Can someone explain this to me
I frequently play in the park near me, and so there are a lot of wide open spaces. A gym would be a water fountain or a statue or a bridge, and you can see clearly all around it.
Yesterday I did a raid (failed, alas) that had 6 people participating, but there was not a soul around for a 100ft. Sometimes I will see someone take down a gym, it's broad daylight and there is absolutely no one nearby.
How does this happen?
Answers
Is it really that unfortunate? Niantic needs to make a profit. If someone enjoys the game through spoofing, but they are generating revenue, isn't that better than playing by the rules and not generating revenue?
Disclaimer, I have never spoofed, although I do use maps, especially for raids.
But I'm not sure why it bothers people, other than blindly following the corporate TOS. What does it actually hurt now?
Niantic have done well to remove the clear advantage that spoofers had over the legit player...but it has come at the expense of an entertaining gym system. They basically removed anything competitive, so the impact spoofers has is reduced dramatically.
...but that leaves us with nothing competitive in game.
However, if they ever wish to implement PvP then spoofers will again have a massive advantage - admittedly reduced due to the availability of raids, but an advantage all the same.
So hopefully Niantic have given themselves time to deal with spoofers, prior to re-introducing a more competitve aspect to the game.
In the meantime, in answer to 'What does it actually hurt now?' - The game as a whole...basically the entire lack of anything competitive in game.
Spoofers are the scourge of what has the potential to be a very strong game.
The conundrum is that if they make it too interesting of a game it becomes enticing to players that want to sit in their armchair instead of getting off their lazy a*$ while one of the basic principles of the game is to get up off your 'A' and hunt Pokemon in the real world.
Please don't try to justify or belittle the scope of a negative impact that spoofing has had on a ground breaking game.
The question is, why do spoofers think they are entitled to do it?
It is a sad comment on the state of the game that "There are lots of cheaters, but it does not matter, there is nothing to compete about anyway" is a totally accurate summary. However, I doubt that spoofing was the reason Niantic pulled the old gym system. The real problem was that the old system rewarded players for making fighting unattractive: place always the same high-CP defenders, use sandsacks to waste the time of the attacking player, never place an interesting defender that other players would want to fight against. Combined with an incentive system that rewarded holding a gym, but not taking it down. The result was players going for mutual non-attack agreements so that they did not have to fight at all. Dull, dumb, and boring.
welcome to pogo. There is a weird upside tho in that you almost won that raid that you would not have otherwise. Where I live, no 3 or above non=soloable raids can be done, so sometimes i'll kick in a raid pass and hope that a few spoofers will show up. They neer do lol. But yes, some parts suck, like taking down gyms anymore. It fills up faster than my fat fingers can click.
Consider from Niantic's point of view, there are 1.3 billion people in China, none with a legal way to play. Turning a blind eye towards spoofing would allow at least a portion of that huge market to get in on the game. Which may translate to wider participation when/if it ever does get released in China.
It's very simple, they are beta testers of "Harry Potter: Wizards Unite" trying on the invisibility cloak.
I wish...the truth is that for much that John Hanke keeps showing off PoGo as a game that brings people out and about to exercise and walk, their game belongs to spoofers and multi account cheaters. Their product is just a fraud!
