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Pokémon GO

RocketSurgery said:
they are doing it because the location data they gather by forcing people back outside is far more valuable to them
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... How? Like, what information data, or rather what new information data, will they get from people going back outside to play and likely just going around through a daily routine?

"They sell that data to advertisers to know what ads to show you"

Okay, but once again, unless you're a person who purposely tries to find new routes doing daily exercise each day (not sure if that effects which Pokemon appears unless you go far away enough), like, shouldn't they already have all the location data about you already? They know where you live and your usual routes, so they know what big box store ads to show you (though I personally never understood how reminding you of stores you pass by or are near makes you want to go into them; I go into a store when I need something).

Also, once they know where you live, they can just use Google maps or another map service to know whatever else they want about the area.
 
Pikachu315111 said:
... How? Like, what information data, or rather what new information data, will they get from people going back outside to play and likely just going around through a daily routine?

"They sell that data to advertisers to know what ads to show you"

Okay, but once again, unless you're a person who purposely tries to find new routes doing daily exercise each day (not sure if that effects which Pokemon appears unless you go far away enough), like, shouldn't they already have all the location data about you already? They know where you live and your usual routes, so they know what big box store ads to show you (though I personally never understood how reminding you of stores you pass by or are near makes you want to go into them; I go into a store when I need something).

Also, once they know where you live, they can just use Google maps or another map service to know whatever else they want about the area.
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I'm just going to make a blanket assumption that different companies use different location data that occurs with different people at different times of day. Basically even with the same person they can always find some use for up to date data of a given area.
 
R_N said:
I'm just going to make a blanket assumption that different companies use different location data that occurs with different people at different times of day. Basically even with the same person they can always find some use for up to date data of a given area.
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So you answered my question to the claim... with just restating the claim.

"They'll somehow use the data"
How?
"Somehow that's how"

Now, am I saying you're wrong? No, I just don't see how this data can be useful that you can't just use non-tracking data for.

BTW I am against Niantic's decision; I mean how dare people want to enjoy the game they made of their favorite franchise from the comfort of their own home, especially those with social anxieties and disabilities! What I am objecting to is that I can completely believe creators will do dumb decisions in the sake of their "vision". They get so invested in an idea, a perfect picture in their head, that when they see other people doing something contrary to that vision they do whatever they can to stop it and force people back into their vision.
 
Pikachu315111 said:
So you answered my question to the claim... with just restating the claim.

"They'll somehow use the data"
How?
"Somehow that's how"

Now, am I saying you're wrong? No, I just don't see how this data can be useful that you can't just use non-tracking data for.
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This explains it better than I can:

Location data can be used by large business to determine the number and frequency of a certain age demographic visiting their business. Those business can compare their own data with the game data to corroborate patterns, plan events and offers, search for areas they're lacking and overall find ways to convince you, the consumer, that their product is worth buying without having to use any sort of advertising.

Niantic can have an agreement with a large company like Starbucks to sell them the data of how many players visit their stores, for how long, what ages they are, which ones use the WiFi and which ones use cell data, what days have more visitors and what stores get more time on each. All this without revealing which player went where.

That's the trick. Location data becomes anonymous data when it's bunched together with the data of other users without having names or identifiers attached. For example you can say that 100 players went to a certain park at 6 pm and 17 walked together for one hour across a certain path. You can say that all were on the range of 16 to 30 years and half of them were male. This is well within the terms you agreed when you allowed location tracking.

This reveals nothing about the personal data of anyone specifically, and you cannot even know for sure if you're one of these people, but for a business this is more than enough to determine the type of person walking near their kiosk that was 50 meters from where they passed, make changes to the staff, looks or even marketing and plan ways to attract that kind of person there because that's the most likely client in the area.

So big companies use your most generic data as a baseline to increase their sales, and thanks to Niantic along many other apps they get a very clear picture of what happens around their business without having to make any in-person interviews like they did in the past.
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...while this discussion (though 4 years old) gives a good breakdown of how player activity is divided up and collected.
 
