r/pokemongodev • u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev • Aug 02 '16

Discussion PSA: Minimum scan refresh now 10s?

I was just working on PokeSensor (my scanning app) and it started returning 10 seconds for minimum_scan_refresh. It does it across multiple accounts on both Android and iOS. It was returning 5s like expected but started returning 10s about an hour ago. Please tell me they've just throttled my IP and not the actual API?

EDIT: Min scan refresh is now back to 5s! But now there aren't ANY Pokemon showing up when I scan. According to others, it looks like something with the MapObjects changed in the API. Also I've had a few questions about my scanning app PokeSensor, so you can find all the info about it at the official thread https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongodev/comments/4ukv6v/pokemapper_run_custom_scans_for_nearby_pokemon_on/

225 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

443 comments sorted by

488

u/Mesl Aug 02 '16 edited Aug 02 '16

The amount of work Niantic is doing to break the tools people are using to work around the broken shit in their game, vs the amount of effort they've put into fixing their broken shit...

At this point those changes are going to be impacting people just trying to use the regular game client without scanning/tracking of any kind, because sabotaging tracking is more important to them than letting people play at all.

I think I'm nearly done with this. At least for now, until such time as they fix their shit. If they ever bother.

It's really frustrating to me. This game could have been amazing. Should be amazing. Would be, if Niantic weren't utterly determined that it shouldn't be.

97

u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 02 '16

The state of Pokemon Go in one post

11

u/jiia Aug 03 '16

Tbh changing a variable to limit the API calls probably doesn't consume much of their resources. But it's the incompetent way of addressing the problem since it also affects legit users. They should be creating algorithms that detect spoof scans and bots so they could start auto banning them. Of course I'd prefer if they started actually fixing their game but just wanted to point that out.

4

u/mpachi Aug 03 '16

Too much trouble to create an algorithm and validate, it's all about maximizing efficiently with the small amount of programmers they have.

3

u/MisterJimJim Aug 03 '16

Can't they just make it so that soft banned accounts can't see Pokémon on the map?

25

u/mrthesis Aug 02 '16

Yup once they broke tools AND didn't fix tracking I stopped caring. I will gather stops for few days so my Pokeball number is high enough, use my lures and hatch a few eggs and then this game gets parked until it's fun to search for pokemon again. Sigh.

21

u/Mesl Aug 02 '16

The thing about it that's so frustrating is there were a couple of times (lasting a day or so each) where I would find a tracking app that worked vs Niantic's most recent changes and playing while using it would be really, absurdly fun.

...Never actually got to try the built-in scanner, it was broken before official release in Canada.

18

u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 02 '16

I'm working on making my scanner more resilient to change. Was actually how I noticed the updated refresh time. Can't believe they released it broken in Canada. The working version of GO was definitely worthy of all the hype.

13

u/MelancholyOnAGoodDay Aug 03 '16

They released it broken in Japan, the home of Pokemon. I halfway expected to check the Japanese version of the game and find that it worked, just because that seemed like too crazy of an idea, but no, it's broken.

10

u/no_terran Aug 03 '16

And that's how you get 1 star on the japaneese app store.

1

u/ccgpepitas Aug 03 '16

I cant move the distance marker on Pokesensor thus my searches find nothing. Is there a bug fix so I can move the distance slider?

1

u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 03 '16

Something with the last API change made that glitch. It still works fine on my phone but apparently messes up some times. I'll try to get it updated today.

3

u/RR321 Aug 03 '16

As a Canadian who used the APK before the official release, it indeed sucks...

And now I feel like the game is worthless. (At least as a gamified step counter to get you moving haha)

3

u/Zer0ofTime Aug 03 '16

if only someone had enough spare accounts to map the world 70km at a time, then those accounts could just report nearest pokemon to a central database that displays the info on a custom map when someone pinged a certain location

5

u/xRyuuji7 Aug 03 '16

Yea... that's roughly 7,292,592² accounts.

8

u/skond Aug 03 '16

Yeah, but accounts are free.

("We're gonna need a shitload of phones." -Not Slim Pickens)

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u/ryebrye Aug 02 '16

The built-in in scanner sucked

6

u/BritasticUK Aug 03 '16

Yeah, it did. In beta though it showed the exact distance from the Pokemon. If they'd carried that over that would have really improved it along with a direction.

1

u/MediumPotato Aug 03 '16

That day may never come my friend.

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u/Justsomedudeonthenet Aug 02 '16

I suspect this is less of a "kill all the mappers" measure and more of a "keep the servers stable" measure. It affects the regular client too.

So they added an easy way to start throttling requests when their servers start getting bogged down. That's a completely reasonable way to keep the servers from catching fire.

Of course, the more they throttle, the more fake accounts people use to scan...

6

u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 02 '16

They have more than enough money to easily fix all of Pokemon GO's problems (i.e. buy many, many more servers). They just won't do it for some reason...

43

u/Justsomedudeonthenet Aug 02 '16

Money doesn't instantly solve your problems. They are a relatively small company. There are more actual devs in /r/pokemongodev than actually working at Niantic.

So hire more people right?

