While Pokemon GO is still enjoying tremendous popularity among mobile gamers, one of the most common complaints about Niantic Labs’ latest mobile game has been directed at the fact that it’s rather simple. Well, the San Francisco-based developer heard your complaints and has started the process of implementing more complex systems into Pokemon GO. The latest update, version 0.35.0 has begun rolling out on the Play Store yesterday and should be available worldwide by midnight.
The most notable inclusion in this update is the so-called Pokemon Appraisal system. It’s basically a way for the game to tell you which one of your captured pocket monsters has the highest battle potential. To put it more simply, even though you may capture two similar Pokemon, one of them will have higher individual values (IVs) than the other one, meaning that one will end up having a more powerful final form than the other one. Some dedicated Pokemon GO players and developers already came up with numerous useful IV calculators but as Niantic isn’t too happy about people using third-party services to play its game, the studio came up with its own mechanics to let players differentiate between potentially great and not-so-great pocket monsters. What that means is that you’ll be able to learn more about your Pokemon stats by speaking to your Team Leader – Blanche, Candela, or Spark.
This may not seem like much if you’re a casual Pokemon GO player, but competitive individuals will definitely appreciate the fact that they can now strategize with their evolutions withing the game itself without having to constantly check other apps or websites. Update 0.35.0 also brings some minor bug fixes to the game and—interestingly enough—its change log states that Niantic is still “working hard on several new and exciting features to come in the future”. While this isn’t particularly big news by itself, developers usually keep change logs reserved for larger changes and bug fixes. So, the fact that Niantic took this opportunity to remind us more awesome stuff is coming soon means that more awesome stuff could be coming sooner than expected. Of course, this primarily concerns the much-requested Pokemon trading system but there’s no doubt that the San Francisco developer has more major features in development.