Magby from Pokemon
Pokemon GO’s latest update isn’t what players were expecting. For weeks, fans hoped for a whole batch of 2nd generation Pokemon — bright, adorable Chikoritas or Espeons, and over 90 more little monsters. Or, at least, a few new Pokemon that players could encounter in the wild. Nope. No. Nope.
Yesterday, Pokemon GO released seven new “baby” Pokemon that players can only hatch with eggs. In addition to most of the original 150 monsters, players can now get Magby, Elekid, Smoochum, Pichu, Togepi, Igglybuff and Cleffa (though apparently not Tyrogue, another 2nd gen baby Pokemon) by grabbing new eggs from PokéStops and walking two to ten kilometers. Also, a Santa-hat-wearing Pikachu is now spawning all over. Sound like a nice, satisfying batch of content?
Everyone who was waiting for the #PokemonGO announcement is now just like pic.twitter.com/JFnl5xAItF
— ∞ Andrea ∞ (@AndreaArizaga) December 12, 2016
No P2P battle, trading or Gen2… this update SUCKS! @PokemonGoApp @NianticLabs #PokemonGO #nomews https://t.co/NyrSvaJad2
— Clay Morris (@ChefUGA) December 12, 2016
Paraplan on the Silph Road subreddit
Skyfartalot on the Silph Road subreddit
On Pokemon GO subreddits and over social media, those who stuck with mobile game through hellish updates and bad design decisions complain that the seven baby Pokemon are a total bummer, and no hat on any Pikachu can solve that. Also, there’s a bit of a problem with hatching Pokemon eggs in December: trudging 10 km in the snow for an uncertain outcome. Here’s what disappointed fans are saying:
Right now, there are seven and not 100 new Pokemon
How lame that gen 2 pokemons only appears by hatching eggs (& there’s not many of the new pokemons). #PokemonGO Still playing tho ?
— Sscarylary (@sscarylary) December 13, 2016
Seven is fewer than 100. None of the seven are the wildly popular 2nd generation Eevee evolutions. Umbreon is so lovely. Sigh.
In July, players started reporting that they’d caught all the available Pokemon. To several players, mid-December felt like prime time for a fresh load of Pokemon. And there’s a real reason why fans are expecting one: Dataminers unearthed the trappings of 2nd gen Pokemon in the game’s code weeks ago, a Silph Road representative told me.
To be clear though, players aren’t sure whether the seven egg Pokemon, plus a few 2nd generation evolutions, are the end of the story. When reached for comment, Niantic told me they prefer to keep these things a surprise.
To get them, you have to hatch eggs
It’s a cute idea! But it presents some problems.
First of all, you’ll need to hatch the new Pokemon with new eggs you got post-update — not old ones. But you can’t actually get rid of old eggs to make space. And you can’t un-incubate eggs that are already incubating. So several players report that they’re racing to hatch old eggs and buying (with real cash) new incubators from the Pokemon GO store to better their chances. Yay, capitalism!
To get them, you have to hatch eggs in the Summer
i’m super disappointed with the pokemon go update, considering i live in the north and there’s a good foot of snow on the ground
— perpetual baby face (@clnnameg) December 13, 2016
Also, it’s summer. What’s better than walking 10 kilometers in searing heat to hatch a virtual egg that may or may not be Magby? Several things.
Where Are The Legendaries?
R_O_F_L on the Pokemon Go subreddit
Who knows? The first batch of Pokemon we got, which (except Ditto), remained the only batch until Monday, didn’t include legendaries like Mewtwo and Articuno. Dronpes, a representative of Pokemon GO watchdog collective Silph Road, told me that he thinks the legendaries will be released for “more involved events than those like the Starbucks or Sprint collaborations we saw last week” and not for another few weeks, minimum.
Where’s the PvP? Trading? All the other stuff that makes Pokemon …. Pokemon?
Frankly, this seems outside the scope of the update. And a mobile Pokemon-tracking game that can barely handle tracking.
Comments
13 responses to “Pokemon GO’s New Update Just Isn’t Enough”
People still having a whinge that they aren’t getting what they want?
Nothing will ever be happy for the people who have a sook about this game. Go back to Sun/Moon and catch your precious shinies with the best stats that you restarted your 3DS a hundred times over just to get the right stats and skin colour because that’s all that matters these days isn’t it?
I’m actually happy they didn’t release 100 new Pokémon because as a player of this game, I find it mind boggling they’d release any new Pokémon without wrapping things up with the 1st gen Pokémon.
No news of legrndaries nor a solution to getting region locked Pokémon other than visiting those countries. With the region locked Pokémon alone, you’ll never be able to complete the pokedex so why are they jumping into 2nd gen?
And they wonder why users result to spoofing their locations. That seems like the only way to get those Pokémon now or spend cash to go to other countries which I think is insane especially if your only reason for visiting is for those Pokémon.
How dare Niantic not allow this free app to live up to our entitled levels of expectations.
Yes, how dare they not allow their free app that has made them millions from users downloading and playing that free app live up to expectations.
Darn users entitlement levels!
Come tomorrow it will be forgotten and Mario will be all we hear about.
Well Clay, you shouldn’t have been expecting trading or PVP. Who said they were coming out in this update?
Unless they change how the game works (catch many duplicates of the same pokemon), I wouldn’t want them to add new pokemon to the game without rotating out some old ones.
And retiring old ones also has its problems: if you were only a few candy away from evolving a pokemon, it’d be pretty annoying to find out that they are going to stop spawning. I suppose the “buddy pokemon” system might mitigate this somewhat though.
A bit weird how the article uses downvoted Reddit comments and non-favourited/retweeted tweets as sources of popular opinion…
It certainly comes across as quite biased.
Woah, you never question the narrative dude!!
You are supposed to assume it’s a massive problem that requires you to take sides!!
Trying to localise from KotakUS by switching the Winter/snow passage to Summer/heat was a cute touch! But leaving the tweet about snow in the middle of it really does highlight the absurdity of complaining about updates to an outdoors game when it’s [time of year] because [weather exists].
Fans of a game complaining because they don’t enjoy said game anymore isn’t entitlement, it’s poor business from Niantic for not pushing out updates that will actually re-engage users. Whinge away, Pokefans. Whinge away.
I couldn’t agree more with this statement.
I’m at a standstill myself in the game since I’ve already caught all of the US Pokémon and as much as I’d like a new batch of Pokémon, I can’t help but wonder when I’ll be able to get my hands on a Mr. Mime, Kanghaskan and Farfetch”d without spending to visit other countries.
Gen 1 needs to be wrapped up before going into the next. Niantic keep making empty promises. This is where player outrage is coming from. Feature they’ve promised from the beginning is past due but yet, their making tons of cash from their free app thanks to users downloading and playing.
Fabricated outrage as usual.
It seems like every article from this writer about Pokemon Go is negative. Can pretty much tell the content from just looking at the byline. Time to get my Pokemon Go news elsewhere, I think, because I’m still enjoying the game and the constant negativity is getting old.
I find it funny people are still upset over each new update not having Gen 2, not having the tracker fixed, etc. Did you really think that THIS update will be the one?! This game has been flogging a dead horse for months now – I guess people really like flogging dead horses.