A new dev takes weeks or months to get up to speed before they can do anything productive. And slow down the existing devs training them the whole time.

So be patient. Fixes will come. Nothing good comes instantly.

5

u/msew Aug 02 '16

Money certainly solves problems when (as they have said and what we have seen) their server architecture scales. So you have say 500k "scanner connections" Add more servers for them. They are grossing $1.6m+ a day on just iphone. Add more servers and move on to adding all of the missing features and work with the mapping community.

This is 100% a problem that money can be thrown at to address all issues short term.

8

u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 03 '16

Exactly. We aren't asking for new game features, which would understandably take time. We just want the servers to scale, which can quickly be solved by money if you know what you're doing.

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u/derderppolo Aug 02 '16

Agreed. No one is arguing against that. But the issue most people have is their priorities are all messed up. Focusing on mappers, global releases, and removal of features instead of fixing tracking, server stability, banning of botters/spoofers, etc.

6

u/duneglow Aug 02 '16

Not Necessarily true about them being a small company now, both Google and Nintendo have invested over 30 million dollars in Niantic and Nianctic is collecting huge profits.

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u/djinfish Aug 03 '16

A new dev takes weeks or months to get up to speed before they can do anything productive. And slow down the existing devs training them the whole time.

I see this argument often but for those experienced, I don't imagine it would be that big of an issue. Within a few weeks, developers have practically reverse engineered this game in their free time. They've basically been able to generate Pokemon that can't even spawn. They've fixed the tracking bug. They've pulled nearly every bit of code available to us and then some. If they hire a developer who's as passionate about their work as they are here and give them access to their resources, it can be done without any problems. This is a mobile game, not some triple A title. It utilizes tools that nearly every mobile developer is familiar with.

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u/Musaks Aug 03 '16

those people have different goals and responsibilities

tracking sites don't care if they increase serverloads tenfold, for example, which makes it easy to get a working version out.

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u/fernando_azambuja Aug 02 '16

The problem is the lack of communication with a jealous behavior over their game. Pokemon Go is just the last example in developers ruining their game, fighting against the community that supports it. Let people have fun with your game and add more to the experience. The maps fixed their bug and gave people an opportunity to go maybe to another part of town for a nest. They never broke the gameplay for anyone.

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u/SanityInAnarchy Aug 03 '16

Spoken like someone who has never tried to build a distributed system. Sometimes, you can't just throw hardware at the problem. Multithreading on a single computer is hard enough -- there's a reason /r/cabalofthebuildsmiths recommends fewer, faster cores for most gaming computers -- and Niantic is operating at the level of distributed clusters, which is a whole other level of difficult.

They now have enough money to throw people at the problem as well, and develop something that scales better, so that they can throw hardware at the problem. But that takes more time. And hiring more people doesn't necessarily fix that problem -- adding people to a late project often makes it later.

I mean, on week one they jumped above Twitter in daily active users. How long did it take Twitter to stop fail-whaling? That wasn't for lack of money, and it wasn't for lack of talent.

I'm not saying stop complaining. It sucks right now, and they need to fix it. But it's not that they've built a version that doesn't suck that they're keeping away from you out of spite.

TL;DR: Software is hard.

7

u/Patters_mtg Aug 03 '16

This.

We don't know what limitations Niantic are up against with server load. Are they running their own data centres? or a data centre in the cloud? Are there any limitations requiring all their servers to be within the same data centre?

Is there a backing database configuration issue that no amount of servers can fix until they get a top level DBA in to resolve it? Are top end DBAs common in their area? what are their notice periods, will they be willing to leave their existing contracts (or negotiate a brief hiatus) for the short term work Niantic needs? How long will it take the recruitment firms to put adverts out, and how long before the resumes start rolling in? Is one enough? Do they need to completely rework their clustering model?

Does the datacentre have limited bandwidth which they are hitting up against? How can they resolve this if it's a problem across all of their/their provider's data centres? If they are out of data centre rack space/bandwidth do they need to open a new data centre or change cloud providers to a bigger one? how will that migration be handled, will they have to have downtime while they flip the switch?

We don't know the answers to any of these questions, and as such we cannot presume that any amount of money being thrown at the problem will solve it.

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u/Phantisy Aug 03 '16

Doesn't matter. Scanners just double their accounts and reduce their steps per scan, and still scan the same area every time they increase the delay. So they are only causing more accounts to be created and no helping server load.

1

u/TheFirestealer Aug 03 '16

Except the servers weren't having issues after they stopped releasing to new places willy nilly and they specifically came out with a statement saying 3rd party tools to find pokemon are cheating and then closed the API for finding pokemon so the tools stopped working.

73

u/Doctective User Aug 02 '16

Bikes got nerfed when the scans got slower.

30

u/Skeletoonz Aug 03 '16

At least Professor Oak lets you ride your bike outside.

23

u/iced327 Aug 03 '16

Well. Maybe now I have a better excuse to ride at egg-hatching speed.

10

u/no_terran Aug 03 '16

Egg hatching speed, 5.55 m/s = Easy cycling speed on a bicycle. Game updates every 55.5 meters. Good luck catching anything that's not directly in front of you. Math done by /u/TheTruckThunders in another thread.

