Open letter to Niantic – comments welcome!
The new AI powered raid algorithm is destroying the game for experienced players in small towns and rural areas. If the algorithm isn’t corrected, and a baseline minimum volume of level 5 raids instigated, there will be an irreversible exodus of the player base in small towns and rural areas.
I’m a level 75 player with a mature pokedex (932/940 Pokémon caught, most legendaries close to full power). All I really have left to play for are occasional new Pokémon, and legendary XL candy, plus the search for legendary hundos. But since the new algorithm took over gym rotations, we hardly ever see level 5 raids in any of our dozen or so nearest gyms.
The local player base is mostly like me, we’ve been playing for years, we’re most excited about decent raids. We’re now lucky if we see a level 5 once a day across those dozen gyms. The two images I’ve posted are from rush hour, in a small town with a population of c. 20,000. We used to have level 5s in half our gyms during. Now, nothing. This isn’t selective posting – I now live in the raid wilderness, and it’s like this every day!
I get that the algorithm shows that we have only a handful of regular players, thus the gyms are lightly trafficked compared to gyms in the big cities. But you’re giving those regular players no reason to log in every day. And soon we’ll log in to a different game, and then we’re probably gone. Forever.
For a game that wants us to get out and walk, our only recourse now is to drive 20 minutes to the nearest dense urban area. That’s not what Niantic intends. Bring back level 5s to less trafficked gyms – before it’s too late!
by This_Tie_9131