Sup /vp/! I am one of the lucky cunts from Straya who got into the Australian Pokemon Go Field Test.
Feel free to ask me anything, I just got in today but I can tell you anything you want to know (except how trading works, trading is disabled in the field test).
How bad is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NN7J-BpHGw
>>26069934
Depends what you were looking for in the experience. Suffice to say that if you were looking for the same battle mechanics as main title Pokemon games you will be dissapointed.
However if you were looking for an urban exploring/walking game where you can catch pokemon in a relatively interactive manner then you'll probably like it.
>>26069930
is gonna be guaranteed microtransactions?
>>26069930
Ken oy borroh yeh loytah?
>>26069930
Is evolution as much of a pain in the ass as it sounds?
Niantic with Pokemon? Or MEH 7,8/10 Pokemon?
So I'm going to start explaining the mechanics. Starting with catching Pokemon.
You start with 20 Pokeballs, I don't know how you get more as I only just started playing earlier today and have yet to run out. You encounter wild pokemon by going near or on these glowing patches on the in-game map, occasionally pokemon will appear on these patches (which vary in size and shape), you have this pulsing radar thing (if you've played Ingress, it's very similar to the radar in ingress) and each pulse can show a Pokemon appearing in an area you are close enough to. You enter the 'capture mode' by touching the pokemon on your screen. Which pokemon can be caught in your current area are shown on screen 3 per area.
Catching pokemon in Go is a surprisingly interactive and fun experience, you touch the Pokeball with your finger and drag it towards the pokemon, releasing it at the right time to "throw" it at the pokemon on your screen, which is shown in full 3D and has animations. This is the most skillful part of the game, if your aim is off or you put too little or too much force into the throw you will miss and lose the pokeball, there is also a small chance that the pokemon will deflect the pokeball, requiring you to throw another one. It's not what I would describe as hard however it is quite fun, feels as close to the experience of "catching" a pokemon in real life as you can get on a phone, the pokeball does the entire catching animation, including rocking back and forth 3 times on the ground.
When you catch a pokemon you get a "shard" for that pokemon type. Once you get enough shards you can make an evolution stone and evolve the pokemon (this is the only way to evolve pokemon, leveling them does not evolve them). Different pokemon require different amounts of shards, Caterpie for example requires only 5 shards (meaning you much catch 5 Caterpie to get a Metapod) while another pokemon I caught Pidgey requires 15 shards to evolve (catch 15 Pidgey to get a Pidgeot).
>>26070111
When you say:
> you get a "shard" for that pokemon type
Do you mean the type as in Water/Electric/Grass, etc. or type as in its species?
Basically I'm asking if the shards are divided up by type or Species
>>26070111
On an extra note on Pokemon on map in Go. Ratatta are fucking eveywhere. I have lost count of how many times I have seen them on my 'Pokemon in your area" indication and I once encountered 4 separate Ratatta at the same damn time (considering you usually only encounter 1 or 2 pokemon at a time at all this really surprised me).
Also on a note for catching pokemon, as long as you touch them on the map while you are in range it does not matter how far away you go while actually capturing them through Pokeball throwing. This actually makes it quite easy to catch pokemon while riding the bus (I caught 4 on my way to uni this way).
Every time you catch a pokemon you get 100 XP for your trainer and an additional 500 XP if it is a pokemon you have not caught yet. When you level up you get 5 balls (Great Balls for level 2, Ultra Balls for level 3, I have not yet reached level 4 so I don't know what comes next) as a bonus. However the main purpose of leveling up is to encounter better pokemon as what pokemon you can run into changes based on your level (most importantly you can encounter second and eventually third evolutions of many pokemon after reaching certain levels, which makes filling out your pokedex without having to evolve pokemon you don't give a shit about much easier.
>>26070162
No I mean a shard for that specific pokemon. A Caterpie shard is what you get for catching a Caterpie and it can only be used to evolve a Caterpie into a Metapod. You must catch many copies of the same pokemon to evolve that pokemon.
>>26070210
Also I can confirm what other testers have said. Pokemon Go eats battery life at an unbelievable speed. If you plan to play it regularly I would suggest getting a charge pack or spare battery because it flattened my phone from 50 percent charge in less than 2 hours.
>>26070210
How do wild pokemon work?
Is it first-come, first-catch or is a wild pokemon around for a while for more people to catch? If that is the case, does that mean a certain area is just "where to find that pokemon" or does it change up?
