No more radar?
Hello, am I doing something wrong or has the nearby pokemon radar been entierly removed?
It seems that now it only shows pokemon that are near pokestops, and since there is no pokestop near where I live the radar basically became 100% useless if I want to hunt pokemon near home.
There are still pokemon around (and a lot more and in a lot more variety than before since the halloween patch), but now I can only walk randomly, the old radar was actually fun because hunting a rare pokemon was possible but not easy, not sure why they replaced it with this crap.
Answers
I guess PokeAlert is pretty good but I barely use it anyways. Only when I see somthing rare pop up on the ingame radar which frankly happens once a month at best. It's also nice for rainy taifoon days and there seems to be a function to check gyms but I haven't used it yet.
The thing with trackers is that they are shunned by many a player and called cheating but well, what else can you do without a working radar and still holes in your dex?
Yeah, taking away the nearby list in favour of the tracker is a pain. It floods the screen with all of the pidgeys and rattatas that no one would ever want to track.
I used to be able to find dratini in my neighborhood as a rare occurrence, but not anymore. Now when I see a dratini, it is half a km away and probably about to despawn.
I have found if you have 3 pokemon or less showing at pokestops then you will also see the "sightings". If you have more than 3 pokemon showing at pokestops (Nearby) then the Sightings won't show up.
EDIT - I think Niantic should actually change what nearby and sightings are. Nearby pokemon should be just that, the closest pokemon that are nearby. Sightings should be pokemon that have spawned at pokestops - an actual sighting at a specific location.
Niantic is messed up.
It shouldn't have been removed completely. I still have it sometimes.
When I'm out hunting Pokemon and there's Pokestops near I get the new Nearby tracker. If there are few Pokemon there I get both Nearby and Sightings.
If I'm some distance away from nearest Pokestop (actually not that far, perhaps a 10 minute walk away) I get the old Sightings tracker.
So if you live in an area with no Pokestops you should have the old Sightings tracker available.
This is what I have found as well. I live in a small town with few pokestops. If I am on the side of town with the pokestops I get the new tracker. If I am on the side of town that only has one Pokestop It will show things at that Pokestop plus the old tracker with nearby pokes. If I am at home, or anywhere else in town then I only see nearby. Having both you really get to see the difference in play....
The new tracker is GREAT (unless I am at work on break but can't actually leave to go get my awesome poke that pops up). Except it takes the "fun" out of it. Sure I can get more pokes that I want and weed out the ones I don't (who am I kidding - I want them all still. Only hit level 30 last week) but what fun is it to see something I want drive/walk right up to it and know EXACTLY where it is. The ones that are nearby are more fun and rewarding. Me and my 6 year old love to hunt them down by watching to see where they move in the list to see if we are going the right way.
The new tracker is ok but not perfect, obviously. If you live around Pokestops and you see something interesting on the radar, you will get it for sure (unless it despawns). No more aimless wandering in different directions not knowing where to go and waiting for the sightings to update to see if you are getting closer. This has helped me get a Rhydon, a Dratini and a bunch of Pikachus that spawned near pokestops.
Of course, like everybody else, I get frustrated that I have no idea if there is a Snorlax or a Lapras in my backyard (has happened before) because my backyard is not near a pokestop (but there are enough pokestops in my neighborhood to fill the radar).
Niantic, maybe we can have 2 pages on the tracker? One for pokestop sightings and one for nearby sightings???
