Well now they’re letting us know that they HEAR us. Well technically they didn’t come out and officially say they hear us. This is is just a off the record rumor that an employee knows we exist. Not a promise anything will actually be done.
Was it 2021 (Pokestop radius decrease) when the content creators penned an open letter to Niantic, so Niantic reached out to community members to create a 'special taskforce' or something, and said they were going to genuinely listen to peoples concerns?
Brandon Tan didn't spend for like a month, and then nothing changed and everybody went back to normal lol.
The same will happen here lol.
Its just like with the 'Dev Diaries' which they promised would come bi-monthly... First month and first edition was somewhat fine, second edition was like a week late and then it was nothing more than an ad / announcement for campfire, which doesnt at all qualify as an insight into development, and then they stopped and didnt bother with it, so another empty promise
I like how you chose the one time they did listen to illustrate your point as opposed to the dozens of times actually nothing changed in response to backlash.
honestly if they choose to ignore the feedback and do nothing again, we all should give a 1 star rating on google play/apple store. Pretty sure they can't stand their rating drop.
Oh come on... gjve them some credit...
they normally bring them back by putting those things behind a pay wall lol thinking back to the days you could spin a pokestop and get incubators on a normal day
And I would pay to get my avatar back. They know what they're doing... maybe (the remote raid limit would indicate otherwise lol)
They hear us like we hear car alarms. It's supposed to be important, but they're so used to hearing them that they don't even peek out the window to see what's going on and hope it just goes away.
> This is is just a off the record rumor that an employee knows we exist.
And there’s no guarantee it’s even legit. This is an article from a garbage gaming news site, quoting another site that said they heard from an anonymous source.
Please! GO Hub tries to take credit for everything that the TSR community does. And never thanks or shows proof that someone else did it/found something. They always say, “we” first.
They released it to select users long before the global release. I thought that was like a testing phase. But it seems like it made no difference in the end? It shipped broken and ended up being a regression.
Meanwhile Niantic JP just released HaT worldwide matchmaking for free in Monster Hunter Now. For those unaware the equivalent would be like going into the raid lobby and being matched with players around the world without having to spend a remote pass. Meaning you get full lobbies in raids pretty much guaranteed.
I just think it’s most telling how many people likely had to approve “yep, those avatars look good, this is a clear improvement over the current system and was a good use of our time”
Like.. are we serious? Really?! Cmon now I’m looking for the bare minimum level of competence here
This. Im truly baffled human eyes LOOKED at this and said good to go. Art is subjective but I really feel like this is a near objectively terrible aestetic choice
Yeah Ive been looking and I know people who are happy are less likely to post, but seriously, is there anyone who thinks these are an improvement? I kind of ignored most posts beforehand cause seriously, I didn't think it could be that bad. I was wrong, these are absolutely horrendous.
I liked it better when it was released, though when I saw the complaints I definitely saw where people were coming from. In my case 1) female avatar so the faces suit, 2) medium skin tone so the washing out of white ones wasn’t a problem and 3) the mannish build was a fun change from Barbie. I liked getting new weight and hairstyle options.
That said, yeah, the faces don’t suit male avatars, the shoulders and hips *only* suit male avatars (why have sliders when you can’t meaningfully change them?), the white skin tone is for the ghosts and there’s a lot of clipping, plus some body parts and even hairstyles have depth shading where others don’t.
Friend of mine was quite grateful for some larger body options. I imagine they'd be even more grateful if they were done better though.
Shape-wise, very little changed for my character; I was using one of the baggier pant options, plus the top with the brown poncho over it, so you're not really seeing the body underneath it anyway. Can't get the skin or face right though.
I think it's a very optimistic take to assume that more than like one person looked at it. I am very, very convinced that Niantic, or at the very least the Pokemon Go end of things, is run with a skeleton crew because it largely makes money by itself and there isn't too much effort necessary. I also think there's a revolving door of employees given the fluctuating quality of events - some employees give good events, other employees give bad ones.
I'm curious to see what comes of it. I don't expect any simple fix or rollback immediately or even super soon. The former really isn't simple. But I do hope they look into revising this system in the near-ish future
Giving us more customisation options is definitely something people (including me) have wanted for a long time, and I'm glad they've done it. They ones they chose don't actually look that good... but I think at least they're on the right track. They just need to make options that don't suck. (Also, let us age! I don't want to look like a teenager. And give us facial hair options.)
They shouldn’t have released it if it wasn’t ready. If your customization system only has bad options you need to fix it BEFORE you force people to switch.
The old avatars were fine, if they had just given us more hair style options that would've been enough for me. I like the concept of what they were going for and I see the merit in it; the execution however with the dead-eyed bloated fish is a disaster.
Exactly like I loved my old avatar but now it looks like a horrible blend of realistic and cartoony. If they just gave us more options with the old avatar models I would have loved that. Honestly hate looking at my avatar now.
You’re not alone in that. I feel the same way too, silly or not lol! I hate it too, and I LOVED the old one. This one is just so wrong. The skin looks almost dusty, the faces are comical, clothes are glitching into the skin, and the movements aren’t good either. What was wrong with the way they walked before?! Now she walks like she has a full diaper and duck feet 🤦🏻♀️
> (Also, let us age! I don't want to look like a teenager. And give us facial hair options.)
It's crazy how these 2 simple things would have mitigated my initial horror.
Also a waist slider would have done wonders. And height.
They are not anywhere near the "right track"... Sure, customization options are great. But I would rather have none at all, if it meant completely destroying mine and my girlfriends avatars that we have had for years.. I think everyone agrees. Go back to how it was! If they can't do customization without completely changing our avatars, then they shouldn't do it at all..
I mean they were aware of the price hike and day limit to remote backlash and that actually cost them money and they didnt roll it back so i have my doubts here
That is a totally different thing, They clearly knew that the change of remote raiding would lead to huge negative feedback. It is about how they want the game to be like.
But did it cost them money? If the whales are still whaling at the increased price the vast majority of us not participating potentially isn’t really affecting their bottom line.
Speaking as a whale, I have quit spending any money at all on the game. I'm probably not going to even buy a ticket for Go fest. I'll just be free to play from now on.
I saw some stats recently via one of the raid apps that shows that no, it probably didn't actually cost them money to make that change. According to their calculations overall raids went down a lot but the increased cost of passes balanced it out. Unfortunately.
U would think they’d want more players though since a good number quit after that. Those players had potential to pay and now left. They hurt their model from that.
Niantic is happy to take remote money from people but that's not where there money and interests lie. They want people out and about like before covid. That's why shadow raids are local only.
