Brilliant article Yang — let me give you 2 scenarios I’ve encountered this week…..we live in a rural area which means 2 pokestops and mainly weedles, zubats and pidgeys. Before any type of tracker we had to drive 20 minutes into town to make the game “more fun”

Then we discovered pokevision and it completely changed the way me, my son (15), daughter (14) and daughter (9) played the game. We became active players excited by the fact we could “see” the pokemon we wanted to catch. We ran, drove and walked towards pokemon all around the city (and around our village)- we didn’t catch every single one (so people saying it is cheating are completely wrong). The excitement was in the chase NOT in aimlessly walking around waiting for your phone to vibrate. We’ve seen and missed 2 hitmonlees, we spotted a Persian but got there too late. We laughed, we’ve got giddy, we’ve had crushing disappointment and we’ve done this as a family, having fun with a purpose.

In our city (lincoln uk) we have 2 lures on 2 pokestops side by side with 100s of people just sat, not moving, waiting for the next random pokemon to spawn. No fitness benefits, no mad chases, just sat…waiting…before pokevision there were crowds of people around these stops, last Saturday there were at the most 6 people- everyone else we bumped into was using pokevision. They were up, running around, chasing pokemon (isn’t that the point?).

Just before pokevision was pulled we were on our way out of town and had a quick look on pokevision at our route home. By some miracle a dragonite appeared in the remotest of areas (one with almist zero footfall) and we managed to catch it. No one else turned up in those remaining 12 minutes before it despawned. With pokevision only 2 people caught it at that time- without pokevision there would he been zero — what a waste??

Now without tracking abilities we are back to casually checking our phones when walking the dogs. No chasing, no trips into town…just watching weedle after pidgeys after zubats appear on our 30 minute walk. All fun removed from the game. The urgency to go pokemon hunting gone.

I struggle to see how niantic expects people to just get on with it, stop whinging and carry on playing? The game has gone from excitement to pointless — even if I can see something on nearby there are 360 different directions I could go and still not even see let alone catch the mystery pokemon. That’s not fun that’s frustrating nonsense

As yang has stated- you’ve managed to reignite a passion that for many of us was long gone. You’ve got families playing together, collectively interested in this pokemon treasure hunt. My son would ask if we could head to the neighbouring village as some pokemon he didn’t have had appeared — I was taken back to being 12 again…rushing to get shoes on and try and make it in time.

If niantic and John don’t offer something very soon you’ll end up with a great case study of how the greatest ever mobile game by downloads and usage became the most pointless, unplayed unloved game in a matter of 14 days.

Please, please don’t ruin this one opportunity…..