>>26070339
I'm pretty sure Wild pokemon are unique to the player so no one can catch your pokemon. As for whether the line up of available pokemon changes I honestly don't know. I haven't played the game enough to say.
However I will say that they areas are relatively small. I've run into dozens of different line ups of available pokemon. There is actually a pokemon catching area in my house. The first pokemon I caught randomly showed up in my living room when I first started the game.
>>26070387
Get to any gyms yet?
Now on to the disappointing part of my experience so far. Combat.
I managed to experience combat in Pokemon Go by putting one of my own pokemon in a gym then challenging that gym. This is how you level up and strengthen your pokemon (obviously it does not have to be your pokemon, just any gym that is currently occupied by a pokemon). I was greatly dissapointed to find that despite the stat screens of my pokemon listing 2 moves the combat is not turn based and I could not tell my pokemon what move to use. Combat is conducted in Go by tapping the screen to make your pokemon attack the other pokemon. That's it. Just tap the screen until one of the pokemon is knocked out. I legitimately can't tell if the pokemon even actually use their moves or if the moves on the stat screen are just for show, that's how generic the attack animations were.
If you were hoping to play Pokemon Go for the combat (why would you do that?) then don't. You should be playing it for something else because the combat is the LEAST fleshed out part of this game.
Luckily there is at least some depth, the level and CP (combat points, no I am not kidding) of your pokemon will impact how much damage they do/take in battles and therefore will influence whether you can take down enemy gyms or hold your own gyms. I have not been able to determine if type has an impact on battle, though pokemon do have types.
So all in all, combat is quite disappointing don't play it for the combat.
>>26070465
Yes, please see
>>26070476
I currently control multiple gyms, not that this is an accomplishment with no one around to challenge them and take them from me.
>>26070111
>catch 15 Pidgey to get a Pidgeot
So are you saying they skipped over Pidgeotto? If so that's extremely odd.
>>26070484
So Gyms are like portals in Ingress?
>>26070494
No, sorry, that was my bad. They did not skip any evolutions.
>>26070498
Basically, yes. The main difference is that you leave a pokemon at the gym to occupy it instead of deploying resonators. You get the pokemon back when the gym gets taken back from you (according to the game's tooltip).
Hey OP, do you play Ingress? I remember reading that there weren't any reports of people who didn't play Ingress getting picked for the field test in Japan, so i was wondering if the same is for this one too.
>>26070556
Yes I do play Ingress. I know people who did apply for the field test who did not get in and did not play Ingress so that may very well be the case.
>>26070567
Any guess on a release date?
>>26070597
Fuck if I know.
The game looks relatively complete. Hopefully it won't be too long, I've experienced a couple of glitches (one time the game froze, another time it reset for no reason) and I feel they should probably do something about the absurdly fast power usage.
>>26070614
mention the combat grievances too man. Couldn't hurt, and you're the only line we have to the devs.
Godspeed
>>26070567
So is visiting a Pokestop basically the same as hacking a portal in Ingress? You get close enough, click the thing, and good stuff shows up in your inventory?
>>26070387
This was the biggest thing I was worried about, thank you so much for putting that fear to rest. Didn't want to scramble to catch some rare thing while people without jobs can cruise around all day snatching shit up.
>>26070667
I actually don't know.
I've run into a few of them but at the moment they don't seem to do anything.
I would guess that that is a feature they plan to activate at release, possibly due to it requiring network features or something like that (much like trading, which is also not active in this field test). Or perhaps they simply felt it wasn't relevant to what they were testing in the field test or something.
All I know is that so far every one I've encountered haven't given me anything.
Is it fun?
>>26070723
Catching pokemon is fun. Battling at gyms is meh. If you like catching and collecting pokemon then I would recommend playing it a while.
>>26069930
New Zealander here, that's bullshit. No codes have been sent yet.
>>26070476
You have two moves, one of them is a designated 'quick' attack that you activate by tapping, the other is a 'charge' attack and you have to hold and release to use it.
>>26070784
As a fellow Australian i was wondering what Pokemon you have run into so far?
>>26071343
you are wrong
>>26071343
Sorry bro.
It sounds like you were not chosen.
>>26070061
No, you can't have borrow my lighter
>>26069930
ayy me too m8
fight my gym!
>>26071367
hundreds of ekans lol
im not even joking, 4/5 pokemon i see are just ekans
Thank you anon for the info
>>26071457
Never thought I'd see Bruce here
>>26071447
Sounds about right, too many snakes here
Whats the rarest Pokemon you've found so far?
