Due to its periodic updates and player feedback, it's no surprise that Pokémon GO has many of them.
- An update released on July 30th 2016 allows players to customize their trainer at will. Meanwhile a message pops up at the start of a session literally warning players not to trespass or enter dangerous areas while playing, since, apparently, the warning about being alert at all times was not enough.
- Players noticed with the same update, however, that the escape/catch rate for the Pokémon seemed to have changed so that it was a lot easier for Pokémon to escape and break out of Poké Balls and some EXP bonuses were removed, making the game a far more frustrating experience that it needed to be for many. Fortunately, Niantic confirmed that this was a bug
and upon finding out about it, quickly got to work on fixing it. Many players still find it odd that this alledged bug affected so many different things at the same time, and think that the "bug" was actually an intentional gameplay change from Niantic in order to push people to spend money on the online shop, with Niantic backtracking once they realized that this change led too many people to stop playing the game altogether, along with the bad press it generated. - After being removed entirely, the footprint tracking system was ultimately replaced by an even more useful system than the original was intended to be, with "Sightings" that specify the nearest Pokéstop to each Pokémon listed in the tracker. However, the function is brand-new and isn't completely functional as of the patch's initial launch.
- The Zubat plague appears to have been cut down over time. Pidgey and Rattata also no longer hatch from eggs, and Eevee now hatch from 5km eggs as opposed to 10km.
- To aid late-arriving players that would be no match for the gyms staffed with high CP Pokémon, an update made it so training at allied gyms brings the Pokémon down to the player's level for the purposes of training. This keeps new players from being completely locked out of earning defender bonuses.
- The 2016 Halloween event boosted the spawns of spooky Pokémon; the Gastly line, Cubone line, Drowzee line, and Meowth line. All four are reasonably rare, Gastly and its evolutions in particular. The doubled candy was a nice bonus. In 2017,the above plus Gen 2 and 3 Ghost-types were similarly given higher spawn rates, in addition to Houndour and Houndoom - making the difficult-to-collect Dark-note and Ghost-type medals a lot easier to grind for.
- Niantic responded to the controversy over the Poké Stops being locked while going above the speed limit by doubling items obtained from them and dramatically increasing spawns, albeit only for a few days.
- Players will have noticed that after October 2016, the number of rare Pokémon encounters is dramatically increased, especially for areas with no Poké Stops nearby. However, this was sidelined by the introduction of Com Mons from the second generation.
- Niantic eventually released a balance update that addressed the problem of Pokémon that should be strong ending up with low CP due to factors like high speed or only one high attack stat throwing off the formula. For just one example, in the previous formula, Vaporeon and Flareon had reasonably high max CP at 2816 and 2643, respectively, with Jolteon's suffering from a rather unimpressive 2140. With the new formula, Vaporeon has shot up to 3157 and Flareon to 2904, while Jolteon trails with a more respectable 2730.
- The partnership with Starbucks caused an increase in the amount of Pokéstops available in rural or suburban areas, slightly alleviating the Scrappy Mechanic of living in a town with almost no Pokéstops, since many towns have (sometimes multiples of five) Starbucks. Some, however, viewed this as "Too little too late" - as a Starbucks may still be kilometers away.
- The Gen 2 update added Nanab Berries, which have the effect of reducing the random animations Pokémon have when you're trying to capture them, a major source of annoyance.
- The raid battles initially rolled out being available only to players level 35 and above. Shortly over the next day, this threshold dropped, to 31, then 28, then 25.
- With the new Gym system, the player is now given coins based on how long their Pokémon has defended the Gym for. The rate was initially 1 coin per hour, before it was greatly improved to 1 coin per 10 minutes.
- Following the failure of the 2017 GO Fest in Chicago, Niantic activated Legendary raid battles with Articuno and Lugia, and began the global events, extending them by 72 hours, while allowing those who attended the fest a 2 mile radius on stops and gyms, a free Lugia, and $100 in coins in apology.
