Featured image credit: PA Images & Twitter/Pokémon GO News
It's here lads. If you know any Pokéhunters, you'll probably be able to tell from the looks on their faces. The update is massive, so I doubt they will be able to contain their excitement.
Pokémon Go players have been racing out the door since they saw that Niantic has rolled out a new 'nearby' fix called 'Sightings', which is supposed to make wild Pokémon trackable again.
After being tested among a smaller subset of users, it has now been rolled out to everyone, with a more specific fix being tested in San Francisco right now.
The new system that has been put in place allows you to see nearby Pokémon and actually walk around and find them. It's a significant upgrade from the zero and all-three-footprint systems users have suffered through for the past few weeks. And it well may be the fix fans are looking for.
But what does all this mean? Well...
- The new system replaces the nearby system altogether. There's a new graphic where Pokémon appear by a little tuft of grass, with the list changing periodically due to spawns and despawns.
- The new system works by 'pulsing' the area every 10 seconds. This will refresh the list to show new Pokémon, depending on what's spawned around you, and you can actually use the list to track specific things.
- To 'track' Pokémon, you walk in a certain direction. If the Pokémon stays on your 'Sightings' screen, keep going. When it disappears, go back a bit until it returns, then go left or right. If it stays there, keep going. If it disappears, turn around and walk the other way. Using the method you can bag the monster you want.
- The radius is now little smaller than the old three-footprint system, which could be because it's taking away Pokémon on the list more frequently, and accurate despawns (both time and location based) go a long way to making this tracking system actually work.
- Unlike the original footstep tracking system, the order of these Pokémon on the grid does not seem to matter. They shift around as you move. However, it doesn't look like the top left slot of the grid means they're closer. Basically, you can track Pokémon again. It's not perfect, but it seems to work a lot better.
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- Sadly there are still some bugs. Sometimes the entire 'Sightings' list goes blank, but luckily it usually fixes itself after another 10 second pulse. The same Pokémon usually show up, but their order's jumbled.
- Also Niantic has removed all the 'rustling grass' from the map, which is good news because a lot of users were finding the grass system confusing.
All of this is great news for players of the game. I bet you can't all wait to get out of your mum's basements and play the game some more.
Words by James Dawson