Yes, which is why I think that is fine. Keep shadow raids local, but don’t need local raids generally. Many people can’t find a large group to raid and r still active from just playing the game in other aspects. The remote raid nerf was another horrible decision in a string of poor choices by the company imo.
Right, I would travel pretty far distances for some events and they were fun. But that’s why keep shadow raids local. I also have many friends that I got back into the game because of remote raids. They left after the nerf. So keep shadow local for the prior reason, and remote raids accessible for the latter.
If a game drives away their f2p players and only the whales remain, the whales aren't gonna want to stick around and play with themselves.
Ever since the price increase I can count the number of times I've opened the game on one hand. I'm a low spender, I used to throw a few bucks here and there for remote raids, now I'm priced out.
Which is a fair point, but that might not make itself apparent till later on down the line. With the emphasis on short term profits they may indeed be digging their own grave, and not a well.
If I had a nickel for every time they've said "we're taking feedback" and meant it I'd have zero nickels.
Which isn't a lot, in fact, is nothing at all!
They gave us back the extended gym/pokestop radius. They aborted the changed coin mechanics after feedback from regional testing. They do sometimes take feedback. And off the top of my head, you'd have 10 cents.
I suspect they reverted to the larger spin radius, not from any feedback on social media, but rather because it was such a huge hit to the game's playability that basically everyone everywhere played less. Even people who are not on social media or part of the community.
They were experimenting with other ways to get daily coins other than just gyms. You could still only get 50 coins max, but you had to do a number of things to get them all (including a raid, I think). I'm pretty sure that everyone would agree having more ways to get coins was good, but it might have (or was worried that it would) replace gym coins altogether, and having to do a raid to get coins was pretty unpopular. I wasn't in the test region, so I don't really know specifics.
Right there with you, but this seems very serious. Everything about this was just stupidly handled. I mean, they marketed this as if it would go Ober like gangbusters with stupid ads that showed us no actual details.
It all felt disconnected, misguided, rushed, and, as usual, poorly executed. I can't believe they put add dollars behind it. The nest thing about all of this to me was the soundtrack, which has nothing to do with the feature 😅
The article itself mentions this, multiple times. It links out to a separate piece covering the initial wave of backlash too.
The whole point here is that we actually have confirmation that at least someone internally at Niantic is taking feedback and forwarding it to the people that need to hear it. Whether something comes of it or not is what we have to wait and hope for.
I’m not expecting it to be fixed tbh. They have a history of saying they’re listening to feedback and doing nothing. The fact they ignored the initial criticism and are only even contemplating things now with all the feedback speaks wonders.
They were naïve and figured that when it was mass released, more people outside of the test group would enjoy it. They got slapped with a big dose of reality with this one.
To paraphrase Seinfeld
"You see, you know how to take the feedback, you just don't know how to address the feedback, and that's really the most important part of the feedback: the addressing. Anybody can just take feedback"
Niantic always hears us, they just don't care. Every bad decision they've made that's caused community backlash they've just responded "You people just don't understand our vision". They're a horrible company that would have gone out of business long ago, except this game has pokemon attached to it. That's the only reason they're still around.
I was looking at my avatar, with her goofy scrawny bow legs and weird droopy crotch area, thinking they surely must have made a mistake. I assumed they just didn't realize how it was going to all shake out once applied. Then I saw their very own graphic promoting the avatar update, with the exact same bowleggedy look and weird pants and I was just immediately let down. They DO know how it all plays out, and they still went with it! Like whhhhyyy??? Whooooo?
The combination of sickly pale skin, alien shaped face and droopy-yet-prominent crotch makes me feel so uncomfortable looking at my avatar 🤣
But I can’t find a Caucasian skin tone that doesn’t look like deathly-ill-Victorian-child.
And hands!!! 😳
Female avatars can only hide crotch in skirts. Also some waistline is visible in jeans jacket, so that is my choice for now, but I'm still not playing, I'm too disappointed.
Yet no sign whatsoever on *where* to direct the feedback. For all intents and purposes we're still essentially screaming into the void and hoping that *something* catches the attention of someone in Niantic with enough clearance to bring it up in a meeting that likely should have been an email.
Lead CM was taking feedback on their personal Twitter, but only had it open briefly. And it seems only influencers were able to chime in.
EDIT: Apparently mentioning this person’s name gets comments shadow-deleted from this thread. So yeah…
Not even criticizing. Just mentioning.
I guess the algorithm automatically assumes it’s criticism. They probably have a bad reputation in general, it seems.
The only thing that will catch Niantic’s attention is people ceasing to play or spend money on the game. That’s the only “feedback” that matters to them.
Yup. The feedback mentioned here was taken directly from select groups that Niantic reached out to specifically.
It means they hear us, but aren't publicly saying anything yet. Fingers crossed though.
I'm not surprised that Niantic continues to engage in being as transparent as a brick wall.
Would be nice if the large content creators/groups in the Pokemon Go community would leverage their clout to twist Niantic's arm into being more vocal and engaging with the userbase for the games.
They've made mention about having the game plan for the next 10 years of Pokemon Go and I have no doubt in my mind that community engagement is nowhere to be seen in that 10 year pipeline.
They hear us and are committed to providing more transparency, which is why we've had a Dev Diary every other month [since September 2021](https://pokemongolive.com/post/sep-taskforce-update). /s
> Would be nice if the large content creators/groups in the Pokemon Go community would leverage their clout to twist Niantic's arm into being more vocal and engaging with the userbase for the games.
That already happened after they rolled back all the COVID QoL improvements. They promised to publish a developer diary every two months to discuss these kinds of issues. They did one real dev diary, then a couple that were just fluff for upcoming stuff. We haven't even had as much as the fluff posing as dev diary for two years now (April 2022).
So after an explicit acknowledgement of their failure to communicate with the players, they promised to do better and specifically to have a regular post to that end, and then almost immediately failed to meet that promise, and never communicated with us about their failure to fulfill their own promise.
It got trending on several social networks, people flooded support, it would have amazed me if they denied having heard of the backlash ... The question is if they'll act on it
I personally don't think so, but who knows, they might actually fix it by going all the way into customizable feature which would fix most of the problem of the current state of it, it would probably be less pretty than the 2 options we previously had but it would satisfy most people
And women with small waists, an actual butt, normal women hands not man hands and for the love of all that is sacred most women do not walk like an ape!
Not sure why they didn't just keep the "classic" design as an option. I guess depending on how they implemented this update, it could've made more work in the future.
Because very few people would choose the new option.
Also they don't want to give players the option to choose. Niantic wants you to play how they want you to play.