- Complaints about the strictness of the Extreme weather condition (which was triggered by the local weather service declaring some variety of warning - when weather services frequently issue warnings hours in advance of bad weather, and over a large area where a severe storm pattern potentially could go) led to an overhaul of the system. A player can now designate themselves safe from the weather, and spawns are still affected by the underlying condition that triggered the warning (for example, bonuses to Ice and Steel types in snowy weather).
- Complaints about obtaining some of the more frustrating Type badges were mitigated in Generation III. Weather affecting spawn rates (and designating more as common spawns) made badges that were only easy in some regions of the world (like Fire and Ice) much easier to get. Moreover, Rocker, Depot Agent and Delinquent (Electric, Steel and Dark, respectively) were made much easier when one of each type (Electrike, Aron and Poochyena) were made into easily caught Com Mons depending on the current weather.
- With Field Research Breakthrough Rewards system, players are able to use their own balls (eg. Ultra Balls) to capture Legendary Pokémon without the hassle of a limited supply of Premier Balls used in Raid Battles, which are criticized for being always the same as a Poké Ball. Despite having low catch rates, this mitigated the problems players had with Legendary Pokémon (in Raid Battles).
- The addition of Pokémon research, essentially the game's "story mode", full stop has been considered to be one of the best additions to the game and has breathed new life into the game. It has alleviated many of the complaints and problems that have plagued the game since launch, such as breaking the monotony of simply catching as many 'mons as possible by actually giving players goals to fulfill. Field research quests also give players lots of useful rewards, including encounters with Pokémon that are otherwise damn near impossible to find in the wild, like Grimer, as well as various goodies like Stardust, Poké Balls, and healing items, and even giving players the chance to catch legendary Pokémon (and Absol) without having to do raids. Additionally, a Kanto themed event run the week after it was introduced, helping alleviate the difficulty of the special requests for the unprepared (particularly filling the Kanto dex and evolving a Magikarp).
- The Ultra Bonus Event in 2018 allowed players who missed out on EX raids, a very controversial feature introduced the previous year, to finally catch Mewtwo in normal raids. It should be noted, however that these Mewtwo do not have Shadow Ball, making them much less versatile than their EX Raid counterparts.
- In September 2018, the EX-raid system was improved: gyms have a marker showing if they're eligible for an EX-raid, and anyone who receives an EX-raid pass can send an additional invite to another player they've reached Ultra Friends status with, allowing more latitude for people who can't raid there.
- Starting in October, players had another hour after Community Day to evolve the featured Pokémon for their exclusive move.
- Following the controversial Feebas Research Day that had limited time slots and difficult quests, the following two months improved on that by giving easier quests and extending the events' length to nine hours. The March Research Day also released two Shiny lines (Lotad and Castform).
- During the fourth generation release in 2018, many players are shocked by the terrible movesets on fan favorites that are seemingly deliberately added to cripple or nerf the Pokémon. Niantic responded by adding various high-viability moves to several Pokémon such as Honchkrow and Roserade and revamped various Pokémon's movesets right before the release of some of them, such as Giratina Origin Forme or Hippowdon, making them significantly more viable.
- The May/June 2019 Field Research Breakthroughs, after the 6-months of controversial Random Encounters having players getting multiples of undesirable Pokémon from a roster of 8 different Pokémon each monthnote causing ire to many players, the first three sets were removed from the encounter pool, in addition to having Latias/Latios being added into mix, reducing the numbers in a roster in addition to increasing the chances of getting a desired Legendary Pokémon on Random Encounters system. Attempts to revert the roster back to one Pokémon per cycle through Flower Crown Eevee in September/October 2019 was met with backlash, forcing a switchback to Legendaries featuring Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres and Groudon/Kyogre for November/December 2019.
