
Pokémon Go Is Shadow Banning Cheaters - pencilpup223
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/pokemon-go-cheaters-shadowban/?mbid=synd_digg
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MrJagil
"We could never have expected it would become such a huge success. Our best
engineers were unable to foresee the server capacity to support the players’
demand. Our biggest prediction was 50 times lower than what actually happened.
We knew Pokémon was a powerful brand with 20 years of existence and over 200
million fans across the globe, but people told us this game was for kids, that
it had no appeal, that people would need to get out of their homes to play. It
wasn’t easy, it was a massive bet. Back then, people were already talking
about augmented reality, but nobody knew when this technology would be
accessible. And then what happened: within two minutes, you could access an
augmented reality experience and catch Pokémon in the real world, free of
charge. And this game blew up without the need to advertise it."

From an interesting interview with a Niantec Exec on the linked sub, stating
they're adding PvP aswell:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/6e3qt2/legend...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/6e3qt2/legendaries_and_pvp_coming_this_summer/di7y4z7/)

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ktta
See, the thing is, I think that's all it was. Hype at the start. Things aren't
looking so well now.

I've heard that the developers are continuously adding things, but it looks
like the game has become a lot more harder to play without spending money on
it.[1]

[1]:[https://redd.it/6dn5kp](https://redd.it/6dn5kp)

~~~
jasondemeuse
The link you posted, did you read past the top comment? There are a lot of
people still playing and many of those that are are still heavily involved. I
can't say I've ever played every day or every time I get my phone out, but I
know enough people that play often that I still keep it around and play once
in a while especially if there is an event.

Of course there was a spike at first release, like every other game. Less
press after a year is hardly indicative of the game being only hype. If you
can name a game that _didn 't_ get less press a year after release I'd love to
hear it.

> but it looks like the game has become a lot more harder to play without
> spending money on it

I'd love to hear why you think this is true other than someone mentioning it
with no explanation in the top comment of that link. The only thing I can
think of is a slight hit to pokeball drop rates which - while annoying - only
affects those in rural areas who don't have access to many pokestops. This
game (like Ingress) has always been geared toward urban areas and ignored
rural players. This was an issue day 1 and it hasn't changed unfortunately,
but this is not a recent development.

Honestly, the game is pretty hollow and is hardly something I'd recommend
everyone pick up, but to say that it was only hype and things aren't looking
good now is uninformed.

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elsombrero
>If you can name a game that didn't get less press a year after release I'd
love to hear it.

Major nitpick, i know, but you said game not app so i guess Minecraft[1] got
pretty much a stable news coverage throughout the years

[1][https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=minecraft](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=minecraft)

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neivin
I really liked the concept of a Pokemon game for mobile.

Unfortunately, they went with the P2Win model that 99% of mobile games use
nowadays, chock full of microtransactions and devoid of any meaningful
content.

They stripped the game of all the elements that actually made Pokemon fun and
all that was left was Ingress with a Pokemon skin.

Maybe some day we'll get an actually good Pokemon game for mobile. Until then,
I'll cherish the memories of playing on my gameboy.

~~~
haburka
I feel like the number one gripe I have is that they are using the branding of
one of the most simple and fun games of all time but ignoring it's design.
Rather than just copying the mechanics of the Pokemon games, they just made
their own game?

For example, battles obviously should be a direct rip off of the main games.
Coding Pokemon battle seems super easy to do. And in order for it to be fun,
they just have to copy the exact system.

Similarly with leveling, encounters, missions, everything was just designed
around what was easy for the team to do rather than what people liked about
Pokemon. It's embarrassing.

~~~
zht
try to take a step back and think about what would actually be involved with
coding a pokemon battle. all the possible moves, statuses, mechanics, etc of a
pokemon battle is probably not super easy to do. there may be product
decisions that you may not have considered. do you think pokemon GO would be
as fun if each interaction with a pokemon took 2 minutes instead of 10-15
seconds it takes now?

~~~
Asooka
I just want more PvE content. Right now I'm just walking around collecting
pokemon, because actual gym battles have been completely impossible for me
since about a month after the game came out. All gyms are 12-stacked with
pokemon with super-high CP, that I can't really meaningfully interact with,
unless I level up significantly. And even then, there's no strategy involved
past "pick the pokemon that does well against this element" and tapping the
screen really fast.