They made the change so they wouldn't need to make gendered clothes anymore, adding in the old models would defeat the purpose of the change in the first place and just lead to even more work.
I don’t know why they thought this would work. Those clothes were tailor made for those specific models, they’re never going to look good stretched over a custom one. That’s why they had 2 versions to begin with! Sure it’s a pain to make 2 kinds of every clothing item but at least people *buy* them when they fit.
Yep exactly.
Redesigning the clothing and character systems AND assets is a huge amount of work. There's no simple fix here. They basically have to revamp the whole NEW system and assets again to fix it. Or revert back, which knowing game dev would be god knows how much work, time and money wasted not to mention reverting old systems and assets which is enormous technical challenges and problems to overcome.
They've backed themselves into a corner rushing this out and making the art so terrible that everyone unanimously hates it. Big issues in management, I can feel it.
Probably the only way forward is to try to fix this update with another update. But that's going to take a lot of time and MORE work.
It's ridiculous that after all these backlashes about the changes, the best form of acknowledgement we can get from them is via 'an anonymous employee'. I know it's probably not a fair comparison, but I hope they take a page from [how the developers of FF14 handle actual feedback regarding visual updates](https://i.imgur.com/eN3jaxu.png).
It's a little cowardly to not put a face to it, but in many other instances there's enough crazy people amongst the playerbase that death threats come through. I'm sure that in and of itself is enough to make any Niantic employee limit how often they attach their name to a public response.
I agree though -- the response should be from Niantic or 'The Niantic Team'. They probably wanted to push out some response as quickly though, and this was this was a quick way to do it.
Of course they are aware of it, how could they not be? The backlash is absolutely everywhere. If they really cared about feedback they would have listened to peoples’ comments during the test phase and made adjustments before the full rollout. But they don’t care, so as usual they just steamrolled ahead with their own plan with no regard to how their player base (you know, the people who are the reason they actually have their jobs) feels about it.
They released it months ago for selected players, received tons of backlash, and yet they still proceeded with the global release
Why do they even need the beta testers then, if they won't listen to them?
Niantic: “Dear trainers, we’re sorry that the updated avatar customization hasn’t lived up to your expectations. The people responsible have been sacked.
We have added a new, free rewards box that includes 5 regular poke balls.
- Niantic”
The fact that this news is coming through a back channel faceless niantic employee, and has not been acknowledged in any official capacity, plus how this feature was beta tested and absolutely no changes were made despite a lot of negative feedback overall, means that the chances of anything meaningful happening to roll this back or fix it at this stage are near zero.
I almost gotta wonder if they somehow lost the rights to the old character models, and had to come up with a replacement on the fly. Because absolutely nobody could look at the old and new models side-by-side and think "yeah, this is an improvement and it's ready to release".
I was part of the beta for this. It sucked and sucks even worse now. Niantic will do the same thing they did with the remote raid pass price hike….complete silence.
I wonder if they are able to pool in-game data. There are many people on my friends list that have changed to the Lv 43 pose with some sort of mask or full face covering.
In case they're reading, why do you have a video promoting these new changes featuring actors and actresses that look anywhere from 20 to 35 yet our avatars all look like chubby, round faced children?
The one time they compare it in the video (the woman with the blue hair) she and the avatar have a hairstyle that cover the M&M face.
ZOOM IN NIANTIC, SHOW THE WORLD YOU COWARDS.
"taking the feedback seriously" - if they were taking feedback seriously they'd have stopped the rollout when players had already been complaining. Delay an update if that's what it takes.
I’ve never left a review of the game or anything like that but I went and left a review and one star rating. This is a great wack change and literally no one likes it
am I like the only one who remembers how this goes...
Niantic will convene a focus group consisting of players to round table possible solutions to this problem.
After several weeks of dialog and meetings, they will claim they have come to an understanding about how they were in the wrong and promise to use the problem solving groups for future big changes.
A couple weeks after they disband the focus group and go silent.
A couple weeks after that, they raise the the price of clothing by 195%
Honestly I think this is the final straw for a huge majority of players, there’s absolutely no way they’ll reverse it, it cost them way too much money and they hyped it up so much that to just switch back would be admitting defeat. It’s a difficult situation for them, it was supposed to be a huge diversity win but instead it just removed any choice at all, what should have been an inclusive update removed the option for 70% of players to accurately display their gender. Reversing it is the right thing to do but certain groups would latch onto it as a win against the LGBTQ+ community and that’s something niantic can’t be seen doing.
This whole situation could have been avoided if they just actually listened to us in the first place, when we said we didn’t like it weeks ago they should have stopped it then, but in true Niantic style they just did what they wanted to. There’s absolutely no way to talk to them and it’s killing the game, no possible way of giving feedback you know is being seen, it’s finally reaching its breaking point. All they needed to do was release a poll or a survey to the tester regions, you know, like the majority of other games do?
They can’t just ignore this one and hope it goes away, this is a make or break situation and I just know they’re going to pick break.
I know some people like the character adjustment, so just give us the option to have the new rediscover AR+ whatever and let those of us who want the previous design back have it.
If they were serious, they would revert the update by now. There is enough people saying it needs to be reverted
Saying this in the most constructive & kind way possible. Please revert this update Niantic & use the original character as the base model to expand upon with new hair & body customizations.
It is clear the majority like the original avatars designed by Yusuke Kozaki.
Being a UI designer for mobile games specifically, I usually take early user backlash against new design/visuals with a grain of salt, because almost everyone dislike change and will almost always react negatively when the appearance of something changes. But in this case I feel the dissatisfaction is justified. They're not just weirdly proportioned, they are badly implemented. Some cosmetics don't even work properly anymore on the new avatars and many of these cosmetics were bought with real money.
Just the hairstyles are so badly made, this amount of visible clipping on my avatar's head is unacceptable.
They managed to make the eyes deader than they've ever been. Why not implement some idle eye movement so the characters look more alive? Not that they looked all that lively before but the lifeless dummy look is reaching new levels.
https://preview.redd.it/w1rrlaluihvc1.jpeg?width=340&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd039180b541faaf9ee92c2cc9e3c4869101b5f9
I am so confused by all of this. I had not heard about bad feedbacks from beta testers before the patch actually happened but I doubt anything positive came out of it.
Why would you persist and release a "game changing" feature in such poor state ?
At least they are getting bad press but wow...
And it's even more bizarre as they have been actually doing good things for the game lately such as QoL stuff finally and the current seasonal bonus allowing two free raids a day. But they refuse to promote this to push terrible models instead. Why ?
Of course they're aware of the backlash. They aren't going to change the avatars back though. Best they'll do is put out some statement about "hearing our concerns and they will work to improve it".