- Unown are a notoriously hard to find Pokémon most of the time, but the September 2019 events made it temporarily (albeit rarely) available in 10km eggs for a week.
- The Regis are notorious enough for having barely any use in both PVE and PVP due to having low attack and outright bad charged moves. The "A Colossal Discovery" event however, grants them Lock-On, a charge move with 1 power and MASSIVE energy gain, allowing the Regis to participate in PVP and defeat Team GO Rocket Grunts and Admins very easily. Registeel especially skyrocketed to the top of the Great League charts and once maxed, remains a solid competitor of the Ultra League and can wipe out most GO Rocket Grunt variants or dent them by itself.
- The December 13 2019 movepool update is this on its very own.
- Earthquake and Mud-Slap, which are considered two of the worst moves in the game, are finally balanced to be decent. Earthquake's base power is now increased by 20, giving it 140 base power and an above average performance. Mud-Slap also got 3 more base power, allowing ground attackers to actually put a dent on enemies.
- Kyogre also benefited from the changes as a poor combination of a slow fast move and a 1-bar move had put its DPS below Machamp despite having significantly higher attack than it. It's now given Surf, which is a straight upgrade from Hydro Pump and allows it to become a superior attacker.
- Tangrowth is often criticized for having only Solar Beam as its sole stab, which charges extremely slow in PVP and is a very slow and clunky one-bar move. Now, it has Power Whip, a significantly superior two bar move, allowing it to become one of the top tier grass attackers in the game.
- Lucario is also highly criticized for having poor performance despite being generation 4's Mascot. It now has Aura Sphere, the strongest move in the game simply because it is so quick that it seemed like the damage window is the same as the move animation duration, in addition to having the same base power as Dynamic Punch. This effectively makes it the strongest fighting attacker in the game!
- Heatran had the bulk, but it had poor moves for PvP and PvE, namely having Fire Blast, a notoriously horrid move. This update gave it Flamethrower, allowing it to be a lot more functionable as a fire attack and in PvP scenarios.
- In addition to those, useful PvP/PvE legacies are also re-released, including Dragon Breath/Dragon Claw Dragonite, Shadow Claw Gengar, Cross Chop Machamp, Dragon Breath Gyarados, Body Slam Snorlax and Flamethrower Arcanine, allowing newer players to access old Pokémon movesets with superior performances over their usual peers.
- Last, but not least, Return (the move purified Pokémon have once they were purified) was increased from 50 power/40 energy to a whopping 130 power/70 energy, turning a poor move into a powerful tool. A Pokémon that benefits from this is Porygon-Z. Its Purified form with Lock On as the fast move quickly turned into the best Normal attacker in the game, outranking even Regigigas. Downplayed, however, in that this buff was in fact intended to be a nerf, specifically one aimed towards PVP, and made several Pokémon such as Banette that had seen momentary competitive viability with the move no longer useful.
- The expanded buddy system rolled out in December, 2019 has a few definite quality-of-life upgrades that relieve some of the minor frustrations from certain aspects of the game. Among the bonuses included are that the buddy will sometimes find extra items for the player (particularly useful in areas with low density of stops), the buddy will sometimes step in and re-deflect a thrown Pokeball when a wild Pokémon has batted it away (the possibility of the wild Pokémon starting its deflection animation after the throw was released has long been frustrating to players), and even halve the distance required to farm candies.
- During the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, playing the game was nearly impossible due to how the game is built around being near others in order to battle and trade with them. Likewise, getting gifts and supplies from stops and doing raids was also not possible without breaking the shelter in place rules many areas had imposed. The devs addressed the issues with several updates that made the game easier to play from home:
- For several weeks, the shop had bundles containing various balls and berries that required only a single coin to purchase.
- For a limited time, gyms and Pokémon Stops had their radius doubled, allowing people to interact with them from a larger distance without coming into contact with others.
- Gifts gave out Balls in greater numbers.
- Buddy Pokémon would bring in items more frequently and they can also gather Gifts from nearby stops.
