Took the kids for a walk downtown yesterday afternoon until all the phones died. We bumped into a patient of mine and his girlfriend who were playing and they gave us some pointers.
Tip #1- Turning off your camera when a Pokemon appears can be done via a button in the top left of your screen marked AR(augmented reality). This helps it not freeze up so much. It does mean you wont see Pokemon in the “real world” rather a generic green field but it makes catching them much easier.
They explained how to use Lures at Pokestops to increase the chances of people finding them near these locations of interest however I didn’t quite get the gist of it.
I would say that 90% of the people we passed on the street were playing, this being a Sunday afternoon at 2pm. You can pretty much guarantee that if you see someone walking down the street holding their phone that you’ll get a knowing glance from them. We had some small chats with some of those people but otherwise it was not a social thing like I think it could be except in the instance of me knowing my patient.
Driving for the past two days I have seen people playing on the interstate and side streets. I myself caught a Magikarp passing a body of water on my way to work this AM. I foresee some pretty crazy accidents/traffic stop stories arising if the novelty doesn’t wear off and this becomes a thing.
Supposedly the different Pokemon are actually to be found in different terrains so downtown had a lot of Rattata and Pidgeys, same as my office in a concrete jungle. The Magikarp I caught as I said near water, on the road to work that passes through a very woodsy area I found a Bellsprout. So the impetus to explore more of the surrounding community with the kids will be there so they can catch a variety.
Trading will become a thing in the future they say so I, and my unlimited data(kids only have iPod Touches so had to utilize downtown’s free WiFi), will be catching them to give to my kids when this is implemented. At least that is my excuse when people I know catch me playing.
People cleverer than I are playing it over here. By that I mean, literally 50% of the train on my commute were playing it. Amazing. Pretty scary though too, I saw one kid playing it and he just marched into the street and was very nearly flattened by a bus. Ironically, I too was almost flattened by a truck as I was texting my mate what I had just seen.
I don’t know what to make of it, I’m too old to care what people think of me, but I’d feel weird strutting around looking for Pokemon. I’d feel all exposed. Reading stories about people bumping into each other trying to find the same thing is pretty special though. As is the fact that apparently there is a giant Clefairy called “Love is Love” at the Westboro Baptist Church.
On the darker end, there’s the story about people using it to jump other people.
Yesterday was the first day where it didn’t drain my battery. We went to a bird sanctuary in the middle of nowhere Scotland Neck, NC and it had a bunch of pokestops and monsters.
Yeah…I’m curious to see how they go about dealing with stuff like that. And yeah, it’s only a matter of time before someone dies in a car accident because they were playing Pokemon Go.
The pokestops are just weird to me. Like they have one in front of my building (it’s an arena) but the picture they use for it is from like three years ago. There’s three in my neighborhood too at bizarre places.
Anyhow, I’m not even level 5 yet so the grind is real.
We too had a few places where the pictures did not match up.
The grind I don’t think is too bad. I downloaded it yesterday on the way to our downtown walk at 2:30pm and hit level five on my way to work this morning. All I have caught were those downtown, a few on the ride home, one or two in the neighborhood and then five on the way to work this morning. I entered a gym on the way to work but did not choose a team.
AThis thing is becoming a newest fastest trend over here as well.
Just on the news: growing concerns over people just invading private property for the game There’s one apparantly located in de basement of a hospital.
When asked to which was the most awkward place they found a pokemon the answer was: on a pregnant womans bosom.
My friend who was playing Friday night between dinner and the movie we saw, I mentioned him in the WTF Are You Playing thread I believe that he made children cry by yelling at them, is apparently waiting for his neighbor to come home from vacation because there is an awesome one in their backyard and they don’t want to scale their privacy fence to go get it.
AThe locations are taken from Ingress, another game that Niantic developed. They allowed users to submit locations into the game but stopped that aspect a couple of years ago because users submitted so many and Niantic couldn’t handle all of the submissions.
That’s why some places and pictures are out of date.
The clinic owner just stopped in. I took him on a walk in our shopping center and showed him the game and how to play it. He thought I was losing my mind. His early 20’s aged son called him when we got back to the clinic and he jokingly told him he was worried about my mental health and why. The son’s response? He was playing it in the car as they spoke.
Then I had a patient walk in who actually parked on the other side of our parking lot to catch three as she was coming in. She is using it for a reason to get out and exercise. Parking farther away from places she gets more steps in obviously.
Before he left he asked if the game/app could find ghosts…
…cuz if it did you’d have a Pokehauntus.
I quickly ushered him out the door and told him not to visit our location again for a few weeks.