In terms of Pokemon GO resources, one favored by experts has always been Pokebattler.com, run by u/celandro. Released just over two months after Pokemon GO's release, the site has been a favorite among GamePress staff. I sat down recently with celandro to talk about the game and what it's like to run Pokebattler.
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So to start, what was the motivation behind making a website like Pokebattler?
That's a complicated question. I really enjoyed playing Pokemon GO and I was intrigued by the combat system.
The in-game auto suggest was absolutely terrible and so I started looking into it. Despite seeming quite simple on the surface, there was quite a bit of complexity behind the scenes. I saw videos by people like Trainer Tips and articles by people like dondon151 on sites like your own GamePress and posts on The Silph Road subreddit and thought I could make a good website to help see how battles would go.
Do you have a background in building and maintaining a website like Pokebattler?
So I've been programming for a very long time. I started when I was 10 typing in a slot machine program from the back of the TI-99 instruction book. I'm showing my age here ;). Anyhow, I went to college and built a website for Mordor 2 that had a database of items, spells, and monsters in the game. I then graduated, got a day job and did some work at nights building add-ons for World of Warcraft. I build the original second bar addon for Cosmos that had its functionality eventually incorporated into the main game. I also worked on a website program called WoW Roster that allowed people to keep track of who was in their guild. I had a kid (who you might have seen in a recent youtube video we made) and stopped with the side jobs for a while. This is my first gaming related project since my World of Warcraft days. My day jobs included a website that did advanced analytics for stock trading, building the matching system and various other things as an engineer and then a software architect for Eharmony, and currently working for a major youtube adtech company Zefr as a director of architecture.
How do you like PoGO these days?
I really enjoy it. I like walking around with my wife on the Santa Monica pier and chit chatting while we catch Pokemon. I enjoy raiding and meeting new people. The most recent Community Day was really awesome, met so many people. It's really rewarding to meet people who have used the site and tell me how it helped them solo a tier 3 raid or optimize their roster.
...trying to convince people to drive around to various raids...is a hard sell.
What's the community like over in Santa Monica?
Unfortunately, it's not that great. Santa Monica pier itself has quite a few people playing Pokemon GO but no one really talks to each other. There is a Discord with some activity. You can sometimes find people who want to meet in person. The issue is you can go walk around Santa Monica and join any raid and it will fill up with spoofers and maybe a couple people nearby. There is no effort required to meet people and so trying to convince people to drive around to various raids they find on bot created maps vs. walking around Santa Monica and letting spoofers help you beat raids is a hard sell. Its a big issue with the way Niantic has set up raids. You can't form a group because no one wants to put in the effort. You have driving around or you have spoofer filled raids. I don't think either is actually in the spirit of the game. That said, we have met a few people at various ex-raid locations. Now that the community has narrowed down which gyms 'matter' it's actually easier to get people together for raids. I hope Niantic takes that into account when they eventually change ex-raids.
Spoofing seems to be one of the biggest issues in the game currently. Do you think Niantic can make changes to correct the problem?
From a technological perspective its a no-go. Not fixable. With a spoofing app and a VPN, there is no way for Niantic to detect spoofing other than by super abnormal behavior. They can catch the uninformed but will never be able to catch everyone. And those who know will teach those who don't. I honestly think they need to go the opposite route and let players raid from their homes at places they have been at recently. Sort of like insta-travel in Skyrim. If you have done a gym battle or had a defending Pokemon at a gym in the last week at a gym, you can raid there or something like that. This fixes the driving issue and the spoofer issue with 1 relatively simple fix while also increasing play time. They'd make more money for sure.
Oh, it also gives a reason to do gym battles which have no point anymore.
Bringing in a hint of the real Pokemon games while keeping the Pokemon GO flavor would be awesome.
Oh boy gym battles...Niantic's Gym Motivation Update really changed the game in a ton of ways. Since it's been a while now, do you think it was the right step?
It absolutely was a step in the right direction. There were major game design issues with the old system. First, it did not promote variety, everyone just stacked Blissey or high CP Pokemon. It did not promote gym strength (outside of Blissey stacks) as people would toss in high CP Pokemon. Shaving was a huge problem where eventually even your best Blissey would get shaved out by someone with two accounts and replaced with some easy to defeat Dragonite. Prestiging was a totally broken mechanic, rewarding you for NOT powering up Pokemon. It was also unintuitive and had strange issues with multi-accounters and 0 damage taken mechanics. Bots and spoofers completely took over entire areas of gyms and filled them with boring Pokemon. The new system has far more variety of Pokemon and you can see almost any Pokemon now. There is also somewhat competitive fights for gyms before a raid sometimes. That said there are things that are problematic. Blissey and Golden Razz Berries being the biggest one. Making a gym completely unbreakable before a raid is no fun for either the person giving the berry nor the person doing the attacking. There also is a big issue that attacking a gym does not give any immediate rewards. If I knock down a full gym and put my Blissey in at lunch, it will often get knocked out in less than 5 minutes from some spoofer and I get nothing for all my efforts but some broken and fainted Pokemon.
One last armchair developer question: If you could change one thing about the game right now, what would it be?
Lol can I make it 2 very minor tweaks?
I lied. How about 3. Bump up the type effectiveness from 40% to 50%. Change stamina scaling so Shuckle has more HP and Blissey has less. And the big one. Split out attack and defense stats to quick attack/special attack and quick defense/special defense. This would vastly change the game and make far more Pokemon useful. Bringing in a hint of the real Pokemon games while keeping the Pokemon GO flavor would be awesome. Blissey with a high special defense would be great against high energy producing moves like Fury Cutter but weak to something like Waterfall that has high DPS.
You mentioned you play Pokemon GO with your wife. Were you both Pokemon fans before the game came out?
As I like to tell her, I don't play the game. (It's not really true, I did beat Black and White and I've watched my son play some of the newer games.) I never had a portable device growing up, mostly played other RPGs. So I don't really know any of the Pokemon except the famous ones from the TV show. I do remember most of the names now though, but I have no idea if they were strong or weak in the real games for example. My wife never played the game growing up either. We got started playing in the craze back in July and kept playing as a nice way to spend time exercising together.
She also writes articles and infographics with my help, although she barely needs any help these days. She's quite the apprentice.
Wow, that's great. Do your kids play PoGO as well?
My son doesn't play that much anymore, but he is excited about the upcoming Dratini Community Day. We will go walking somewhere until he has a Dragonite. He also worked really hard on reading the script for our most recent Rayquaza duo contest. I was really proud of him. He used to have a severe speech impediment and he wants to be a youtube star some day. With some more practice and a lot of passion, I think he could do it.
That's amazing, you have quite a talented family! Thanks for your time.