HEY BOWEN HILLS NERD
IF YOU'RE HERE I STOLE YOUR GYM
FITE ME BRO
So I'm back. Turns out pokemon in an area do change. Though it might be because it's night time now because I can now see Zubats when I never saw one during the day.
That's right, there might actually be nocturnal pokemon in this game though I'll have to check tomorrow to see if there's a pattern or if it's just a coincidence that the bats came out at night.
>>26072065
I just started playing. I have yet to have a concept of rare in this game.
>>26072065
is alakazam considered rare?
there's one by my house
i dont know whats rare in this game
i got it 8 hours ago but it doesnt fucking load
>tfw cant post screenshots for my /vp/ friends because the entire game is watermarked with a unique code
>>26072397
wait, are you serious?
They're really trying to keep it under wraps.
Did you pass near a spot of water? Did it make any change in the pokemon you encountered, like a water pokemon or something?
>>26072431
yeah, im serious
another anon can verify
or we can just wait for some idiot to not notice and post a screenshot anyway, it's hard to see the watermark unless it's against a dark background
>only want Ralts
>by the looks of it, it might be impossible for me
it hurts to be a degenerate waifu fag
then again, game wont come out in Europe anyway and even if, my HTC desire 500 wouldnt be able to handle it
>>26072446
>not covering/blurring the watermark
Does it cover the whole screen?
>>26072546
yes
it's the same code repeated from the top of the screen to the bottom
>>26072553
Aw, that sucks. Eh, if I had a phone to test this stuff on and a copy of the game, I would've looked into the code and see if I could disable the watermark or something.
>>26070015
Of course
>>26072504
It's been confirmed it will come to Yurop on launch. Your phone might run it, depending on how well they optimize that shit, but the battery is gonna be kill.
>>26072604
>depending on how well they optimize that shit
Mobile game devs don't give a shit about optimization anymore, since there's a lot of quad-core phones with gigabytes of RAM and a super cool graphics card.
God do I miss the days when most phones didn't have more than 512MB of RAM and just a single-core shitty CPU. Games looked the same, but people just gave more shits about optimization.
>>26069930
It's Gen one mons only, right?
>>26072878
i've only seen gen 1 mons so far
dont know if thats the case for everyone though
the pokedex only shows up to the highest number you've seen
so mine only goes as far as voltorb
>>26072504
You can always find your one true gen 1 love!
>>26072904
What do you think about the shard mechanic? It's the only thing keeping me from trying out the game, but I'll give it a shot if it's okay.
Remember to adress your complains about the evolving method and battle mechanics once the beta is over.
Beta testers are our only hope
Make sure to say you can't wait for more Pokemon. I want all generations to search for
Is it fun forming your own team? I mean, if it's a game about Pokémon, I sure as hell better have six in my team per individual.
>>26073305
eh, i mean it's not hard to catch the same pokemon multiple times. at least where i live the same ones seem to keep respawning all day
it feels like a waste of pokeballs though :Pi predict that there'll be a "buy more pokeballs, only 99c" button in the full game"
>>26075061
battles are 1v1
well, gym battles seem to be at least
>>26073310
Was anyone here in Ingress's beta and can clear up if they actually made real changes based on community feedback? Because right now based on what I'm seeing it looks like the only changes being made are different features being turned on and glitch fixes. I have a lot of doubts they will pay attention to complaints over actual major content like the awful evolving and battle systems.
>>26077533
The IAP pokeballs are already confirmed. Data miners of the Japanese beta found unactivated code strings for the microtransactions and three packs of pokeballs were there.
>>26077869
So, aside from buying them with real money, how do you get more pokeballs? Just from pokestops?
Did someone already post this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylW_NL5a-wc
>>26078410
And look, here's the guy who didn't notice the watermark
At least you guys can see the gameplay now
But yeah, I thought the camera AR poke ball throwing thing was cool at first but it got annoying fast, I turned it off
>>26072356
Stay away from hypno at night
>>26071360
Damn, see, that's basically what I expected out of this game, so that doesn't sound all that disappointing. The worst news so far is that you can't battle wild Pokemon, which is a total travesty. If they just allowed you to battle Wild Pokemon with this simple system, and THEN once they're weak added the catching minigame, then it GO would be pretty much ideal.
>>26078130
Sure looks that way, but the janky graphics make it hard to watch
>>26078666
Actually funny story about that alakazam, I had to walk along a small creek to reach him
There were no security cameras and no visibility from the road. I went and caught him at night
I was a little scared desu
>/vp/ lets itself get viraled for hours on end
Can you name your mons?
