Little Quality of Life Things I Want for Pokemon GO

Over the years, Pokemon GO had been given a lot of little quality of life updates. But after all these years, there is still work to be done. Here are some quality of life changes, or rather, additions I’d like to see.

A way to spin Pokestops with a full bag

Pokestops do two things. They give you items and they give you research tasks. Sometimes, you just want research tasks. However, if your item bag is full, you can’t get research tasks, you need to clear some space out first. This is quite annoying. There’s no real reason to block you from spinning a Pokestop just because your bag is full. And the proof of this is quite simple. You can turn on an option that allows you to open gifts when your item bag is full, and instead you only get stardust. You don’t get a lot of stardust (you only seem to get 50 stardust if the bag would have only contained items) but at least you get something, and you can proceed with friendship progress. The same should apply to Pokestops. Don’t need the stardust, but just getting the research task would be fine.

A way to tap on Pokemon in awkward spots

Once, I had a Galarian Moltres spawn on a Pokestop, next to a bunch of other Pokemon. I proceeded to spend 45 seconds desperately trying to tap on it, only for the bastard to disappear in a puff of smoke. It took me a week and a half before I saw another Galarian Bird. And frankly, I’ve hardly seen them since. They’re rare as heck to even see, let alone catch, and I still haven’t managed to catch any of them. I’ve had similar things happen to surprise spawns, like Smeargle, but at least they don’t disappear after 45 seconds. Sometimes, the only way you can tap on a Pokemon is to catch all the Pokemon around it first.

I don’t really know how you’d fix this, aside from making Pokemon spawn further apart. It’s made worse by the fact that incense spawns either spawn directly at your feet or at a nearby local position, and sometimes that position just happens to be on a Pokestop, where you can’t tap on it.

A way to block items you don’t want

Sometimes, you want a specific item. But spinning Pokestops and gyms always gives something you don’t want. For the Halloween Spiritomb research, I had to spend 102 berries in order to complete a task. That basically drained my supply of pinap berries, and I wanted more. However, as I spun Pokestops, I was constantly just getting normal Pokeballs, when I needed berries. Here, I wish I had some sort of feature that would block me from getting Pokeballs for a bit, so I could restock on berries. Or, alternatively, it’d be nice to have the game auto-delete items when you reach a certain amount. Especially the lower potions and nanab berries. We so rarely need those.

A way to force Team Rocket balloons and spawns

A bug that annoys me a lot is one where a Team Rocket balloon fails to spawn, or all the nearby spawns disappear. Sometimes this can be fixed by restarting the game, but restarting the game is always tedious. And isn’t always guaranteed to work. I’ve had to restart the game multiple times just to get my daily Pokemon to spawn, and it’s not a consistent bug, so I can’t avoid whatever causes it.

Really, this is quite a big ask. I’m basically requesting a way to troubleshoot the game without having to close it. But surely the ability to just refresh things isn’t too huge?

Anyway, I doubt any of these requests would be added, but it’s good to dream…