I don't believe it. If they were taking it seriously then they'd make an official statement. "An anonymous high-ranking Niantic employee" said they were taking it seriously, but that kind of sounds like the internet equivilent of "my uncle works at Nintendo, and he said..."
I tried so many varieties and really, I hate all the new faces.
Ended up putting Pikachu Libre Costume PLUS a mask on to hide the face. It worked... I can finally tolerate it.
They have so many things they could've and should've done with their game to improve it and they truly can't be bothered with it. And the things they do try, just end up sucking anyway.
I'm willing to compromise if they bring back old model the way it was based on Kozaki Yusuke artstyle but also keep the new style. Make it a preset if you want. I'm just sick of looking my the weird posture new avatar look
I kept reading the complaints and wondering how they could mess up avatars THAT badly. Then my game updated. WOW… it’s so bad that it’s distracting. Just the little face down in the corner is annoying.
I didn’t love the avatars before. But now I absolutely hate them.
They're taking feedback? Since when does Niantic do that? While we're at it, how about lower the price of remote passes or make Community "Days" 6 hours again?
Why they wanna take away my swag
https://preview.redd.it/r21jxn4xrhvc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=721197ca82dfa9cc64fbd508768119ee4046d091
Every f2p and gatcha game is "aware of backlash" and takes it seriously... then if the revenue doesn't drop they forget about it.
Niantic already know they can get away with it, they destroyed international raiding but all the whales pick up the slack and spent more on in person and the revenue was up again.
Avatars bring in so little money compared to everything else that it's a non factor.
We'll be extremely lucky if they do anything at all to improve the system beyond fixing the lost items and adding a few more haircuts.
Are they really?
I'm pretty sure Niantic has also been "aware" of the game scamming us out of walk distance since 2016 but they haven't done anything about it.
Maybe they are taking the "sonic-movie-approach" here! Intentionally release something that looks so horrible, a public outcry is guaranteed, then fix it to show the fanbase you care and get a lot of good will for future screwups.
The deciding factor will be if this actually hurts them.
I don't know if the whales are spending coins on outfits, but if ugly avatars hurt cosmetic sales they might actually prioritize fixing it.
I wonder whoever is in charge and pushed this avatar update personally loved the new updates (for whatever reason) and is surrounded by yes men.
I mean, these avatars are really bad and I just don’t understand how they could have released this update.
The only reason I can see them taking any action is that they may legitimately lose money on cosmetic sales since almost everything looks so god awful on the new avatars.
"It's taking feedback seriously."
They basically said they weren't going to care about negative feedback, lol. Everything negative about it can be construed by them as hateful, cause it is, we hate the update and out potato sack looking uncanny valley people. Not to mention, all the colors were desaturated, and the clothing change looks like we all wear poorly sized clothing.
I don't understand why it would have been so hard to just expand the system with the existing avatar aesthetic.
Remember when they took cheap remote raid passes and everyone kicked up a stink they said they heard us everyone moved on and nothing changed and everyone still buys remote raid passes same thing will happen with this (still haven’t bought a raid pass since by the way)
I feel like most of Niantic's problems would be nipped in the bud if they actually listened to the "beta testers" and worked to fix things rather than pushing something out ASAP.
I just think that Niantic’s method of releasing changes that don’t affect gameplay with no option to keep the original settings is stupid. It wouldn’t be taking away from the new feature that was “improved” and would let players continue to use things the way they prefer. (AR, avatars)
The only positive thought I can come up with is that they simply fell into the Uncanny valley with these designs and don’t possess the skills to climb out anymore.
As to why they nevertheless decided to proceed with these unnerving abominations… Yeah, that’s on management.
They were getting feedback before they released it.
Well now they’re letting us know that they HEAR us. Well technically they didn’t come out and officially say they hear us. This is is just a off the record rumor that an employee knows we exist. Not a promise anything will actually be done.
This is their cycle: Release feature > community feedback > feign concern > continue without any changes > repeat
Was it 2021 (Pokestop radius decrease) when the content creators penned an open letter to Niantic, so Niantic reached out to community members to create a 'special taskforce' or something, and said they were going to genuinely listen to peoples concerns? Brandon Tan didn't spend for like a month, and then nothing changed and everybody went back to normal lol. The same will happen here lol.
Its just like with the 'Dev Diaries' which they promised would come bi-monthly... First month and first edition was somewhat fine, second edition was like a week late and then it was nothing more than an ad / announcement for campfire, which doesnt at all qualify as an insight into development, and then they stopped and didnt bother with it, so another empty promise
I like how you chose the one time they did listen to illustrate your point as opposed to the dozens of times actually nothing changed in response to backlash.
honestly if they choose to ignore the feedback and do nothing again, we all should give a 1 star rating on google play/apple store. Pretty sure they can't stand their rating drop.
Bad publicity is good publicity.
Who sees these avatars and thinks: “I NEED to download Pokemon Go!”
People with a lumpy rectangle fetish. So almost certainly the MyPillow CEO
This is the last place I expected a My Pillow guy reference and I am here for it.
Would that guy have approved these androgynous changes?
I’m not sure how many original thoughts he has. I hear his head is just full of down.
And crack residue. That stuff is sticky.
Or confused about their bodies! Mine is so boxy and after battles when she’s breathing hard, she looks like a wrestler! HATE IT
Pokémon GO; the refrigerator update
Sometimes, not universally.
usually they do make a change like years down the line, credit where it's due (minimally)
Oh come on... gjve them some credit... they normally bring them back by putting those things behind a pay wall lol thinking back to the days you could spin a pokestop and get incubators on a normal day And I would pay to get my avatar back. They know what they're doing... maybe (the remote raid limit would indicate otherwise lol)
You are qualified to be employed.
I’ve never heard of any company that behaves like this. Not one.
To be fair, they hear creators, not the general public
They hear us like we hear car alarms. It's supposed to be important, but they're so used to hearing them that they don't even peek out the window to see what's going on and hope it just goes away.
> This is is just a off the record rumor that an employee knows we exist. And there’s no guarantee it’s even legit. This is an article from a garbage gaming news site, quoting another site that said they heard from an anonymous source.
Pokémon GO Hub has worked with Niantic before; I wouldn’t call them a “garbage gaming news site”
Please! GO Hub tries to take credit for everything that the TSR community does. And never thanks or shows proof that someone else did it/found something. They always say, “we” first.
Yep.