It kinda reinforces the feel of attachment
god damn i had high hopes for this game but it looks like garbage
>>26072397
Take a pic with another device noobsauce
>>26080534
DUDE JUST BE RICH LMEOW
>>26080431
Nope lol
Or maybe it's just not implemented yet?
Speaking of which, how do I get eggs? There's an achievement for hatching eggs but as far as I can tell, there's no breeding option?
Have you seen any pic related and in what type of area if yes?
>>26081736
bet they'll be all over detroit
>>26081757
>tfw in FL and doubtful a ghost would be anywhere around
With the exception of maybe Chandelure and Trevanant.
>>26081835
St. Augustine you nerd
>>26081856
Nigga, I've been to St. Augustine like 5 times, that shit is fucking tourist/beach paradise. But we do have Mariana Caverns and shit.
>>26081736
There are gastly near me, I'll have a look around
Most important question, tomorrow, confirm if Pokémon locations change. If I can literally stay at home and catch them all doing nothing, that's the deal-breaker for me.
If there is a Ratata near me, there better be that same Ratata the next day again and forever.
>>26069930
Have you found a Gengar yet?
>>26084119
What time zone are you in? It just turned midnight in the eastern part of Australia.
>>26084204
yurop
>>26070476
>having to catch 726252 same pokemon to evolve one
What a nice way of making capturing pokemon a job. It's like they want everyone to only have f.e.a.r ratata.
>cannot battle wild pokemon
...For what purpose?
At least you should be able to get credits fighting other players.
>>26070061
Naaah maayte yool just lose it agaaayn. Ya ciggy butt brain!
I'm assuming you have to either be on wifi or 4g 100% of the time to play?
>>26084481
Yes. You would be surprised how little data Ingress uses, but idk how that'll translate to Go
I gotta be honest. This sounds really lame. I was pretty big on the hype train, but the more I read about it, the more I'm disappointed. I just don't understand how they couldn't come up with a better battling, leveling, and evolution method. The shit already exist for you, just copy and paste.
How much money did they put into this, because I don't think it will make much.
>>26071457
Ide fuck bruce
not op but I've been playing too
>>26084934
It's basically ingress but pokemon themed. imo they've made it way too easy. I've seen over 1/2 of all the pokemon and I've only had it 2 days. I'll probably play for a few months and then get bored, just like ingress.
>>26084119
They change. From what I can tell they stay around for around 5-10 mins, maybe longer idk, (maybe dependant on rarity?) before they disappear. They only spawn in certain spots though. Most likely you'll be able to sit at home and wait until something interesting turns up, but you'll have to walk around the nearby streets to look for it.
>>26075061
It's 6 per team for fighting gym battles and probably pvp, but from what I can tell you can't organise/look at your team unless you are just about to start a fight. kinda annoying
>>26078130
pokestops are everywhere. I don't run out of pokeballs at all. I also have plenty of great balls and some ultras, potions and revives and stuff as well
>>26081669
I've gotten one egg from a pokestop. Just had to walk 1km for it to hatch. I doubt there will be breeding
>>26072065
probably jynx. I also have a charmander and I've only seen one of those
>>26070339
>>26070387
>>26070683
I'm pretty sure the wild pokemon are the same for everyone... but because they spawn/disappear in <30min intervals you dont need to worry about neets stealing all the good ones
I'll explain gyms a bit more because they are probably the most interesting part.
Everyone picks 1 of 3 teams: Red, Blue and Yellow.
If you take over a gym (most are empty atm) then you can assign one of your pokemon to defend that gym. Up to two more players on your team can also add one pokemon each to defend as well.
You can train against your own team's gym to increase its prestige (or something) which determines how many times other teams will have to defeat that gym before they take it over.
So once the game starts up properly I think it will be pretty typical to have to take out 3 fairly strong pokemon maybe 5 -10 times using your team of 6 (healing or switching pokemon in between times) before you can take over a gym.
At the moment, the most I've had to do is beat an Abra twice, and I own like 20 gyms.
>>26085168
Greeeeeeeeeat. So I can sit at home, capture everything, then make a trip for mewtwo/birds.
Please tell me at least that for example Goldeen appears in/near a body of water. I'm gonna lose my shit if I find Goldeen in the middle of the streat, swimming on the concrete.
>>26083807
DO IT. I NEED MY BRO ON THE GO
>>26069930
KHAN'D
