In a post on this website, GamePress member housunkannatin states "all scanners are currently down for an indefinite, possibly infinite period of time." This is certainly true of the website I use (GymHuntr), but is it true worldwide? Does anybody know why? Does anybody have any info on the prognosis of the scanners coming up again?
I usually avoid GoHub because it started as a click-bait website, but someone on Discord linked to this article and it explains pretty well:
https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/pokemon-go-maps-and-trackers-go-down-after-a-forced-0-95-3-api-update/
Forced update. New API and security system has to be reverse engineered again. Could maybe be 3-5 weeks based on past outages.
I hope they're down indefinitely, and that Niantic takes the steps needed to improve in-game tracking so that third-party scanners (TPS) aren't necessary anymore. Whatever your opinion on the issue, the fact is that TPS create an unfair advantage for those who use them, over those who play the game honestly and don't use them. They employ bots which spoof in order to aggregate data on spawns and raids, and these are strictly against the TOS. Niantic needs to take this issue into their own hands by killing the TPS, and removing any future need for them.
I would not say "IV" is the main thing differentiating players.
Stardust/rare candy/pokemon lvl does.
However, the introduction of weather boost have decreased that gap a lot.
Getting a high IV pokemon to lvl 40 was earlier a great achievement. With weather boost and scanners it was suddenly possible to find lvl 35 100% mons regularly, at least of the most frequent species, like Machamp, Golem and Aggron.
I would be thrilled if Niantic took steps to "improve" in-game tracking (I would use the word "create" because there is nothing in what Niantic offers in-game that effectively provides for in-game tracking of what raids are coming up in a reasonable distance from my location. The "nearby" function is a misnomer in anything but an urban, very densely populated location. Most of us do not live in San Francisco or New York or Shanghai.)
I disagree that third-party scanners create an "unfair advantage for those who use them over those who play them game 'honestly' and don't use them" as you put it. I use the free GymHuntr web site, available to everyone at no charge (and therefore, inherently, not "unfair"), to find out what raids are happening within about 10 miles or so of my house (about the distance limit of my willingness to drive).
I think you misunderstand the "terms of service". The terms of service limit the use you can make of Niantic's service. When using a third party site, like GymHuntr, I am not using Niantic's services. In using GymHuntr's website, I cannot possibly be violating Niantic's terms of service. Maybe GymHuntr is, but I am not.
"[...] In using GymHuntr's website, I cannot possibly be violating Niantic's terms of service. Maybe GymHuntr is, but I am not."
I think we subscribe to different notions of 'justice', philosophically speaking, which is fair enough. From my perspective, GymHuntr, for instance, utilises something 'illegal' to function and therefore it is, too, 'illegal'. Which really is why I'm never going to bother with any form of scanners; I just think it's wrong and it's not how I want to play the game.
"I disagree that third-party scanners create an "unfair advantage for those who use them over those who play them game 'honestly' and don't use them" as you put it."
They do, though. The level-playing field would exist if everyone used scanners, or nobody used scanners - not some halfway point where some do, and others don't. That is precisely where the imbalance, and concept of 'unfair advantage' comes from. Since, from the point I made above, scanners are 'illegal', the best way to level the playing field would be to have no scanners whatsoever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMSU-YVLvNA // good analysis about scanners here tbh.
Your's is a truly excellent and well considered reply. Perceptive. Astute. But I disagree. How am I, as a user of GymHuntr, to know if GymHuntr is violating Niantic's terms of service? It is Niantic's obligation to be vigilant in enforcing its intellectual property rights. It appears to me that Niantic has not done so until now. There is a maxim of equity of law stating something to the effect that "the law helps those who help themselves". If Niantic has been lax in enforcing its intellectual property rights, shame on it, but not shame on me (or anybody else) for using a tool available to all. If I (and many others) used GymHuntr or similar sites to find out what pokemon was spawning at a nearby website, we cannot be held in disapprobation for using some tool available to all. Fundamentally, only Niantic, and not you or any other player, has the right to shut down GymHuntr. But I think that Niantic does so at cost to itself. And it has not done so until now. In my environment, seldom can I find a raid on which I can plan to attend without GymHuntr or a similar tool. Happy hunting, my friend.
