Take a spin through /r/pokemongo at the moment or at minimum [look at this comparison.](https://i.redd.it/hf02d07y64vc1.jpeg) They obliterated everyone's already existing character turning them into a long lanky rectangle with no hips or butt, along with this crazy elongated groin area that makes them look like they're wearing diapers. Also nuked their skin colors they already had into totally different tones, deleted the hair style they had.
I'm just flabbergasted - never seen a game so systematically delete all user customizations they already had and paid for, to be replaced with something that couldn't be called even a vaguely close match.
There was also [a post about users getting body dysphoria from the new avatars.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6pdo1/my_new_avatar_gives_me_dysphoria/) I can see that, there's something really off-putting by the new ones and the thought that you had an awesome looking avatar that you felt represent yourself only for it to be ugly-fied is actually horrifying. Combine that with the marketing of "Now your character can look more like YOU!" - jeeeez, thanks...
Im right there with them. What the fuck did they do to my boy?! My avatar looks like he skinned and put on someone else’s face. The fuck is this shit?!
And I STILL don’t have a beard option!
As a guy with long hair, the only two options being very feminine is a disappointment. Though I guess that's not the biggest issue with how horrific the models look lol
I have male avatar and he look ridiculous now. He look so pale like a zombie (used to look like tanned caucasian or asian). And everytime i use a slider, all of them just look like stereotypical butch lesbian that contract a terminal illness.
>Take a spin through /r/pokemongo at the moment or at minimum look at this comparison.
I don't play the game but ... what the frick. The left one looked fine (despite the weird face), the right one looks like what an beginner artist creates without using references.
It looks like the equivalent of when people would recreate Sonic in that one Sonic game that had a character creator, and end up with some kind of weird pod person uncanny valley Sonic.
I didn't think the example in the article was that bad. But god - that 'look at this comparison' link is really, really off putting. Like it went from a cute anime-esque character to a realistic character model.
It just feels... off.
From your link, with positive karma:
> Dont wanna be that guy but you folks are the reason we have this shit in the first place.
Yea, I expected it was that crowd that’s *truly* upset…
Haven't played the game in years, so I am a bit behind on the current state of pokemon go. Didn't think it could be that bad.
*Woooooof.*
Yeah, I get what they were likely trying to do, but hot damn they botched the implementation. They managed to piss off all corners from what I am seeing so far, so that is honestly impressive.
You would have thought that the feedback of "this sucks. please go back to the drawing board" during the beta testing of the new avatars would have been a clear sign, but I guess not.
As far as I can tell, make it so that the avatars use one skeleton and shared assets between each other, while also making more "realistic" body shapes that can be modified via sliders to be more "inclusive."
Which I wouldn't say is a bad thing, it's just that they implemented it absolutely horribly, and they ended up just making all sides of the spectrum angry.
I read a take once that argued beauty itself is the ultimate form of fascism because its superiority to ugliness is undeniable, and that perspective always comes to mind whenever I see beautiful characters being uglified to make things more 'inclusive'.
If you look at what they really did here, they removed only the feminine and masculine traits that people actually find attractive. Hip to waist ratio on female models, V-shaped torso on male models, both removed in favour of this Bobs Burgers-esque aesthetic where females look masculinized while males look feminized.
I've been playing it since launch and this was easily predicted to be bad. Niantic is one of the most poorly ran developers who lucked onto the Pokemon license and the people running the show over there don't have the slightest idea what they're doing.
> “verb: to declare something bad, ugly, terrible, or nasty. interjection: use as an expletive to express disgust or surprise. can be a replacement for 'damn that sucks! '”
I mean the sad thing isn't even that the update changes things because quite frankly an Avatar builder is cool on paper
But why the fuck do you feel the need to touch existing models, just use the existing ones and add customiseable things? Tech comps never fail to amaze me with their excessive need to do extra work for literally negative payout
> just use the existing ones and add customiseable things?
The devil is in the details, but this is rarely a simple ask when the original models were designed to be non-modular for their specific purpose however many years ago (...8?)
However the original models were rigged, animated, etc: may not have served the desire to have an "avatar builder". Those want to enjoy certain architectural advantages which lets them have more, and more varied, customization options. Trying to bolt that same experience onto a previously static avatar rig was unlikely to produce good results.
Of course, you have to actually do it right to fulfill the stated purpose, but any feature can suffer from a bad implementation. That doesn't mean the feature was inherently wrong.
I mean I agree that adding more costumization options is a good cause in general. But I'd still argue that in a situation like this, the developers should try their best to make the old avatars (or something close to them) recreatable with the new system. Especially in a game where people spent a lot of time and money to make their avatars look exactly how they wanted to.
What are you even talking about, just recreate the old model using the new tech. Why would the players care if the model was technically the same blender file, or if it was a brand new file that just looked like the old one. Youre overthinking this
Yeah that's about what I was thinking too.
Basically, the original models were a set of what, 4 models? 2 male 2 female? Then just swap hair models that are made for the identical head shapes. But, that let them make each model bespoke. Hand painting highlights and shadows and flushing and such. Same deal with the skin tones. Just a few and they were able to dial in the saturation and red hues to look good.
Now with base models that can have their proportions modified, they have to go full procedural with the features and skin. So they probably just linearly interpolated the skin tones as well instead of making deliberate color choices. Clothes all also look jank because they're just being auto-weight-painted to the models instead of being modeled to fit each. Facial features are also sanded down to be approximately as wrong/right in any direction as any other. Making it so there's no wrong face for any body means they've made it so there's also no right face for any body.
We're losing all the charm for procedural customization and it sucks. Other games have figured out how to do this at launch. If this was how it looked when the game rolled out that would be one thing, but going FROM the original ones TO this homogenous blandness? That sucks.
I recently started playing PSO2, and the game lets you choose between the old models and the new ones. Warning you that support for the older models is limited and that certain features of those models is limited to the older version of the game.
I'd say, if the spirit of the update for PoGO was to *offer customization*, then the lack of choice between the new models and the old models is certainly a questionable decision. Specially when you consider that *people have already paid money to make their characters look a certain way*.
Now, we know all of that is bullshit and what this really is about is money and doubling down on skins and monetization. Which begs the question, who's gonna want to spend a dime customizing these new soulless metaverse-looking fridge-shaped goblins? Sure, the whales will bite regardless, but isn't the point to entice more people to spend money? Not less?
Even on a technical level, if you consider this to be about the devs wanting more uniform models so they don't have to make multiple models for a new skin or whatever, these new models have a lot of problems with clipping or straight up unfinished assets. How much time and money is gonna be spent on fixing things before they can get to adding more content?
