"Pokemon Go" developer Niantic Labs has disabled the Nearby Pokemon tracker in an updated released over the weekend, and players are livid to the point of asking for refunds for their microtransactions.
It's now harder for players to find specific Pokemon in "Pokemon Go" without the old tracker. The way the old tracker worked was that Pokemon who were close by would appear first in the footsteps window, and their actual footsteps would disappear. This was how players found out they were near, but according to Niantic, this was actually a bug that made it easier for players to find the Pokemon they wanted.
Niantic removed the tracker in a "Pokemon Go" update a few weeks ago, and now where the game would show Pokemon 100 meters from where they were first encountered (AKA where they'd pop up on the map), Pokemon would now only be visible for 70 meters. This actually makes looking for Pokemon a lot harder than it seems.
Comicbook.com reports that the new "Pokemon Go" tracker would display nearrby Pokemon in a random order. That means the first Pokemon you see in the new tracker wouldn't necessarily be the Pokemon you're closest to, but this might still not be the case. Further testing with the new tracker is needed, though, in order to verify this information.
Right now, though, "Pokemon Go" players are wishing the old tracker would come back. Yes, the way the old tracker worked was pretty much gaming the system, but in the grand scheme of things, deliberately seeking out Pokemon you want is a relatively harmless way to play the game. Sure, a big part of the "Pokemon" games has always been painstakingly searching for certain Pokemon in the wild, but what's so wrong with finding the Pokemon we really want?
