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An Open Letter To Niantic Labs

I write to you today with a question that has plagued me since your last update:

Why would you make changes that make it impossible for handicapped people like myself to play your very successful PokemonGo game?

The changes I refer to are the changes you have made to Pokémon spawns and Pokéstop access when travelling in a vehicle. You are obviously by now aware that people have noticed your little "tweak" to the coding. People that used to hit pokestops on the bus on the way to work now can't, and kids now can't play in the back seat on the way to school.

Your fan page is flooded with angry consumers (because that's what we are remember, we're not just players, we're your customers), furious because they now have to - by your definition - "play properly". But did you even spare a thought for those of us who CAN'T "play properly"?

I've worked very hard to get to level 25 from my wheelchair, I cannot self propel. Everything I've achieved I've managed incredibly slowly, via being a passenger in my carer's car. I've also had to spend far more money on this game than an able bodied person would have needed to to get the level of achievement I have with my obstacles.

I don't want to stop playing, I really really don't, but with these new changes to spawning and poke stops you're EXCLUDING me based on my disability. Doing that is, at the very least, distasteful but in a fair few of your target market countries, illegal. You're taking measures to ACTIVELY make it impossible for a person in my situation to play.

You don't care about me, I'm just a number to you. You probably won't even read this. But with your severely declining player numbers, I'd say it's a pretty stupid decision to actively prevent a large group of your community - the disabled community - from playing.

SarahEden89

I would like to be able to listen to my music while playing again. That's really making the game less fun for me. Long times between Leveling up is another disappointment. The more I play, the harder it is.

Niantic,
I love playing, never was into Pokémon, but this game makes it so much fun! Sadly I live in a Pokémon dessert aka no poke's pop up without incense. Since the update I might get 3 poke's to pop up.... making it so much harder to play. If I leave my neighborhood there are wild Pokémon but my area has a block on it. Please fix the incense! I'm ok with getting 5-7 Pokémon per use, but 2-3 isn't worth the money I have to spend. Thank you:)

Why did this update make it so that any music being played through the phone's music player has the volume turned down? I can barely hear my own music now whilst playing the game because the volume is lowered so much and if I turn the volume up the game's sound effects become deafening. I understand wanting to ensure players can hear the sound effects within the game, but surely there is a better option than this.

Can anyone explain what the developers have done with Pokémon you catch in the wild? It seems since the last update you never catch anything that has good stats (when you look at the stats it very rarely says "... stats simple amaze me..." It sucks that the only time you get Pokémon with good battle stats is when you hatch an egg (maybe). Is this a money grab by Niantic? Since the Halloween event I have caught hundreds of Mowths and none of them are anything I would evolve or power up.

-_- Apparently you need another update already. Haven't been able to sign in for at least a day now. Does nothing but spins in a circle before finally popping up the error saying it couldn't sign me in.

Nice event. Supposed to get 4x candies from buddy system. My wife, Krystal Nowak, and I get 0x. That is right. It says our buddy found a candy, and our candy count stays the same. What is up with that? I would like my candies. Oh, and I no longer receive stardust either. Got to love that.

Awesome event! hope to see more, however please for the love of all things good FIX THE TRACKING SYSTEM. if you guys could focus less on banning and blocking the 3rd party tracking sites and put that level of focus on making a functioning tracker those 3rd partys wouldnt exist. love playing the game but not having a tracker is getting really old. at least give us loyal players an update, not being able to track takes away the fun of it

Liking the Halloween stuff, you seem to have upped spawn rates and obviously getting lots of ghost types. I still don't understand the new egg colours, I haven't seen a 2k in weeks or a 10k in over a month despite hatching 1 - 2 eggs per day. OK I don't miss the 2k eggs they only ever hatched pidgey, wheedles and all the common types you trip over anyway. Maybe the egg drop rate could be looked at again, it went off the rails before, looks like it's gone again.

Just only one think my question..how niantic can not detect player use some apk call tutuapp in android or ios device...every player in my country many using those apk so they can play pokemon go use joystick to every where they want to go fot cath pokemon in the wild but the player is still in they home...please give some action for those cheat player who using those apk joystick in tutuapp

In my little city there are 4 gyms. Since 2 weeks we can take only 3 of them because one gym is bugged (error message when the battle goes). I reported 3 times to Niantic this issue but nothing has changed. What's your problem Niantic??

Please help. I use to be able to listen to music/Overdrive while using the PokemonGo app with this new update it won't allow the audio to continue, no matter what i have tried. Samsubg Galaxy S6

My work has a pokestop but literally nothing ever spawns there. I'm not exaggerating either. There's nothing around this area at all. Is there a way to request more spawns here? Not even the new update, there's zero pokemon at all. :/

BUG : So my game works for hatching eggs, catching pokemon, and pokestops but I have random pokemon in my list that if I set as a buddy will NOT get any candy. Just keeps resetting the numbers. Some of them have never been a buddy before some have, seriously not happy.