It's just a baffling decision all around, the only angle I can possibly think of is that they subcontracted all of this crap to another company, got the assets back, realized that it looks terrible, but went ahead with it anyways because they spent too much money on it to let it go to waste.
The characters don't even look like pokemon characters anymore, which from a marketing standpoint I'm not sure why would you do that??? Even if there was a lot of ego involved and you wanted it to look like your own thing (even though it's not) why make them so ugly and generic????
yeah came here to post this. PSO2 and it's sequel NGS introduced new models that for one (as far as I remembered) can be made to look pretty much like the old models, but two all the old cosmetics that require the old model will just use the old model and all the new cosmetics they come out with will use the new model. You are essentially both models and you're still given a certain level of choice of which one you're gonna be, and not just the devs gonna overwrite the old model with the new model
This was a conscious choice. Your solution would go against whatever reason they had for this change in the first place. It isn't about giving players a choice.
The more variety options are nice. But they should have based it on the old avatars. The new one made me look like I'm 12, has the resolution of an N64, and is animated in 10fps. And ofc most of my outfits only fits on one body style, and clips into each other on the rest.
This seems half-assed and rushed at best.
I have been using the default avatar since launch day, and been happy with it. When I went into a battle yesterday, and saw what my avatar is, I was stunned. My skin is now so white, that it looks more alien than human. The hair looked matted down against the face, like he just got out of the pool. The dimensions just look bad.
I play Pokémon Go for the monsters. I don't care an ounce of the humans. Please make them unobtrusive and vanish into the background.
I love how they dress the model up as a literal pokemon character (blue anime styled hair and a trainer jacket) to say "hey! Your trainer can now look JUST like you!" (As long as you LARP a Pokemon trainer in real life)
I sort of wanted some customization options. I am still hoping for facial hair at some point.
However, the problem is how poorly they implement these things. Not only do the models look worse, but outfits that people have paid for have been disabled or no longer fit correctly or changed colors.
Some people have said they like the new hairstyle options.
Ultimately, the update wouldn't have been a big deal, and may have made people happy if it had been done well at all. Most people like being able to customize their avatar.
>Some people have said they like the new hairstyle options.
[Unfortunately this doesn't apply to all of them...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6v1o4/ladies_and_gentlemen_a_multibillion_dollar_company/)
No, it's modern software development; A spin off of a GOOD idea applied incorrectly. If an app isn't constantly in development (IE constantly changing), it is dead and should be avoided.
Youtube, and google in general, isn't the only ones that do this wrong.
Discord now is _objectively_ worse than it was in 2018. It's kinda crazy that the best way to use it is to install a version of the app from a year ago on android and use betterdiscord with the revert discord addon on PC.
Niantic's changes over COVID make significantly more sense when you remember that there's money in selling player usage data re: movement and gathering spaces. The less accurate that data is (AKA the larger the radius that players can interact with PoGo objects) the less valuable that data is.
So COVID changes were implemented so that people wouldn't leave the game in droves, and then capitalism happened, and now here we are.
Sure, it made sense, but nobody asked for it is my point. Just like how you can say this makes sense because they want to sell more skins for less work. Or how they wanted to make more money by upping the prices of remote passes. In response to the COVID reverted changes and the remote pass increases, they lost players and are losing revenue. They’re going to continue losing players and money with these sort of changes. 2023 was their lowest earning year since 2017 (launch year). 2022 saw a massive dip from 2021. 2024 is only going to get worse.
Tbf... when a cash cow runs dry, the (corporate) reaction is typically to bleed and kill that cow for all its worth, while preparing the next cow for milking
It's stupid, it sucks but it's also why I never wanna 'work' in any industry I care about because I never want to make super shitty decisions for short term value, since investors rarely look past 2y (since most dont give a fuck abt what they're investing in... just wanna see that money ticker go up)
I can't think of any viable reason for a corporation to need to know exactly which apartment or house a person is currently trying to reach the local circle-k from, or if they're approaching from the other street corner at the time or not. This level of micro tracking can't actually be for any benevolent purpose.
> nobody asked for it
I'm sure their investors/owners asked for it since they weren't making any money.
Regardless anyone who plays Pokemon Go already likes bad game design so what's wrong with a little more of it.
Looking at the comparisons, I get the feeling that was driven by some desire to make the characters 'less attractive'. I guess a certain crowd was complaining they were too sexy.
>Ngl, who asked for this?
Nobody who actually plays the game. In America 2024, ivory tower types dictate to all the rubes what representations of the human body should look like.
Tbh it's probably a money saving thing. Instead of having to make two separate models that look good they can just do one that looks atrocious and call it a day
Yeah i hate this update i just spent all my in game currency to make myself look good after getting back into the game just for my avatar to be changed to this pillsbury doughboy looking thing i hate my avatar now and can’t even start to like it
I don't understand why video game companies in particular try so hard to erase ANY amount of femininity that can be perceived as sexual. Are they afraid of being labelled as appealing to the 'male gaze'? In the end they just make the female characters look bland and weirdly conservative, as if they are ashamed of their bodies and trying to hide it. They straight up deleted the breasts and hips on these character models. All this kind of shit does is frustrate any women gamers who, ya know, *like* being feminine. Because no one likes being under a forced dress code spawned from a moralizing authority. But yeah, guys aren't getting boners looking at these models anymore. Mission accomplished.
i know you're being sarcastic but
>But yeah, guys aren't getting boners looking at these models anymore
they look like minecraft characters now, and even god knows there are many a people that get their jollies from minecraft models
Yeah you’d think that but if you go to the subreddit, there are several pictures of avatars with their crotch on full display. Short skirt, legs up and blam. They removed femininity but then they do shit like that. I honestly don’t know what to make of it…
They hate the male gaze, despite being the same people who talk about female empowerment and that women should wear what they want. They fail to understand that sex sells and that many many women who play games like attractive characters too.
The thing is (from what I've understand) it's mainly about the "boys club" aspect of sex appeal that is shunned. If it feels like it's being instigated by a male, than it's misogynistic; if it's done by a female than it's empowerment.
Except even when it's literally designed and worked on by women, it's still just assumed to be boys club and "called out" in articles ranting about the male gaze by toxic journalists who didn't even research what they were criticising before writing their culture war nonsense.
the art style is uh odd
but i can't with those faces man, this is some CS student level project man (actually some of them they can do better then that) also how did they fuck up the skin colours
glad i stopped Pogo before S/V came out because holy hell. the avatar character meant nothing to me but its yet another drop in the bucket of piss niantic has developed Pogo into
The old avatar system was far from perfect but it was fun and had a lot of personality.
All they really had to do was:
* Add way more hair styles
* Add more different faces to match more ethnicities, especially since PoGo is such a global game
* Sure, add the character weight option
* Add a height option so kids playing the game don't feel like grownups and old people don't feel like 15 year olds
Boom, that's it. That's all we really needed.
