Pokemon Go Suggestion; Fix To Limited Pokestops?

[TickleMehElmo]

Hey guys! So I've only been playing Pokemon go for a few days now, waited for everything to calm down a bit before I joined. But I"m already realizing that I probably won't be able to keep playing for long, as I'm sure many people outside of cities are realizing too. Without the tons of pokestops that cities provide, we run out of pokeballs! I live in the suburbs and there's only 1 pokestop within a 10-mile radius of my house, which usually only drops 1 pokeball. Pretty sad.

So, if there are limited pokestops near you, the options are;
1) Buy Pokeballs. (Gets expensive, not practical for us on limited resources)
2) Drive to the city (Time consuming, only have time to do so often, not practical consistently)
3) Camp at a pokestop for an hour or so, constantly refreshing it to get pokeballs. This, to me, defeats the purpose of the game, as it encourages us to stop instead of GO, not to mention being a huge time-waster, and depending on where your pokestop is, may not be a good idea.
4) Stop Playing.

At first, of course, I thought that they should just add a ton more pokestops, but that's difficult to do without putting them in inappropriate places. So, I had a thought, and of course I'm just brainstorming, but what if pokestops dropped more or less items based on how many pokestops are around it? So a remote pokestop, where there are little to no other pokestops around, would drop a good amount of pokeballs, whereas ones where there are many others around would drop less. To balance this out they would have to lengthen the refresh time on stops quite a bit, but I think this could fix a lot of problems, and make it possible for people outside of cities to consistently play. Plus I think this encourages people to keep moving from pokestop to pokestop, which is what the game is all about.

Of course for now they need to focus on fixing the issues with the game right now, and there are many things that people are suggesting they add/fix, but I'd just like to know what you guys think of this idea

 

[TickleMehElmo]

As stated in my post, my pokestop generally generates 1-2 pokeballs for 5 minutes. It would take a LONG time of sitting there to get enough pokeballs to use. Probably at least a good hour. Which is a huge time waster, boring. (Maybe better if I used some lures while waiting, but still, I don't always have that much time) Not to mention other problems with it. Example: My Pokestop is outside a gas-station which does not take kindly to people camping out in their parking lot at night. (I have to play at night)
It's a struggle ;x

Oh and (Sorry to double-post, forgot to add this) They stopped taking requests for new pokestops awhile ago because of the overwhelming amount they got, so that's not an option anymore

 

[CoalCraft]

I'd agree with a system where a stop's drops are higher the greater the distance to the nearest pokestop, but I don't think the refresh rate needs to be higher; they already refresh after 5 mins.

So...

Yes to drops depending on distance to other stops
No to higher refresh rates.

 

[TickleMehElmo]

I just think that if this system were put in place, it would be really, really easy to sort of "cheat" the system without making the refresh rate higher. IE; find a pokestop in the middle of nowhere that drops a ton of pokeballs/items, stay there for 20 minutes constantly refreshing it, be set for weeks without having to come back. It's just a way of balancing it. And besides, if they dropped a reasonable amount of items, you wouldn't need to sit and refresh them so often, so I don't think it would be a big issue. Plus it keeps people moving which is nice I think. But I don't know, that's just how I see it, I'm sure it has it's fair amount of problems

 

[CoalCraft]

I just think that if this system were put in place, it would be really, really easy to sort of "cheat" the system without making the refresh rate higher. IE; find a pokestop in the middle of nowhere that drops a ton of pokeballs/items, stay there for 20 minutes constantly refreshing it, be set for weeks without having to come back. It's just a way of balancing it. And besides, if they dropped a reasonable amount of items, you wouldn't need to sit and refresh them so often, so I don't think it would be a big issue. Plus it keeps people moving which is nice I think. But I don't know, that's just how I see it, I'm sure it has it's fair amount of problems

Oh, I thought you were advocating making the pokestops refresh more often, not less. Yes, I can see the logic in lowering the rate at which they refresh (i.e. make them refresh less often), again in proportion to how far it is from other stops, and ergo how good its rewards are.

 

[jiipee95]

Well I have a bunch of Pokestops near but besides those 5 there's not really anything close. Makes it a bit frustrating to go and move further cause there's no pokestops (or not many Pokemon either). Basically one day I went for a 6km walk to find pokemon and hatch egg and during that I found like... 4-5 pokemons (2 of them we're new so that was cool at least). Then when I came back someone had placed a lure to the pokestop and I was there for like 15 minutes and caught 3 pokemons (not new ones though).

In cities it's more fun to wander around as there are pokestops everywhere and more Pokemons spawning. Never really ran out of Pokeballs yet, but it's easy to run out if there's no pokestops near.

 

[Squirrel]

I 100% agree that this issue needs addressing. It really sucks living in a small remote rural village as you'll just never stack up any of the items you need to play the game. It feels like a huge advantage for the city-dwelling players and whilst that isn't the worst thing in the world it is pretty rubbish to have such a harder time of it than they are. If they can balance this out it'd be wonderful but I would be nervous about the village stops getting abused instead haha.