I appreciate the point you make. This is why I believe the best solution to the 'scanner issue' is Niantic taking extreme ownership, and developing their own 'raid scanning' mechanism, perhaps in the form of a webpage accessible to all PoGo players. That eliminates the need for bot/spoofer accounts to populate third-party scanners with the desired information.
I don't really want to go down the grapevine of discussing the use of scanners to seek out rare/perfect Pokemon, however - I feel scanning of this variety just destroys the game.
Thank you for your astute observations. I agree 100% that "the best solution to the 'scanner issue' is Niantic taking extreme ownership, and developing their own 'raid scanning' mechanism, perhaps in the form of a webpage accessible to all PoGo players." That would be awesome. I hope that I shall still be playing when that day arrives.
I think we all know those sites have violated TOS and by using them we're not pure as snow.
Niantic should provide the info they provide themselves - all I care about is raid info (location/time/tier), I don't need to know the boss's moveset. I also don't have time or care to drive all over the city chasing rares (I don't need unown or other elusive mon to enjoy the game).
Raid organization is just a matter of the community. In my part of town we use an interactive map showing only the gym locations to create calls for action on Telegram. You have to put in the time and the type of egg or raid boss manually, as you see them for nearby gyms. But you get information for a much larger area via the Telegram calls. If enough people sign up for a raid, you go there at the appointed time. This system is entirely within TOS and works very good.
Scanners are absolutely unnecessary for raid organization, unless to community is to lazy to contribute.
Just checked - my pokemon privilege is all there and partying with my other privileges, just the way I like it. :-)
Point is, the Telegram system works just as well in rural areas. As long as there is one interested player in the vicinity of a gym, he can put up the raid information for the whole area to read. Anybody within miles can immediately see that there is a raid going to be, what raid it is, and how many players already said they would come if enough others sign up. Granted, the system does not work if everybody meets up at the same spot. But normally you have a large number of players that do not want to drive around all day, but would happily go out to join the raid they can see from their house.
Playing the game while walking/jogging/cycling/driving around and discovering there's a raid popping in 30m, or that a Chansey spawned in a particular location, and letting your community know is not the same as relying on bot accounts that spoof all over the place and relay this information to a third-party server. One is against the TOS, another isn't.
So you're comparing apples with throwup, essentially.
He's right though, the TOS is written so broadly that absolutely counts as breach of the terms. The TOS isn't there to set guidelines on playing fair or whatever, it exists to protect Niantic from legal issues. It's written as as it is because they want a get out of jail free card no matter what happens.
There's a section mentioning "causing emotional distress" is a breach of the TOS. So if anyone got mad that you knocked him out of a gym early or that you kept razzing to keep him from flipping it, it's technical a breach of the TOS. There's DMCA protections for Niantic's intellectual property in the TOS, so if you ever posted fan art you could be in breach of the TOS. Helping a friend make a difficult throw during a raid is technically sharing accounts and a breach of the TOS, etc. There's even a section in the TOS that flatout says Niantic has the right to ban you just for suspicion of wrongdoing, for making Niantic look bad, or for no reason at all.
It's fine if you want to set your own guidelines for what's fair and not fair play, but the TOS isn't there for that. It's a legal guideline to protect Niantic and make it easy for them to ban anyone they want for whatever reason, nothing more.
I know I'm late to reply to this but this has to be the most stupid logic I've ever heard. Just because something is publicly available you think that makes it fair? Guess what, cheats for almost every game are publicly available. If I go and download public CSGO cheats that's 'fair' because everyone can get them? So I guess I'll just go and use my cheats in a tournament and earn thousands in winnings, genius! I really don't care if people use scanners, I used rubbish free ones a while back, but don't tell other people who want to play the game legit that it's fair. Don't try and be smart and act like it's unclear whether or not it's allowed (even though I'm sure even Niantic wouldn't be stupid enough to leave out using 3rd party software in their ToS Edit: I was sad enough to look, scanners are definitely against the ToS) when the whole reason this post was made is because Niantic has just banned them! Once again, you do you, I couldn't care less if anyone uses scanners, but at least admit that saying somethings fair just because it's public is flawed. I could even make a real life example, everyone can go rob a shop at gunpoint and steal tons of money, but no one sees that as a fair or just way to do things. It's not like anyone says "It's not unfair you got robbed, you can rob people too if you want" lol.