- Raiding from a distance is possible with Remote Raid Passes, allowing you to raid at any gym visible in the map. To make sure that raiding in person isn't completely invalidated, remote raiders deal less damage and there's a limit to how many remote raiders can be in the raid at once, though the former was mitigated by the pandemic bonuses.
- Various events were redesigned to be easier to complete from home.
- A random task was given out once a day so that players could complete their weekly breakthrough research.
- The Pokémon GO Fest usually took place in a real life location where players could gather and capture Pokémon. Since COVID-19 made gatherings impossible, the 2020 event was made into a digital event that could be accessed anywhere.
- Team GO Rocket started invading via balloons as of July 7, 2020, hovering around your trainer, saving you the risk of having to go out and physically interact with a Pokéstop occupied by a GO Rocket member. For a few months, Jessie and James were appearing in special Meowth balloons, too!
- Around Fall 2020, Niantic removed the COVID bonuses from the game, which ticked off the fan base. After reports of COVID-19 cases were spiking across the world, Niantic not only brought the bonuses back, but would keep them in until June 2021 and would give a heads up on when the bonuses would be removed once the pandemic ceased.
- For years, Pokémon obtained from events could not be multi-selected for transferring, thus you could only transfer them one by one at a slow pace. You'd also get a second pop up asking you if you're sure you want to get rid of your event mon. In 2020, the issue was finally addressed by letting people multi-select any Pokémon and the warning of transferring event based mons was merged with the "Do you wish to transfer?" screen. Legendaries and mythicals were also not allowed to be mass transferred for a long time until an update allowed one to mass transfer them as long as the player enables the option and acknowledges the second warning that pops up to confirm they want to transfer the rare Pokémon. Another update enabled the ability to exclude Legendaries and mythicals in mass transfers when using the "select all" option rather than having to manually unselect them.
- The removal of Mega Evolutions in Pokémon Sword and Shield had people afraid that the series would do away with the concept. While the mechanic has been present in other Pokémon media in 2019 and 2020, its introduction in such a high-profile game as Pokémon GO can be taken as a statement that, yes, Mega Evolution is here to stay. When the mechanic itself was implemented, players were disappointed that it was made Too Awesome to Use due to the very high Mega Energy cost and limited ways in which to collect it for any Pokémon besides Beedrill. In response, Niantic increased the amount of Mega Energy obtained from Mega Raids, decreased the amount of Energy required to Mega Evolve after the first time, and announced that they would be making additional subsequent changes to make it easier to collect.
- Said subsequent changes made in Winter of 2022 led to it becoming far more manageable to Mega Evolve Pokémon: Pokémon now gain increasingly cheaper Mega Evolution costs over time until they can do so for free, and Mega Evolution also increases their Mega Level, which further decreases their base cost and speeds up how quickly they discount the cost of Mega Evolution.
- Raids being reduced to three tiers (four if you count the Mega Tier as a separate tier). Tier 4 Raids were rare to be tackled on unless Raid-only mons such as Absol, Alolan Marowak and Galarian Weezing were involved (at least tier 3 Raids could be solo'd provided players had a strong enough team) and their rewards were slightly inferior to Tier 5. Tier 2 Raids were in the same situation for lower-level players, while players which could tackle Tier 2 Raids received better rewards in Tier 3 Raids. The mons in Tiers 4 and 2 were sent into tiers 3 and 1 respectively.
- Egg storage was capped at nine eggs for the longest time, frustrating players that could not obtain eggs from their adventure sync weekly rewards and from beating GO Rocket Leaders due to their egg storage being full and not easy to clear out at a moment's notice. At the tail end of 2020, Niantic implemented a bonus storage for eggs that specifically drop from GO Rocket Leaders and adventure sync rewards, giving players three extra spots to obtain those eggs without worrying about making room for them.
