GOStadium · @GOStadiumPvP
20th Aug 2021 from TwitLonger
#HearUsNiantic Discussion With Niantic 8/20
Thank you for taking the time to gather together this team of Pokémon Trainers to review and discuss our feedback on the current state of the community. As outlined in the Open Letter that led to this conversation today, the 80m interaction radius, we believe, is a valuable quality-of-life (QoL) improvement for the game. We feel that this improvement to the game should not be reverted as it is currently in the United States, otherwise the Pokémon GO Community risks losing a sizable portion of the player base. After gathering feedback through multiple channels, we are confident that the player base will not accept having this feature sold to them, given back to them only through AR mapping tasks, or only available to them for certain stops or during certain events. If the goal is to encourage exploration, there are many other creative solutions that could be implemented, such as improving rewards for spinning unique consecutive Pokéstops, implementing similar features to encourage visiting a sequence of waypoints like we see in Ingress, or enabling scalable bonuses for closer interactions with waypoints. We, as a community, understand and appreciate the eventual goal to encourage exploration, but the 80m interaction radius does not conflict with this goal and is a much needed feature moving forward for quality of life, accessibility and safety.
We are here today to discuss the interaction distance concern, but we have reached this point because Trainers consistently feel unheard and witness a lack of transparency (e.g. undisclosed shiny or hatch rates for raids and eggs, significantly reduced GO Battle League stardust rewards without mention or explanation, and many more examples). A community should not have to resort to Social Media campaigns such as the #SavePvP or #HearUsNiantic for a game developer to simply be open to a dialogue. The poor transparency and communication from Niantic have slowly eroded the community’s trust, and we now stand at a pivotal moment. I’ll reword a quote from a blog post in June of 2020 after an exploit in the game allowed an unfair advantage in GO Battle League. As a community, we believe there is a “contract of trust” in our relationship with you; we feel our passion and love for the world of Pokémon and this game should be proof that we want the best for all Trainers on both sides of the screen.
Looking across the gaming industry, some game developers regularly engage the community through weekly updates and have official channels on open platforms such as Reddit AMAs. Other game developers initiate a dialogue by soliciting community feedback, concerns, or suggestions through surveys as we have seen with other recent Pokémon Games. To put it plainly. We, the community, need more from the developer of Pokémon GO. We need more from you, Niantic and anyone else from The Pokémon Company or Nintendo that may be listening to these meetings. Having played this game for years and forged many friendships along the way, We can agree with your statement that this community is unique and incredibly passionate, and over the past few weeks, we also have been unapologetic on the importance of accessibility and being able to play safely using the #HearUsNiantic. However, it should not have taken that to get us here. At Stadium Gaming we strive to provide an environment for Pokémon Trainers to achieve greatness through the ways they choose to interact with fellow Trainers in the World of Pokémon. At the end of the day, we are all Pokémon Trainers, and in 2016 the dream of becoming a real life Pokémon Trainer came closer to fruition than ever before. We truly appreciate the amazing work that has gone into the development of Pokémon GO. We have come very far on our journeys together, but we must do more. We must do more for our Trainers across the world, ensuring that everyone has a way to experience the joy of Pokémon without boundaries. We humbly ask that you take the feedback we have shared today and the feedback from this amazing community and make real impactful change for the future of Pokémon GO. Don’t do it for you, don’t do it for an earnings report, and don’t do it for me, do it for ALL Trainers. Thank you.
John Rich
CEO Stadium Gaming