Game isn't really playable in %80 of the world. You can only play in populated and more importantly ingress playing areas.
There is no realistic way to expect people to travel 10 to 100 kms just to play pogo every single day.
Therefore spoofing comes in Handy. I dont blame anyone at this point. Game is progressing soooo slow...
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Going from non-spoofers to spoofers. Is it increasingly common?
I haven't fought a gym for many months because of how time consuming it has become. Yesterday I ran into a group of pogo trainers whom I used to fight gyms and do raids together. 3 of them admitted to spoofing now. The reasons are (1) they are getting bored of this game so it doesn't matter as much even if niantic found out and ban their accounts (2) and since they are losing interests in this game, they don't want to spend so much effort in walking and fighting gyms (since there is no guarantee of winning the battle if defenders decide to spam golden razzberries); and collecting their daily dose of pokecoins is one of the few things that's keeping them in the game.
Admittedly, I am disappointed that these trainers have turned to spoofing and perhaps more disappointed by niantic's tolerance of spoofing. Have you encountered similar experience and do you feel more and more trainers are becoming spoofing? (based on your gut feel when you are out there playing this game)
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I'm not sure I'm seeing more spoofers, but the same spoofer/s getting more disruptive and abusive, ruining the game for some.
the biggest culprit has some form of God complex, insisting on "maintaining balance" in my area, killing gyms and leaving multiple grey, so as to have equal numbers of each colour in his sphere of care.
He's been called on local discord by a few of us, that results in us now being targeted, swiped from gyms, even when in late slots, he'll use his multis to berry up others so he can selectively strike out ours.
I'm mostly disappointed at Niantic, I know this account has been reported by more than 20 players, at least once a week since October, and he's only getting worse.We can't even beat him by not taking his gyms so he doesn't get coins, he'll just use his multi's to clear them.
Come on Niantic, you need to do something.
Ours have 2 different reasons. First are those who were known as legit and played legit until they got bored of the game.
Second ones though, I would not be surprised if non-spoofers became spoofers because they're punished by the community that suspects them as spoofers without a chance to clear their name. I've seen the following stuff on the group: one person who is new there asks if there are any active players in his area, and is met with the "You're a spoofer, ask spoofers for help." reply. Another made level 38, and as soon as others saw his video of getting level 38, they accused him of spoofing because ... none of them has ever seen him before.
I do not consider spoofing as it would just make me lose the only reason of going outside nearly daily. But I am considered a well-known spoofer because, as one of them put it, I take the gyms in the evening while they put them during the day, and none of their members is there in the evening to witness me take the gyms down. But I call bullshit on that, I've seen their members outside in the evening, I just didn't go talk to them because I am not good at socializing with strangers.
Not quite related to the original article about spoofers but I happen to also be "not good at socializing with strangers" and even though I was doing gym battles for a while with a group of trainers that I had run into on many occasions, I would not consider myself having a relationship with them. Its more like a "hi and bye" thingy and I would usually just slot in my pokemon and go home after taking over the gym. Lately however, due to the gym revamp, the gym scene has become more time demanding that prompted me to stop doing gyms; to my surprising horror, this move of mine has become a main source of gossip for the group of trainers I used to run into in the past, and now I am being badmouthed on a regular basis for not joining them in pogo activities!!!
While the raid and gym features have brought people together and forged many good relationships for many trainers, sadly it did not work for me as I am simply not the sort that enjoy calling someone a friend just because we fought a gym and talked about pokemons for a few minutes a day...
My problems are the following when it comes to socializing:
1. Players around here just pass by and drop a mon and they're gone before i'd even get to see their face. The ones I have seen take my gym mere seconds from under my nose were still quite far away from the bench I was sitting on. And I had no idea if players of opposing teams talk to each other, I wouldn't even know where the heck to start a conversation. I mean I could say "Hi" but then what the heck do I say?
2. I am part of a WhatsApp group (installed WhasApp on a separate phone because I don't want that thing on my main phone). The members either are not around or cannot gather enough or are only around when I have just finished my walk, they're more active during mornings, aka the time I'm sleeping.
3. The hypocrisy they show by still raiding with actual, confirmed spoofers and multiaccounters. I'm an outsider to them and even though I didn't do anything, there's no way to prove a negative. So I've lost hope that I'll ever manage to do a raid, Lugia's returning, I want a Lugia, always wanted one, could not find a group to raid with.
