More Rambling About Pokemon GO

Pokemon GO is something I kinda wish I jumped on earlier. But how could I have jumped on the bandwagon when I had no mobile data on my phone plan? It’s only been the last year or so that I’ve had 4G to use, and holy heck I have treated it like a scarce resource. To the point that I genuinely felt bad getting a €6 top up of 250MB. Because I’d used up my 150MB playing Pokemon GO.

Yes, mobile data here is expensive. And free WI-FI areas are few and far between, assuming you can even connect in the first place.

But Pokemon GO isn’t as expensive, data-wise, as I expected. I managed to milk that 150MB for 16 days, with many hours of Pokemon-ing.

Enough of my data though. I got other thinga to ramble about. Like the fact that Pokemon disappear off the face of the planet the second you leave town. Pokemon are clearly going to be more common around Pokestops and Gyms, but they cease to exist after about 5km away from the nearest Pokestop.

But it’s not like there aren’t many monuments or famous places or whatever nearby that could BE Pokestops. The closest village to where I live has not one but two old ancient churches which would be perfect for Pokestops. The same applies to pretty much every village in Cyprus. But noooo, the closest Pokestop to me is the airport. And you can’t go to the airport to catch Pokemon. Some Pokestops don’t even make much sense. One in town is a statue of a buddha in front of a restaurant. Why is THAT a Pokestop when it’s opposite some fucking stone sea baths that have been there for decades?

And then there’s the Pokemon that spawn. There is only one weather condition in Cyprus, and that is sunny. Meaning that I am overrun by fiery dog types. Actually it’s just Growliths and Houndours. With the odd grass type like Cacturn or Rosalia thrown in. I actually see more Cacturns than Rattatas and Pidgeys. I haven’t even SEEN a Caterpie yet but I have three CP1000+ Tropiuses and multiple Houndooms caught in the wild.

I know a lot of it is to do with location. But the city Pokemon don’t spawn in the middle of the city, they spawn on the sea front, sharing space with water and ground Pokemon. Anywhere else, you get the same old set of fire, ground and grass types, with the odd Swablu, Spheal or Magikarp spawning in town at random.

As far as I’m concerned, Growliths control this island. But not Vulpixes. And every raid is a 5 star one that I have no hope of ever completing, even with my high level siblings. I’ve seen one 1 star Charmander when I was level 5, a Mawille and a Donphan. Everything else is Registeel or the new Regirock.

A lot of it is enormous amounts of RNG though. I’ve caught a CP1470 Houndoom with a normal Pokeball and failed to catch a CP20 Charmander with multiple balls. I’ve also had five Pokemon in a row flee after escaping a single Pokeball, including a Rhyhorn I had used an Ultraball and a Razzberry on. Yet I managed to catch a Raid Boss with one ball and a Razzberry, a normal one.

The quality of the throw and what the game assumes is a Nice/Great/Excellent throw seems random sometimes as well. I’ve hit balls dead center and the game’s like “lol nah” and thrown balls completely crooked which somehow manage to count as hits. Don’t get me started on curve balls, I simply can’t do them, and I don’t have enough Pokeballs to practice throwing them.

Pokestops and Gifts don’t always help. They seem insistent on giving me more berries. Probably because Niantic want me to buy Pokeballs with real money.

But that’s what I don’t get. Even if I DID use real money, I can only get normal Pokeballs, which most Pokemon seem to outscale quite quickly. There’s no option to buy Great or Ultra Balls. Really, for a mobile game, the Pokemon GO cash shop is really small. But that’s probably a good thing.

There’s simply so much RNG though that it becomes hard to deal with. A different sort of RNG though. Warframe’s RNG is at least all labelled out for you so you can see what you are getting into, without needing a constant resource like Pokeballs that you can easily run out of. Team Fortress 2’s randomness is mostly team mate-based or completely cosmetic. Pokemon GO’s RNG seems so vast and completely uncomparable to anything else I have played.

The good news though, it’s helping me get out more and do more exercise. That’s awesome, because I’m a lazy, anti-social person who needs to get out more and do more exercise.

I guess no matter how much I rant and ramble, the extra mileage more than makes up for it.