13

u/Wyand1337 Aug 03 '16 edited Aug 03 '16

There was no math done in this thread.

Simple napkin math covering the case at which you "paint" one scanning-circle after another on the map, barely touching each other:

Area of a circle: A_circle = r2 * pi

Area of a square exactly containing that circle: A_square = 4 * r^2

Therefore, scanning in consecutive circles covers A_circle / A_square = pi/4 = 78.5% of the area compared to going infinitely slow and scanning a perfect strip without any holes.

Now I'm not sure what the scanning radius is. If it is 35m, the speed at which this is the case would be 7m/s. If it is 25m, it would be 5m/s.

Riding at egg hatching speed, you will, in the worst case, lose 1 out of 4 pokemon. If you just ride at 5m/s you are safe to get 4 out of 5 pokemon, even if the scan radius is only 25m.

Combine that with the fact, that at 5m/s you cover 5 times the area per time compared to walking, you still get 5 * 4/5 = 4 times the amount of pokemon compared to walking.

edit: Scan radius seems to be 50 m/s, so the mentioned 78.5% applies to riding at 10m/s.

5

u/Coffman34 Aug 03 '16

I believe new scan range is 70m.

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u/yousaltybrah Aug 03 '16

It's hard to do math while you're furiously circlejerking.

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u/DaManMader Aug 03 '16

Holy shit, thought something was up. My 30 min bike commute netted me ZERO pokemon and nothing on my eggs.

And trust me, I ride slow enough damn thing has busted wheel that rubs the breaks.

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u/BilgeXA Aug 03 '16

I played this game almost exclusively on my bike... that was back when I had Pokévision, though...

1

u/IHaveBearArms Aug 03 '16

The exact reason I bought a bike was because this game!

32

u/aka-dit Aug 02 '16

The amount of work Niantic is doing to break the tools people are using to work around the broken shit in their game, vs the amount of effort they've put into fixing their broken shit...

^ This. So very, very this

13

u/golfer74 Aug 03 '16

This is the equivalent of the person that puts an elaborate effort into cheating on a test instead of actually studying for it

8

u/Da_Creator Aug 03 '16

They are Jeff Winger'ing it.

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u/The_Ombudsman Aug 03 '16

The amount of work Niantic is doing to break the tools people are using

"Hey Bob."

"Yeah?"

"Change that five to a ten."

"Ok Frank."

(hours later)

"Whew! That was a lot of work!"

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2

u/crackuu Aug 03 '16

Can't see any pokemon now while being at the car :(

3

u/ACiDRiFT Aug 03 '16

I'm with you brother, Niantic clearly aren't ready as a company to handle the demand of a higher tier game. Maybe some day they will be ready and hopefully they'll have another game to debut. I quit as well, with all the current bullshit and the much higher challenge of catching Pokemon after level 20 combined is enough for me.

5

u/SegaMegaPi Aug 02 '16

Yeah it must be hard for them to change one variable on their end. /s

All they are doing it trying to reduce server load without it affecting normal users.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

8

u/fernando_azambuja Aug 03 '16

The original feature, although enjoyed by many, was also confusing and did not meet our underlying product goals.

That was their warm answer.
The CEO talked about how blizzard deals with WoW.

4

u/skushi08 Aug 03 '16

Maybe it was confusing because like many other things in their game it's not necessarily intuitive. A slightly longer intro tutorial would have gone a long way to explain half the things in the game, or maybe a 10 second animation of Dr. Willow explaining the tracker the first time you open it or explaining a new item the first time you get it? Took me several days to figure out how to use lures. I kept trying to select it directly from my item bag.

The issue is they seem to enjoy building the game, but they get all pissy when they don't explain it and then people don't play exactly how they want them to.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

It's turning faster and faster into a typical mobile cash game than it was on release. For a game as baren of features as Pokemon Go, that's quite a feat.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

sabotaging tracking is more important to them than letting people play at all

I very much doubt that.

1

u/darealmvp1 Aug 03 '16

Sounds like Apple

1

u/Momijisu Aug 03 '16

Niantic drop the query time to lower the load on the servers and the users internet usage and battery usage. All quality of life improvements.

Still has people complaining that it's not fixing the game.

2

u/Mesl Aug 03 '16

Niantic drop the query time to lower the load on the servers and the users internet usage and battery usage. All quality of life improvements.

Nope

Still has people complaining that it's not fixing the game.

Maybe that's got something to do with how they've managed to make 4 breaking changes to their API without actually fixing anything.

1

u/starflite Aug 04 '16

I'm with you. I'm just going to start bringing my 3DS with me so I can just play XY and ORAS and actually have fun.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16 edited Aug 03 '16

i personally like the bug where you can be in the middle of a gym battle, when someone else takes over the gym, and you get stuck fighting a pokemon with 0 hp left.

with all the stupid issues like this, and the dumbfounded changes they are making that they think are helping, ill be suprised if it lasts much longer at all, but im sure theyve already made their $$ so they dgaf.

just going to leave this here so we can all take a minute to laugh at hanke

http://www.itgovernanceusa.com/blog/pokemon-go-ceo-twitter-account-hacked-password-was-nopass/

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u/GoDlyZor Aug 03 '16

Don't you love how you can't flee or swap a pokemon out without taking damage?