Harry Potter. Sponsors want new players, fresh eyes...not going to get anybody new to just decide tomorrow Pokémon Go is the life for them.
However, if someone was a dedicated 100% TOS player, well, they might rethink that and start a buddy account (free stardust for it if you act fast). Sprint even gets some action on it with additional costs of mobile hotspot/tethering
With the 60+ players all together doing raids at specific gyms...who is left to keep 'eyes on the ground' for the next raid?
Unless some sacrifice their raiding day just to play spotter for everyone else, then there are no 'eyes on the ground'....those eyes are looking at their phone and raiding.
I suspect we would agree on many things about scanners as a whole...but for raiding a map does improve the number of raids a player can get to in a given time...and that means money for Niantic. They really need to develop one of their own, and use that as a means to lessen the reach of scanners.
I know a LOT of players who don't use maps very much for mon hunting, but do use them for raids.
These 2 issues, Mon hunting and Raid hunting, need to be separated when discussing 'maps'...at least in my opinion.
I'm the kind of player who is content to drop $10 a month into Pokémon Go (mostly to buy Raid Passes and Incubators); currently I've got a $15 GooglePay card that I had planned to cash in this weekend to get the 5 Raid passes and other stuff. That $15 card is still on my shelf, uncashed, because without the Scanners for Raids, Raiding in my area dried up literally overnight - people who were mobile simply started raiding in the downtown and ignored my area entirely.
As I can't simply head Downtown to do raids, I only did 1 raid this weekend (for a Wailmer). I normally do 4-5 on Weekends (being the only time I can reliably do Raids due to being an Adult, with a Family, Working 9-5 and the Raids stopping at 7:30pm most night) but if the Scanners don't come back up (or Niantic releasing something that can replace what those Scanners can do), I honestly don't see myself spending any more money on this game at all - there wouldn't be anything for me to spend money on. 50 Coins a day, 350 a week, 1400-1550 a month? That's more than what I need, if I'm not out there doing 5-10 raids a week and needing to grind to bring up my Pokémon.
I used to be opposed to all scanners and trackers, but even the purists on Silph Road seem to grudgingly accept them now as most Discords seem to use them (if they can).
But a free site similar to Gymhuntr was wonderful for me as rural/small town/sometime city player (got the link here on GP). It allowed me to monitor the local gyms for raids so we could organize groups. And now it went away.... at least for a while.
Mixed feelings here... I wish Niantic could provide the information these sites do. Maybe in the future.
How much easier it would be for them! Or let us pick which gyms we want info on. We have very eager raiders, but need to know where the raids are!
A limited version if this already exists. If you have a defender in a gym, you can go there (like remote berry feeding) and view any raid eggs. If you watch when it hatches, you can even see the raid boss! (At the exact time it hatches; any later, you will see "Raid in progress".)
Sorry, rivals, I need defenders in these gyms ;)
All in all, Scanners don't give an unfair advantage to players - Scanners allow players to have the same advantage everywhere. They level the playing field between the Urban and Suburban/Rural, when the game is designed to be played in the Urban environment essentially exclusively. (It's like they only test it in downtown San Francisco, or in places where the main criteria is "Can this feature stand up to a LOT of traffic?" and everything else is completely secondary.)
Scanners are a must in places where there are either few Pokestops and Gyms, or places where there is a great deal of space between Pokestops where Pokémon can spawn outside of the range of a Pokestop. This is true for both for Raids and for finding Pokémon; the "Nearby Pokémon" feature is only sufficient when you are in an area where the majority of Pokémon spawn within range of a Pokestop - and even that feature is not particularly useful because you can't assign any sort of ranking to what gets seen. (A Weedle and a Bedlum seem to have the same ranking, and it's not clear why one is shown and the other is not.) Pokémon that don't fall into the range of a Pokestop are essentially invisible to you unless they are right there on your screen in front of you. This is an extremely rare occurrence in an Urban environment, where Pokestop ranges often overlap, but is the norm for Suburban and particularly Rural environments.
