Engagement is crazy right now. I drove home at 3am last night and stopped by a PokeStop, and as I was leaving the parking lot, another car pulled in just to play... Same at the church by my place 15 minutes later. Different car.
What will really be telling is how many people still play after a week or two.
I feel that if they don't get the server issues under control soon (I saw they delayed the European lunch) then it doesn't matter what WOULD have happened the game is going to lose players in the social/network effects won't be there.
I think more of an issue will be people hitting "completion" relatively soon. Certainly, the most interesting part right now is just catching new Pokemon, but there aren't so many that you can't burn through most of that enjoyment fairly quickly.
So far the game only includes the 151 original Pokémon, and I imagine it should be pretty straightforward to add in the later generations (700-something total). That's without adding things like shinies, gender, etc.
I was super excited but then pretty fast realized that:
a) its the same as ingress. With all but even more of the annoying bugs.
b) It eats even more battery than ingress
c) Its purely pay to win. I could have lived with free 2 play and buying some special or cosmetic items. But not selling essential items ...
Currently i mostly wonder why people don't care about that. I hate playing games where other players can just spend $10 and overtake hours worth of skilling.
>I hate playing games where other players can just spend $10 and overtake hours worth of skilling.
But you can't. Not really. I guess it's location-dependant but if you live anywhere near a student campus or town there are literally tens of pokestops in a short 10min walk. My SO has got from level 1-11 without spending a penny, just by incorporating more pokestops into her little 'route' she has going. Added to that, the cooldown on a pokestop is 5 mins iirc, so you can pretty much milk them infinitely. If there's a stop in a pub for example, you'd be able to get 12 spins in the hour it takes you to catch up with your friends. Each spin tends to yield between 1-5 poke/greatballs.
Not sure what else is p2w, I was in the same boat as you until I saw how much progress my SO made without touching her purse.
I guess arguably the incense items in the cash shop are 'p2w', but you do get these through levelling up. Haven't seen any appear at pokestops yet. I've used 5 myself and all I've obtained through it are more Weedles and Pidgeys.
That says nothing except that its easy to get started. The strategie may is to catch players 3-5 days in who already need more than a day intensive work for a single level.
Dont get me wrong. I was niantic fan from beginning, one of the first Ingress players, probably even the first in my country. I really appreciate what they are doing.
I just simply refuse to touch pay 2 win games as they always get frustrating at some point.