In addition to the specific things like relationships with sponsors and wanting to be able to a) demonstrate that the sponsors are getting bang for their buck and b) influence consumer behavior, there are a few other things that Niantic almost certainly uses player data for.

Niantic doesn't just want data about where we are so that they can sell it to advertisers, they also want us to gather data for them at real-world locations to help develop their Augmented Reality (AR) tech -- that's Niantic's real vision that they might be willing to sacrifice some short-term profit for. One of the things Niantic introduced to the game a year or two ago was AR scanning of Pokestops: getting players to do panoramic scans of the area around a Pokestop. I never do this, so I don't know if you get diminishing returns from scanning a specific Pokestop repeatedly, but there are a lot of Pokestops to be scanned (and they probably want multiple people to scan the same Pokestop as a form of checking for reliability). And to get this data efficiently, they need people to go explore more than they have been doing.

Another thing I would expect Niantic to want to do with the data, although this is more speculative, is observe what kinds of impacts Covid and lockdowns had on communities. This was a gigantic perturbation to the game, and by forcing players en mass to coordinate in real-life again Niantic could potentially study whether old communities reform or how new communities develop. TrainerTips also claimed that Niantic's position if lots of players abandon the game because of this is that they would put their marketing budget towards attracting new players into the game, which would provide new data about people and their daily routines, how these new players' behavior differs from early adopters, etc., all going into the data grinder they already have set up.
 
QuentinQuonce said:
This explains it better than I can:

...while this discussion (though 4 years old) gives a good breakdown of how player activity is divided up and collected.
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Right, I forget we're in late stage capitalism where businesses are perfectly fine spending a lot of money to get info that some common sense would have led to the same conclusion. Though I'd still argue I don't think this is going to go the way the businesses think it's going to work. Like, okay, maybe you'll increase sales a bit, particularly eateries, but I feel most people sort of already have their day planned and it doesn't matter how much you advertise to them, they'll just keep going on with their day as planned.

RocketSurgery said:
Niantic doesn't just want data about where we are so that they can sell it to advertisers, they also want us to gather data for them at real-world locations to help develop their Augmented Reality (AR) tech -- that's Niantic's real vision that they might be willing to sacrifice some short-term profit for. One of the things Niantic introduced to the game a year or two ago was AR scanning of Pokestops: getting players to do panoramic scans of the area around a Pokestop. I never do this, so I don't know if you get diminishing returns from scanning a specific Pokestop repeatedly, but there are a lot of Pokestops to be scanned (and they probably want multiple people to scan the same Pokestop as a form of checking for reliability). And to get this data efficiently, they need people to go explore more than they have been doing.

Another thing I would expect Niantic to want to do with the data, although this is more speculative, is observe what kinds of impacts Covid and lockdowns had on communities. This was a gigantic perturbation to the game, and by forcing players en mass to coordinate in real-life again Niantic could potentially study whether old communities reform or how new communities develop. TrainerTips also claimed that Niantic's position if lots of players abandon the game because of this is that they would put their marketing budget towards attracting new players into the game, which would provide new data about people and their daily routines, how these new players' behavior differs from early adopters, etc., all going into the data grinder they already have set up.
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Alright, I think we have the answer here!
 
Pikachu315111 said:
Right, I forget we're in late stage capitalism where businesses are perfectly fine spending a lot of money to get info that some common sense would have led to the same conclusion. Though I'd still argue I don't think this is going to go the way the businesses think it's going to work. Like, okay, maybe you'll increase sales a bit, particularly eateries, but I feel most people sort of already have their day planned and it doesn't matter how much you advertise to them, they'll just keep going on with their day as planned.



Alright, I think we have the answer here!
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Eh, i think you do underestimate how much this kind of stuff actually sways sales.

My former company developed the system that works with the Juventus store here in Milan. Their system would do things comparable to what was stated above, use phone mcaddresses and some degree of facial recognition to track what kind of people stay around, how long they stop on a given advertisement, which stores they'd visit, etc.
While it's all completely anonimous, being able to recognize that es "30ish year old males are not attracted to swimsuit commercials but will stay to watch a soccer one and 70% of the time check the nearest store" allows you to develop pseudo AIs that change the spot shown on the advertisement columns based on the sex / age of the people approaching, and getting them more likely to check out the store while they wouldnt have before.
It seems like "common sense", but having this done by automations allows to have these also dynamically update the system and priorities on the fly based on current trends, saving you from investing more human resources.