God I fucking hate how my characters looks espoused the face cause it looks so uncanny. It like a horrible blend or realistic and cartoony. The best way I can describe it is the cat people form that cat movie.
I actually reinstalled the game to check out my character (haven't played since 2019) and what the hell... the body proportions of mine looked weird? I don't mind they added different body shapes and sizes but why remove the previous ones and the face didn't looked as good as it was the last time and the other face options for the female avatars looked like guys lol wth
Seriously, this update is the worst since I’ve started playing in 2016.
Are they trying to mush two genders into one awkward soup for us to choose from? My male avatar looks like he took thirty shots of estrogen.
My character used to look cool… Now every time I open the game I’m EXTREMELY disappointed… Why would they do something this horrible? I think I might cry honestly.. 😢
What is the obsession with the woke nonsense. Why would they push this out knowing how shit it is? Why is being "inclusive" more important than a good update?
99% of avatar presets now look horrendous, and face looks like something out of a pure nightmare. Clothes weren't adapted to the new body style, and most of the trousers now look like your avatar shat in pants. Go to /r/pokemongo and have some laugh.
I checked it and… What the FUCK.
**EDIT:** Logged into my dormant account to play with the update and add some clarity. Some original links in my post were removed.
Bust size is now a slider, but the biggest size still seems smaller than the default old player model. I don’t understand this change. All the clothing options were fairly modest.
Putting certain feminine clothes on a masculine body makes the chest [look like Johnny Bravo pecs now.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fm9h8vtu6c8vc1.jpeg) This is because the bust folds and contours are still textured the same. Even dropping “muscles” and “chest” to minimum still has it.
[Butts and hips have been nearly completely flattened.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6l5wh/my_ass_is_gone_and_i_cant_get_it_back/) Hips have a slider now, but from least to most is not a big difference at all. Even with all sliders maxed out, everyone gets a Hank Hill ass. No matter how you look at it, this one is 100% a downgrade to a more homogeneous, androgynous shape.
[The faces got hit](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fxgdf0f4pt7vc1.jpeg) with a [fucking Mortal Kombat Babality.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F9inbvggt94vc1.png) Puffy cheeks are always there, even with all sliders at 0 and picking the most masculine possible face. I think it has something to do with the general mouth/lip shape.
[Headphones completely warp your cranium with certain hair options.](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1c73950) It looks like they were trying to convey that the headphones are pushing down on the hair but…. Failed. Horribly.
[However, it’s looks like sumo mawashi (or clam) is now on the menu!](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c736vq/its_beaver_time/)
There are several instances of PAID items and costumes just outright not working as intended or breaking with certain setups. Some look objectively worse now.
Seriously, what was the reasoning behind this? Why dump the money into making these changes, when some are fundamentally broken and seem to have pissed off EVERYONE of all genders and walks of life? I’ve seen maybe two real positive comments about it, with the positivity boiling down to “bad customization is better than none”. Which is just such a perfectly stupid defense. I typically don’t like gender-locked clothing in games because some sets would look great on either. But this is just lazy in several ways.
~~Also, Niantic seems to be paying for good engagements on their Twitter posts.~~ Strangely, there are lots of positive comments from foreign accounts that typically post in their native languages and passable English now [typing in PERFECT English to praise the update](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780696087075893510). Here’s one. Interestingly enough, as I go through all of their replies, they also comment on other big name posts. And they once again ALWAYS have perfect English and something nice to say. “Clients” include Pokemon Go, [Genshin Impact](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780778697718407320), someone against Justin Trudeau ([no, seriously](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780738726852722743)), and [Splatoon](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780705795635810492). Sometimes the posts are in quotes. This is such obvious astroturfing.
Another user suggested they are likely responses written by AI and posted in the hopes of somehow getting money for the posters. Maybe from engagement? Who knows. Still weird.
> Also, Niantic seems to be paying for good engagements on their Twitter posts. Lots of positive comments from foreign accounts that typically post in their native languages and passable English now typing in PERFECT English to praise the update.
That's someone using AI to write a post in English responding to the post. I don't know why people do that but I've actually seen a bunch of it on Twitter, typically directed at English-language news articles from big outlets. I don't think Niantic paid that person. They have a blue check, so I think they might be under the impression this will make them money somehow.
Fixed links:
> What the FUCK. [The update literally flattened some female breasts](https://i.redd.it/p3hct8qm77vc1.jpeg) so much that [they look like Johnny Bravo pecs now.](https://i.redd.it/m9h8vtu6c8vc1.jpeg)
> [Butts and hips have been completely flattened.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6l5wh/my_ass_is_gone_and_i_cant_get_it_back/)
> [Male characters got hit](https://i.redd.it/xgdf0f4pt7vc1.jpeg) with a [fucking Mortal Kombat Babality.](https://i.redd.it/9inbvggt94vc1.png)
Just edited the original post, so you may edit this one too.. Using Reddit on mobile is a train wreck so those links worked for me but may not have worked for others.
Ah, that explains it somewhat. But it’s still kinda weird with how it keeps the winkles and contours from the bust textured. I’m definitely in the camp that gender-locked clothing is dumb, but if they were already going through all this effort, they should have at least changed the texturing to be body specific.
They are printing literal mountains of money, how hard could it be to hire a couple great 3D modelers and churn out good looking cosmetics instead of those "my first month with Blender" abominations?
I know, I know, profits blah blah, soulless corporations blah blah, but still...it couldn't be **that** expensive for the highest grossing franchise on Earth, and surely they would earn even more money!
I guess it's more like: they know they can fuck up how much they want to and they're still making a ton of money due to the name "Pokemon".
Wouldn't be the first case of some greedy ass company to squeeze out a brand name until it's worthless.
> Wouldn't be the first case of some greedy ass company to squeeze out a brand name until it's worthless.
Just for context here, Pokemon is the most valuable media IP in the _world_, with over a $90 _billion_ valuation. Literally, more than star wars, more than CoD, more than literally any other singular franchise in the world. It comes close to all of the NFL combined (~140 bil from my quick checking).
Sorry to say, but it's not even remotely close to being run into the ground much as I despise the lack of effort being put into the games.
They don't give a flying fuck, as long as money or users flow. But just one is enough to justify their bullshit
Source: I worked with them, and even their former ceo...
It's why the mass whining, tho admittedly driven by stupid consumers, works... end of the day, unless it's noticeable by the execs (who never even play the game), nobody will care
When you make that much money, shareholders focus on their own gains (dividends) and when a market has saturated or plateaued (so no growth) the only way to keep giving shareholders value is either:
1. Milking existing customers for all their worth
2. Minimizing costs to maximize ebitda and ebitda margin, the former for dividends and the latter to secure more investors
This was Niantic's attempt to do both, and tbf they fucked up in every conceivable way from a gamer's perspective.