Pokémon GO please unlock pokemon in my city, Makassar, Country: Indonesia

We have lots of Pokestop and Pokegym but no spawn pokemon at all

other city in Indonesia, have pokemon to be spawn.

This must be a geolock that Niantic forgot to lifted up when release in Indonesia several months ago.

Fix gyms kthx. Absolutely sick of getting Error messages and wasting time battling down a gym halfway just to have to leave because of this random error message. Also, dodging is very broken and Vaporeons using Water Pulse back to back, Lapras using Ice Beam back to back, Arcanines using Bulldoze and Flamethrower back to back is just annoying as all hell. I literally had a Lapras spam Ice Beam 5 times in a row earlier 😒 And this is after I came back to the same gym for the 3rd time at different times throughout the day because I kept beating the gym once and then getting the error message and had to leave. 🙄🔫 ultimate frustration level reached.

Pokemon Go, desde la penúltima actualización no puedo capturar pokemon que aparece en las pokeparadas con cebo, porque cuando aparece se desaparece enseguida, espero que lo arreglen muy pronto y así poder disfrutar del evento.

Hope Niantic comes up with an area to put pokestops and Pokémon back in the Milwaukee area, thanks to some whiny people and parks directors we lost the best place for Pokémon hunting in the Milwaukee area because too many people were out in the park and we all know people aren't supposed to use our parks

Estimados, me comunico para notificar que mi cuenta tiene problemas con la frecuencia de aparición de Pokémon, es decir me aparecen muy pocos y debo estar cerrando y abriendo el juego para poder capturar algunos. Dicha situación empezó a presentarse en las últimas dos actualizaciones.
Espero respuestas a esta problemática, me encanta el juego, pero me ha desmotivado bastante ese tema.
saludos

Can you include a feature where you can control the volume of the sound effects so I can listen to music while playing? Also, there is a new feature that the volume of background music is diminished during use of the app so that switching out is very painful when the music gets very loud.

I wish I could buy more incubators with the itunes card I have but I refuse to spend money until they change back the function that doesn't allow you too see Pokémon while driving over 25 mph. I love this Halloween thing to but kind of missing my pigeys was wanting to take advantage of them so I could level quickly if I decide to keep playing. I know I know.

Hey, I don't know if it's just me, but my Pokemon GO Plus wasn't picking up nearby pokestops or pokemon even though it was connected. I even tried restarting both the app and phone. It was working fine yesterday before the event started and today's update.

Thank you Pokémon GO for your Halloween promotion! My son & I are definitely enjoying the extra Ghost Pokémon and candies. We'll be doing some extra Pokémon hunts while it lasts!

The new update broke the pokemon go plus (it no longer connects), and the minor bug fix update did not fix this. I would not have gone through all the trouble of tracking one down, waiting for restock, checking back for stock daily, and then FINALLY getting one if I knew you guys were gonna make it so that it couldnt be used in the next update. FIX THIS!

For all the Go Plus users... some troubleshooting tips:
Change the battery.
Disconnect the device in the game, then remove (the eject symbol). Close the app. Go to phone Bluetooth settings and remove the device. Un-pair the Go Plus by pressing the button until the light is solid blue (6 seconds), release and then press again for 6 seconds until it buzzes. Then clear the phone cache/restart the phone. Re-open the app and re-pair the Go Plus (if it doesn't prompt to pair, then it did not successfully un-pair). If that doesn't work, try again, but re-install Pokémon Go from the official App Store.

Got mine to work, but I'm not sure how consistent it will be. With another surge in players at the same time third party sites are working again, the servers may be overtaxed. That would cause login/authentication problems, and nearby sighting update problems if the server can't cope with the additional load.

They must get this under control before having local events. Otherwise, the events will be riddled with these same problems, possibly spilling into other areas.

Give us the player vs player feature. It's pokemon basics man. It's a shame that you call this a pokemon game. You still have a lot of work to do, it gets so boring so quick. That's why you've lost more than half the users and you'll keep losing users unless you start doing something real.

The game stopped working with mobile data connection. Connected to Wi-Fi, it runs just fine, but when I go outside, I can't see any Pokemon, only it's shadow and white circles around it. So annoying. Maybe it requires better connection now, but I can't see the reason. I would like to have an option of downloading all datas (models etc.) to my phone and have them saved offline, so it could run as it used to...

I hope you can fix it really quickly, I don't want to miss an event.

Guys, a broken PoGo Plus is not a "minor" fix, LOL. But thank you VERY much for this event. So much fun!!!! I super love that you gave us even more than you said you would (Cubone, Meowth). A POSITIVE surprise for once.

Ice Pokemon for Christmas, right? RIGHT? ;-)

I love this event, thank you! :D

But could someone tell me why my Eevee but renamed Sparky doesn't evolve into the correct one even though I rebooted after I renamed it? Has anyone else had this problem? This happened to me twice :/

Please DO NOT turn off other applications sound when the background music and the sound effects are off within the pokemon go app. I like to hear online radios while walking. Since this version I cannot, because pokemon go turns off any other apps sound when active.