- The GO Beyond update of December 2020 is a bunch of well-received QoL features:
- Level 40 players were worried about not being able to fully power up their mons, since before the update mons could be powered up to two levels above the player. The update increases this cap to ten levels above the player, which means that level 40 players can fully power up their mons.
- Up to Level 40, the rewards between the levels (with the exception of those levels which were power of 5, e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40) were very... sub-par to say the least. From Level 40 onwards the players receive better rewards in all level increases (such as incubators, incenses, and a Rare Candy XL), with level 45 and 50 giving players the very rare TM Elites and a super incubator as rewards. Considering how difficult is to power up to these levelsnote , the rewards can be very satisfying.
- Filters for Pokémon searches was always in the game, but was never explained or mentioned, thus players had to do some Googling to learn of them. Niantic eventually released a patch that lets players see what filters they can use when doing a search and even combine multiple filters to narrow it down.
- For a while, there was no way to give tags to Pokémon, forcing players to get creative by renaming their Pokémon and within the Character Name Limits. An eventual patch would add a tagging system to make it easier to tag and identify specific Pokémon for specific purposes.
- Feeding Pokémon would have them take two or three bites of the berry before they fully ate it, which took several seconds for each berry if the Pokémon ate slowly. An update changed the eating so that Pokémon now only take one bite instead of multiples, making the feeding process a little bit faster.
- For a long time, the only way to know what was inside an egg was to look it up online. Around April of 2021, Niantic made it possible to see what Pokémon were in each egg and the rarity of each Pokémon inside.note
- Later costumed Pokémon have tended to be Pokémon that are either already at their final evolution stage (such as Top Hat Flygon and Gardevoir and Banette Costume Gengar) or only have one evolution stage to begin with (Litwik Costume Sableye), negating frustration over first-stage costume Pokémon that are completely unable to evolve (such as the costumed Kanto starters) while also giving them more of a purpose beyond just looking pretty in your storage box. A handful of previous costumed Pokémon have also retroactively been given the ability to evolve (such as Flower Crown Togepi and Buneary for example).
- After the infamously hard Mega Steelix posed an incredibly difficult challenge to raiding players, especially in groups who couldn't raise the optimal Pokémon to defeat it, Niantic released a series of free timed research tasks that could be completed to obtain enough Mega Steelix energy to Mega Evolve Steelix once, and when Mega Steelix reappeared in raids, its CP was reduced.
- The original version of the special research All-In-One #151 featured the absolutely insane "Spin 151 unique Pokéstops", which felt to many like they were being asked to walk the ends of the earth to complete; for suburban and rural players especially, there might not be more than 30 Pokéstops within visible map range, let alone reasonable walking distance. The condition of every spin being a unique Pokéstop ended up getting dropped, making the task a lot more feasible, if still grindy.
- The game was infamously known for being a major battery and data hog due to how the game keeps downloading assets whenever it needed them. An update in September 2022 added an option that lets players download all of the game's assets directly to their phone's storage so that whatever assets the game needs to use can be used right away rather than downloading them on the fly, which greatly helps in reducing battery and data use.
- Zorua was planned to debut during Shuppet Spotlight Hour. The problem? It was going to only appear for a total of ten minutes: 5 minutes at the start of the hour and 5 minutes at the end. Given that Zorua and Zoroark are one of the most loved fan favorites of Gen V and they were highly anticipated due to being among the last Gen V Pokémon to be added, fan backlash was intense, escalating further when Niantic cancelled their spawn event due to finding a critical bug in the method used to calculate their stats. Since then, Niantic have changed Zorua's spawn duration from "ten minutes" to "until the end of the Halloween event", giving players way more opportunities to find them.
- Something that annoyed players was the fact that they couldn't open gifts with a full inventory, and were forced to either upgrade their storage or discard items if they didn't want to wait to open them. Eventually, a feature was added that allowed players to open gifts with a full inventory but only get stardust from them.
