Niantic Labs’ latest mobile game has been a huge hit all over the world, but it’s still far from perfect. For example, Pokemon GO can easily get boring if you decide to play it on a more regular basis once you realize that over half of your encounters are either identical or very, very repetitive. Pidgeys, Rattatas, and Zubats are quite literally all over the place and grinding those experience points can easily become more of a chore than it’s designed to be. Sure, you could simply try to avoid all grinding, but with the recent addition of capture bonuses, a few frequently encountered pocket monsters consequently became even more common.
The San Francisco-based Niantic Labs is aware that a lot of players are sick and tired of encountering Pidgeys, Rattatas, and Zubats which is why the company recently took to Twitter to playfully announce some much-needed changes. More specifically, the Californian firm revealed that “Professor Willow has discovered” the three Pokemon mentioned above will soon be encountered less frequently and other, less common Pokemon will get increased spawn rates to replace them. In addition to that, Niantic Labs announced that it has rolled out a server update which prevents Pidgeys, Rattatas, and Zubats to hatch from Eggs. The said update also modifies the hatch rate of Eevee which can now only be obtained from 5-kilometer Eggs.
As for the mentioned encounter rates changes, it’s to be presumed this change will also be introduced via a server-side update given how a minor tweak such as that one probably won’t require a client update. All in all, it’s great news that Niantic is listening to community feedback and updating its hit mobile game accordingly. Sure, some of the most demanded features and changes are yet to debut in Pokemon GO, but major additions like player-versus-player battles and a comprehensive battle system require time to be properly developed. In the meantime, it’s good that Niantic is at least taking note of smaller community requests and regularly updating Pokemon GO to make it more enjoyable. While the game obviously isn’t as popular as it used to be throughout the Summer, this is still one of the highest grossing mobile games in the world, and if the developers continue with this community-driven approach, there’s no doubt Pokemon GO will stick around for quite some time.