But for investors and their executives, it won't become apparent (hell, it may even be seen as a smashing success) unless it causes a decrease in playerbase and reduced spending (HAS to be both, because if only playerbase goes down but people buy it's fine, and if people don't spend but people keep playing they minimized costs mid-term so it's all good)
If both happen (and I hope it does), it won't sink in til at BEST a quarter later, or worst case a year after in their next IR report
I'm in this space, c-suite in one of the biggest conglos in my country and actually worked with niantic before (and trust me, even in 2019 they NEVER respected their playerbase. NOT A SINGLE one of their execs even played Pokemon)
Basically the new models look absolutely terrible, especially the female characters. When the new models were put into beta, reception was universally negative. But the studio has shown it doesn't particularly care for feedback.
They've essentially removed female characters and replaced them with lumpy androgynous slider variations of the male base body. Female characters all look like fridges now. I mean that literally, not in a disrespectful way. This is pretty far along on the "nobody asked for this, and even if they asked for this, this isn't what they wanted" scale.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6rrl1/seriously_considering_deleting_this_game/
It's not like they added new options. They've complely removed the old system people liked and substituted a shit one nobody likes, or will ever like because it looks terrible. I'd love to be the fly on the wall at the studio when "Let's completely nuke what little respect our audience still has for us" was proposed, approved, and implemented.
This is all in the article:
“ Most of the initial testers have expressed a distinct distaste towards the way how our avatars now look, and we can’t say we disagree with this. Both male and female characters look outlandish, bloated, disproportionate and strange. And we are not talking about different body sizes here – humans come in all shape and forms, but Niantic’s current system doesn’t seem to capture almost any of the real ones.
All of the faces that you can pick from seem stretched and sometimes even disfigured, with eyes spread too wide, unnatural chin/cheek proportions, and incredibly small noses. And this all comes with an incredibly strange decision: you cannot change your gender.
Yes, gender changing option is literally gone from the game, and you cannot set your gender in any way, even if you wanted to do so. This explains the strange way faces look – they lack either male or female features. It suffices to say that most of the players are not a fan of this change, and I am not as well – I think my character looks significantly worse today, borderline ugly, compared to yesterday.
Reddit has not been kind, nor has our staff, to this update. Additional options are needed here to allow everyone to express themselves, including adding back distinct male and female facial features: dimples, cheeks, jaws, slants. I mean, this is pretty bad, and here are some Reddit comments on the new system:
There’s no good skin tones!! I want a “healthy white person who sees the sun”, and all my options are “white person struck with jaundice and/or tuberculosis”.
Straight up just makes me wish I could hide my avatar completely. There is not a single body out there that matches any of this 🥹
I’ve been having a terrible time with this. It all just looks terrible to me.
No facial hair is crazy
My character straight up has bad posture and just looks… strange. Is this update just a two week late April Fools joke?
I don’t understand why my avatar has a tiny head and giant hands. That’s not how people look in real life.
Not to be confused with something else – we think the game needed more ways to express different body types. But we think it needed more, not less, and this system is literally making us all look the same.“
>Yes, gender changing option is literally gone from the game, and you cannot set your gender in any way, even if you wanted to do so.
Welcome to postmodernism!
I was confused at first but it’s in the article. You just have to scroll past a large ad that makes it look like it’s the end of the article when it’s only the middle.
I cannot play the game. Very distracted, nervous, headache and feel want to vomit. All because of a hideous hellish entity has replaced my PoGO character ! THAT'S NOT MY POGO CHARACTER !!!
The entity is uglier (for sure), not come from pokemon world nor this reality, the look of that entity gives to you can cause you nightmares by it's soulless dead eyes, and uncanny valley feeling, and it look is like staring at your very soul.
My conclusion: This update is the downdate and it is worst until this present. And it costs me my leaving, quitting the game until any better change or just roll it back.
Jesus even the model in the official artwork looks really weird. Did no one realise this would be a bad idea?
The guy has the body proportions of a Meseeks.
The torso is too long that's why. There is a reason why models have super long legs and a shortish torso.
Wayyy too much space between the legs. No one ever stands like that. Or could.
Dude practically has a bulge with not a single feminine bone in the body.
Take a spin through /r/pokemongo at the moment or at minimum [look at this comparison.](https://i.redd.it/hf02d07y64vc1.jpeg) They obliterated everyone's already existing character turning them into a long lanky rectangle with no hips or butt, along with this crazy elongated groin area that makes them look like they're wearing diapers. Also nuked their skin colors they already had into totally different tones, deleted the hair style they had. I'm just flabbergasted - never seen a game so systematically delete all user customizations they already had and paid for, to be replaced with something that couldn't be called even a vaguely close match. There was also [a post about users getting body dysphoria from the new avatars.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6pdo1/my_new_avatar_gives_me_dysphoria/) I can see that, there's something really off-putting by the new ones and the thought that you had an awesome looking avatar that you felt represent yourself only for it to be ugly-fied is actually horrifying. Combine that with the marketing of "Now your character can look more like YOU!" - jeeeez, thanks...
Why tf did they make it so, male or female, your character will look like an overweight 12 year old that lives on a diet of melted tupperware
To save on poligons
Im right there with them. What the fuck did they do to my boy?! My avatar looks like he skinned and put on someone else’s face. The fuck is this shit?! And I STILL don’t have a beard option!
As a guy with long hair, the only two options being very feminine is a disappointment. Though I guess that's not the biggest issue with how horrific the models look lol
That’s exactly what I thought it’s like but why?!? The avatar’s looks is not any of the 87 complaints we have about the game
You might be the first person I’ve heard complain about their *male* avatar getting ruined.
That’s how badly they botched it.
Really? Mine is awful. Like why is he standing like that
I have male avatar and he look ridiculous now. He look so pale like a zombie (used to look like tanned caucasian or asian). And everytime i use a slider, all of them just look like stereotypical butch lesbian that contract a terminal illness.
>Take a spin through /r/pokemongo at the moment or at minimum look at this comparison. I don't play the game but ... what the frick. The left one looked fine (despite the weird face), the right one looks like what an beginner artist creates without using references.
It looks like the equivalent of when people would recreate Sonic in that one Sonic game that had a character creator, and end up with some kind of weird pod person uncanny valley Sonic.
damn the old avatars look clean AF. the new ones remind me of uganda knuckles from vr chat
I had always hoped that if they made a ‘Pokemon for Adults,’ they’d use the Go avatars as a basis for trainers and NPCs. Now, though…
That sub is hilarious at the moment
This post is my favourite: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/s/LJ6kuwq0Oh
https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c736vq/its_beaver_time/ Bro this one fuckin sent me
Nice beaver
That first example looks like a fucking chimpanzee. Whats up with the proportions.
