Dilemma
Valor runs the best strip of my town. There are two profiles who can be recognized as most notorious. Yesterday I met one of them and chatted for a while. Bumped into him again today and chatted some more. He asked me if I tracked and put me on to my towns tracker.
Before this I didn't even know one was available. I thought we were too rural. Anyway, I checked it out and to my surprise every single regular was registered to this thing! Again fairly small town here so I can pretty much recognize the same 10-15 account names. What do I even make of this?
And by the way I looked into it and its not even that reliable. It didn't pick up a Dratini, Typhlosion, or any of the Sneasel that I caught. I don't know exactly how its filtered to alert spawns but there were other Dratini and Charizard notifications. So what do I make of some 85+% of my town on a tracker. I might keep an eye on it for a little while longer, (judge if you want) but the truth is in 3 hours it proved itself to be unreliable anyway.
I'm certainly not going to report anyone because I would then have all the gyms to myself. I always knew those Valor guys sucked, wayyyy to many Blissey!
He bragged a little about how he was catching 10 Chansey a day in February. So I naturally said yeah well you can't track these and whipped out my 3 shinies. I totally won the brag-a-thon.
Answers
I stopped seeing them about a month back. When the water event started, right up to may I literally clicked every single magikarp I passed. I've since grown lax. I live on the coast so 10 a day is the minimum. I did 500 for the event. My second one was just as the announced the event was closed but keep am eye out. My third was many weeks after that. I've seen 745 and caught 696. Don't run away, click everyone you see, and wear the hat with all orange everything. The two Gyarys are in the low 70s. Both have been dusted and both have DT. The most recent one is unevolved and likely will stay that was @~40%. Shockingly the karp has been in a gym almost a week now.
Agreed that trackers aren't that reliable...I watched one on twitter for a while (never bothered to catch anything) and like you said, missed random stuff that I saw on nearby like Chanceys with regularity. My guess is that the trackers only watch some areas so also miss a lot...
During the v-day event, it was possible to catch 10 Chansey's a day without a tracker. I didn't use one and just did random walks around my loop and there were 1 or 2 every single hour...not to mention all the ones that popped up on nearby...
Why Niantic did that, I have no clue, but this is why I don't think PoGo will ever be a real strategic/competitive game other than a casual time passer (Lapras/Snorlax event in Japan makes me think this too)...
In all honesty, this is why I kind of roll my eyes at players that claim they are "totally legit." I have never actually met a serious player in person that has never bent the rules or the ToS. There is even a middle age woman around here that walks around with 3 phones...her kids accounts she says...
I was introduced to out local tracker, and like you said, a lot of people follow it. We have around 120 people following it and the scanner only covers potions of 3 cities (in in the subburbs, so it isn't as big as it sounds.) It is actually a great tool for meeting people.
At the end of the day, I think "cheating" comes down to intent and how it is used in conjunction with spoofing. Spoofing combined with a scanner is bad...if you want to drive 20 minutes to get a Larvitar, be my guest...
There certainly isn't a point in reporting people. I think of it like professional cycling...sure, Lance Armstrong was the best cheater, but they were all a bunch of cheaters. The guys setting up the bots and maintaining them are the Lance Armstrongs, they are the ones getting past all the rules and "winning." Everyone did something that was questionable, but hopefully it all works out in the end. I think a lot of these players will be crippled if we can only put one of each type, as they will have to complete against everyone, even on their own team.
As far as how accurate scanners are, or how they work, I have no idea...I know ours stopped showing IVs, a while back, but ours has been out of service for a few weeks now.