When it comes to Raids, this is even more important - the ONLY Raid that can be accurately predicted is a Legendary Raid, and only when there is a single Legendary available. Otherwise, it's a toss of the RNG what is going to come up - if you don't want to do a Golem raid, too bad - that's what spawned. So planning to do a raid is difficult in places where Gyms are spaced out. When you are in an Urban environment, it's a regular occurrence to find that there are 9 raids noted but only 6 showing up on your phone (not sure if this is for all phones, but for my LG G6, I can only see 6 Raids max). Meaning that if a particular raid isn't appealing, you will likely see another one that is. In the Suburban/Rural environment, you may not be able to be in range of 6 gyms at once to see 6 Raids at once, so your ability to choose what Raids to do is severely hampered.
When it comes to Scanners, the ONLY aspect of Scanners that I find to be "Cheating" is the IV Scanner. So I don't use any IV scanners - even though my current goal is to get a %100 of every species (and for each applicable Gender/Variant, like Castform). I would be perfectly happy with every Spawn being unique IV's.
But without the Scanners? I have a $15 GooglePlay card that I was going to cash in and buy the Ultimate Box this weekend, to get the 5 Raidpasses (and the rest, which are long-term useful for me), but when the Scanners went down and I had no reasonable way to find more than 2 raids to do? I put that card back on my shelf, to be cashed in either another time... or another mobile game. That's potentially $15 that Niantic lost. How many other players did the same thing this weekend, or opted for the cheaper boxes without the Raid passes because they suddenly didn't have an immediate need for them?
It doesnt make any sense that we cant see if theres a raid on a gym we have badges for. I should be able to open up my gym badge screen and see every active raid or egg. Perhaps the level of the gym badge should determine the amount of information shown. Considering the game willl pull up raids on our nearby after trying to remote feed demonstrates the information is right there and would not be difficult to implement.
On that note another one of my cheating apps have been shut down. It shows the IVs of all my recent catches and saves quite literally hours of time. With 1500 slots of storage I simply dont have time to manually appraise them and (still cheating, just no risk) manually enter appraisals on a site like Gamepress or Genie or Calcy. The fact that the developers have chosen to give us such vital information as height and weight over IVs right on a pokemons page is an insult.
I guess what im trying to say here is I, and the overwhelming majority if not the entierty of players would happily stop using most cheating services if they were implemented right in the game (spoofers excluded).
The fact of the matter is it isnt cheating to know if your pokemon is crap or perfect. Its not cheating to know where raids are. This information is already in the game, the developers however have chosen to make it very difficult for players to access.
I think that Niantic will continue to fight the scanning services even if they should make a comeback this time.
And that they have very good reasons to do so.
One of the popular arguments player use to defend the scanning services is the comparison with a group of people sharing their information in the social media.
But there is one important difference that makes one legal and the other not. It's about why PoGO is free to play.
If you want to play the game on a Nintendo console you pay for it.
The price includes among other things like those related to the production of the cartridge the limited right to use the intellectual property of The Pokemon Company it represents.
PoGO on the other hand, is free to play.
You are invited to make use of their intellectuall property for free.
Niantic fights something else.
The impact scanning services had on the games dynamic is incredible and must have blown the schedule, that's also true but i think thats not the point either.
Niantic will fight them simply because they rise their costs.
For it's them who pay the bandwidth and cputime scannerbots use up by making all those api calls.
So what makes them illegal is that
human player are allowed to use the api, bots not.
I never understand any discussion about fairness in a game.
The only I understand is that the one who could not take the lost, always complain about fairness. And nobody on the winning side do that. Instead of paying so much attention on the negative side, I would like to see improvements in the game experiences.
I agree, nobody should steal 'money' in any means. But if one is building a robot, which play for them instead of playing themselves. Or someone who plays everyday 8 hours or more, they always have advantages. But that is the fun of a game, that knowing some tricks make you have some advantages. I do not see that as unfair. at least not something that you should avoid in the game. What about one who is disabled who are not able to walk, are they not having disadavantages compares to another? And are they cheating when they are on a mobile scoot because they have more advantages?