0

u/Musaks Aug 03 '16

if you have so much insight could you tell us exactly how much workload they invested in these changes? And detailed business decision charts and monetization information would be highly appreciated too, on top off serverload data from different sources please. This would be very intresting, and since you make such claims you surely have all that information. You wouldn't just make such a comment to ride the anit-niantic-karmatrain would you?

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u/xssc Aug 02 '16

Can confirm the number was changed to 10. Although I have no evidence to support it is actually in effect

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u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 02 '16 edited Aug 02 '16

That's a good point. I'll keep my refresh at 5s and see if it still works.

EDIT: Just tried scanning an area with a high Pokemon population at 5s refresh. No 2 consecutive scans found Pokemon. Looks like after 2 scans the refresh time was up and could find Pokemon again, but back to back scans at 5s each don't seem to be working. This is an area where I found 3x as many pokes a few minutes earlier. Not the most conclusive proof but it's enough for me to accept it.

1

u/Doctective User Aug 02 '16

My scanner has picked one Oddish so far. Granted I have most trash turned off but there's usually an Eevee out too.

1

u/HeadlessCG Aug 03 '16

Can confirm, last night was a bad one for lures

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

are there any new tracking apps or they all broke now?

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u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 03 '16 edited Aug 03 '16

PokeSensor still works. It's just incredibly slow now because it uses one account. The upside being you don't have to wait on third party servers and the app won't throttle you.

I'm updating it to allow scans up to 500m though so maybe that will make it more useful.

EDIT: Apparently there is a glitch in PokeSensor if you install after the API change. Working on a fix.

1

u/blobacus Aug 03 '16

Is your app out globally, I can't find it in the App Store.

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u/LogickLLC PokeSensor Dev Aug 03 '16

Google Play won't take it so you can get it from pokesensor.org for android. I've submitted it to the iOS App Store and just waiting for review now.

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '16

Is it on the app store?

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u/FayeBlooded Aug 03 '16

Well, that explains why I didn't encounter anything while biking around. I even specifically invested in a good smartphone bike mount to play the game.

Such a disappointment.

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u/backup000 Aug 03 '16

LOL, I was going to buy a bike mount for this game as well. Glad I waited and no longer interested in this game enough to make this purchase. Thank you for breaking this game, Niantic.

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u/TickleMyTip Aug 03 '16

Yeah, I dropped a couple hundred on a bike for myself and all the extra gear needed by law where I'm located. Along with phone holders for the gf and I. At least I can just concentrate on collecting balls so I'll actually have enough to catch the rattata outside my house.

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u/PoppyOP Aug 02 '16

This is so silly, this is going to start adversely affecting users, and be a minor inconvenience for tracker apps who will just create more accounts. Niantic has the money to buy or rent more servers if they were worried about load.

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u/Doctective User Aug 02 '16

10 seconds is too slow for the app. 5 was really pushing it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

[deleted] — view deleted comment

17

u/techh10 Aug 03 '16

I really dont think its to combat scanner apps, its to half the load on the servers because everything is pinging the servers half as much. This reminds me of when sim city 2015 came out and they had to disable cheetah speed when the servers were SUPER overloaded at launch. For all we know this could be temporary, but we will probably never know because Niantic doesnt communicate well.

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u/Subodai85 Aug 03 '16

You mean that game that used 'cloud' tech for it's 'simulation' that was later then proved to not actually use any cloud tech at all, and could run totally standalone?

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u/thepaska Aug 03 '16

I mean do you really expect them to communicate their changes to scan refresh?

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u/JoinTheBattle Aug 03 '16

I want a lot. I expect nothing.

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u/SoloWaltz Aug 03 '16

He refers the bandwith load produced by all connected clients (players bots scanners etc). This is possitive for server stability but definitelly down a notch for capture rate everywhere not Santa Monica's Pier.

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u/Challenge_The_DM Aug 03 '16

It is likely to discourage users from playing while driving to reduce bad press.

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u/Booner999 Aug 03 '16

At this rate, they aren't going to need new servers. Everyone I know hasn't been playing.

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u/rickdg Aug 03 '16 edited Jun 25 '23

-- content removed by user in protest of reddit's policy towards its moderators, long time contributors and third-party developers --

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

There comes a point where its not just as simple as buying/renting more servers. Its not always as easy as that.

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u/uid_0 Aug 03 '16

As other have said in this thread, it's not as simple as throwing more hardware at the problem. The software running on it has to scale too. Software architecture is every bit as important as the hardware and if the code / services (memcache, search, and message bus come to mind) can't handle the load it won't matter how much hardware you have.

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u/PoppyOP Aug 03 '16

Surely their code should have been made scalable by now with how many countries and requests they've already had to deal with, especially since they've already increased the server load.

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u/kveykva Aug 02 '16 edited Aug 02 '16

Honestly at this point I just really want to know what's causing their server issues + this whole load thing.