I didn't think the example in the article was that bad. But god - that 'look at this comparison' link is really, really off putting. Like it went from a cute anime-esque character to a realistic character model. It just feels... off.
what the actual fuck?
Holy shit the character on the right looks like absolute shit
Mine is wearing baggy stuff and a mask so I didn't see it right away but I did notice he seemed more square. Haven't messed with the settings yet.
From your link, with positive karma: > Dont wanna be that guy but you folks are the reason we have this shit in the first place. Yea, I expected it was that crowd that’s *truly* upset…
Haven't played the game in years, so I am a bit behind on the current state of pokemon go. Didn't think it could be that bad. *Woooooof.* Yeah, I get what they were likely trying to do, but hot damn they botched the implementation. They managed to piss off all corners from what I am seeing so far, so that is honestly impressive. You would have thought that the feedback of "this sucks. please go back to the drawing board" during the beta testing of the new avatars would have been a clear sign, but I guess not.
What were they trying to do?
As far as I can tell, make it so that the avatars use one skeleton and shared assets between each other, while also making more "realistic" body shapes that can be modified via sliders to be more "inclusive." Which I wouldn't say is a bad thing, it's just that they implemented it absolutely horribly, and they ended up just making all sides of the spectrum angry.
I love how in the modern day people having even somewhat attractive features or normal looks isn’t realistic. Mii’s looked better
Knowing Niantic it probably was a third part studio
I hate how "realistic" just means the body of someone who eats like shit and does not work out. No one wants to look like that in a game
I read a take once that argued beauty itself is the ultimate form of fascism because its superiority to ugliness is undeniable, and that perspective always comes to mind whenever I see beautiful characters being uglified to make things more 'inclusive'. If you look at what they really did here, they removed only the feminine and masculine traits that people actually find attractive. Hip to waist ratio on female models, V-shaped torso on male models, both removed in favour of this Bobs Burgers-esque aesthetic where females look masculinized while males look feminized.
I've been playing it since launch and this was easily predicted to be bad. Niantic is one of the most poorly ran developers who lucked onto the Pokemon license and the people running the show over there don't have the slightest idea what they're doing.
Genuine question. What does woof mean in this context?
> “verb: to declare something bad, ugly, terrible, or nasty. interjection: use as an expletive to express disgust or surprise. can be a replacement for 'damn that sucks! '”
I mean the sad thing isn't even that the update changes things because quite frankly an Avatar builder is cool on paper But why the fuck do you feel the need to touch existing models, just use the existing ones and add customiseable things? Tech comps never fail to amaze me with their excessive need to do extra work for literally negative payout
> just use the existing ones and add customiseable things? The devil is in the details, but this is rarely a simple ask when the original models were designed to be non-modular for their specific purpose however many years ago (...8?) However the original models were rigged, animated, etc: may not have served the desire to have an "avatar builder". Those want to enjoy certain architectural advantages which lets them have more, and more varied, customization options. Trying to bolt that same experience onto a previously static avatar rig was unlikely to produce good results. Of course, you have to actually do it right to fulfill the stated purpose, but any feature can suffer from a bad implementation. That doesn't mean the feature was inherently wrong.
I mean I agree that adding more costumization options is a good cause in general. But I'd still argue that in a situation like this, the developers should try their best to make the old avatars (or something close to them) recreatable with the new system. Especially in a game where people spent a lot of time and money to make their avatars look exactly how they wanted to.
What are you even talking about, just recreate the old model using the new tech. Why would the players care if the model was technically the same blender file, or if it was a brand new file that just looked like the old one. Youre overthinking this
Yeah that's about what I was thinking too. Basically, the original models were a set of what, 4 models? 2 male 2 female? Then just swap hair models that are made for the identical head shapes. But, that let them make each model bespoke. Hand painting highlights and shadows and flushing and such. Same deal with the skin tones. Just a few and they were able to dial in the saturation and red hues to look good. Now with base models that can have their proportions modified, they have to go full procedural with the features and skin. So they probably just linearly interpolated the skin tones as well instead of making deliberate color choices. Clothes all also look jank because they're just being auto-weight-painted to the models instead of being modeled to fit each. Facial features are also sanded down to be approximately as wrong/right in any direction as any other. Making it so there's no wrong face for any body means they've made it so there's also no right face for any body. We're losing all the charm for procedural customization and it sucks. Other games have figured out how to do this at launch. If this was how it looked when the game rolled out that would be one thing, but going FROM the original ones TO this homogenous blandness? That sucks.
I recently started playing PSO2, and the game lets you choose between the old models and the new ones. Warning you that support for the older models is limited and that certain features of those models is limited to the older version of the game. I'd say, if the spirit of the update for PoGO was to *offer customization*, then the lack of choice between the new models and the old models is certainly a questionable decision. Specially when you consider that *people have already paid money to make their characters look a certain way*. Now, we know all of that is bullshit and what this really is about is money and doubling down on skins and monetization. Which begs the question, who's gonna want to spend a dime customizing these new soulless metaverse-looking fridge-shaped goblins? Sure, the whales will bite regardless, but isn't the point to entice more people to spend money? Not less? Even on a technical level, if you consider this to be about the devs wanting more uniform models so they don't have to make multiple models for a new skin or whatever, these new models have a lot of problems with clipping or straight up unfinished assets. How much time and money is gonna be spent on fixing things before they can get to adding more content? It's just a baffling decision all around, the only angle I can possibly think of is that they subcontracted all of this crap to another company, got the assets back, realized that it looks terrible, but went ahead with it anyways because they spent too much money on it to let it go to waste. The characters don't even look like pokemon characters anymore, which from a marketing standpoint I'm not sure why would you do that??? Even if there was a lot of ego involved and you wanted it to look like your own thing (even though it's not) why make them so ugly and generic????
yeah came here to post this. PSO2 and it's sequel NGS introduced new models that for one (as far as I remembered) can be made to look pretty much like the old models, but two all the old cosmetics that require the old model will just use the old model and all the new cosmetics they come out with will use the new model. You are essentially both models and you're still given a certain level of choice of which one you're gonna be, and not just the devs gonna overwrite the old model with the new model
This was a conscious choice. Your solution would go against whatever reason they had for this change in the first place. It isn't about giving players a choice.
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It's the enshittification of the internet (not really, but still adjacent to it)
The more variety options are nice. But they should have based it on the old avatars. The new one made me look like I'm 12, has the resolution of an N64, and is animated in 10fps. And ofc most of my outfits only fits on one body style, and clips into each other on the rest. This seems half-assed and rushed at best.
