The effects of the Gen 2 release?
It's been almost 6 full weeks since the relase of Gen 2. What do you think has been the good and the bad since then?
My thoughts: please add yours.
+ New Dex entries have generated some interest to 'catch them all'.
+ I feel that there are more people playing today than there were 6 weeks ago.
- The rare have become even more rare. (Same total number of spawns, but more base to spawn from = Gen 1 rares have become more rare.)
- No real change to the gym heirarchy other than Trex and Blissey. ( I was hoping for other types that might make good defenders.)
- It has made mass evolves harder for pure leveling purposes. (No Gen 2 that evolve on 12 candies, plus fewer caterpie/weedle/pidgey mean it takes longer to build up a mass evolve. Plus more scrolling to find the evolves means fewer can be evolved in a 30 minute time period.)
+/- Gyms seem to turn over more often. (This may be a good thing, since it implies more people playing, but it may be a bad thing, since I'm seeing a lot more cheaters.)
Answers
(+) Aim to walk more has come back for me at least, with mon like Larvitar and Mareep I have now tons of km to walk in order to complete the new dex
(-) Two mon I really want to use I can't get them, Sneasel and Piloswine, ice does not spawn here almost at all (2 Swinub since gen2 release), and I can't seem to get them even from eggs.
(+) Almost all cheaters seem to have switched to Tyranitar after the few first weeks of Blissey, at least on my town, so it makes take down gyms far easier than first weeks of gen2
(-) With the introduction of mon like Mantine, Wooper and Marrill my 5-6 water spawns where I got my Dratini candies seem to have lowered too much...
(+) 10km eggs drop rate seems to have increased
(-) Almost all 10km egg hatches are Pineco, Sudowoddo, Mantine or Gligar...
(-) I wish that by this time we had get more than just new mon...Really miss new features or quests, getting gen1 legendaries, pvp, new gym system...The game seems frozen after 9 months...Catching/Hatching and Gyms full of bots/hackers are the only gameplay...
(-) Niantic keeps working their "own" path, without listening to reports and without giving feedback, releasing events and things without any previous information of what they are working and what we can exactly expect for the game. They are not growing as a company and this is very bad for the game in the long term. And by growing I don't mean numbers, I mean intangible things, learning from their mistakes and taking advantage of free feedback from their costumers, something that a lot of huge companies would pay a fortune for...
(-) During this last week I am seeing the game going down again, since the water event finished and people is again close to complete their dex.
Firstly, I am a bit disappointed that Gen 2 has only really brought Blissey and Tyranitar (with a notable mention for Donphan and some new prestigers) into the top level of the gym part of that game.
Too many of the Gen2 'mons are just for the collection (and they look childish as well).
More significantly, Gen 2 brought many new / return players back to the game. This had a knock-on effect in my area that the gym scene was turned upside down with stagnant level 10 gyms being taken down and "all hell breaking loose" in the general turnover of gyms.
6 weeks later, however, this new enthusiasm appears to have peetered out. The more static gym scene appears to be returning - a result, I guess, from the many new / return players losing interest in PoGo.
My conclusion, is that the major change of introducing Gen 2 (and this was a major change to PoGo) appears to have a maximum impact of less than 3 months on the number of active players. I believe that this is a very bad sign for the long run.
I have been playing since last July and I really enjoy PoGo, but I fear an ever rapidly increasing number of special events and new releases to keep the interest in PoGo, with each attempt failing to meet Niantic's expectations.
The core of active players (many of them on this forum) will remain, but the total number of players will continue to decline in spite of ever more strange attempts by Niantic to gain more players.