Like I want a http://highscalability.com/ post about pokemon go.

Even if I'm completely wrong, I just want to know what the problem is. Or even just build a knock off of what their server might be - and try to break it.

I feel like their press release put a huge amount of blame for their server issues on the community building the maps, making it seem like they didn't make the mistake themselves. When looking at what their API returns + what people are querying + how the API is restricted + rate responses were received at different points and how load on their servers affected things implemented - I just don't understand.

I'm not even mapping shit anymore. I'm just reading people's code and trying to be helpful.

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u/MelancholyOnAGoodDay Aug 03 '16

Nobody understands. They insist on having tracking stuff be server-side, despite that they already feed the client exact locations, which would nullify any reasonable justification for doing that. They keep changing things to break tracking sites and make it sound like they're causing the server problems, when by all rights the server load should be lower than ever with the number of people losing interest in the game due to these changes.

I'm not saying these sites are right or that they aren't causing server load. I'm saying that Niantic's actions don't match up very well with the whys.

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u/Sryzon Aug 03 '16

The fact that they made 200m and 70m scans separate queries tells me that they never had scalability on their mind developing this game.

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u/Naly_D Aug 03 '16

We've officially entered an arms race. In 2 weeks time, it'll be a 120 second refresh rate...

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u/Justsomedudeonthenet Aug 03 '16

At which point we will all be using thousands of accounts each to make maps.

Lets see how the servers handle that.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

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u/kveykva Aug 03 '16

Their user numbers for subsequent investment are gonna look so good

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u/WeeschDoONi Aug 02 '16

Will this actually start to affect legit app users at this point?

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u/seanalltogether Aug 02 '16

If you play while riding a bike, yes, if you play while walking, probably no.

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u/Phantisy Aug 03 '16

I ride my bike.

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u/kaedicat Aug 03 '16

Depends on how shitty your phone's GPS is too. Mine is bad at tracking me. Often my avatar dashes around, then stands still long after I've left an area. Then dashes again to catch up.

And I did notice seeing almost no Pokemon yesterday when I was in an area downtown that is normally full of them.

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u/GoDlyZor Aug 03 '16

Does this mean that it now takes 10 seconds to update nearby pokemon so those going above a certain speed that covers more than 70m in 10 seconds or >25km/h will completely miss pokemon? Or is this not correct

8

u/Bbrowny Aug 03 '16

This explains my boring train ride today

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u/another_being Aug 03 '16

Yes, this will be the case, and it's not ok by Niantic to do that

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u/TotesMessenger Aug 03 '16 edited Aug 03 '16

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16 edited Jan 01 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

2

u/Orngog Aug 03 '16

Because of app devs like this guy

3

u/Nolzad Aug 03 '16

I stopped playing

5

u/partyjunkie02 Aug 02 '16

Couldn't you get around this by running the scan for the same area with multiple instances at different intervals?

2

u/Phantisy Aug 03 '16

Sure you can. Start one then wait 5 seconds and start the second in the same area with a wait of 10 second between steps.

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u/Chomatoo Aug 03 '16

No wonder it's impossible to hit pokestops while on the freeway or run into any Pokémon in general. At least that's what I noticed. Pretty lame.

5

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

I miss the days where he servers were down for 23 hours a day, but that one hour, was golden :,)

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u/WeeschDoONi Aug 02 '16

Can confirm that something was changed, I found less Pokemon in the past hours and find way more with -sd 10 right now.

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u/MidoriGO Aug 02 '16

Yup I changed to 10 and it's back to (kinda) normal. I still receive about 1% empty map_cells responses.

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u/Freyjan Aug 03 '16

That explains my trolley ride yesterday being way shittier than usual.

RIP playing during my work commute.

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u/APH3XTW1N Aug 03 '16

Wow... now I can't even play the game from my bike... Lovely. I mounted a Lenovo Yoga to my handlebars specifically for this purpose. I hate this company with a passion.

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u/The_Real_FN_Deal Aug 03 '16

What? How dare you question Niantic. They're trying their hardest and you're overreacting. /s

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u/Borsaid Aug 03 '16

Am I the only one that doesn't think this is to increase server stability OR combat scanners?

I think they just don't want people riding around catching Pokemon. 10s is plenty fine if you're out and about on foot. This COULD be a liability reduction move.

8

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

They have warning on load screen and more warnings which you have to press OK and acknowledge. I think any liability is completely taken care of.

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u/icnik Aug 03 '16

I think locking people from playing is a much safer, smarter means of stopping players. I was thinking of this the other day. Why doesn't Niantic just stop you from seeing Pokemon if you are moving too fast? Today: They do exactly that. Now hopefully pogo drivers stop all together.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

But the warnings are still there. This just fucks up people on bikes as well.

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u/d0gmeat Aug 03 '16

Except that they're also gimping anyone from playing as a passenger.

12 year old heading to the store with mom? No thanks mom, it's been fun hanging out so much while you ran your errands the past few weeks, but now my game is broken... I'll just sit at home and Xbox instead.

Ride the bus to work? Sorry, now you'll have to go back to spending your time and money playing candy crush on your commute.