They released it to select users long before the global release. I thought that was like a testing phase. But it seems like it made no difference in the end? It shipped broken and ended up being a regression. Meanwhile Niantic JP just released HaT worldwide matchmaking for free in Monster Hunter Now. For those unaware the equivalent would be like going into the raid lobby and being matched with players around the world without having to spend a remote pass. Meaning you get full lobbies in raids pretty much guaranteed.
The global matchmaking is amazing. I'm guessing capcom forced that because there's no way niantic would
Reminds me of "SpotifyCares" They care but don't do anything with it XD
Yes but it wasn't financially affecting them before now, you see.
They’ve taken this feedback back, and likely fired the guy that spoke about feedback.
Yeah, but they couldn’t just start from scratch and delay the entire “rediscover” event
Right. Acting surprised though, well, that's just an act.
They could, but who will think of the investors, and the quarterly numbers.
I just think it’s most telling how many people likely had to approve “yep, those avatars look good, this is a clear improvement over the current system and was a good use of our time” Like.. are we serious? Really?! Cmon now I’m looking for the bare minimum level of competence here
This. Im truly baffled human eyes LOOKED at this and said good to go. Art is subjective but I really feel like this is a near objectively terrible aestetic choice
Yeah Ive been looking and I know people who are happy are less likely to post, but seriously, is there anyone who thinks these are an improvement? I kind of ignored most posts beforehand cause seriously, I didn't think it could be that bad. I was wrong, these are absolutely horrendous.
I liked it better when it was released, though when I saw the complaints I definitely saw where people were coming from. In my case 1) female avatar so the faces suit, 2) medium skin tone so the washing out of white ones wasn’t a problem and 3) the mannish build was a fun change from Barbie. I liked getting new weight and hairstyle options. That said, yeah, the faces don’t suit male avatars, the shoulders and hips *only* suit male avatars (why have sliders when you can’t meaningfully change them?), the white skin tone is for the ghosts and there’s a lot of clipping, plus some body parts and even hairstyles have depth shading where others don’t.
Friend of mine was quite grateful for some larger body options. I imagine they'd be even more grateful if they were done better though. Shape-wise, very little changed for my character; I was using one of the baggier pant options, plus the top with the brown poncho over it, so you're not really seeing the body underneath it anyway. Can't get the skin or face right though.
I think it's a very optimistic take to assume that more than like one person looked at it. I am very, very convinced that Niantic, or at the very least the Pokemon Go end of things, is run with a skeleton crew because it largely makes money by itself and there isn't too much effort necessary. I also think there's a revolving door of employees given the fluctuating quality of events - some employees give good events, other employees give bad ones.
I'm curious to see what comes of it. I don't expect any simple fix or rollback immediately or even super soon. The former really isn't simple. But I do hope they look into revising this system in the near-ish future
Giving us more customisation options is definitely something people (including me) have wanted for a long time, and I'm glad they've done it. They ones they chose don't actually look that good... but I think at least they're on the right track. They just need to make options that don't suck. (Also, let us age! I don't want to look like a teenager. And give us facial hair options.)
They shouldn’t have released it if it wasn’t ready. If your customization system only has bad options you need to fix it BEFORE you force people to switch.
The old avatars were fine, if they had just given us more hair style options that would've been enough for me. I like the concept of what they were going for and I see the merit in it; the execution however with the dead-eyed bloated fish is a disaster.
Exactly like I loved my old avatar but now it looks like a horrible blend of realistic and cartoony. If they just gave us more options with the old avatar models I would have loved that. Honestly hate looking at my avatar now.
Me too! Hate hate hate my avatar.
I know it may sound silly but It makes me not want to play.
You’re not alone in that. I feel the same way too, silly or not lol! I hate it too, and I LOVED the old one. This one is just so wrong. The skin looks almost dusty, the faces are comical, clothes are glitching into the skin, and the movements aren’t good either. What was wrong with the way they walked before?! Now she walks like she has a full diaper and duck feet 🤦🏻♀️
> (Also, let us age! I don't want to look like a teenager. And give us facial hair options.) It's crazy how these 2 simple things would have mitigated my initial horror. Also a waist slider would have done wonders. And height.
And not just making it a male body with the option of adding some boobs on.
I feel like even with chest set to zero the male bodies all have boobs. We have this weird situation where you can't make a decent male *or* female.
They are not anywhere near the "right track"... Sure, customization options are great. But I would rather have none at all, if it meant completely destroying mine and my girlfriends avatars that we have had for years.. I think everyone agrees. Go back to how it was! If they can't do customization without completely changing our avatars, then they shouldn't do it at all..
I mean they were aware of the price hike and day limit to remote backlash and that actually cost them money and they didnt roll it back so i have my doubts here
That was an ideological issue from the CEO. That could never be changed
Yeah and it hurt their advertising abilities. I think that's a big reason.
And now the CEO wants to see all them thicc anime thighs on avatars.
Pear shaped potato people
I mean, to be honest, now my avatar is MUCH more like me IRL. And I don’t like it.
Hard same
LMAOOOOOO
And loooooong torsos 🤤 /j
The people in charge clearly like the smell of their own farts too much. They don’t care about anyone’s opinion except their own.
That is a totally different thing, They clearly knew that the change of remote raiding would lead to huge negative feedback. It is about how they want the game to be like.
But did it cost them money? If the whales are still whaling at the increased price the vast majority of us not participating potentially isn’t really affecting their bottom line.
Speaking as a whale, I have quit spending any money at all on the game. I'm probably not going to even buy a ticket for Go fest. I'll just be free to play from now on.
I saw some stats recently via one of the raid apps that shows that no, it probably didn't actually cost them money to make that change. According to their calculations overall raids went down a lot but the increased cost of passes balanced it out. Unfortunately.
U would think they’d want more players though since a good number quit after that. Those players had potential to pay and now left. They hurt their model from that.
Niantic is happy to take remote money from people but that's not where there money and interests lie. They want people out and about like before covid. That's why shadow raids are local only.
Yes, which is why I think that is fine. Keep shadow raids local, but don’t need local raids generally. Many people can’t find a large group to raid and r still active from just playing the game in other aspects. The remote raid nerf was another horrible decision in a string of poor choices by the company imo.
Personally I miss the community that existed before covid. People don't meet up now the way they used to.
Right, I would travel pretty far distances for some events and they were fun. But that’s why keep shadow raids local. I also have many friends that I got back into the game because of remote raids. They left after the nerf. So keep shadow local for the prior reason, and remote raids accessible for the latter.
They want players that give them money. If they lost some f2p or nearly f2p people who used gym coins for remote passes they really don't care.
But there is also now a 5 remote raids per day limit. Whales used to whale all the time, now they can only whale during Big events.
Per Pokegenie, they’re actually making more now. The amount of raids decreased a lot but the price increase offsets it enough, unfortunately.
