Pokemon GO’s infamous three-step glitch, which displays all nearby Pokemon at the maximum distance, has been troubling players for weeks. A game update currently rolling out to Android players removes the steps entirely. Problem solved!
Left image: Current iOS version. Right: New Android, via Reddit.
Making the rounds on Reddit and Twitter, the 0.31.0 update offers various tweaks and fixes to the popular game, including new customisation options for avatars, adjusted battle damage (some of which we’ve already seen), fixes for map features like footpaths in parks and the elimination of the three-step glitch.
And steps in general. No more steps.
- Avatars can now be re-customised from the Trainer profile screen
- Adjusted battle move damage values for some Pokemon
- Refined certain Gym animations
- Improved memory issues
- Removed footprints of nearby Pokemon
- Modified battle damage calculation
- Various bug fixes during wild Pokemon encounter
- Updated Pokemon details screen
- Updated achievement medal images
- Fixed issues with displaying certain map features
- Minor text fixes
On the one hand, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. “Doctor, it hurts when I bend my arm!” *doctor chops off arm*
On the other (the first one got chopped off, sorry), removing the feature entirely while it’s being fixed (hopefully) makes a lot more sense than leaving it in to annoy folks.
Here’s hoping iOS gets the update soon. I desperately need to change my trainer’s outfit.
Comments
33 responses to “Pokemon GO Update Fixes Three-Step Glitch By Removing Steps Entirely”
Oh cripe. This is like how Apple “solved” their antenna problems by just making the bars bigger and adjusting what represented a weak signal.
It’s actually worse because Apple didn’t just remove the bars altogether. Also, it’s 2016, why are you still Android crusading?
Not doing anything of the sort. Like others, you are just jumping the gun and trying to ram words down my throat.
As my past posts indicate I’m critical of many things. Just now, I point out how the removal of steps is simply a matter of sweeping a problem under the rug like Apple did with the antenna.
As for Android, I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions it is an unethical clone of iOS.
So nope, like my past posts on many other topics, I continue to tread long the fenceposts and tear apart anything on either side that irritates me.
So.. The OS that is completely different to iOS in just about every way, to the point that a person who has only used one of them would have very major difficulties trying to use the other for the first time, is a clone of it? You’re some kind of crazy alright.
If the removal of steps makes Onix and Magnemite spawn instead of pidgeys and weedles, sign me up!
“If nobody can SEE the bug, then nobody can COMPLAIN about the bug”
All I see is Weedle and Caterpie.
They’ve also removed the ability to select a pokemon from the Nearby list to focus on, which I guess makes sense when you can’t reasonably use the feature to track them.
This feature actually worked quite well during the beta, so I hope they work out a way to bring it back with the size of the current player base.
Hilarious if permanent. Long live pokevision et al.
Oh look, Pokevision is dead.
Not really. Pokevision is down and likely will stay down if their twitter account is to be believed.
Yeah, wasn’t at the time of commenting.
Shame.
The update is up for iOS now.
Really wish media would get it right. It was NOT A GLTICH. Niantic disabled the step Tracker to Lower server load. So your stupid doctor analogy just makes you look daft. If you actually kept up to date with the topic rather than making uninformed editorial comments kotaku would look a lot. Less like an organisation run by mankeys
I understood that to just be a rumor passing around the players.
Do you have a link to where Niantic confirmed it?
I’ll find a link but I read at least 3 articles where that was taken as a quote from Niantic. And and does make sense on some lever that the added server requests that feature would add. Multiplied by the how many millions of players would at least cause some difference to resource managemenr
Wondering why it should make a difference to the server requests. I mean surely as it stands, the game is getting each pokemon’s position as a set of GPS coordinates (must be, otherwise it wouldn’t know where to make them appear, right?). And the game knows its own GPS coordinates already. So why should it be up to the server to calculate the distance between the two, surely the client can handle that themselves, and throw up whether it’s near/mid/far.
I suspect it’s just the number of refresh requests being sent by the client to keep that nearby information relevant. But hey its just a guess, im as in the dark as anyone else.
Don’t let facts ruin a good story.
Their attitude to one of the most important features is why so many people are cheating now. Impossible to play the game without something like pokevision unless you’re happy just stumbling into pokemon spawns and don’t worry about finding the rare ones.
I was trying to understand how the distance bar currently worked by having both Pokemon Go and Pokevision running on separate devices, it’s a freaking mess.
Don’t even get me started on personal random Pokemon, because they don’t show on pokevision, it comes down to pure luck.
I managed to find some scripts to run my own map…basically pokevision but I can scan a much larger area continuously.
From looking at that I’ve been able to see that the spawns in general are completely unbalanced. Even in my local area If I walk from point A to point B and take path 1 I’d encounter 2-3 pokemon. If I instead walked between the same two points and took path 2 I’d encounter 10-15 pokemon, a decent number of which would be uncommon/rare.
I don’t know how they’ve determined spawn points but even just within one suburb it’s very inconsistent. There are also some spots that seem to commonly have rare pokemon so you lose out by just not living where they’re spawning.
Don’t even get me started on regional vs suburbs vs cities….the spawn mechanics need a complete overhaul.
Curious, does the map still work now? Or has it all been shut down from Niantic’s end?
I found it interesting that going by pokevision, they seem to spawn on specific spots rather than randomly like I would have thought. Like there’s two houses on the street that cuts through mine which always end up with something, but anything on my own will only appear further up the road at the park. No chance of coming across something in my own house, apparently. Well, outside the use of incense.
Yeah, my map is unaffected so far. Will probably be that way until the account I use for it gets banned.
Yep, spawn points are fixed locations. You get that idea from the leaves/grass shown on your map in game. Those are spawn points that may or may not have a pokemon at any point. Each spawn seems to have a list of common pokemon for that spawn, some that are a bit more rare and then an off chance they’ll spawn something very rare. Good source there is the two spawn points in my front yard, they’re usually zubats (most of the time) but also commonly get clefairy, nidoran m/f. Sometimes it’ll be rhyhorn or geodude too. I’ve had some one off rare spawns that were rapidash, pidegot, dragonite and bulbasaur.
Compare my spawn list to others I’ve seen in the neighborhood…there’s one that spawns snorlax every few days and others that have common bulbasaur/squirtle and tangela.
So now instead of hunting nearby pokemon, it’s just a totally random encounter game. Why not remove it entirely and just randomise encounters?
Got my first Onyx a little while ago thanks to pokevision. Never even noticed the footsteps were gone.
“We hate that you use third party apps to make our content more accessible!” *Immediately proceeds to make native content even more inaccessible.”
Props to whoever removed Mike’s original clickbait title, as seen in the URL
I’m pretty annoyed about the removal of the Battery Saver option on iOS. I understand they did it because it sometimes crashed the game, but it also saved me a ton of battery and meant I could put my phone in my pocket and not worry about holding out (headphones on so I could still hear the noises).
Now they have forced poke vision and the other sites to be pulled. Great game but getting close to just saying screw it if you cannot find things.
How? Please explain to me how you need to do this. They have not removed the other ways of tracking Pokemon in the game, so I really don’t get your problem at all.
What other ways to track pokemon? The nearby steps are gone and the trackers like pokevision et al are all disabled. There is no other way to track them that I know of…..
Also are you the same Jagji who used to hang around the PCPP forums or a different one?
Yes they have…we had “step” indicators at the start so you could tell which pokemon were closest and by walking and monitoring the steps you could determine where they were. Now they’ve completely removed all indications of how close something is and if it’s “nearby” all well and good, you’ve got no way of finding it other than luck.