Thank you, i´m going to keep an eye on them.

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Canada, Hong Kong, Aus, US, UK and also Japan.


Thats what i can gather from the Niantic website. Also here is a nice list on Polygon.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/15/12196050/is-pokemon-go-out

I think the success of this game is going to be short-lived. Or rather, the game will remain successful with urban players and those lucky enough to live near dense clusters of Poke Stops, but disadvantaged players will quit playing in large numbers as they realize what a pain-in-the-ass the game is for those living in rural or suburban areas (or on the wrong side of town).

The game is grindy as fuck, and you needs hundreds (later thousands) of Poke Balls to advance. And that grinding is really very boring. It's pretty much: Catch as many Pidgeys, Weedles, and Caterpies as possible (these are the easiest Pokemon to evolve), pop a Lucky Egg (double XP; see this chart to plan), evolve those Pokemon. Rinse, repeat. Rare Pokemon? Pfft. Same XP as common, but much harder to catch and evolve.

That said, the grindy aspect is somewhat forgivable because it's probably meant to prevent those who play all the time (or spend a lot of money) from completely roflstomping people who have lives outside the game. Still, grinding shouldn't have to be so damn boring. How about more XP for catching rare or higher-CP Pokemon? How about a greater variety of Pokemon instead of the same 20-30 or so repeated ad nauseam?

Grinding aside, the biggest help for me would be the ability to suggest Poke Stops. There's a park near my apartment with a memorial, a small bandstand, and two pavilions. The memorial is a Poke Stop, and I spin it on my daily walk, but that's not enough to sustain more play than the walk itself per day. If I could mark the bandstand and pavilions as Poke Stops, that'd be enough for people in my neighborhood to actually play a decent amount each day. I've seen clusters of three and five Poke Stops clumped together a couple towns over, so four in a small park shouldn't be a problem.

That said, there should probably be a restriction to limit abuse and keep the number of suggestions manageable. Perhaps each player could get one suggestion at Lv10, Lv20, and Lv30?

Another option would be to have Poke Stops give a number of items based on how far away the nearest Poke Stop is located. Maybe three extra items per kilometer to the next Stop? So if the next Stop is two kilometers away, that Stop would give six extra items per spin. That's still not much at middle and later levels, but it'd be a significant step towards leveling the playing field.

For now, I can drive to a park on the other side of town that has four Poke Stops and two Gyms, but taking a 15 minute drive (30 minutes round trip) just to take my daily walk in an area with multiple Stops is wearing thin. I think the game might have been better off with Poke Stops at every intersection so that you could hit multiple Stops by walking around the block regardless of where you happen to be located. Parks, churches, and whatnot could have all been Gyms and higher-chance spawn areas.

I want Pokemon Gone instead. A game where you can just shoot all the Pokemon at all these stops. (And the Pokemon Go players would then only see the mutilated carcasses).

Or at least Pokemon Go Away! A game where you chase the Pokemon away from a stop permanently.

Lol. Instead of Poke Stops, you get Campfires where you can roast slain Pokemon? Every Poke Steak gives XP when eaten, and gaining levels grants access to better guns? ;)

Poke stops. Loot drops. Gyms. Collector balls. Is it just me or are Pokemon players starting to talk like they're alien invaders from another world? At what point will special sunglasses be necessary to detect them?

Exactly! Now THAT is a game I would be playing. :-)

"Put on the glasses!"

All of your points are valid. Having said that, remember that the current version number of the game is 0.29. That means that, by Niantic's projections, the game isn't even a third of the way complete. Updates will be coming that will inevitably address many of your concerns. In fact, those changes would be coming much sooner were it not for the devs drowning in server updates during the global roll-out of the game. Even the Pokémon Go Plus accessory had to be delayed two months because the app doesn't have the necessary compatibility features in place.

Niantic already has a webpage set up for people to suggest PokéStops and Gyms. It is not currently accepting submissions (for reasons I explained above), but they will eventually be looking at changing and adding new points of interest as time goes on. To get things started, Niantic used map data collected on their previous AR game, Ingress, but one of the developers said that, eventually, Pokémon Go's and Ingress's map data will start to diverge.

In regards to the woes of wading through a sea of Pidgeys and Rattatas, this is also something that will change with time. Eventually, Niantic will be rolling out Pokémon from the newer games up until they have the entire collection available. Aside from the fact that the devs have said new Pokémon are coming, you can already see hints that this is true. Bite being labeled as a Dark type move is something that didn't happen until Gold and Silver and Jigglypuff and Clefairy being categorized as Fairy type Pokémon didn't occur until X and Y. In due time, we'll have a wider variety of "common" Pokémon like Lillipup, Pidove, and Wurmple to pad out your day-to-day collecting.

TL;DR - Have patience. All will be well in time.

That is a reasonable opinion. How long do you think you will keep playing the game if nothing changes?

Aside from some minor variations, it's the same lingo used by other types of gamers. 'Loot drops' is particularly universal among gamers in online games like Destiny and singleplayer games in the vein of Diablo, Torchlight, Borderlands, and Darkest Dungeon; not so much with the Pokemon Go players I know, though.

Was going to take over a Gym this morning on the way home, but the servers were down. :|

I guess it depends on the player. I'm Lv16 now and very bored with it after a week and half or so. If I hadn't spent $10 on Poke Balls and some other items, the tedious grind of getting enough Balls to consistently play the game around here might have burned me out sooner.

Lv19 is just a few dozen more Pidgeys, Weedles, & Caterpies away, but then I'll need to take a few more Gyms to buy a Lucky Egg to get to Lv20. Short of a game-changing update, that might be it for me - I feel like I'm giving the game a fair shake, and it just isn't good enough to maintain long-term interest. Not right now at least.

Perhaps, but Niantic might have shot themselves in the foot by releasing the game in its current state. It's undoubtedly a success already, but its long-term prospects aren't as bright if it can't keep players interested. I get that they're busy releasing the game in other countries, but it's tough to be patient for real improvements when they aren't even fixing core mechanics: Tracking is *still* broken.

But then again, this is my first real foray into free-to-play mobile (phone) gaming, so maybe I'm expecting too much from it.

Finally made it to level 22 =D Challenging gyms comes into play alot after level 18 and you can get 3000-4000 EXP after versing a mid-high level gym, it is much easier to take on a gym with a second person or more.

For those with no or few poke stops in their area, see if there are any areas of interest (statues, Public buildings, Monuments etc) and take a photo and place a submission to the Niantic website.

I find the game highly enjoyable out playing with a few mates and encountering the mass amount of people playing the game and sharing about what they have caught and tips on where to find pokemon.

I was also able find enough Dratinis to evolve a Dragonite, after finding out yesturday where alot of them were located.

Nice! I've managed to snag a few Gyms myself and assigned defenders to other Team Instinct Gyms. But it's a bit of a pain because I have to drive to reach the closest Gyms unless I want to go for a long and somewhat dangerous walk along the highway.

They aren't accepting submissions at present. We can hope it's because they're creating a means of suggesting Poke Stops in-game... but I suspect they're just too busy right now.