need ingame strikes.
Big virtue here: moderation/temperance (dunno which word fits better in English)
Comments
I just don't see how somebody having access to a cluster of Pokéstops (assuming they are all legitimate POI) affects me or why I should be concerned about it. What does affect is when people actually break the terms of service and cheat, because that does have a negative impact on players. Assuming all of those Pokéstops are legitimate POI in the correct places I don't see any problem with them.
I simply call that a double standard. It's against the rules, so take action against it. Regardless of whether they are all right, they should not have existed in the first place without the manipulation and should therefore be cleaned up.
It's a problem because the way in which those stops were created required players to cheat, exploit, and abuse by creating mutiple accounts in order to manipulate Wayfarer, first move or create Wayspots away from their correct location. This is further compounded that these hyper-dense clusters encourages spoofers to go to there to farm for powerful Pokemon that they would not have gotten had they played legitimately, which you will eventually face off against in the Battle League. One form of cheating, exploitation, and abuse leads to another within the game.
Firstly, Pokémon spawn density is tied to mobile signal strength, not Wayspot density. The 3G/4G/5G signal is something outside of the player's control. Secondly, many of the important Pokémon in the Pokémon GO Battle League are Pokémon that cannot be obtained in the wild so it becomes a case of who is willing to spend more money paying for raid passes and hatching eggs.
It doesn't matter how many gyms are in a given area if people aren't willing to spend the money on raid passes. If enough people are willing to spend money on raid passes then I can certainly see why it would be in the interests of Niantic to have more gyms. I can only see mass removal of Wayspots hurting Niantic in the long run.
Outside of Pokémon GO Battle League's Great and Master Leagues, IVs aren't very important. I can have still have lots of fun despite not having every Pokémon in my collection not being the perfect IVs. Most of my time in Pokémon GO is spent soicalising and obtaining golden gym badges.
The spawns do not depend on the cellular signal. And let's be honest, who cares about all this Pokémon stuff in this forum? This is about wayfarers. So back to the topic. Reset the cells and follow the rules.
Hey, you know Spanish Inquisitors tryed to apply the Holy rules, righ?
Nowadays no one tags them as fair, but sadistic.
And that's what happens when you are so obsesed with twisting rules that you rather harm lots of people than being more lenient.
It seems that you aim to worsen the gaming experience (not talking about spoofers) around the world than being lenient. And that's just for the pleasure of feeling powerful. Because you are not an employee nor no one special. You're just a single player among millions around the world.
And this will be my last message here. I think we all have made clear our OPINIONS and it's not up to any of us to take a measure, but Niantic, so going on with the same won't bring anything of interest.
Good evening.
If a higher density of stops and gyms means that Niantic makes more money, why would they not change their spacing algorithm to allow for higher density? Why did Niantic change things to where Wayspots are removed from the game if they moved too close to another Wayspot? In fact, why even have Wayspots tied to real world objects and locations in the first place? I would wager that it is because that there isn't a fanatical incentive to increase the density of stops and gyms and this argument is created for the sole purpose of justifying further cheating, exploitation, and abuse.
I'm not sure if it has been said here before but it seems some people still don't see the problem about PokéStop clusters (I'll stick to talking about Wayspot clusters since that's more of the correct term, the cluster thing is an issue in PoGO as much as it is one in Ingress).
It's not the clusters themselves that are the issue. It is how they came into being: abuse of Niantic Wayfarer.
Wayspots naturally can't appear in any game if they are closer than 20 metres to an already existing Wayspot.
So what you have to do to get a Wayspot cluster is to move things around so they ARE closer than 20 metres to one another, even though they originally weren't.
This can be a legit movement in case a Wayspot is very old and was submitted in the wrong place back then (for example due to a small GPS drift, at least NOT on purpose) and the location is simply being corrected.
Another possibility comes to mind when thinking of an "area"-ish POI, for example a football pitch or a playground. Since moving a Wayspot to a different place (closer to another) is technically not wrong, one can use this tolerance to create a small cluster.
I think no one has anything against Wayspot clusters that come into being through either of these methods.
What is NOT okay is
And I'd say that many clusters we saw reported here in the last few days came into being through an illegit method. Sevilla's Plaza de Espana, for example, probably had the Wayspots in the right place, but from how close they were to each other, they were not spawned naturally, but through shuffling the Wayspot's positions around, thus making it a cluster worth reporting because it was created through abuse of the Wayfarer system.
Things like these are one of many reasons why Niantic decided NOT to create any forum for Pokemon GO.
I don't care if it worsens the gaming experience, because rules are rules. I also prefer quality over quantity. And am I not special? Sorry, but every person is unique, some more than others.
I really hope it will be your last message because you are just writing a bunch of nonsense and defending the scammers instead of Niantic. Because if Niantic doesn't act, it's up to us - the players, to take action and bring the issues up.
In terms of the cells, we kept being told (by people with blind faith in Niantic) it's not so easy for Niantic to change it and that Pokemon GO was rushed during initial development. Assuming the game was rushed then perhaps the cell size is on the list of things to be fixed eventually.