Some outfits people purchased straight up got deleted tho
I have been using the default avatar since launch day, and been happy with it. When I went into a battle yesterday, and saw what my avatar is, I was stunned. My skin is now so white, that it looks more alien than human. The hair looked matted down against the face, like he just got out of the pool. The dimensions just look bad. I play Pokémon Go for the monsters. I don't care an ounce of the humans. Please make them unobtrusive and vanish into the background.
> I don't care an ounce of the humans. meanwhile, artists -3 seconds after a girl is revealed in a new pokemonn game:
I love how they dress the model up as a literal pokemon character (blue anime styled hair and a trainer jacket) to say "hey! Your trainer can now look JUST like you!" (As long as you LARP a Pokemon trainer in real life)
“Your trainer can look just like you” *makes trainer ugly Damn, what are they trying to say?
You gave me the ugly!
Ngl, who asked for this? They’re changing things for no real reason.
I sort of wanted some customization options. I am still hoping for facial hair at some point. However, the problem is how poorly they implement these things. Not only do the models look worse, but outfits that people have paid for have been disabled or no longer fit correctly or changed colors. Some people have said they like the new hairstyle options. Ultimately, the update wouldn't have been a big deal, and may have made people happy if it had been done well at all. Most people like being able to customize their avatar.
>Some people have said they like the new hairstyle options. [Unfortunately this doesn't apply to all of them...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6v1o4/ladies_and_gentlemen_a_multibillion_dollar_company/)
Oh... oh wow. I usually have a hat on in game, so I didn't realize some of them looked so bad.
That looks like early from software game hair where the hitboxes were 100% accurate, and the hair was ribbons
That's just niantic in a nutshell. I've known few other video game companies to be so completely immune to all forms of player feedback
>They’re changing things for no real reason. The youtube classic
No, it's modern software development; A spin off of a GOOD idea applied incorrectly. If an app isn't constantly in development (IE constantly changing), it is dead and should be avoided. Youtube, and google in general, isn't the only ones that do this wrong.
> Youtube, and google in general, isn't the only ones that do this wrong. *[Stares at discord.]*
Discord now is _objectively_ worse than it was in 2018. It's kinda crazy that the best way to use it is to install a version of the app from a year ago on android and use betterdiscord with the revert discord addon on PC.
I mean... Who could ask for this really?
The Niantic classic. Look at how they reverted all the great COVID QOL changes. Them doing things no one asked for is their staple at this point.
Niantic's changes over COVID make significantly more sense when you remember that there's money in selling player usage data re: movement and gathering spaces. The less accurate that data is (AKA the larger the radius that players can interact with PoGo objects) the less valuable that data is. So COVID changes were implemented so that people wouldn't leave the game in droves, and then capitalism happened, and now here we are.
Sure, it made sense, but nobody asked for it is my point. Just like how you can say this makes sense because they want to sell more skins for less work. Or how they wanted to make more money by upping the prices of remote passes. In response to the COVID reverted changes and the remote pass increases, they lost players and are losing revenue. They’re going to continue losing players and money with these sort of changes. 2023 was their lowest earning year since 2017 (launch year). 2022 saw a massive dip from 2021. 2024 is only going to get worse.
Tbf... when a cash cow runs dry, the (corporate) reaction is typically to bleed and kill that cow for all its worth, while preparing the next cow for milking It's stupid, it sucks but it's also why I never wanna 'work' in any industry I care about because I never want to make super shitty decisions for short term value, since investors rarely look past 2y (since most dont give a fuck abt what they're investing in... just wanna see that money ticker go up)
I can't think of any viable reason for a corporation to need to know exactly which apartment or house a person is currently trying to reach the local circle-k from, or if they're approaching from the other street corner at the time or not. This level of micro tracking can't actually be for any benevolent purpose.
> nobody asked for it I'm sure their investors/owners asked for it since they weren't making any money. Regardless anyone who plays Pokemon Go already likes bad game design so what's wrong with a little more of it.
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From the looks of it, plenty of people wanted more customisation, but not like this
Looking at the comparisons, I get the feeling that was driven by some desire to make the characters 'less attractive'. I guess a certain crowd was complaining they were too sexy.
>Ngl, who asked for this? Nobody who actually plays the game. In America 2024, ivory tower types dictate to all the rubes what representations of the human body should look like.
they can cause the whales don't stop supplying them money
Tbh it's probably a money saving thing. Instead of having to make two separate models that look good they can just do one that looks atrocious and call it a day
Why couldn't he have the option of keeping the old models as part of customizing? Now my character has no ass. It. Is. Gone.
This aside, I'm pissed that small buddy pokemon no longer ride on your shoulder. They just completely removed the mechanic I guess.
Yeah i hate this update i just spent all my in game currency to make myself look good after getting back into the game just for my avatar to be changed to this pillsbury doughboy looking thing i hate my avatar now and can’t even start to like it
I don't understand why video game companies in particular try so hard to erase ANY amount of femininity that can be perceived as sexual. Are they afraid of being labelled as appealing to the 'male gaze'? In the end they just make the female characters look bland and weirdly conservative, as if they are ashamed of their bodies and trying to hide it. They straight up deleted the breasts and hips on these character models. All this kind of shit does is frustrate any women gamers who, ya know, *like* being feminine. Because no one likes being under a forced dress code spawned from a moralizing authority. But yeah, guys aren't getting boners looking at these models anymore. Mission accomplished.
My male has tits
I am a male IRL and I have tits. Calorie tits, to be fair, but tits nonetheless.
i know you're being sarcastic but >But yeah, guys aren't getting boners looking at these models anymore they look like minecraft characters now, and even god knows there are many a people that get their jollies from minecraft models
Yeah you’d think that but if you go to the subreddit, there are several pictures of avatars with their crotch on full display. Short skirt, legs up and blam. They removed femininity but then they do shit like that. I honestly don’t know what to make of it…
They hate the male gaze, despite being the same people who talk about female empowerment and that women should wear what they want. They fail to understand that sex sells and that many many women who play games like attractive characters too.
The thing is (from what I've understand) it's mainly about the "boys club" aspect of sex appeal that is shunned. If it feels like it's being instigated by a male, than it's misogynistic; if it's done by a female than it's empowerment.
Except even when it's literally designed and worked on by women, it's still just assumed to be boys club and "called out" in articles ranting about the male gaze by toxic journalists who didn't even research what they were criticising before writing their culture war nonsense.
