Pokémon GO has received a new feature at PokéStops. You can move existing Stops and change them in other ways. The feature could become very important for you.
What exactly does the feature do? If a PokéStop is located at a place in your city where it shouldn’t be, like the Brandenburg Gate in Cologne, you can now move it. Of course, you need to provide good reasons, and players at Niantic Wayfarer must agree to it.
However, the system doesn’t seem to be working perfectly yet, as Niantic removed the feature from the game just a few hours later.
This is what the new feature brings for you
You can essentially change everything at the PokéStop. Image, location, or description can be replaced by your submissions. For example, if the image is blurry or the text is incorrect, you can improve it now.
This is particularly interesting: Especially moving the location is interesting. Almost every city will have one or more PokéStops that are located where they don’t belong. You can now correct all of these.
This could result in better places to play. For example, if you move a Stop to a location with many other Stops, you can activate Lure Modules even better there.
This could be a problem: The feature already exists in Ingress and there players have shown what is possible with it. In the Spanish city of Zaragoza, for example, players moved a bunch of Stops right next to each other. This way, you can encounter over 15 PokéStops in one location. Of course, they are not all actually there, but were simply moved there through this feature.
The whole system is only verified by Niantic Wayfarer. A player in a completely different city cannot know if there is a plaque or a nice wall at a certain spot. They then confirm it, which significantly distorts the game.
How accessible is the system? So far, only players at level 40 are allowed to suggest changes. The same requirements apply as for submitting PokéStops and Niantic Wayfarer.
But currently no trainer has access to the feature. Just a few hours after the release, Niantic stopped the new system again. There seem to be a few issues. Once these are resolved, the feature should go live again.
Have you heard about the new Rocket Leaders yet?