In reality, they don't need to change the cell spacing because they could change the ratio of gyms to Pokestops in a given area (although it would be great if they would reduce the cell sizes for Wayspots because it would reduce the inclination of some people to move Wayspots back and forth). As to why they have not done this? Perhaps they have thought about it but figured it might make it too easy for people to get Pokecoins.
It's a simple matter of changing one value in the algorithm. If Niantic cannot change it, then it is because they are contractually obligated by TPC to maintain the preset spacing algorithm. Thus hyper-dense clusters, such as Zaragoza, would be a direct violation of that contract and Nianatic could risk losing its license.
Sorry about breaking what I said before, but this is not about right o wrong things, about fair and unfair, your post is just nonsense.
You just show that you have no idea not only about developing (modifying just one "value" in one "algorithm" lol) but about contractual relationships. Sometimes is better to keep your mouth closed instead of make a fool of yourself.
This thread is like the Wayfarer community experience in a nutshell.
A mass of system abusers dogpiling on members who still try to uphold the actual purpose of Wayfarer, while Niantic does... well...
...Yeah.
Hopefully, Niantic will clean up the clear use of multi-accounts that are being used to mass like/disagree certain posts.
Niantic won't do anything about it. But I find it entertaining how I sometimes get 9-10 dislikes here and others who support the abuse the same number of likes, but always from the same accounts. Any unknown ingress accounts that have not done anything and that nobody knows. Probably the accounts that were used for this abuse.
Spoofers xD
It's fun to "@" those accounts on the Ingress coms to see their profile stats.
Let me guess. They haven't done much of anything in Ingress.
Mostly very low level with some hacks (probably to collect Portal Keys) and some OPR agreements (if the accounts are linked to their PGO account).
Opino lo mismo sobre tu comentario, aún no le veo el sentído a defender el abuso y hacer el ridículo en el intento. PD: sus "No me gusta" no me afectan, me fortalezen
The fact you think people are unemployed and wishing to get hired by niantic is laughable. Im fully employed and i generally try to comment on threads to help people. Niantic could get rid of those clusters to maintain fairplay all around but they chose not to and its quite obvious lol.
ive never seen a bunch of people who are commenting now ever on any thread here which makes me wonder lol
I also wanted to clarify one thing which I just remembered. There's a spoofer in my town and Pokestop density makes no difference to him. He's shown me how the spoofing software works and he can teleport to any Pokemon he wants and it shows him the IVs.
If you believe reporting Pokestop clusters is going to make the life of spoofer that much harder then you are sorely mistaken. The guy can even teleport to shiny Pokemon. He's shown me and it is disheartening how brazen he is about it. But I realise that for Niantic to restrict spoofers it's going to mean they would need to snoop around in my phone and I wouldn't like a company having such power.
Perhaps a compromise can be reached, such as two Wayspots per S17 cell? In many villages near me, they are denied a gym because everything interesting is packed closely together. I believe by reporting Pokestop clusters it will affect local players more than spoofer.
I was also thinking that 2 wayspots per cell in PoGo could work really well and reduce system abuse in some capacity. Doubt it'll ever happen, though.
The problem is, whenever anyone makes a rule, someone won’t be happy.
Theoretically Niantic can pack as many stops in as you like but there will be someone from a densely populated area who then complains that it is a pain in the ar$e to tap Pokémon to catch as there are too many stops and gyms in the way. When one spawns right under one now, I am forever accidentally tapping the stop instead of the Pokémon or vice versa.
Also, it doesn’t fix the issue of it’s easier to play in cities. Those in cities, who play PoGo not Ingress, who avoid submitting things if it’s not in it’s own cell, will now submit the things they avoided doubling the number of stops in the city.
All this, of course, is assuming it is Niantic’s decision that is and not TPC’s.
If you've played much HPWU in a dense area you probably know how hard it is to tap on some of the things in that game. You sometimes have to zoom all the way in and still have a high probability of ****-fingering it and getting the wrong thing.
If you've played Ingress with a bunch of stuff dropped on the ground you probably have encountered the same thing... aiming for a capsule and getting a portal, or aiming for a portal and getting a key that somebody dropped.
Higher density isn't always better.
In PoGo it's simply better, because nearly evryone uses Go Plus or its automatic stepbrothers ....
So your argument wont convince anyone of the other side of the discussion, because the tryhards, who create and/or farm these cluster stops, most likely all use these gadgets ...
To throw my 50ct in this discussion: I'm not neither pro nor contra in discussion about clusters. A bit of clustering is okay, in my oppinion. The big question is, how that happened to build them. A bit of playing with the degrees of freedom of wayspots, that have an area is fully okay for me. Few more stops than usually possible dont hurt anyone. But the examples above, like Sevilla or the Zaragoza spot with lots of graffitis around a soccer yard are hard abuse of the system. Those need to be removed and the creators need to be banned from wayfarer; and they need ingame strikes.
Big virtue here: moderation/temperance (dunno which word fits better in English)
That's how PGO players protest. They want more stops/gyms.
Just saying 😅
Locking this thread as it has long since gone off the rails in terms of both respect for one another and also the original topic.
We have reviewed the report and have taken necessary actions on the Wayspots and Wayfinders in accordance with our policies. Thank you!