I sincerely hope you will be able to do a few Lugia raids if you have the means to travel to the city in the next few days (I am assuming you live in the suburbs with limited players to form critical mass for lvl5 raids). I don't consider myself living in the city center but its close enough and more often than not, finding players is not a problem as long as I arrive at the raid just within 5mins of hatching and this is especially so if its around lunch time on weekdays at work. All the best on your lugia raids
No, the hilarity of it all is that I live in the capital of Romania, Bucharest. It's just that I'm only able to go outside in the evenings, need to do my chores and sometimes projects during the day, and then go for a walk, and then in the late evening until 3 am work on projects again.
And the park near my house is pretty much devoid of players during most of the time, I can count on one hand the people I've seen at that park.
Just standing at Niantic side point of view, if you are Niantic , u got youtuber playing as legit for the front , and spoofer supporting the number of player base,
Moreover, Spoofer spend real money for speed raiding( basically dumping money in the sea)
And every time you release a new lengendary, both legit and spoofer will spend money no-matter what...
So why would you dare to fixing bug and due with the problem when the money will just coming in non-stop???
They are lazy and don’t care about the game , pokemon go is just their ATM ,even pokemon go is shut down forever by now , they have enough money for whole Niantic employees and CEO himself to retire for their rest of their life ( they only have a hundred ppl in their company )
We just can’t expect anything from them , they have more then enough money to do whatever they want , so it is pointless hoping it will fix in the future because that is not a thread to their income and they will do nothing if that doesn’t affect their income...
That's so true and niantic side of the story.
On the player side ; as i told on this post, some people really wants to play the game but live in "rural" areas. They cant grind as let's say people in long beach, santa monica, Singapore... I think its unfair and it pushes people to spoofing.
You may not agree with this but its a fact so yea, you can hate on it.
It’s true. In MMOs, many cheaters tend to put some money in the game and in the developer benefits from it. However the game itself would be absolutely dead if its entire player base is composed by cheaters, which would discourage new and legit players interested in it. In my community, new players usually get interested after witnessing the legit ones actually going outside and farming/raiding.
The path that some games take is to “balance” the number of cheaters to make sure they aren’t overpopulating it. Luckily most relevant players in my city are legit and the spoofers usually are only a mild nuisance. However, from what I have been informed from other groups, you have to be ABSOLUTELY STUPID to get flagged for spoofing. It seems that they’re losing the fear of doing it.
Well, It’s quite impossible (and unviable, business-wise) to punish or ban all cheaters at this point, but Niantic should at least impose the thought of “If I do this I might get banned” which is not happening. I don’t even remember when the last ban wave happened.
That's what's happened in my town. We went from one or two people doing it to nearly everyone. Combined with new US Maps coverage for our area, our community play experience really shifted once people realized how easy it was to simply cherry pick whatever Pokemon they wanted from wherever they wanted and do raids for XP from wherever they were.
These are still good people and very kind to me, but it's a disappointing shift from a game-play perspective. Comparing achievements, which used to be kind of cool, is now pointless, as you have a bunch of players with artificially inflated resumes that I simply can't compete with, even as a relatively accomplished, L40 boots-on-the-ground player. It's discouraging.
There's just a handful of us (myself included) who won't go this route. Why? It's nothing personal, but I don't see the point in engaging the game from that perspective. If that's the experience you desire, then just download perfect Pokemon directly to your phone as a museum collection and dispense with the pretense of "playing" a game. Now it's just an endless stream of gloat posts about spoofed 100% Pokemon. Those don't mean anything to me. If the game isn't about the journey experience--the challenges, the striving, the sense of accomplishment, and the thrills--then it's just pixels. And pixels are empty.
Though there was this one time I had gotten home from a long day of Pokemoning, put on my pajamas, and sat down on the couch with the cat when a 100% Bulbasaur got posted from the map in our chat. I REALLY wanted one for Community Day, but I didn't want to get dressed and get out there again (and the cat was comfortable). I was super tempted to figure out how to spoof for that.
Almost. ;)
There is a ridiculous number of spoofers in Singapore. Sometimes I see people walking through the subway station spoofing, which is absurd because there are several gyms and spawn points at the station, so there is no need to spoof to a different location. I’ve likely benefited from “air cover” in raids, but it is so frustrating when I take a relatively remote gym at night and end up with only 1 coin unless I dump a bunch of golden razzes.
Wasn’t sure if he was a spoofer, but I was at a raid yesterday, and I guy showed up with three devices. He defeated the boss, then logged onto another account on each device. I could see that he had at least ten accounts. What is the point of that!?
