Post Pokémon Go update fans downrate the game on the stores

Pokémon Go fans are giving low ratings to the game on the Play Store and the App Store after an update removed the footprint tracking feature. The footprint tracking feature showed how close or far away Pokémon were with the use of footprints below the Pokémon. If the same kind of Pokémon had previously been caught, then the footprints would appear below the image of the Pokémon. However, the footprints would appear below a silhouette of the Pokémon if the Pokémon had previously not been caught.

The number of footprints indicated how near or far the Pokémon were. If there were no footprints below the Pokémon, then it meant that the Pokémon was about to spawn. If there was one footprint, that meant the Pokémon was a few steps away from the current location. Two footprints meant intermediate range, and three meant that the Pokémon were far away. This was one of the most engaging aspects of the game, as gamers would have to walk around to try and find the Pokémon. If say there was a Bulbasaur at a two footprint range, Pokémon Trainers would have to walk around till it became one footprint, and try to hunt the Pokémon by making the footprints disappear altogether.

This feature was buggy , and the Pokémon always showed as being 3 steps away irrespective of how near or far the Pokémon actually was. This was on the list of things that Pokémon Go creators Niantic was about to fix. Niantic fixed the buggy feature by removing the footprint tracker altogether in the update. It was a problematic update with some news sources reporting that Pokémon Go players were losing their accounts , but Niantic clarified by noting this was a login issue. However, what really sent people into a raging fury was the removal of the footprint tracking.

Fans of the game retaliated by spamming the Google Play Store listing of the app with one star reviews. The current version of the game on the App Store is rated at 2 stars, as against the 3.5 rating of the previous version. The official Pokémon Go account on Facebook, gave an explanation to fans.

Reading between the lines, looks like Pokémon Go is sticking to the decision. Their explanation is that the feature was not meeting the goals they had for the product. While the feature is not in the game as of now, there are efforts to improve the feature, so it might come back in a better form, in a future update.