Niantic Has Removed All Legendary Pokemon from Pokemon GO Accounts for "Fairness"

Metalix Knightmare

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Sep 27, 2007
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MHR said:
Other games have this crap happen all the time. MMOs have limited items obtained in weird ways that nobody can ever get ever anymore, even TF2 has items that shouldn't exist but do anyway due to bugs or exploits a few people found. None of those are really removed because they don't damage anything.

PokemonGO is a stupid mobile game where balance isn't nearly close to the top of the list of its problems. So what if a couple people kept the bird, they didn't have to delete it.

People losing their shit over it are worse. Easy come, easy go. Get over it.
Given how legendary pokemon tend to be though, I rather doubt it came easily.
 

Elvis Starburst

Unprofessional Rant Artist
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Aug 9, 2011
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Side A: People shouldn't have stuff they legitimately caught be removed from their accounts for a mistake made. At the very least they should be given some stuff back.
Side B: The legendaries are clearly meant for some sort of event of big announcement, and Niantic don't want people saying they have these Pokemon before these events happen. They made a mistake and they don't want to downplay the official release of the Pokemon.
My thoughts: Get over it? The excuse is that it's meant to be kept fair. I'm sure they don't mean in terms of combat stats or anything like that. They probably mean it in the case of people having Pokemon that are 100% unable to be obtained through legitimate means yet. These people got lucky due to a fault, and so Niantic wants them to be on a level playing field with everyone else because they're not supposed to have a legendary yet. I call that perfectly reasonable. Should these people maybe get some items and XP for the mistake? Yes, absolutely. But I repeat this: You're not supposed to have these Pokemon in the first place
 

Kameburger

Turtle king
Apr 7, 2012
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I didn't see what the big deal was about the tracking thing. Damn system didn't even work for me. But this is kinda awkward. Just activate legendary Pokemon a little at a time. If a couple people had them doesn't that make it rare like a legendary Pokemon should?
Just removing them is kind of bullshit, and I don't also really understand what kind of integrity they're preserving. It's not like the battle system is stable enough yet for me to care that I got my ass kicked by a far superior Pokemon...
 

ninja51

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When Pokemon Go first came out I had hope for the game, I would tell friends who were playing that "IF" Niantic can work quickly and start adding stuff to the game, we might just have a true blue Pokemon world. Niantic has since shown their success was a complete fluke and they haven't the creativity and/or talent to actually capitalize on their success. There's been one update so far, it largely removed features rather than fixing or adding any, and at this point, a month down the road, any hope of Pokemon Go actually becoming a staple of modern society is gone. Our potential Poke World has been obliterated by time and Niantic failing at fucking everything.

Legendary Pokemon are cool, but no fucking draw to the game. When putting out 3-5 fucking pokemon has taken more than a month, shit like trading and a decent combat system will take 10 years. I'm just disappointed, but unsurprised. When dealing with anything involving Nintendo its a safe bet it will be mismanaged and any successes are accidental.
 

Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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Well that is a fucked thing to do. Listen, if people benefited from a mistake that THEY made, it's actually unfair to remove them. This company sucks, it's just anti-consumer. The solution isn't to remove them, the correct solution is to see a few more into the world. It's just backwards. You don't level the playing field by removing things, you level it by making the option available to everyone. In other words, keep them suitably rare, but keep them in the world.
 

Baresark

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Proto Taco said:
LysanderNemoinis said:
This sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do in this day and age, because this is how society functions. Everyone is supposed to be equal and rather than everyone having the same shot to do be better, we all have to be the same and push down those who rise up.
By your logic every drug dealer, warlord, mugger and thief should get a free pass because after all, cheating is fine if it gives you an advantage.

Niantic made the right move here. Preserve the integrity of their big event flagships, improve customer communication, and fix the inciting issues as quickly as possible. Cheating, even by glitch, should NEVER be supported or allowed. If players don't have to earn their advancement then gameplay loses all meaning and sportsmanship.
It's not cheating though. These Pokemon were in the world, someone didn't hack them into the game. If it was a known exploit, you might have a point, but it wasn't. Just a lucky few individuals who came across these things in the wild. Correct me if I'm wrong. If people did hack these into the game or take advantage of known exploit, let me know. But if neither of those things happened then no one cheated.
 

Fappy

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Jan 4, 2010
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Kibeth41 said:
A handful of people having ownership of something not accessible by others is both unfair, and detracts from the overall experience when the birds are finally released.
Eh, I couldn't care less what other people have. People have been hacking pokemon for ages in the original franchise.