Tldr: this kind of data is way more valuable than it looks on first glance.
 
I haven't done any remote raids since the nerf so sorry if I'm not joining any invites sent my way. Waiting until there's a new boss I'd be interested in raiding for. Between my account and an alt we've been successfully completing Landorus raids with best ice types. Rock Throw and Focus Blast can be challenging and still have managed to complete the raids with some time to spare. I'll likely use the coins I've been saving towards item and Pokemon storage increase and any deals in the shop that are worthwhile. I keep hoping for a return of 3 remote raid passes for 250 coins but that is just wishful thinking at this point.
 
Expert Evan said:
I haven't done any remote raids since the nerf so sorry if I'm not joining any invites sent my way. Waiting until there's a new boss I'd be interested in raiding for. Between my account and an alt we've been successfully completing Landorus raids with best ice types. Rock Throw and Focus Blast can be challenging and still have managed to complete the raids with some time to spare. I'll likely use the coins I've been saving towards item and Pokemon storage increase and any deals in the shop that are worthwhile. I keep hoping for a return of 3 remote raid passes for 250 coins but that is just wishful thinking at this point.
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Yeah it's ironic that they chose now to drop this given that raids are so dull. Usually when the raid boss isn't one I'm interested in (which is the case with Landorus) I focus on something else, but literally nothing in the pool atm excites me that much. I did a Nidoqueen yesterday morning, but only because it was right in front of me and I'd just picked up a "win a level 3 or higher raid" task.

Yesterday was the most I've played in about a month: a friend who doesn't live in my city any more came down for the weekend so I joined him and some others to walk around the park. Caught so many Togetic that I ended up with over 1000 XL candy. Also coming up on 16 million stardust! We didn't see a lot of other players until the event was actually over but a bunch of people put golden lures up on the stops and suddenly the place was full of people playing the game. It's nice that there's something that can still get people out I guess.

The other cool thing was that during comm day there appeared to be guaranteed XL candy for all trades. I hadn't seen that bonus announced and I've been hoarding Pokemon recently since I like trading useful species between my accounts but prefer to get XL from trading when I can. Axew for instance has been slightly more common recently and I want to get as much candy for it as I can (even if, as commonly assumed, it will have a community day itself in a couple of months). So that was nice as it allowed me to clear out a fair bit of my storage.
 
QuentinQuonce said:
given that raids are so dull
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This, but again

1681717975510.png
 
QuentinQuonce said:
This, but again

View attachment 508398
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At least Tapu Fini I could send to my Home Dex roster.

It also annoys me a bit that they put Pokemon with decent PVP niches but little PVE utility in raids like Victreebel and Stunky, since the 10/10/10 floor is actively counter to a good PVP spread for most Pokemon (Hatch-only Mons like Stunfisk or Togekiss have the same issue unless you get lucky during very rare events or something like the CD).

Also I wish they'd do something to vary up the event bonuses again.
  • Maybe 2 in-person passes per day for a while to push their vision for non-Remote Raiding
  • How about 2k Eggs with PvP relevant Pokemon again (if only for Candy since PvP building can be expensive)?
  • What about increasing the Daily Coin Limit for a time to encourage more Gym play?
  • Maybe reduced cost on unlocking second moves in PvP to encourage hunting for specimens you don't have yet?
  • Could Raids can drop Elite TMs or other Valuables if done in person for Legacy Moves (to help people build raid teams to go out and find groups)? The XL candy is one benefit, but not noticeable enough to make people actively travel for raids enough that they'll encounter groups.
Part of what's making the game so boring right now is that on top of all-stick/no-carrot, the Carrot is also just the same thing they do over and over again with no particular group in mind: Is this supposed to encourage early adopters to get up on par with existing players so they increase; are they trying to keep hardcore raiders raiding so they'll encourage new players to join and learn/be carried by them; do they want people to play PvP more to increase engagement in another "Multiple Players" mode? I don't know what their overall goal is or how these measure do anything to help them achieve it that they weren't already doing before.
 