 

[VisualJae]

I live in the suburbs as well, with virtually no PokéStops. But I'm constantly on the move and you said it yourself, that's the whole point of the game. Even today when I'm supposed to be working from home, I drove myself a few towns over and now I'm camping in a cafe on a lure spot. That's how I adapt.

There are already proposals for businesses to sign themselves up to become PokéStops, so with any luck, there'd be more, not fewer stops in the future around the world.

I wouldn't call it fair or unfair that rural areas have fewer stops than cities. Logically that makes more sense; cities are always more populated and by default tend to have more landmarks and places of note. It's also astronomically, without question, WAYYYYYYY more expensive to live in the city so there are tradeoffs.

 

[Squirrel]

Honestly I think everyone could use more balls from stops as it is; they're pretty scarce to come across compared to how many you need to burn through if you are't putting real money into the game. Perhaps an idea could be to buff the items you get from every PokéStop but then make it so that only X number of people can visit it before it goes inactive for everyone for the same cooldown? The people in villages and people in cities are both getting the balls they need but it's not too unfair to village dwellers as the city folk won't be able to claim each stop's rewards.

 

[CoalCraft]

Honestly I think everyone could use more balls from stops as it is; they're pretty scarce to come across compared to how many you need to burn through if you are't putting real money into the game. Perhaps an idea could be to buff the items you get from every PokéStop but then make it so that only X number of people can visit it before it goes inactive for everyone for the same cooldown? The people in villages and people in cities are both getting the balls they need but it's not too unfair to village dwellers as the city folk won't be able to claim each stop's rewards.

I am not sure it would be a good idea to make it so that a pokestop can only be visited a certain number of times before a cooldown is initiated. Imagine how frustrating it would be if you lived in a busy city and desperately needed pokeballs, but every stop you visited turned out to be inactive from other people using it? I personally believe that the pokestop system works well as it is in populated areas; they provide the right amount of rewards, take the right amount of time to refresh and are at a good density. I think the problem comes in suburban or rural areas where there aren't enough stops. Either there could be more of them (best solution imo but a lot of work for Niantic) or, like the original post suggested, have an algorithm where a stop gives better rewards but takes longer to refresh the further it is from other stops.

 

[Hiidoran]

Honestly I think everyone could use more balls from stops as it is; they're pretty scarce to come across compared to how many you need to burn through if you are't putting real money into the game. Perhaps an idea could be to buff the items you get from every PokéStop but then make it so that only X number of people can visit it before it goes inactive for everyone for the same cooldown? The people in villages and people in cities are both getting the balls they need but it's not too unfair to village dwellers as the city folk won't be able to claim each stop's rewards.

Personally, I would be so upset if something like this was implemented. It wouldn't solve anything for me. If you go into the city and all the pokéstops take have a cool down period, chances are you're not going to be getting anything, as there are ALWAYS people playing. With a system like this, I'd have to wait until 2am to even start out an adventure. ):

I also don't think it would solve the issue of less pokéstops in rural areas. Just because there do happen to be less people around by definition, does not mean those people do not also play GO. I grew up in a small, rural town, and I visit there frequently. There are people EVERYWHERE playing GO, and the one gym in town has some pretty high-level Pokémon, which makes me think they play pretty often... If the limited pokéstops timed out after so many people, it wouldn't be too fair to the people who couldn't camp out at those spots all the time.

 

[Esper]

Perhaps a better solution would be for pokestops to give you more things depending on how long ago it was that you last hit a pokestop. So if you live in a faraway place and you only get to a stop once a day it could load you up with 10 or more items. People who hit 10 stops in 10 minutes because they live in a big city would still get their 3 or 4 or whatever items and they'd still get a lot, but the poor person in the boonies won't be as left out.

 

[TickleMehElmo]

CoalCraft; My apologies, I wrote this late at night and got a little mixed up haha.

VisualJae; It's great that you have many opportunities to go into the city where there are a greater number of pokestops, but a lot of us don't have the time for that on a constant basis. Maybe it's just me, but when I think of Pokemon Go and moving, I think the idea is that they want us walking, not driving, but that's just how I look at it. Cities do have more landmarks of course, but because pokestops are for individulas, and not based on the population, it definitely feels a little biased for those living in the cities. More pokestops would be great, and I don't think my idea takes anything away from them adding more pokestops in the future.

I definitely don't think pokestops having a set number of people is a good idea, that would become pretty frustrating for a lot of people.

Esper; I see where you're going with that, and it's definitely a viable idea, but I think that it could potentially take away a bit from the game. If you're living by 12 pokestops, the idea is to get you to walk to those pokestops. With your idea, people living by 12 pokestops could just stop by the closest one once a day and not have a lot of motivation to go any further. Maybe some sort of combination of the ideas would work haha