Are you satisfied with how Niantic is handling non Ultra friend tier PvP?
It’s not about being antisocial at all, it`s about the inconvenience about how the devs chose to implement PvP outside of Ultra/Best Friends tier. I have no problem raiding with strangers,first of all Niantic expects you to identify unknown trainers on the street or by stalking gyms to challenge them which will make a lot of players nervous and spooked out!
Second of all raiding in PoGo is not similar to MMOs because there is no chat system build into the game to attract and form parties without the need of physical contact hence MY POINT of not liking the part where the developer puts me to “Hunt” players In Real Life that I’m not friends with if I want to PvP other ppl then the same few friends that will use the same team each time after a while.
And third of all leaving a chat system out of this, wouldn’t it have been better to put yourself willingly available for challenges for nearby trainers and have a text come in for you with “a challenger has arrived “ or “you have been challenged by trainerX”, rather then you stalking people, scaring them and intimidating them with your presence and potentially bothering them for PvP which they might not even enjoy? Not every trainer will enjoy PvP and so trying to find and challenge non ultra tier friends will be very difficult, inconvenient.
Just curious what other players think.
Answers
You use the word stalking way too much to describe saying hi to random people standing near gyms waiting for the same raid to hatch as you. When this game first came out the best way I could describe was massively-singular. Taking over and powering up gyms affected other players but you couldn't interact with anyone directly. Raids, trading, and now PVP give people the opportunity to interact and play the game with everyone around and that's really cool. Unfortunately some people are not comfortable with interacting with total strangers. But these features, trading and PVP, are something that a lot of people here have been looking forward to.
The main way I can see it play out is I'll walk up to a gym, maybe there is 5 minutes till a raid starts. Someone is already there sitting against a wall.
Me: hi
Them: yo.
Brief pause
Them: wanna battle?
I shrug my shoulders: sure
That's all it has to be. Most people in my city have organized groups in various sizes so they will mostly be battling between themselves.
TL/DR don't sweat it it's just a game and we've gotten this far without pvp
Chill down mate, I used the words Hunt just once to express the process of initiating PvP outside of Ultra Friend tier, while "stalking" was used twice; once for stalking gyms cuz where else you gonna find new people and 2nd for stalking people because you have to identify them from afar.
I don`t get why are you so angry I only wanted an easier way to initiate PvP and less time consuming to get to the action
The lack of a chat system in Go builds toxic communities. Trading increased the toxicity level in discords with the "hunting" and "stalking" of players, PVP will only add to it. My buddy was permanent banned because the admin had a trading request so they could get 740k xp in one egg. He didn't look at it that day "busy with work and kids" and when he checked discord the next day he was kicked.
I don't see myself being interested in battling with random people so I don't personally see any problem here. Most players of my own team that I'd want to fight with in my city I'm already UF or BF with and I can start working on the pvp actives of other teams with my remaining 100 friend slots once I find out who they are. Tournaments will likely have to be in-person anyway.
Granted, I live in a fairly safe country, but to me it seems you're making way bigger of a deal about talking to another person who might be playing pokemon than what I've found it to be. We value our personal space where I'm from but still there are safe and acceptable ways of addressing an adult stranger to ask whether they also play. People walk up to raids all the time and ask the other people standing around whether they also play. If they don't, they ignore it. In the future, if they play but don't want pvp, they'll ignore it or maybe mumble something about not being interested while they continue staring at their phones.
I mean, I'm not an unsightly person whose mere presence scares other people so this isn't an issue. If I'm at a raid or whatever and see someone else nearby on their phone it would probably go one of two ways:
#1:
Me: Playing Pokemon?
Them: Yeah
M: Wanna battle after this raid?
T: Sure/No
#2:
Me: Playing Pokemon?
Them: ...What?
M: Never mind
My disappointment stems from lack of Niantic-generated tournaments.
I was hoping PvP would include tournaments or a ranked League. Not simply be something to do with your friends.
There will still be such leagues, but you'll have to fight in person for them and they'll be managed by third parties. Having in game tournaments with large Stardust/rare candy rewards would makes PvP crazy. Maybe even releasing Arceus as a reward for winning your first tournament would surely be a way to get people always entering.
They might be planning just this. But I suspect they want to roll out PvP first, make sure it works, tweak the interface, and give it more gaming options (tap-swipe battling gets old fast, it would be like having a coin flipping tournament; single elimination, based on a single coin toss). Let's take this one step at a time.
I for one am very excited about what Mr.ex-777 will say about PvP. Should give me a chuckle.
I will say that an In-Game chat system is really necessary both for raids and PVP.
Many Discords/Facebooks/etc were set up by cheaters. The person who scanned an area ran a discord.
Even the ones not set off by cheaters, once they reach a certain size the person who is the moderator gets extreme amount of power.
As such the moderator of a local facebook/discord can simply kick off people making them a min-dictator.
Sure, they can't be super dictator in the sense that if everyone leaves or sets up thier own, they lose their kingdom. .....
But inertia is a powerful force. It's hard to convince a large player group to leave and lose contact with others because the person in charge is a mini-dictator. Worse, the chance is the person setting up the alternate chat is also a mini-dictator and just wants to set up their own kingdom.
I think you are making a basic mistake of viewing Pokémon as a classical mmorpg you play at home that is only about what happens on the screen. Pokémon Go is a game that is about playing Pokémon in the real world, so naturally you need to talk with real people in the real world in order to communicate with nearby players. It makes sense that you need to meet in real life in order to battle because the real world is the world of the game your real life self is the character you play. Real life gaming is the entire point of Pokémon Go, if it wasn't for that we could just stick with the main games for convenient screen only online play.