If the guy had to show up at the gym in order to raid, then obviously he is not a spoofer. Having multiple accounts is different from a spoofer. Isn't the gripe against spoofers due to their lack of effort? Trainers with multiple accounts have to spend a lot more time and effort maintaining their accounts vis a vis those with one. I see many trainers these days with at least 2 accounts and handphones. I'm ok with trainers having more than 1 account. The ones i dislike are those with more than 1 team colour, eg. 1 blue, 1 red who shaves other trainer's pokemon from gyms just put his/her own in. But its a way to get an advantage, just as having more accounts allow a trainer to be less reliant on getting criticial mass for raids.
All said, it is just a game. Enjoy it, but don't take it too seriously. This game has allowed me to make friends with people whom i otherwise would not have met. So that's a positive. But if my work is in the way, i will just stop playing for extended periods of time before returning when i have time to kill.
I am playing since the beginning, level 38. Always played legit with two different squads in my large city. With time things have changed within the teams. First there was account sharing - one guy drops the gym and puts in his 5 team members. That started being natural at some point, but I didn't participate since my Gmail account is to important for me to share it. Of course all of us are using scanners and since a lot of people are mobile so good pokemon where easy to catch - you can also call that a cheat. Then one of our guys lvl 40 got sick, so a friend of his started taking his account to raids. Then he gave up gaming completely, but the guys are still using his account.
So who is all that account sharing/scanning+car all that different from spoofing? Not that much really. Last month I have got completely tired of competing with them. This game cost me to much time and effort to keep up with the sharing team. I have stopped... and started spoofing. It has turned out that my second Android phone is perfect for spoofing. No GPS rubber-banding, no problems, I am playing with no warnings from Niantic for over a month now. No stress, more time to myself. If I get overpowered soon, I will probably just drop the game altogether and be done with it. But for now I am working on lvl40. Not busting anyone's game, just moving around is easier ;) . I just don't care anymore. I don't want to participate in this race with other players who just use different types of cheats that are more acceptable to the general public.
If Niantic did something with cheaters, the spoofers would be a minority.
if i still played GO, i would never spoof.
What's the point of it? It's cheating, every pokemon you spoof is hollow. While other real players get the thrill of going out and catching a good pokemon, spoofers get nothing. And if i lived 100 miles from anywhere, i'd just play the main games instead, since they offer 50 times more strategy and depth than GO ever will.
Niantic will never do anything about it cos they just want more Wonga. As i've always said here (while being shot down as a troll) everything Niantic do is to make money. They serve no other purpose.
Suck it up folks.
Spoofers suck. They whine about being at a slight disadvantage yet abuse the system to teleport around the world catching the rarest and strongest pokemon. Friggin' hypocrites.
At this is the point they'll be asking "how is this affecting you" to which I retort "how is it NOT?!" Them taking/sniping gyms when they should be for those actually travelling, collecting and using strong pokemon in fights and gyms that they otherwise wouldn't have, and likely most importantly forcing Niantic to redirect resources to fight them, thus all players not getting better and quicker updates.
Get off your lazy @$$3$ and walk or bike.
Niantic entire motivation is money. That is why there is never a real update to this game it's to keep the game frustrating as possible to make you go into the shop and spend money. They are so petty that they don't event want you to make money off them. The CEO came out last year and said "there will never be trading because players would use the black market to profit" So what???? Did they think that never happen with the trading cards?? or even the gameboy games?? I used to hate spoofers but not anymore that is the only thing you can do to stick it to the man.
I have been playing on and off since the game launched and have never spoofed. Recently hit level 32. Based on the raids I've been attending it seems like more people are spoofing, but I have to say there is one upside to that for me as a non-spoofer. I live in a big city with tons of gyms but in a part where there's not a lot of foot traffic. I used to show up in person at legendary raids, wait for 10 minutes, and then leave when I saw no one around me and no one joining the lobby. I've since learned that if I just commit my raid pass even though I can't see anyone around, the lobby will quickly be flooded with 15 to 19 other people playing remotely. In that sense, it's nice that I only have to walk to the gyms that are a short distance from my house because I know spoofers will show up if I do. But it defeats the community spirit of the game. It's kind of sad that I live in a city of 3 million+ people and I've only ever seen and spoken with 1 or 2 players in my neighbourhood despite the fact that the gyms are always under attack and legendary raids often fill up.
