Since the big furore over the termination of Pokevision and the in game tracking system, Niantic have become a lot more transparent in their communication with fans in regards to questions and queries related to Pokemon GO (Free). Within a day of the controversial 1.1 update, they had released a statement on their future plans for the ‘nearby’ tab, launched in Brazil to virtually complete the worldwide rollout and finally had a feature on the App Store. However, for many this wasn’t enough. A fundamental change to the catch and flee rates within Pokemon GO had led many hardcore fans to grow increasingly frustrated, seeing both rare Pokemon and CP16 Metapods flee at the first sight of their potential spherical prison. Thankfully, Niantic have continued their public relations renaissance and have addressed concerns through Twitter, by outlining that the difficulty in catching Pokemon is a bug and will be fixed in the very near future, as well as promising to sort out a glitch that prevents XP being gained from Pokeball throws.
Trainers, a new bug affecting throw accuracy increases the odds of escape and omits the XP bonus. We are working on a fix, stay tuned…
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) August 4, 2016
Of course, there will always be a degree of cynicism with such an announcement – was this legitimately an unintended glitch, or was this a stealthy and surreptitious attempt to alter the free-to-play balance to profit more on Pokemon GO’s insane popularity? On one hand, the current generosity of Pokeballs meant that, especially in densely populated cities, it was very easy to catch everything and never have to spend a penny on anything in the game. However, with the problems that the game has had over the past few weeks, I wouldn’t doubt that this was simply an honest mistake. Regardless, it’s great to see this new Niantic be a lot more prominent on social media, and hopefully these fixes will convince anyone who swore never to play Pokemon GO again to put their cap back on and go catch that Onix outside – it certainly won’t be going anywhere when the next update hits.