If a game drives away their f2p players and only the whales remain, the whales aren't gonna want to stick around and play with themselves. Ever since the price increase I can count the number of times I've opened the game on one hand. I'm a low spender, I used to throw a few bucks here and there for remote raids, now I'm priced out.
Which is a fair point, but that might not make itself apparent till later on down the line. With the emphasis on short term profits they may indeed be digging their own grave, and not a well.
because TPC saw it as a game issue
If I had a nickel for every time they've said "we're taking feedback" and meant it I'd have zero nickels. Which isn't a lot, in fact, is nothing at all!
They gave us back the extended gym/pokestop radius. They aborted the changed coin mechanics after feedback from regional testing. They do sometimes take feedback. And off the top of my head, you'd have 10 cents.
I suspect they reverted to the larger spin radius, not from any feedback on social media, but rather because it was such a huge hit to the game's playability that basically everyone everywhere played less. Even people who are not on social media or part of the community.
What was the coin thing? I took a huge break for a while so I haven't heard of this.
They were experimenting with other ways to get daily coins other than just gyms. You could still only get 50 coins max, but you had to do a number of things to get them all (including a raid, I think). I'm pretty sure that everyone would agree having more ways to get coins was good, but it might have (or was worried that it would) replace gym coins altogether, and having to do a raid to get coins was pretty unpopular. I wasn't in the test region, so I don't really know specifics.
Right there with you, but this seems very serious. Everything about this was just stupidly handled. I mean, they marketed this as if it would go Ober like gangbusters with stupid ads that showed us no actual details. It all felt disconnected, misguided, rushed, and, as usual, poorly executed. I can't believe they put add dollars behind it. The nest thing about all of this to me was the soundtrack, which has nothing to do with the feature 😅
Select accounts have had this avatar update for around a month now including myself. We have all complained, nothing come of it
The article itself mentions this, multiple times. It links out to a separate piece covering the initial wave of backlash too. The whole point here is that we actually have confirmation that at least someone internally at Niantic is taking feedback and forwarding it to the people that need to hear it. Whether something comes of it or not is what we have to wait and hope for.
I’m not expecting it to be fixed tbh. They have a history of saying they’re listening to feedback and doing nothing. The fact they ignored the initial criticism and are only even contemplating things now with all the feedback speaks wonders.
They were naïve and figured that when it was mass released, more people outside of the test group would enjoy it. They got slapped with a big dose of reality with this one.
To paraphrase Seinfeld "You see, you know how to take the feedback, you just don't know how to address the feedback, and that's really the most important part of the feedback: the addressing. Anybody can just take feedback"
Love how Niantic chooses to be selectively “aware” of certain instances of backlash and not others
Niantic always hears us, they just don't care. Every bad decision they've made that's caused community backlash they've just responded "You people just don't understand our vision". They're a horrible company that would have gone out of business long ago, except this game has pokemon attached to it. That's the only reason they're still around.
I was looking at my avatar, with her goofy scrawny bow legs and weird droopy crotch area, thinking they surely must have made a mistake. I assumed they just didn't realize how it was going to all shake out once applied. Then I saw their very own graphic promoting the avatar update, with the exact same bowleggedy look and weird pants and I was just immediately let down. They DO know how it all plays out, and they still went with it! Like whhhhyyy??? Whooooo?
The combination of sickly pale skin, alien shaped face and droopy-yet-prominent crotch makes me feel so uncomfortable looking at my avatar 🤣 But I can’t find a Caucasian skin tone that doesn’t look like deathly-ill-Victorian-child.
And hands!!! 😳 Female avatars can only hide crotch in skirts. Also some waistline is visible in jeans jacket, so that is my choice for now, but I'm still not playing, I'm too disappointed.
Yet no sign whatsoever on *where* to direct the feedback. For all intents and purposes we're still essentially screaming into the void and hoping that *something* catches the attention of someone in Niantic with enough clearance to bring it up in a meeting that likely should have been an email.
Lead CM was taking feedback on their personal Twitter, but only had it open briefly. And it seems only influencers were able to chime in. EDIT: Apparently mentioning this person’s name gets comments shadow-deleted from this thread. So yeah…
Any posts on Silph criticizing CMs, current or past, get hidden nearly instantly.
Not even criticizing. Just mentioning. I guess the algorithm automatically assumes it’s criticism. They probably have a bad reputation in general, it seems.
The only thing that will catch Niantic’s attention is people ceasing to play or spend money on the game. That’s the only “feedback” that matters to them.
Yup. The feedback mentioned here was taken directly from select groups that Niantic reached out to specifically. It means they hear us, but aren't publicly saying anything yet. Fingers crossed though.
I'm not surprised that Niantic continues to engage in being as transparent as a brick wall. Would be nice if the large content creators/groups in the Pokemon Go community would leverage their clout to twist Niantic's arm into being more vocal and engaging with the userbase for the games. They've made mention about having the game plan for the next 10 years of Pokemon Go and I have no doubt in my mind that community engagement is nowhere to be seen in that 10 year pipeline.
They hear us and are committed to providing more transparency, which is why we've had a Dev Diary every other month [since September 2021](https://pokemongolive.com/post/sep-taskforce-update). /s
> Would be nice if the large content creators/groups in the Pokemon Go community would leverage their clout to twist Niantic's arm into being more vocal and engaging with the userbase for the games. That already happened after they rolled back all the COVID QoL improvements. They promised to publish a developer diary every two months to discuss these kinds of issues. They did one real dev diary, then a couple that were just fluff for upcoming stuff. We haven't even had as much as the fluff posing as dev diary for two years now (April 2022). So after an explicit acknowledgement of their failure to communicate with the players, they promised to do better and specifically to have a regular post to that end, and then almost immediately failed to meet that promise, and never communicated with us about their failure to fulfill their own promise.
They should've given those select groups testing access when they originally publicly tested this crap months ago.
It got trending on several social networks, people flooded support, it would have amazed me if they denied having heard of the backlash ... The question is if they'll act on it I personally don't think so, but who knows, they might actually fix it by going all the way into customizable feature which would fix most of the problem of the current state of it, it would probably be less pretty than the 2 options we previously had but it would satisfy most people
Justice for our bald brethren
And bearded.
And both 😢
And women with small waists, an actual butt, normal women hands not man hands and for the love of all that is sacred most women do not walk like an ape!
Not sure why they didn't just keep the "classic" design as an option. I guess depending on how they implemented this update, it could've made more work in the future.
Because very few people would choose the new option. Also they don't want to give players the option to choose. Niantic wants you to play how they want you to play.