Their problem with cheaters would be mitigated much better if they focus on
PvE.

~~~
fencepost
The gym situation is pretty unsustainable.

I'd like to see them either revise the gym mechanics entirely or introduce
"junior" gyms that would make some of the weaker Pokémon viable to use. Heck,
a gym with a dynamic CP cap could work - max_CP = 1000 - (15 * gym_level) with
too-big Pokémon being forced out. You could boot the strongest protectors in a
gym with a flock of (weak) Pidgeys at that point as long as they raised the XP
of the gym, then evolve/transfer/both all of those for individual XP.

Right now most varieties even fully evolved and with perfect IVs and movesets
are simply not worth putting into gyms.

Edit: As far as the pay-to-win aspect, I'm not really seeing that. The
purchasable items can all be gotten by getting into a few gyms a day to get
"coins," which would go along with a social aspect of getting together with a
few friends on the same team to go take down gyms. The only item that's hard
to come by and I think inconveniently priced is the Egg Incubator, which
without real-$ purchases is weighted towards a LOT of walking per stop.

Lure modules and incense have never seemed to make much difference to me (and
lures can be done by just one person in a popular location with everyone
benefiting), and while Lucky Eggs are nice they're not really that important.

Buying Pokeballs just seems silly if there's any kind of outdoor art
installation area anywhere nearby, because you can wander that for a
relatively short time and stock up - or just veg on a blanket in the park
between 2-4 art pieces and swipe 2-4 stops every 5 minutes.

~~~
Asooka
Personally what I really want is some sort of randomly generated pokemon
adventure based on your local landmarks. Just take a bunch of linked quests,
scatter them around landmarks that are a good distance away from each other
and let me walk to and from collecting mcguffins. Turn parks into Safari
Zones. If I live in the middle of nowhere, then make up some virtual landmarks
and put the quests there.

There's so much you can do if you think of it as generating a roguelike on top
of the landmark, road and park data they have.

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js8
This is similar to an approach I suggested some time ago here for other games
as well - if you detect griefers/cheaters/trolls, just let them play against
each other.

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sov
That's what Blizzard did for Diablo II about 15 years ago.

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sbarre
Yep, this is easily the best way to deal with people who are committed to
messing with an online community.. Make them think they're still having an
impact when they're not..

I believe HN does something similar but I ran a small forum back in the early
2000s and we could flag one or more people into groups where their posts were
only visible to each other, but not to anyone else.

Since the site was invite-only, there was no anonymous access so they had no
practical way of finding this out on their own.

Eventually they got bored of "being ignored" and left on their own..

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RangerScience
> their posts were only visible to each other

For the Something Awful forums, this is called hell-banning.

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marxdeveloper
I guess my account has been shadowbanned since the beginning - there are only
2 PokeStops in 5 km (3.1 mile) radius and all they have is Pidgey and Rattata
99% of the time.

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Scramblejams
Did you cheat, grief or troll?

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jgoewert
I am putting a strong assumption that he has the same problem that a large
chunk of players like myself have called 'ruralistis' or 'farmlandempti' where
if you aren't in a large city or on a coast, your pokemon spawns for the first
8 months of the game were limited to pidgeys and rattatta and once in a blue
moon there might be something amazingly rare like a Weedle, because our town
data wasn't in the data source they used to calculate biomes.

Many player have noticed this and have been updating openstreetmaps.org data
in hopes that Niantic does a biome refresh and that OSM is actually where they
are sourcing their data from.

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nathancahill
"updating" OSM = creating parks and rivers where they don't exist. It's an
annoyance for OSM maintainers, there's a Slack channel that specifically flags
things that look like they might be Pokemon Go users adding bogus features.

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elliottcarlson
Shadowbanning was in place from very early on - we noticed it during the
initial attempts at decoding the original protobuf syntax. Specifically,
"moving" around very quickly would often get you shadowbanned very quickly.

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hackunomatter
So... paying to level up is not 'cheating', but using a bot is? I don't think
the distinction is as stark as Niantec would like one to believe.

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Yizahi
When I first discovered Ingress it was a revelation. I played it for hours,
walked everywhere etc. Then I discovered cheaters and that's it. A pity
really, it was a cool concept for millions completely broken by a few dozen
morons.

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bitmapbrother
This is the best kind of ban. Make them think they aren't banned and just let
them continue to waste their time.

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wnevets
do people still play?

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bArray
Manager: "You know what this website really needs?"

Programmer: "What?"

Manager: "No scroll bar..."

Programmer: "Hmm..."

Manager: "... For a website that you need to scroll."

Programmer: "Genius!"

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coding123
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tabVaoeNtdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tabVaoeNtdk)

Start at 27:45 but you should watch the entire thing.

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Zarathust
Breaking the game IS the fun. Actually winning afterwards is irrelevant.

~~~
titanix2
No it is not. Some gyms of my town are full of Blissey from level 40 accounts
all with the same looking names. Given how hard it is to KO even one within
the allocated time when playing alone, it's effectively ruining a whole part
of the game for every non-cheater player.

~~~
Zarathust
I didn't play Pokemon Go, but the only reason I ever installed Ingress was to
figure out how Android location services ran. This led me to arm shared
objects decompilation and mocking and other interesting shenanigans.

Achieving internet points was not very high on the goals list

~~~
nemo
The people who are cheating aren't the ones figuring out the cheats. The
people providing the cheats are doing interesting things, but also enabling
cheaters to steal fun from the game from everyone else.

