Many may roll their eyes at the idea, some find it silly, I did as well, until I tried it.
When I first heard about the app 1 year ago, I rolled my eyes and mocked it a bit, then after a month someone asked if I ever tried it and said I could laugh at him after I got to level 5 (which goes pretty quickly). So I tried it, and liked it. There are many that take it to the extreme, but using the app causally it’s a fun, free (mostly...you will be tempted to buy some in app purchases) and gets you moving.
Got my wife into it and we found that once a week we enjoy going to a town we know already and then pulling out the app and playing there. What happened was that in the game we saw a lot more of cities and it forced us to explore more of the city while finding little virtual creatures all over the place. The app counts your steps and I found that because of it as of today I walked an additional 1’298.8km, that’s like walking from Geneva to Warsaw. Some may argue I would have done it either way...mmmmm....not really as we really only played when deciding to go out instead of watching a movie at home or taking longer more scenic routes instead of taking a tram.
Anyway, I enjoy it on a casual basis and gets me out more often walking with the wife. So, before this turns into a thread of why would a grown man do this, I think I answered the question. I do agree that others do take it to the extreme and really need to lighten up on it, but hey at least they are out walking instead of sitting on a bench waiting for the bus clicking on the 1000th meme of the day their “friend” sent them.
To the social point:
For those who play, you know legendaries are out and that you need a group of 10+ to take them on. Any “trainers” out there willing to meet up and take on some of the harder gyms in either Zürich, Basel, Bern or Luzern?
Nice, my wife is around the same distance. but Level 26....rural area. Gotta spend more time hatching eggs. So have you got a team about you? Caught any legendaries yet?
No, no team unfortunately, which means I haven't been able to tackle the Legendaries on my own. I won a few easy raids, I control a few arenas, but group work doesn't seem to be done where I live. Shame.
Eggs are the way to go. I managed to get 229 Pokemons in my Pokedex thanks to them and the Buddy system.
Well let us know if you want to try a day for gym challenges. My wife and I can take on Level 3 raids no problem, with a 3rd Person then Level 4 should be easily doable. For 5, we were able to do it once with 7. So we would just need 4 more. Articuno leaves us on the 31st...so time is running out.
Hey there Arthur! We also play a bit of Pokemon Goi but frequently have to let the legendaries go due to not having a big enough team and I haven't been able to find a local 'support group' - until I read your post.
We have L29 and L34 toons with fairly reasonable pokemons and at the moment we can only take on the raids up to around 22000cp so we would be interested in joining forces with some others. How often are you in Zurich playing?
That's a coincidence. I took part in something called a 'raid' today at the request of our CTO, who's on holiday and requested I do it with his family's suite of phones (apparently it was quite an important one).
This was only the second time I'd ever played the game (the first was a short training session we did before he left). Basically what you do is turn up at the appointed place and time just before it starts (this was at the Strassburger Denkmal near the Basel SBB), join the raid, mash a button for a few minutes while a monster is on the screen (three buttons in my case - some people were using five or more phones all lined up on the ground), then do a fairly simple ballistic game where you aim a ball at the said monster (it takes a bit of practice since it jumps around a lot).
I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't more integrated into the environment; it doesn't matter where you point the phone and the Denkmal wasn't any part of the game. The geolocation thing is just a MacGuffin to enable a flash mob. Maybe if you turn the AR on it's more integrated, but nobody there used it like that.
It does seem popular, but I didn't get anything from it and maybe that's for the best. I've got no time for a time-sucker like that...
We tried in Basel with a friend some weeks ago, there was NO POKEMONS at all... we literally left the phone there for 2 hours or so, not even 1 pokemon to catch...
They're certainly around (after all, they're just entries in a database - why limit them?) and plenty of people turn up for raids. The guy I mentioned in my previous post has a little keyring thingy which links to the phone and flashes when there's a pokemon nearby (at this point you mash the button - button mashing is a familiar thing to the pokemon aficionado). It flashes every minute or so when we're driving around town.
It doesn't have to be the prime objective of the day though. For me it has been complimentary to walking a lot more and getting exercise (1200km and growing). The more you walk, the more eggs you hatch, the more you could run into new pokemon. A short walk around Zurich and you will catch 50-100, take down enough gyms to run out of revives for your pokemon's and if you're lucky around the lake you might catch a shiny Magikarp!
There are definitely still heaps of players out there - the gyms change colour frequently.