i feel that some people just dont play hard enough. yes there are some areas that do spawn more pokemon. i believe this is based on users congragated in one area which is probably why citites and areas with buildings spawn more pokemon. there is a few important points though, people want things fixed and new features but niantic had to spend most of the time trying to figure out how to keep third parties and bots out because they almost tripled the load on the server so that they could release it on other countries so that then they could fix and add new features. Its a bit hipocritical to be mad at them for fixing the game and the servers issue. the game hasnt crashed on me since a long time. Theyve also added a few features and released to a lot more countries.

the most important thing is that tracking is still very much so doable, yes its a bit more annoying than having the steps and the nearby list working optimal, but tracking still works. At the time of this post if you want to track or see a 100% nearby list you need to, at least on iOS, close the app completely and open it again the nearby list will show the position as it did at the beginning closest on the top left corner. to track simply move towards a direction close the app and open it again. if your pokemon is closer to the top left you are on the right track. I figured this out simply by playing the game and trying to figured out how things work. Still the most only way to catch most pokemons is by playing as much as you can at different parts of the day, making mind maps and mind catalogs( could also be actual catalogs) of where you find pokemons and rare pokemons around you. Also go to different areas. People always want the easy way out. No matter where you are pokemon common and rare will spawn around you but you actually need to check every 35–30 minutes.