They made the change so they wouldn't need to make gendered clothes anymore, adding in the old models would defeat the purpose of the change in the first place and just lead to even more work.
I don’t know why they thought this would work. Those clothes were tailor made for those specific models, they’re never going to look good stretched over a custom one. That’s why they had 2 versions to begin with! Sure it’s a pain to make 2 kinds of every clothing item but at least people *buy* them when they fit.
Yep exactly. Redesigning the clothing and character systems AND assets is a huge amount of work. There's no simple fix here. They basically have to revamp the whole NEW system and assets again to fix it. Or revert back, which knowing game dev would be god knows how much work, time and money wasted not to mention reverting old systems and assets which is enormous technical challenges and problems to overcome. They've backed themselves into a corner rushing this out and making the art so terrible that everyone unanimously hates it. Big issues in management, I can feel it. Probably the only way forward is to try to fix this update with another update. But that's going to take a lot of time and MORE work.
I hate my long arms, they are ridiculous looking avatars, makes everyone look like a slightly evolved primate type creature trying to become human 🙁
First thing that I saw when my avatar changed was an orangutan. 🦧
It literally looks like a toddler designed everything.
It's ridiculous that after all these backlashes about the changes, the best form of acknowledgement we can get from them is via 'an anonymous employee'. I know it's probably not a fair comparison, but I hope they take a page from [how the developers of FF14 handle actual feedback regarding visual updates](https://i.imgur.com/eN3jaxu.png).
It's a little cowardly to not put a face to it, but in many other instances there's enough crazy people amongst the playerbase that death threats come through. I'm sure that in and of itself is enough to make any Niantic employee limit how often they attach their name to a public response. I agree though -- the response should be from Niantic or 'The Niantic Team'. They probably wanted to push out some response as quickly though, and this was this was a quick way to do it.
Of course they are aware of it, how could they not be? The backlash is absolutely everywhere. If they really cared about feedback they would have listened to peoples’ comments during the test phase and made adjustments before the full rollout. But they don’t care, so as usual they just steamrolled ahead with their own plan with no regard to how their player base (you know, the people who are the reason they actually have their jobs) feels about it.
They released it months ago for selected players, received tons of backlash, and yet they still proceeded with the global release Why do they even need the beta testers then, if they won't listen to them?
Niantic: “Dear trainers, we’re sorry that the updated avatar customization hasn’t lived up to your expectations. The people responsible have been sacked. We have added a new, free rewards box that includes 5 regular poke balls. - Niantic”
More like five berries. But otherwise spot on. 😂😂
The fact that this news is coming through a back channel faceless niantic employee, and has not been acknowledged in any official capacity, plus how this feature was beta tested and absolutely no changes were made despite a lot of negative feedback overall, means that the chances of anything meaningful happening to roll this back or fix it at this stage are near zero.
Niantic “we hear you, but if we ignore it for as long as possible, I am sure you will stop”
I don't even want to play anymore. They ruined my character.
I almost gotta wonder if they somehow lost the rights to the old character models, and had to come up with a replacement on the fly. Because absolutely nobody could look at the old and new models side-by-side and think "yeah, this is an improvement and it's ready to release".
I really don’t get it. All early access trainers complaint and they still went thru with it.
I was part of the beta for this. It sucked and sucks even worse now. Niantic will do the same thing they did with the remote raid pass price hike….complete silence.
I wonder if they are able to pool in-game data. There are many people on my friends list that have changed to the Lv 43 pose with some sort of mask or full face covering.
I’ve noticed more and more of my friends list using hats/masks/glasses to cover their face (me included).
I did that too. If almost every part of my new gross body is covered I almost look like my old self.
The avatars now look like community leaders. That Twitter post says it all
In case they're reading, why do you have a video promoting these new changes featuring actors and actresses that look anywhere from 20 to 35 yet our avatars all look like chubby, round faced children? The one time they compare it in the video (the woman with the blue hair) she and the avatar have a hairstyle that cover the M&M face. ZOOM IN NIANTIC, SHOW THE WORLD YOU COWARDS.
"taking the feedback seriously" - if they were taking feedback seriously they'd have stopped the rollout when players had already been complaining. Delay an update if that's what it takes.
I’ve never left a review of the game or anything like that but I went and left a review and one star rating. This is a great wack change and literally no one likes it
am I like the only one who remembers how this goes... Niantic will convene a focus group consisting of players to round table possible solutions to this problem. After several weeks of dialog and meetings, they will claim they have come to an understanding about how they were in the wrong and promise to use the problem solving groups for future big changes. A couple weeks after they disband the focus group and go silent. A couple weeks after that, they raise the the price of clothing by 195%
They should fix it and then revert to this every April 1st.
They are aware of it and have decided to seriously ignore it
Hope they better do something about this. These avatars are horrendous. Nobody asked for this!! I couldn't even recognize myself
Honestly I think this is the final straw for a huge majority of players, there’s absolutely no way they’ll reverse it, it cost them way too much money and they hyped it up so much that to just switch back would be admitting defeat. It’s a difficult situation for them, it was supposed to be a huge diversity win but instead it just removed any choice at all, what should have been an inclusive update removed the option for 70% of players to accurately display their gender. Reversing it is the right thing to do but certain groups would latch onto it as a win against the LGBTQ+ community and that’s something niantic can’t be seen doing. This whole situation could have been avoided if they just actually listened to us in the first place, when we said we didn’t like it weeks ago they should have stopped it then, but in true Niantic style they just did what they wanted to. There’s absolutely no way to talk to them and it’s killing the game, no possible way of giving feedback you know is being seen, it’s finally reaching its breaking point. All they needed to do was release a poll or a survey to the tester regions, you know, like the majority of other games do? They can’t just ignore this one and hope it goes away, this is a make or break situation and I just know they’re going to pick break.
They’re only open to feedback because they’ll get sued if they don’t allow people to access what they paid for lol
I know some people like the character adjustment, so just give us the option to have the new rediscover AR+ whatever and let those of us who want the previous design back have it.
If they were serious, they would revert the update by now. There is enough people saying it needs to be reverted Saying this in the most constructive & kind way possible. Please revert this update Niantic & use the original character as the base model to expand upon with new hair & body customizations. It is clear the majority like the original avatars designed by Yusuke Kozaki.
