Routes
I was lucky to be a beta tester for routes. Loved it. It is a great complimentary feature to the game. Will not suit everyone. It is massively complementary on community days or other similar raid/PGO hours.
Kudos to PGO for their work on this and getting it out there to be tested and to start to roll it out.
I definitely walked more than normal. Discovered new POIs to nominate. Created routes from my long walks and runs. But neglected to create some shorter ones (DOH) or ones related to journeys to work. They are mixed from suiting the fit to those with strollers and wheelchairs. They must be at least 500m long. At least. It does appear once you can create them there will be a limit on how many to create weekly
Remember routes needs reviewing so the system can take a while to review. Some times real quick. Some times not so.
I have met people who have used them and love them. Though some of mine require a bit of effort. And the routes seems a bit weird. Start in odd places. As it was me not thinking who will use them but what am I doing. Lesson learned.
So when you create them think about community days. Think where people are and are likely to be. Think about trips you normally made to shop, to work, to socialise, to exercise, to do sport, what weekend walks you do, where you cycle too and from. Think about themes, so gym route, cafe route, theatre route, heritage route, mural route, trail routes. Longer routes over a K seem to have higher rewards.
Always select this route is reversible. So people can do it the other way
It is and has been exciting to see new features come in. And the product develop. Even with hiccups. This is after an early release.
You can battle, catch, create new POIs etc in game. Remember if walking or creating a route it you do something else or even leave the game then it will pause. If you carry on thinking it is still going. It is not. Once you are aware of this all good ;-)
The routes you follow may squiggle but as long as you follow the general direction you will be fine.
If you do a route every day you get rewards and you get a good reward at the end of 7 consecutive days
There appears to be additional spawns along a route
The Z cube is at the end. But stop 50m out and walk v slowly. You do not want the route to auto end early. You do need to pay attention. I am not sure how it works but the Z cube seems more likely on longer routes. But I am not sure. not done enough to work it out. I do know I have either missed a lot or they did not appear. I have run a route, biked a route, scooted a route and caught a slow bus on part of a route.
Remember this is a phased release. It has bugs - ability to create routes is not working for now :-( But it is an early release. I think it will not suit all phones. To ensure it works for me I have no other apps open. Activity trackers off. All background data save the phone/sms is switched off. I have used only on Android on S9, A20 and S21 Ultra. All work perfectly.
When it comes it will be fun. And as I said will suit some more than others. But it is fun ;-) And a great way to earn swag.
Enjoy it when it comes. And thanks PGO. Am loving it.
Comments
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I find the new functionality very confusing.
How do you tell the game to start tracking a route?
Why doesn't it tell you you are not at the beginning of that you need to reverse the route to travel it?
How important is it to follow the creators meandering path? One route I tried and failed went strolling thru a grassy field instead of using the nearby sidewalk or road...I didn't recognize that the game wasn't tracking me.
Very confusing instructions and implementation.
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Routes are fun to participate in. I enjoy walking, creating and participating with them.
BUT
It is clear the product is still unfinished and was and is still being rushed out to meet planned events.
In the mean time it is still buggy
Open to being gamed for the Candy XL
And the process for administering Routes is mind blowingly appalling. Random acceptance, randam rejection, extremely poor process when handling post publication rejection (as it appears people who are not getting their Zygarde Cells or enough Poke Spawn are 1 starring and reporting routes for rejection and PGO is accepting this). Routes can be in for review for a long long time and yet if they meet some unknown AI criteria are accepted in less than 5 minutes. Some routes have been created that would be impossible without hacking/manipulating the game.
There is little to no communication on processes, roll out plans etc. There is a help section in game that has zero capactity to help with Route issues.
That said. When it works. It is game on. Superb product enhancement.
I am sure more routes will be coming all over for many people as more people create them - so that will mean more can enjoy. Which is good as they really do add quality to the game.
Just be aware it is still in development and has a road bump or two. OK three or more😁
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Is there any advantage such as better spawns for getting a Route badge to Gold?
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You do get more rewards. There are more spawns. You get daily rewards for walking and higher 7 day consecutive walks.
doing the same route 5, 20, 100 times gets you nothing extra it seems. Except your badge is gold for 100 walks of that same route. I maybe wrong
BUT
It is clear the product is still unfinished, so there maybe future rewards coming. The feature has already been gamed to get the extra candy XL which probably meant the development team has been delayed in other areas and that development process has not been helped because the product was and is still being rushed out to meet planned events it is buggy along with processes that are not quite there at all.
For example
The process for administering review, publishing and rejecting Routes is mind blowingly appalling. Random acceptance, randam rejection, extremely poor process when handling post publication rejection (as it appears people who are not getting their Zygarde Cells or enough Poke Spawn are 1 starring and reporting routes for rejection and PGO is accepting this). People report them for not being short enough or flat enough or they think they can get their routes accepted faster with zero impact from PGO.
Routes can be in for review for a long long time and yet if they meet some unknown AI criteria are accepted in less than 5 minutes. Some routes have been created that would be impossible without hacking/manipulating the game.
There is little to no communication on processes, roll out plans etc. There is a help section in game that has zero capactity to help with Route issues.
That said. When it works. It is game on. Superb product enhancement.
I am sure more routes will be coming all over for many people as more people create them - so that will mean more can enjoy. Which is good as they really do add quality
Just be aware it is still in development and has a road bump or two. OK three or more😁 and the support for the feature is non existant
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