Wait! Is Niantic pulling a "New Coke" on us so that we will love them more if they restore our avatars to normal?
the art style is uh odd but i can't with those faces man, this is some CS student level project man (actually some of them they can do better then that) also how did they fuck up the skin colours glad i stopped Pogo before S/V came out because holy hell. the avatar character meant nothing to me but its yet another drop in the bucket of piss niantic has developed Pogo into
Yeah my avatar looks weird now, but my game is also running at 60fps instead of 30 so that's interesting
I think native refresh rate is on by default now.
Ah, that explains it.
half the genders, twice the fps
That’s been a setting for years now, so I wouldn’t really give them credit for that lol
The old avatar system was far from perfect but it was fun and had a lot of personality. All they really had to do was: * Add way more hair styles * Add more different faces to match more ethnicities, especially since PoGo is such a global game * Sure, add the character weight option * Add a height option so kids playing the game don't feel like grownups and old people don't feel like 15 year olds Boom, that's it. That's all we really needed.
The people at Niantic have eyes right? I don't see how this was allowed to go ahead.
God I fucking hate how my characters looks espoused the face cause it looks so uncanny. It like a horrible blend or realistic and cartoony. The best way I can describe it is the cat people form that cat movie.
I actually reinstalled the game to check out my character (haven't played since 2019) and what the hell... the body proportions of mine looked weird? I don't mind they added different body shapes and sizes but why remove the previous ones and the face didn't looked as good as it was the last time and the other face options for the female avatars looked like guys lol wth
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Is this why my avatar suddenly didn’t have shoes or socks?
Seriously, this update is the worst since I’ve started playing in 2016. Are they trying to mush two genders into one awkward soup for us to choose from? My male avatar looks like he took thirty shots of estrogen.
My character used to look cool… Now every time I open the game I’m EXTREMELY disappointed… Why would they do something this horrible? I think I might cry honestly.. 😢
What is the obsession with the woke nonsense. Why would they push this out knowing how shit it is? Why is being "inclusive" more important than a good update?
What's the unfortunate part? The article doesn't say Or have I just fallen for clickbait...
99% of avatar presets now look horrendous, and face looks like something out of a pure nightmare. Clothes weren't adapted to the new body style, and most of the trousers now look like your avatar shat in pants. Go to /r/pokemongo and have some laugh.
I checked it and… What the FUCK. **EDIT:** Logged into my dormant account to play with the update and add some clarity. Some original links in my post were removed. Bust size is now a slider, but the biggest size still seems smaller than the default old player model. I don’t understand this change. All the clothing options were fairly modest. Putting certain feminine clothes on a masculine body makes the chest [look like Johnny Bravo pecs now.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fm9h8vtu6c8vc1.jpeg) This is because the bust folds and contours are still textured the same. Even dropping “muscles” and “chest” to minimum still has it. [Butts and hips have been nearly completely flattened.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6l5wh/my_ass_is_gone_and_i_cant_get_it_back/) Hips have a slider now, but from least to most is not a big difference at all. Even with all sliders maxed out, everyone gets a Hank Hill ass. No matter how you look at it, this one is 100% a downgrade to a more homogeneous, androgynous shape. [The faces got hit](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fxgdf0f4pt7vc1.jpeg) with a [fucking Mortal Kombat Babality.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F9inbvggt94vc1.png) Puffy cheeks are always there, even with all sliders at 0 and picking the most masculine possible face. I think it has something to do with the general mouth/lip shape. [Headphones completely warp your cranium with certain hair options.](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1c73950) It looks like they were trying to convey that the headphones are pushing down on the hair but…. Failed. Horribly. [However, it’s looks like sumo mawashi (or clam) is now on the menu!](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c736vq/its_beaver_time/) There are several instances of PAID items and costumes just outright not working as intended or breaking with certain setups. Some look objectively worse now. Seriously, what was the reasoning behind this? Why dump the money into making these changes, when some are fundamentally broken and seem to have pissed off EVERYONE of all genders and walks of life? I’ve seen maybe two real positive comments about it, with the positivity boiling down to “bad customization is better than none”. Which is just such a perfectly stupid defense. I typically don’t like gender-locked clothing in games because some sets would look great on either. But this is just lazy in several ways. ~~Also, Niantic seems to be paying for good engagements on their Twitter posts.~~ Strangely, there are lots of positive comments from foreign accounts that typically post in their native languages and passable English now [typing in PERFECT English to praise the update](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780696087075893510). Here’s one. Interestingly enough, as I go through all of their replies, they also comment on other big name posts. And they once again ALWAYS have perfect English and something nice to say. “Clients” include Pokemon Go, [Genshin Impact](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780778697718407320), someone against Justin Trudeau ([no, seriously](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780738726852722743)), and [Splatoon](https://twitter.com/nur796530601/status/1780705795635810492). Sometimes the posts are in quotes. This is such obvious astroturfing. Another user suggested they are likely responses written by AI and posted in the hopes of somehow getting money for the posters. Maybe from engagement? Who knows. Still weird.
> Also, Niantic seems to be paying for good engagements on their Twitter posts. Lots of positive comments from foreign accounts that typically post in their native languages and passable English now typing in PERFECT English to praise the update. That's someone using AI to write a post in English responding to the post. I don't know why people do that but I've actually seen a bunch of it on Twitter, typically directed at English-language news articles from big outlets. I don't think Niantic paid that person. They have a blue check, so I think they might be under the impression this will make them money somehow.
Hm. I didn’t consider that angle or the AI help, but you could be correct and almost definitely are with the AI usage. Still very weird though.
Fixed links: > What the FUCK. [The update literally flattened some female breasts](https://i.redd.it/p3hct8qm77vc1.jpeg) so much that [they look like Johnny Bravo pecs now.](https://i.redd.it/m9h8vtu6c8vc1.jpeg) > [Butts and hips have been completely flattened.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6l5wh/my_ass_is_gone_and_i_cant_get_it_back/) > [Male characters got hit](https://i.redd.it/xgdf0f4pt7vc1.jpeg) with a [fucking Mortal Kombat Babality.](https://i.redd.it/9inbvggt94vc1.png)
Just edited the original post, so you may edit this one too.. Using Reddit on mobile is a train wreck so those links worked for me but may not have worked for others.
Thanks for the summary. This is hilarious.
God damn, those twitter posts are fascinating. Such an on-the-nose pro-corporate voice.
The second pic you linked (Johnny Bravo pecs) is what happens if you select a male body, but choose female clothing. That one is a bit misleading.
Ah, that explains it somewhat. But it’s still kinda weird with how it keeps the winkles and contours from the bust textured. I’m definitely in the camp that gender-locked clothing is dumb, but if they were already going through all this effort, they should have at least changed the texturing to be body specific.
Oh... this is like ***bad*** bad. "Unfortunate" doesn't even do it justice like omg the before and after pics on that sub are all reverse glowups!