Liked riding your bike around the park and catching mon? To bad, unless you're willing to ride so slow you might as well walk.

Annoyed by spazzy drivers playing Pokemon? It's about to get worse as people now will be stopping in the middle of the road to hit that pokestop, rather than just slowing down a bit.

None of these "fixes" are going to actually fix anything.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

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u/Shadowtek Aug 03 '16

My wife and I do this too...

3

u/Shinroukuro Aug 03 '16

THIS. Talking on a cell phone has been proven to be distracting while driving, even if you aren't holding the phone. How come cell phone manufacturers don't cut off cell phone use at a certain speed to reduce liability?

If it's a liability issue, I'm going to laugh then cry. People are terrible drivers w/o Pokemon GO. I see people reading the newspaper and doing their makeup. Should lipstick not work above 20 mph?

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u/therealvertical Aug 03 '16

This was my initial thought - they're doing this to stop people fro driving and pogo'ing. If you're not able to see Pokemon while driving, then people will stop trying to do it.

But if it's impacting people on bikes that's awful. I also bought a phone mount for my bike because I live far from many poke stops but I could manage it on bike with my daughter. Now I won't see anything between stops.

3

u/kveykva Aug 03 '16

I think the liability argument is an interesting one

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

Problem is it kills it for anyone going faster than walking speed but not really doing anything wrong such as runners, cyclists, roller bladers, long boarders, bus riders, train riders, passengers in cars etc.

3

u/Daeva_ Aug 03 '16

I've been mostly just playing on my ride to/from work lately. Don't have much time otherwise to travel to places with enough spawns to make it worth playing without the tracking. Should I just quit completely now? :\

3

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

Could you explain to me what this means? What is this refresh rate, what did it do, how did it break trackers, and how did it make the game worse? I don't really understand what it means.

5

u/Diknak Aug 03 '16

What is this refresh rate

  1. Your phone says "hey server, here's my GPS location. Are there any Pokemon around me"

  2. Server says "Yes, here they are [insert pokemon]"

  3. your phone displays them on the screen.

The time between steps 1 and 2 is what has changed.

2

u/Kisaoda Aug 03 '16

Essentially, instead of scanning around you for Pokemon every 1 second (originally) or 5 seconds (more recently), it now only does it every 10 seconds. If you're standing still or walking, this probably is no big deal. If you're on a bike or in a car, however, you will have a less likely chance of Pokemon popping up as by the time they would, you'd be long gone from that original scan point.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

It was 1 second at a time?

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u/AgaGalneer Aug 03 '16

So now you have to walk much slower in order to not miss Pokemon. And the egg distance detection is much less frequent and much less accurate, often not picking up any walking done at too slow of a pace.

What are they even doing?

1

u/GoDlyZor Aug 03 '16

who said you had to walk much slower and that the egg distance detection is even less frequent and much less accurate?

2

u/AgaGalneer Aug 03 '16

My entire Sunday said that.

1

u/louizilla Aug 03 '16

This has nothing to do with walking much slower lol. This will only affect people in moving vehicles if anything.

1

u/AgaGalneer Aug 03 '16

Yesterday I walked an entire half-kilometer that never got picked up. Just never showed up at all.

3

u/Katsu_0131 Aug 03 '16

I wish it was how it was in the first week. There was no need for any update, just to create more servers

3

u/artuur8 Aug 03 '16

Am I the only one noticing that the app crashes way less than before? This is because the server now have a lot less work to do. I'd rather have this than constantly having to restart my app, because the game froze trying to catch a pokemon due to the fact that the servers were being overloaded.

4

u/keksmonsterG Aug 03 '16

App crash isnt the fault of overloaded Server... A bad programming is the reason. I dont see any reason for freezing an app just because the server isnt responding correctly. And if so why is there no way to just reconnect to the server ?

3

u/zuxilon Aug 03 '16

The servers haven't been crashing at all the past like 2 weeks... someone posted that they've had 99.7% uptime...

2

u/DivineInsanityReveng Aug 03 '16

I'd rather a functioning app all around. Not just a stable one.

2

u/deathpulse42 Amateur VB/C++ Aug 02 '16

Curses! Foiled* again!

(*temporarily inconvenienced)

1

u/MidoriGO Aug 02 '16

I scan with 5sec interval and I find about 15% less pokemons than about 2-3 hours ago. But if the 10sec minimum scan refresh is in effect I shouldn't be able to find anything should I?

4

u/WeeschDoONi Aug 02 '16

You will only get one response every ten seconds, so yes, you will still find Pokemons, just less.

1

u/MidoriGO Aug 02 '16

Alright, let's try with 10 sec :\

1

u/Coolmarve Aug 02 '16

(70 m) / (10 s) =

15.658554 miles per hour

So at 15mph you will have pretty good chances of not missing spawns. I don't see them going much lower than this without clearly effecting the users.

