The app was once the biggest thing in the world but has over the last month settled to just become very big indeed. At the game’s peak, 45 million people were playing it each day, but that has since dropped to 30 million – partly driven by a natural drop off but also reflective of the problems the game has been hit by.
Now the company has issued yet another update intended at addressing problems with the game as well as adding new features.
The primary change – and the only one obvious to players of the game is the addition of a new “appraisal” feature, intended to let people understand more about the Pokemon that they catch.
The tool lets anyone highlight a specific Pokemon and find out about its strengths and weaknesses, so that it can be used more effectively in gyms. It’s accessed by heading to the Pokemon’s page and clicking the round button in the lower right corner of the screen, and choosing the “Appraisal” option.
But the update doesn’t bring any other changes to the game. All the notes mention is that the developers “are still working hard on several new and exciting features to come in the future of Pokémon GO”.
Giving such an update is very rare in update notes or changelogs – which are traditionally used to say what has been altered in a game, not what is going to be. It likely points to the dissatisfaction that many players have with the developers, with players complaining that updates to the game are minimal, developers say little about what they have planned, and that most of the changes appear intent on kicking trainers off the service.
The update notes also say that the game has received “Minor bot fixes”.
The update has been pushed out to iOS and Android and should arrive on devices in the next few days if it hasn’t already.
