The Sneakiness of Niantic With POKEMON-GO And Your Wallet

This is more an observation piece than a complaint. If it were a complaint, I'd quit playing altogether instead of having toned it down quite a bit like I have.

So here we are, a few months into this latest video game craze of Pokemon-Go. Niantic is still making approximately a $million a day off the game and they're adding new and "better" ways to make more money for themselves.

They've restricted the game to a very very slow walking speed for being able to do certain things, so this eliminates seriously stupid people and most adults with a life.

This leaves the kids with allowances and nowhere to spend them. And to be fair, I do recognize that this is primarily a pay-to-win game.

So what do we have now-a-days?

They've recently added new "baby" Pokemon to the cadre of critters, but you have to hatch them, if you get an egg with one of them in it. That means we need more incubators and how are you gong to level them up if they don't occur in the wild? $

Having new Pokemon in the egg wild is great, but it seems not many folks are hatching these new Pokemom. Keep chasing eggs and hatching things. That needs more incubators. Of course Niantic is giving out incubators for the holiday season. Then what? $$

In recent weeks, PokeStops are dispensing fewer items overall. But in addition, Niantic has made it so more Pokemon are spawning in the wild. Which in turn, has players burning through their Pokeballs faster. $$$


Then there was that Ditto craze, where Niantic pushed everyone to go catch everything they can to see if they can catch a Ditto. (Ditto does not appear as a Ditto, but rather, as a Pidgey, Rattata, Zubat and a few others, but once you catch it, it changes.)

First off, Ditto SUCKS as a fighting dog. Period. Second, telling everyone to go out and catch everything they can will have them go through their Pokeballs much faster. $$$$

And it was right after this Ditto craze, I conjecture, where I think they noticed that as people burn through their balls, they buy more, since they're not getting enough out of the Pokestops. 

And the game changed right after that with more wild inventory and fewer things being spun out of stops. 

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But you can still play Pokemon Go and save your money doing it.

For one, I learned a long time ago that if you can't catch a Pokemon in three or four balls, you probably won't. Conducting random experiments, I noticed that sometimes, after 20 or even 30 balls (plus razz berries) tossed at a creature, IT IS NOT CATCHABLE.

I learned to save my balls in Pokemon Go.

1 - I've become very careful where or how often I throw my balls around or at! With any creature encountered, I will only throw three, maybe four basic balls at anything. If I can't catch it with three, I step off! This includes if they jump over my shot, knock it away or break out of the ball.

If it's a creature I really want, I will step my game up instantly to a Razz Berry and use one of my Great Balls or Ultra Balls.

An interesting conflict I see enough for it to be annoying is that the monsters with red rings, turn out to be shit after you run your appraisals on them, while sometimes the green ring monsters are pretty cool.

If anything, I'd expect the red ringed monsters to be kick ass contenders.

Don't waste time... because sometimes these things will run from you. I've been finding all my Abras lately will run after one shot.

2 - Another reason I limit throwing my balls around:

Another reason that has me glaring at Niantic is how my red balls can sometimes barely catch a 10 CP monster, yet on multiple occasions, I've caught a 1400 CP monster in one throw with them. And those monsters had red rings. WTF people?

3 - Be selective in what you catch with your balls

I have certain beasts I will go after and walk right on by everything else. I learned not to touch Onix. They're useless. But I do go after most Pidgey's for the easy level-up help they provide.

I've also noticed that flying monsters, EVEN if you're standing right on top of them, when you go to catch them, appear in your throwing screen pretty far off. And sometimes too far off for my Pokeball toss to even hit. So I ditch even trying more than one shot at these guys.

4 - Don't waste time with more than one gym take-over per day.

Unless you are feeling especially assholey, why bother tackling gyms more than once a day? Why? You only get 10 coin for every take over, per day.  ADDENDUM... something just happened today where I got credit for two gyms at once! I think I'll have to look into this a bit more.

5 - Skip catching monsters.

Once every few weeks, no matter how frugal I am with my balls, I still find myself running out.

I don't mind running out of basic balls. And using great balls makes catching Pidgey's a bit easier. But it feels downright insulting when your inventory is so low that you're using your ultra balls on 10 CP Pidgey's where some of them even still manage to "jump" over your shot.

Frack that.

6 - If you feel like you're wasting time...

Since Niantic turned off being able to interact with Pokestops over a certain speed, IE: screw you on trains, buses or who are living in frozen wintery locations, and you just don't have the time to dedicate, then blow it off. Spend whole days ONLY spinning whatever stops you come across and ignore the monsters. Then on another day, chase the monsters that only interest you.

otherwise, if you're feeling left out by all the over abundance of wild monsters and the lack of tools and support, then download a nice solitaire game and break the monotony. Or just dump the game. They only want players with money, not the cheap ducks like myself who only buy incubators after 15 - 20 days of taking over gyms.

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