Pokémon GO

[MerlinDrazziw]

The game is out here now. I've downloaded it on my iPhone 4S, but game servers are down... Going to try it on another iDevice as well, should work with same G+ account.

[Kong Wen]

I had to turn battery mode off as it was freezing my game every couple of steps. After I got 1.5km into my evening walk with 0.1km of progress, I switched battery mode off and then didn't run into another freeze (related to that problem) for the rest of the walk.

I did find a new glitch where the poker man tracker apparently stops updating itself, continuing to show old (and often unavailable) poker men that don't reflect what's really nearby. I close out the app and restart and then it updates the tracker with completely new men and begins auto-updating itself again.

I ran into another new glitch last night too but I forget what it was now. I'm like the best beta-tester ever! If there's something broken about the game, I'll apparently find it!

Anyway, buggy software aside, I did manage to hatch an Eevee out of my 10km egg, and I also caught my first Magikarp and my first Jigglypuff. I was briefly tracking a Pikachu around my neighbourhood, but the tracker stopped working so I had no real way to guess whether I was going in the right direction, and by the time I realized it was glitching out and rebooted, he was gone.

[Kong Wen]

Interesting piece about a hidden gem in the Pokémon GO EULA: Opt out of Binding Arbitration

[MerlinDrazziw]

Still haven't been able to start the game. Possibly due to a lmit on new users? After logging in on my G+ account, the game says that the servers are down (or too busy?). But my nephew could still log in and play. He first started with the app downloaded from New Sealands store, but now has the dutch stores version (same as me). Anyway, my battery already drained from trying to get into the game.

[The Shoemaker]

I thought I'd give battery saving mode a try after Niahak's post, and I ran into two new errors. One is that the screen will get stuck in darkened mode, even when I raise the phone. I can still back out of the app to do other stuff on the phone, but when I switch back to the game it's still a darkened screen and I can't interface with it. The second is that sometimes the game will just stop accepting input while on the main screen. I can still see my avatar walking around, but I can't click on anything, can't get into the menus, etc. Both of these scenarios require the game to be fully closed out and rebooted.

This is what happens to me 90% of the time. I wonder if turning battery saver off would improve my experience.

[MerlinDrazziw]

Little progress .. could log on this morning and was presented the 3 starters. As I want to avoid them long enough to get Pikachu and I didn't have time to start walking, I shut the app down. Now I've created a Pokémon club trainer account, as I read it comes with some extras. Logging in worked well, but still no time to go walking. Have to go to a birthday later today, will open the app and go driving (should be far enough away to get Pikachu as a starter). Fwiw: screenname is MerlinDrazziw.

[Kreegs]

Doesn't battery save mode limit your processing speeds? That would explain the freezing perhaps? (Aside from crazy busy servers)

I have one of those portable phone charging cylinders that is actually pretty tiny and really cheap. I used it in Tokyo when my phone's battery would mega drain trying to connect to the portable wifi box we were carrying around. I'm sure there are bigger and better ones, but I would recommend it. NOTE: I currently use an iPhone SE.

This one https://www.amazon.com/Anker-PowerCore- ... ne+charger

[kawaiipikachu]

Doesn't battery save mode limit your processing speeds? That would explain the freezing perhaps? (Aside from crazy busy servers)

Well it dims the screen & replaced the map with the "Pokémon Go" logo when you hold the device upsidown.

I have one of those portable phone charging cylinders that is actually pretty tiny and really cheap. I used it in Tokyo when my phone's battery would mega drain trying to connect to the portable wifi box we were carrying around. I'm sure there are bigger and better ones, but I would recommend it. NOTE: I currently use an iPhone SE.

This one https://www.amazon.com/Anker-PowerCore- ... ne+charger

My battery bank stop outputting power for some reason when I was out saturday while Playing Pokémon GO so I had to stop playing.

I think of replacing it with this bank here which looks reasonable & hopefully my next big season would be longer & less server issues.
Plus it's good to have one in my bag ready just in case ready weather Pokémon related or not.

[MerlinDrazziw]

Finally got my starter, Pikachu (I think). App crashed after catching it, but I could see other pokémon after a restart. Also walked by a pokéstop where I got 3 pokéballs after a spin. Saw a fish like creature*) behind me, but didn't want to walk back at that time. Further along the way, I found a gym. With me being a lvl. 1 trainer, I had no bussiness there. But I saw a Staryu closeby, only the app crashed again when I tapped on it After waiting for a while to see if the app would reconnect, I went home without being able to catch any other pokémon.

Battery was fully charged when I first logged in on the app, already at 82% when I started walking (first had a cup of coffee) and was at 34% when I got back home. App was working for about 15 min. of the 40 min. walk .. it seems it used up 9MB of data, so that's not so bad.

UI for logging in and showing alerts can be improved a lot. Login screen hides the password field behind the keyboard and alert texts go behind game info texts (so you can't read them well).

Hope the experience gets better along the way, but for now it's just terrible.

[edit]
*) It was a Magikarp (looked it up on the pokédex)
[/edit]

[VictorViper]

Regarding Magikarp: you will need to catch 301 of them, and send 300 to the professor to evolve it. And you better believe I'm gonna try, assuming the game keeps me interested beyond this week.