The players didn't exactly lose anything. If ever you obtain shit you're not supposed to in an MMO, then you're always fully aware that you probably don't get to keep it. In fact, I'd imagine you'd probably send in a bug report.
I think it's fair to assume that the vast majority of people playing Pokemon Go (at least for now) are fairly casual gamers. I imagine most people wouldn't know they got something they weren't supposed to have unless they were curious enough to look it up. I know plenty of people playing that can't even recognize any of the pokemon silhouettes XD

If I were one of them, I'd feel cheated for sure. At the very least compensate them with a cool rare they don't have and the pokeballs they wasted.
 

Asuka Soryu

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Jun 11, 2010
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I need some popcorn. Watching Niantic fumble the legendary golden goose is pretty entertaining.
 

Nazulu

They will not take our Fluids
Jun 5, 2008
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Wow! Not even Nintendo are that shitty. Just create more ways for other people to get legendary's you fucking morons!
Someone send this too them.
 

EbonBehelit

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Oct 19, 2010
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Not the best way of going about things, but letting the players keep the Birds would have been even worse: besides balance issues, how many of those players do you think would resist the urge to sell their accounts for shitloads of money?

I'm of the opinion that no legendaries should be catchable, though.

LysanderNemoinis said:
This sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do in this day and age, because this is how society functions. Everyone is supposed to be equal and rather than everyone having the same shot to do be better, we all have to be the same and push down those who rise up.
What? did the world turn Communist while I wasn't looking?

If anything, leaving the legendaries in would mirror how our society works more closely: you know, the 'lucky' few having a significant advantage over the rabble, and all that.
 

Auron225

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Oct 26, 2009
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I don't understand who benefits from removing them. If I was playing Pokemon Go, I'd think it pretty awesome that someone else has a legendary. What I would NOT feel is "cheated" because they have a legendary and I don't. You know why? Because I am not a f*cking 3-year-old.

This isn't just going to turn away those who had their Articuno's ripped from their hands - it's very likely going to disgust a lot of other players who see what kind of company Niantic is. The obvious call here was to release a small number of other Articuno's into the world. Heck, it would have made the news in a lot of places given the attention Pokemon Go has gotten ("First legendary Pokemon can now be found in the wild") and it may well have brought back a lot of players who had already gotten bored with it.

This game may already die a death before I even get the chance to get a phone that can play it.
 

Neverhoodian

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Apr 2, 2008
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I swear, mobile developers have a special knack for wrenching failure from the jaws of success. First EA's Capital Games division screwed over Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, now it's Niantic that's falling flat on their face. These franchises are gold mines, yet they still find ways to utterly squander the opportunity.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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You know what's funny? I think I want this and Angry Birds to fight to the death for my amusement. Is that bad?
 

bluegate

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To be honest though, there really is no meaning in having caught just 1 pokemon, you can't even make it stronger unless you capture multiple pokemon... so yeah... Let people have one legendary, it won't do them much good anyway.
 
Mar 30, 2010
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If only a few people had them then where's the harm in letting them keep them? I mean, if they'd accidentally dumped Legendaries in every Pokemon Go account then yeah, admit you done fucked up and take 'em back, but if it's only a few players there will be far more damage done by the bad will generated by this ill thought out move than the damage done by letting a handful of Legendaries enter a couple of accounts.
 

Saltyk

Sane among the insane.
Sep 12, 2010
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fisheries said:
Saltyk said:
Proto Taco said:
LysanderNemoinis said:
This sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do in this day and age, because this is how society functions. Everyone is supposed to be equal and rather than everyone having the same shot to do be better, we all have to be the same and push down those who rise up.
By your logic every drug dealer, warlord, mugger and thief should get a free pass because after all, cheating is fine if it gives you an advantage.

Niantic made the right move here. Preserve the integrity of their big event flagships, improve customer communication, and fix the inciting issues as quickly as possible. Cheating, even by glitch, should NEVER be supported or allowed. If players don't have to earn their advancement then gameplay loses all meaning and sportsmanship.
But, these players didn't cheat. Niantic screwed up and these players got Legendaries. This is punishing someone else for their mistakes.
By taking away the variable that lets them own a digital pokemon.

Come on people, let's look at this in context, please. It's embarassing in here.
Niantic screwed up. They shouldn't take something that players legitimately earned. These players didn't cheat. They didn't hack. They didn't break any rules or laws. This colors Niantic in a negative light. It is not fair to punish the players for their mistake.

The only people who should be embarrassed are Niantic. I don't even care about this game that much. And it's not like I lost anything.

Seriously, this is a website about gaming first and foremost. If you don't want people to be upset when a game developer screws over players, go to some other site.