I wish pvp had just done an auto-raise/reduction scheme in which max ivs were optimal. Keeping mons with good pvp spreads just adds to the storage bloat.

In terms of ways to energize the game, a solution I'd love to see, but depends entirely on TPC, would be the release of several lines of new regular mons into the game before they are available in the DLC (or a new game). This would partly solve the problem that GO has essentially caught up to the main series. Meltan and Melmetal were cool, but were only teased before Let's GO came out, and roaming gimmighoul feels pretty pointless since outside of getting Gholdengo in GO it will only provide a collector's item to SV once HOME connectivity is rolled out. Having several new mons released in GO first would definitely drive some interest in the game, and they could still hold back some features of these "preview mons" like evolutions or forms until the DLC/main game is released.

Now, this isn't going to be a perfect solution since people will eventually just catch all the new stuff and have to wait around again, but it would at least be an occasional bolus of excitement ahead of new game releases (especially if those mons are useful in GO's competitive scene).

Bigger picture and longer term, Niantic and TPC need to keep coming up with groundbreaking new features that will be engaging without a consistent flow of new mons into the game. Otherwise it's just going to be more and more costumes until Niantic finally extinguishes the last of the playerbase's patience. Could we interest anyone in a Rayquaza wearing a bowtie?
 
May events have been announced:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1650545337885503491

Just my luck, the nerf to remote raid passes is going to bother me extra hard because shiny genesect is finally going to be available again and naturally it will only be in raids the one week I am traveling for work. :/

(Assuming, of course, that Niantic doesn't discretely change the announcement when the event starts because they didn't mean to release shiny genesect shock drive yet).
 
RocketSurgery said:
May events have been announced:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1650545337885503491

Just my luck, the nerf to remote raid passes is going to bother me extra hard because shiny genesect is finally going to be available again and naturally it will only be in raids the one week I am traveling for work. :/

(Assuming, of course, that Niantic doesn't discretely change the announcement when the event starts because they didn't mean to release shiny genesect shock drive yet).
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Raid day I'm presuming will be Hisuian Lilligant (also lmao, just realised it's on the same day as the King's coronation)... and finally a couple of poison-type spotlights so I can evolve the level 1 shiny G-Slowpoke I caught on comm day, yay!

Assuming comm day this month will be Fennekin. Having reached 296 XLs for it a while ago and obtained a lucky hundo months back, that'll be a fairly quick one for me - catch a couple of shinies, and done. That said, Delphox is a banger of a shiny so maybe it's worth playing the full thing...
 
Most exciting thing on this list for me is Tapu Fini to try and roll for my UL team and a Shiny, plus my Home Dex. Second place after that is the Double Transfer Candy Bellsprout Spotlight, since I want to power up a Shadow Victreebel and also a good time to offload a bunch of my Stunfisk from Yesterday for more candy (Hundo BB for UL is expensive).
 
Niantic: Go Fest 2023 is happening! We're doing in-person events in London and Osaka the weekend of August 4th, and New York the weekend of the 18th, with a global event on the weekend of the 26th!

Me: Ugh, of course the London event is happening on a weekend I'm not in London

Niantic: The in-person event costs £27 minimum!

Me: Yeah, never mind

Looks like Diancie will be the featured mythical this year, as I predicted (not a hard guess, tbf). Expect they'll do it similarly to last year's, with people able to get Diancie at the in-person events and then the global event possibly unlocking the Mega Evolution. Not massively excited yet though.
 
Even though New York is just a train ride for me to get to, I'm unlikely to buy a ticket just to attend as I have other priorities needed at this time.
 
RocketSurgery said:
Welp, with the GO fest mythical being Diance I guess I will once again have to hope they pull a Hoopa and release Marshadow as part of the Fall Season theme leading up to Halloween.
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I'd say Marshadow seems more likely to debut in a future Go Fest but given the way they wasted Keldeo's debut (still think it should have had its own season like Cosmog and Hoopa), anything's possible.
 
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