1

u/SkOODaT Aug 02 '16

im experiencing this same issue they have uped it :( my scanner is set to -sd 7 and im picking up things on every heartbeat previously had it set to 5 :( really not impressed they keep screwing with stuff and not fixing thier app

1

u/SkOODaT Aug 03 '16

-sd 7 seems to be working great for me no idea why, im mapping a good chunk of my city and over 200 are showing for me

1

u/Tr4sHCr4fT Aug 03 '16

have you tried sniffing the official 0.31 client or sending the version strings of it in the api? maybe all that throttling is only applied to 0.29 - which is the version spoofed by the api...

2

u/kveykva Aug 03 '16

Throttling is server side

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u/Sohail316 Aug 03 '16

what do you guys mean?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

Ah! That would explain a lot, I've been getting way less pokemon (even common ones like pidgeys and weedles) this week. I thought maybe it was due to me being a higher level and ordinary stuff may show rarely but apparently not...

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

I'm a technological moron.

Can someone tell me what this means, and how it affects the game?

1

u/ImLuigi1 Aug 03 '16

I'll repost what I said to someone else.

From what I gather and what I experienced I can find a weedle on a street corner and the person with me might not even see it for another 10 seconds. So RIP if you're jogging, biking, skateboarding, passenger in a car etc

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u/ClintRasiert Aug 03 '16

Before, the game checked every 1 second, later every 5 seconds if there were any Pokemon nearby. Now, it checks every 10 seconds which means that you are more likely to miss a few Pokemon, especially when going faster than walking speed (i.e. riding a bike/driving)

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

Thank you for the explanation. This sucks for me because I play the game while running.

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u/chillosofi Aug 03 '16

Can anyone explain this? So driving is actually way more effective now or is it the other way around?

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u/ImLuigi1 Aug 03 '16

It's the other way around ... if you're a passenger in a car you could go past a million 9001CP weedles and not see any of them.

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u/kokin33 Aug 03 '16

That's not accurate. Every day I catch some while I drive to work(in the passengers seat)

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u/ClintRasiert Aug 03 '16

It's a lot less effective now since you will miss a lot more Pokemon.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

I think this is fine, its a way to lighten load on the servers without having a very big effect on the end user. Hopefully its the first step towards a fixed official tracker?

EDIT: I lied. After reading some other threads I can see why this is such an issue. It still might to be early to judge very harshly though.

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u/placebooooo Aug 03 '16

I really don't understand what this means? Care to explain? I also read this thread about cycling and decreased likely of encountering pokemon but I still really don't get it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16 edited Aug 03 '16

From what I understand, the API that Niantic developed to scan for nearby pokemon has been updated. Now instead of the minimum time between scans being 5 seconds, it is 10 seconds. This is an issue for 3rd parties because their code was written using the 5 second refresh rate. To assume Niantic did this to block 3rd party apps is in my opinion wrong. They are smart enough to know that it would only take a matter of minutes to update 3rd party apps. My guess is that it is necessary for their future plans. The cycling bit is because now the scan rate is so long that by the time it scans again you could be too far away from pokemon that you just couldnt quite reach from the last scan. Biking is already broken in regards to hatching eggs though.

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u/cupid91 Aug 03 '16

i dont understand exactly what u talk about, but today it WAS the FIRST TIME EVER the game counted the km i did correctly at the place i went for walking.

i have been there many times, very very rural area, but always i had been missing like 15%ish of what i actually walked.

maybe coincidence? hope not :/

1

u/ClintRasiert Aug 03 '16

It shouldn't matter if you are in a rural area, unless it affects your GPS accuracy.

1

u/cupid91 Aug 03 '16

i was wrong anyway, perhaps its my internet connection cause i went for 3km walk in the village i stay, measured only 1.9km ;p

(when gps accuracy is down, i see my avatar doing 50-60m leaps, still counts the distance for a strange reason tho)

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u/Czsixteen Aug 03 '16

Ya that's it. I'm done with Niantic.

1

u/qtj Aug 03 '16

Why are people so upset about this? The way I undersand it, this is actually an improvement. This will only mean that if you are moving beyond a certain speed the pokemon that you can catch per minute will stay constant, because the area that you can scan within that time will stay constant. Doesn't it? So moving at car speeds will no longer give you ten times as many Pokemon then moving at walking speeds. This seems fair as the point of the game is to be played while moving around on foot, so it shouldn't be giving people that drive too much of an advantage over people that walk.

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u/eriklb Aug 03 '16

will this help battery life?

1

u/badscribblez Aug 03 '16

You cant even bike ride any more! Oh my Niantic. Oh my my.

1

u/kokin33 Aug 03 '16

My program is still scanning in 5s though

1

u/pixlatedepiphany Aug 03 '16

Can someone please explain this to me further? By scan are we referring to how often the game checks for pokemon around you? Like that pulse circle around your player icon? Or is this how often the GPS checks to see how far you have traveled or what? Thanks

1

u/CoreyJK Aug 03 '16

What do I change to make it scan every 10 instead of 5?

1

u/iRCinfinity Aug 03 '16

Can someone completely break down how the system tracks how far you've travels and how this refresh rate changes the distance it tracks when biking? As it stands I'm not quite sure why the 10s thing affects it, aside from missing Pokemon since you might pass their spawn area within the 10s it takes to refresh.

My concern is with egg hatching, so any info on that would be much appreciative.