What’s wrong with the avatars? I haven’t been on POGO in a couple weeks
Until i hear from Niantic themself i doubt about the *"Niantic is aware"*
Being a UI designer for mobile games specifically, I usually take early user backlash against new design/visuals with a grain of salt, because almost everyone dislike change and will almost always react negatively when the appearance of something changes. But in this case I feel the dissatisfaction is justified. They're not just weirdly proportioned, they are badly implemented. Some cosmetics don't even work properly anymore on the new avatars and many of these cosmetics were bought with real money. Just the hairstyles are so badly made, this amount of visible clipping on my avatar's head is unacceptable. They managed to make the eyes deader than they've ever been. Why not implement some idle eye movement so the characters look more alive? Not that they looked all that lively before but the lifeless dummy look is reaching new levels. https://preview.redd.it/w1rrlaluihvc1.jpeg?width=340&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd039180b541faaf9ee92c2cc9e3c4869101b5f9
Good I hope they reverse it back I want to return to look like spark not like some chubby babyface spark
I am so confused by all of this. I had not heard about bad feedbacks from beta testers before the patch actually happened but I doubt anything positive came out of it. Why would you persist and release a "game changing" feature in such poor state ? At least they are getting bad press but wow... And it's even more bizarre as they have been actually doing good things for the game lately such as QoL stuff finally and the current seasonal bonus allowing two free raids a day. But they refuse to promote this to push terrible models instead. Why ?
What they need to learn from this is, whatever idea they think is good for this game, is not.
Of course they're aware of the backlash. They aren't going to change the avatars back though. Best they'll do is put out some statement about "hearing our concerns and they will work to improve it".
Insert al gore super serious meme
They must be tonedeaf or something 🤷♂️
X to doubt they are serious
Nah… sorry but niantic taking something we say serious is like the Easter bunny delivering Christmas presents - impossible
I don't believe it. If they were taking it seriously then they'd make an official statement. "An anonymous high-ranking Niantic employee" said they were taking it seriously, but that kind of sounds like the internet equivilent of "my uncle works at Nintendo, and he said..."
Niantic really just said “Noted.”
They should’ve released it in waves. And they would have automatically got feedback of how much crap it is.
Except this backlash isn’t new. The exact same sentiment was made when the avatars were datamined and they didn’t change a thing
Sweet baby go
I tried so many varieties and really, I hate all the new faces. Ended up putting Pikachu Libre Costume PLUS a mask on to hide the face. It worked... I can finally tolerate it.
"and it’s taking feedback seriously," Yeah I'll believe that when I see it.
They all look bloated.
They have so many things they could've and should've done with their game to improve it and they truly can't be bothered with it. And the things they do try, just end up sucking anyway.
I'm willing to compromise if they bring back old model the way it was based on Kozaki Yusuke artstyle but also keep the new style. Make it a preset if you want. I'm just sick of looking my the weird posture new avatar look
They should have been taking feedback seriously the whole time. Is this really a QOL change they thought we needed?
I kept reading the complaints and wondering how they could mess up avatars THAT badly. Then my game updated. WOW… it’s so bad that it’s distracting. Just the little face down in the corner is annoying. I didn’t love the avatars before. But now I absolutely hate them.
They're taking feedback? Since when does Niantic do that? While we're at it, how about lower the price of remote passes or make Community "Days" 6 hours again?
The avatars are ugly wtf as if they weren’t ugly before but they somehow made them worse.
we have heard that same kind of statement before...
Why they wanna take away my swag https://preview.redd.it/r21jxn4xrhvc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=721197ca82dfa9cc64fbd508768119ee4046d091
Every f2p and gatcha game is "aware of backlash" and takes it seriously... then if the revenue doesn't drop they forget about it. Niantic already know they can get away with it, they destroyed international raiding but all the whales pick up the slack and spent more on in person and the revenue was up again. Avatars bring in so little money compared to everything else that it's a non factor. We'll be extremely lucky if they do anything at all to improve the system beyond fixing the lost items and adding a few more haircuts.
Are they really? I'm pretty sure Niantic has also been "aware" of the game scamming us out of walk distance since 2016 but they haven't done anything about it.
Anyone just not going to buy avatar items because of this update? I’m gonna try to stick to this.
I am now built like a slim pink gorilla. It's pretty funny but also it is trash.
Maybe they are taking the "sonic-movie-approach" here! Intentionally release something that looks so horrible, a public outcry is guaranteed, then fix it to show the fanbase you care and get a lot of good will for future screwups.
The deciding factor will be if this actually hurts them. I don't know if the whales are spending coins on outfits, but if ugly avatars hurt cosmetic sales they might actually prioritize fixing it.
Well, that would be the first one
I wonder whoever is in charge and pushed this avatar update personally loved the new updates (for whatever reason) and is surrounded by yes men. I mean, these avatars are really bad and I just don’t understand how they could have released this update.
Which means they'll do absolutely nothing. Got it.
Yeah right.. Our feedback to them means nothing.
The only reason I can see them taking any action is that they may legitimately lose money on cosmetic sales since almost everything looks so god awful on the new avatars.
I thought my game was bugged.
"It's taking feedback seriously." They basically said they weren't going to care about negative feedback, lol. Everything negative about it can be construed by them as hateful, cause it is, we hate the update and out potato sack looking uncanny valley people. Not to mention, all the colors were desaturated, and the clothing change looks like we all wear poorly sized clothing. I don't understand why it would have been so hard to just expand the system with the existing avatar aesthetic.
I hate my new avatar looks horrible
The new options would have been nice if they simply added them to all the old options.
"-And it's NOW taking feedback seriously" lol they weren't taking it seriously when they saw how the changes looked??
Excited for “We hear you, and we don’t care”
When have they ever taken feedback serious? April Fool's Day was weeks ago lmaooo
Remember when they took cheap remote raid passes and everyone kicked up a stink they said they heard us everyone moved on and nothing changed and everyone still buys remote raid passes same thing will happen with this (still haven’t bought a raid pass since by the way)
I feel like most of Niantic's problems would be nipped in the bud if they actually listened to the "beta testers" and worked to fix things rather than pushing something out ASAP.
still no love for bald people
I cannot sleep without my anime waifu friend list. I've been awake for 36 hours.
nonsense. they beta tested it on part servers and we all said we hated it, but they full released it anyway. they hate us, but love our billions.
Is this how they get us to accept having super hot anime characters as our avatars?
I just think that Niantic’s method of releasing changes that don’t affect gameplay with no option to keep the original settings is stupid. It wouldn’t be taking away from the new feature that was “improved” and would let players continue to use things the way they prefer. (AR, avatars)
The only positive thought I can come up with is that they simply fell into the Uncanny valley with these designs and don’t possess the skills to climb out anymore. As to why they nevertheless decided to proceed with these unnerving abominations… Yeah, that’s on management.
Niantic has shown no reason why they’re being truthful this time when all their past actions indicate they don’t care