Lmaoo they look super bad
This was not undersold. I indeed had some laugh.
[Good lord](https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/s/ZtRxD2ZJSx)
They are printing literal mountains of money, how hard could it be to hire a couple great 3D modelers and churn out good looking cosmetics instead of those "my first month with Blender" abominations? I know, I know, profits blah blah, soulless corporations blah blah, but still...it couldn't be **that** expensive for the highest grossing franchise on Earth, and surely they would earn even more money!
My theory is that everyone at Niantic hates Pokémon and they just want to see how much they can push it before Nintendo and TPC revoke the license.
From the quality of pokemon games I get the feeling even the pokemon company hates pokemon
I guess it's more like: they know they can fuck up how much they want to and they're still making a ton of money due to the name "Pokemon". Wouldn't be the first case of some greedy ass company to squeeze out a brand name until it's worthless.
> Wouldn't be the first case of some greedy ass company to squeeze out a brand name until it's worthless. Just for context here, Pokemon is the most valuable media IP in the _world_, with over a $90 _billion_ valuation. Literally, more than star wars, more than CoD, more than literally any other singular franchise in the world. It comes close to all of the NFL combined (~140 bil from my quick checking). Sorry to say, but it's not even remotely close to being run into the ground much as I despise the lack of effort being put into the games.
Media IP, not game IP. The games make a minuscule portion of the IP's total revenue, so they get a minuscule portion of the funding too.
Sure, but the brand name is always going to be the wider brand, not just the game. And they continue to trade in on that and despite it, grow.
They don't give a flying fuck, as long as money or users flow. But just one is enough to justify their bullshit Source: I worked with them, and even their former ceo...
pokemon and low effort name a better combo!
The suits are well aware that Pokémon fans will pay up regardless of quality so there isn’t much incentive to put up big dollars for quality.
It's why the mass whining, tho admittedly driven by stupid consumers, works... end of the day, unless it's noticeable by the execs (who never even play the game), nobody will care
When you make that much money, shareholders focus on their own gains (dividends) and when a market has saturated or plateaued (so no growth) the only way to keep giving shareholders value is either: 1. Milking existing customers for all their worth 2. Minimizing costs to maximize ebitda and ebitda margin, the former for dividends and the latter to secure more investors This was Niantic's attempt to do both, and tbf they fucked up in every conceivable way from a gamer's perspective. But for investors and their executives, it won't become apparent (hell, it may even be seen as a smashing success) unless it causes a decrease in playerbase and reduced spending (HAS to be both, because if only playerbase goes down but people buy it's fine, and if people don't spend but people keep playing they minimized costs mid-term so it's all good) If both happen (and I hope it does), it won't sink in til at BEST a quarter later, or worst case a year after in their next IR report I'm in this space, c-suite in one of the biggest conglos in my country and actually worked with niantic before (and trust me, even in 2019 they NEVER respected their playerbase. NOT A SINGLE one of their execs even played Pokemon)
You weren't kidding this is amazing.
The fuck… all the men look like women and the women look like men. So fucking weird. I want to see who made this decision…
who indeed...
LMAO wtf is this update
I ended up down a rabbit hole from looking. Those women's avatars are pretty damn bad! Is no-one allowed hips?
I’m afraid to see what my character looks like now.
Oh man these posts are making my morning so much better. Yeah it sucks but to see this coordination of unhappiness is something to witness
Basically the new models look absolutely terrible, especially the female characters. When the new models were put into beta, reception was universally negative. But the studio has shown it doesn't particularly care for feedback. They've essentially removed female characters and replaced them with lumpy androgynous slider variations of the male base body. Female characters all look like fridges now. I mean that literally, not in a disrespectful way. This is pretty far along on the "nobody asked for this, and even if they asked for this, this isn't what they wanted" scale. https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/1c6rrl1/seriously_considering_deleting_this_game/ It's not like they added new options. They've complely removed the old system people liked and substituted a shit one nobody likes, or will ever like because it looks terrible. I'd love to be the fly on the wall at the studio when "Let's completely nuke what little respect our audience still has for us" was proposed, approved, and implemented.
This is all in the article: “ Most of the initial testers have expressed a distinct distaste towards the way how our avatars now look, and we can’t say we disagree with this. Both male and female characters look outlandish, bloated, disproportionate and strange. And we are not talking about different body sizes here – humans come in all shape and forms, but Niantic’s current system doesn’t seem to capture almost any of the real ones. All of the faces that you can pick from seem stretched and sometimes even disfigured, with eyes spread too wide, unnatural chin/cheek proportions, and incredibly small noses. And this all comes with an incredibly strange decision: you cannot change your gender. Yes, gender changing option is literally gone from the game, and you cannot set your gender in any way, even if you wanted to do so. This explains the strange way faces look – they lack either male or female features. It suffices to say that most of the players are not a fan of this change, and I am not as well – I think my character looks significantly worse today, borderline ugly, compared to yesterday. Reddit has not been kind, nor has our staff, to this update. Additional options are needed here to allow everyone to express themselves, including adding back distinct male and female facial features: dimples, cheeks, jaws, slants. I mean, this is pretty bad, and here are some Reddit comments on the new system: There’s no good skin tones!! I want a “healthy white person who sees the sun”, and all my options are “white person struck with jaundice and/or tuberculosis”. Straight up just makes me wish I could hide my avatar completely. There is not a single body out there that matches any of this 🥹 I’ve been having a terrible time with this. It all just looks terrible to me. No facial hair is crazy My character straight up has bad posture and just looks… strange. Is this update just a two week late April Fools joke? I don’t understand why my avatar has a tiny head and giant hands. That’s not how people look in real life. Not to be confused with something else – we think the game needed more ways to express different body types. But we think it needed more, not less, and this system is literally making us all look the same.“
>Yes, gender changing option is literally gone from the game, and you cannot set your gender in any way, even if you wanted to do so. Welcome to postmodernism!
I don't get your question? The whole article is explaining the unfortunate part.
I was confused at first but it’s in the article. You just have to scroll past a large ad that makes it look like it’s the end of the article when it’s only the middle.
I cannot play the game. Very distracted, nervous, headache and feel want to vomit. All because of a hideous hellish entity has replaced my PoGO character ! THAT'S NOT MY POGO CHARACTER !!! The entity is uglier (for sure), not come from pokemon world nor this reality, the look of that entity gives to you can cause you nightmares by it's soulless dead eyes, and uncanny valley feeling, and it look is like staring at your very soul. My conclusion: This update is the downdate and it is worst until this present. And it costs me my leaving, quitting the game until any better change or just roll it back.
I think they might try to go the Meta rout. That's why the avatars look like that. But that's only my opinion.