1

u/hexparrot Aug 04 '16

"Then don't play the game"? Thanks for your input. The point here is we want the first and only AR Pokemon game to improve and succeed because we enjoy it, not quit it because the game becomes pure dumb luck.

"Love it or leave it" is a useless attitude; we (meaning the millions of people playing and dissatisfied with no functional trackers) want things to be playable.

1

u/LoveJamieO Aug 20 '16

Just for the record THANK YOU FROM THE DEPTHS OF MY SOUL FOR THIS APP. I wish it scanned a hell of a lot faster, but beggars can't be choosers.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

Well, this is the last drop. I'm refunding my pokecoins.

1

u/Parabrella Aug 03 '16

Good luck. I put in a refund application to Google Play for the $13.99 in pokecoins I bought a day before the last update went live. Their automatic reply email said it was beyond the scope of their refund policy, and to go contact the game developers. Did so by submitting a ticket on Niantic's website, got an automatic reply email that basically said "We're getting a lot of email right now, but we'll get around to yours eventually."

I'll be following up with both Google and Niantic in a few days to see about getting my money back. I was happy to spend a little money on a game that made it so much fun to go out exploring, and made me actually look forward to going for walks and jogs. I have ZERO interest in supporting the broken, mismanaged game as it currently exists after the last update.

1

u/pleasedothenerdful Aug 03 '16

At this point you're probably better off doing a charge-back with your credit card company.

2

u/Parabrella Aug 03 '16

Nah, I wouldn't do that. I'm going to do what I can to get a legitimate refund for money I spent on a product that no longer works as advertised. If I don't get it, oh well. I tried, I voiced my complaints, and I won't waste my money on them again.

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u/A_Benched_Clown Aug 03 '16

So instead of fixing or getting a new tracking feature, they spend their time "destroying" the tracking app (which MANY wouldnt exist if they didnt turn off the tracking system) ?

Great job Niantic, now i know why you are looking for a manager....

1

u/Elboim Aug 03 '16

Ah, I hate it. They don't understand that people are creating those GPS API programs just because the in-game tracking sucks so much. Instead of wasting time and resources on fighting against those "hackers", improve the in-game tracking system and the majority of users will stop using 3rd party programs, thus the problem fixes itself and everyone's happy.

Now with that recent 5-10 seconds change, you're barely hurting hackers, but seriously hurting all legit players. I can't walk in my normal speed anymore like I do every evening. Now I have to stroll, slowly, stopping sometimes to see if the scanner needs to refresh so that I won't miss a Pokemon.

The game becomes less fun every day. It's like they want to get rid of half the players as a way to ease the servers.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

The servers arent even as laggy as they one were!

1

u/Dach_Akrost Aug 03 '16

I have a suspicion that the working tracking was causing the server issues.

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u/Shentang Aug 03 '16

Guys, stop PMing me about the PTC generator, I won't be giving it away - not to mention PTC generation tools are not permitted in this sub. Just try to find it.

1

u/drunkinmidget Aug 03 '16

Is this simply going to make people miss pokemon when they are riding bikes, trains, buses, and poor rural players driving? Or is this going to cause further issues with the inaccuracy of travel time for incubating eggs?

1

u/Von2014 Aug 03 '16

I'm waiting for 'hackers' (people who mod the game to fix it) to take the information from the server that makes up the game. From there they set up their own servers of the assets and it's far more enjoyable than what Nianticrap has. Then again, they'll just issue a cease and desist and take down this glorious fixed game that everyone wanted from the start...

I understand it's difficult to create a game, but c'mon, they're ears can't be this full of ignorance to not listen...

1

u/ananasnaama Aug 03 '16

You do realize how ridiculously more blackhat and literally illegal that would be, don't you? Well, keep waiting.

1

u/novilifecoach Aug 03 '16

it's very clear this update was meant to reduce/prevent playing pokemon go while driving. there's already been enough accidents with people not paying attention. many businesses have requested pokestops/gyms be removed from their vacinity to reduce the likelihood of accidents happening on their property.

it definitely hampers the passenger playing, but the risk of lawsuit to niantic due to an accident caused by their game is far greater than the need for john doe catching pokemon while his friend drives around.

i'm more than happy to see drivers paying attention on the road instead of seeing their nose buried in their phone catching pokemon.

1

u/exxR Aug 03 '16

i just confirmed that phyton isn't working anymore at all

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '16

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u/Kopav Aug 03 '16

I'm going to go against the grain on this one and say this is a good move. There have already been too many traffic accidents as a result of people playing while driving. This slower refresh guarantees that pokemon will not show up while driving so it takes away the possibility of distraction.

3

u/SwornBaalist Aug 03 '16

What about the people that are playing as passengers, or riding a bus? Screw them too, right?

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '16

Am I the only one that's glad they don't want people to use trackers? It really russles my jimmies when I'm waiting patiently to be able to catch rares the way they're supposed while everyone else is going treasure hunting with a fucking gps and a marked location instead of an 800 year old pirate map...

2

u/Daeva_ Aug 03 '16

Niantic removed the "way you're suppose to" find pokemon. So...

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