In Pokémon GO, there has been confusion in recent days regarding an adjustment of the catch radius. Now, Game Director Michael Steranka has commented on the matter.
What is the problem? In the course of an update to Pokémon GO, players noticed that the radius of the circle in which Pokémon can be caught suddenly became much larger. This meant: Much more Pokémon could be found and caught.
- First, trainers noticed the change and were happy, but unsure if this was intentional
- Then several content creators around Pokémon GO shared the news that Niantic confirmed the change was intended. Accordingly, it seemed, as if the catch radius would remain and community morale rose
- But then the turnaround came, and Niantic support explained that it was indeed a mistake that would disappear
This caused frustration among many players who criticized that Niantic would reverse such a positively appearing change after it briefly even seemed confirmed as intentional.
Now Game Director Michael Steranka has spoken out in an interview and explained what actually happened and how the topic is supposed to proceed.
What Michael Steranka from Pokémon GO says about the situation
Michael Steranka is the Game Director of Pokémon GO at Niantic and has previously commented on controversial topics within the community.
In a conversation on “The Battle Catz Podcast,” he now spoke about various topics. You can find the entire two-hour video here:
What Steranka says about the radius: Steranka describes the situation as very frustrating
, even for Niantic internally, because it overall was a miscommunication.
We definitely saw a lot of positive feedback from players when it was rolled out globally. I think one of the biggest sticking points was that we mistakenly confirmed to our content creator group that this was an intended outcome, and so it had already spread within the community, which is probably one of the unluckiest points. Honestly, it comes down to pretty bad internal miscommunication within Niantic.
Actually, a developer in the team planned to fix a bug that caused Pokémon to completely despawn when moving away from them. If you went back, they wouldn’t appear again, and some players lost catches this way.
A developer on the team really wanted to fix that and provide players with a smooth experience. We had a number of people writing to us that they were frustrated about this
, said Steranka: And as part of this fix, the encounter radius of the Pokémon was significantly increased.
This ultimately also led to miscommunication with the creators, according to Steranka. The intended change referred to this bug fix, but not the radius.
Why didn’t the change simply stay in the game? Steranka emphasizes that they noticed the positive reaction. But they don’t want to handle such a significant change casually:
We definitely saw a lot of positive responses from players, and that is something we want to consider in the development of the game. But beyond that, this radius was itself associated with some unintended bugs in the game. You probably saw some people talking about how it negatively impacts the Go-Plus experience, where it sort of stalls and misses some things in the outer areas. And that is something where, when we make a big change like this, we want it to be intentional, and we want to design it and ensure it runs smoothly.
This does not necessarily mean that the increased radius will come back into the game – but they want to take a closer look at the topic.
What I can say is that we will include player feedback. We really want to test things and make sure it’s the optimal experience
, said Steranka.
He also explains that Niantic has to cater to multiple player groups. For experienced and very active players, who he believes share a lot of criticism on Twitter and elsewhere, it is ideal to see and catch as many monsters at once as possible.
But: For a new player, that can be a bit overwhelming, right?
, said Steranka: You open the game and see 50 different Pokémon around you and wonder what this is, what you should tap, what you should do, and so there is always this difficult balance that we need to find.
In such decisions, Niantic needs to find the right balance: I don’t want the impression to arise that ‘Michael promises they will bring this change back’
, emphasizes Steranka: But I can promise that we will take a look at it and assess the intended and unintended effects to make the right decision based on these results.
So the change does not seem entirely off the table. It remains to be seen how the topic will develop further. We will keep you updated as always.
Otherwise, a new event has begun in Pokémon GO. You can find all the information about the Dark Flames event here.
