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What do you do when you encounter fellow players at the street?

I live in a rather small town and we don't have any active group or chat (at least I didn't find any). But I usually meet other players near gyms. It's easy to understand that if I'm knocked out of gym and there are 2 people with phones nearby, and they put their 2 pokemons in there immediately after. Or if they come to a place where they can spin a pokestop without crossing the street and immediately return from there.

I don't know if I even want to meet other players, but I know that if I want to, it is my only chance. Playing alone means that I can't go to high level raids and it's more fun in general. But the players whom I've met are 10 years or more younger than me. Most of them are teenagers. Meeting them in the internet would be fine but trying to get acquainted with a 12 year girl at the street is another thing. I'm sure we have other more grown up players, the game is quite active. But they might be more secretive, like me, not crying out loud how difficult it is to knock out my pokemon out of the gym :D

So if you meet a player in the streets, what do you do? Does it happen to you often? (Because I meet them every day when I decide to walk around town) And do you try to hide while playing? For some reason, I don't want to be noticed by other players, even though they probably think the same thing and do nothing even when we obviously see each other. Sometimes I feel like I joined some kind of a secret society, huh.

Asked by felinafelis5 years 6 months ago

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I suppose it's very different depending on where you live. I live in a small-ish city and most players I encounter are adults, and the most hardcore players are definitely adults. (It's hard to be a power raider without independence, money, and a vehicle, which not too many kids have. ;D ) I do see the occasional group of teenagers playing on foot/bike and the younger kids I see are usually being hauled around by their vastly more interested parents.

I usually do the "I see you are also playing PoGo" smile/phone wave/nod-of-acknowledgement and keep doing my own thing, unless I'm at a raid and no one else is doing the organizing.

Although I do look young and was quite recently angrily yelled at by some guy about how "adults don't waste their time doing stupid shit like pokemon" and laughed to myself about how wrong he was. So I can understand the desire to keep your playing a secret.

There's plenty of pros to socializing, although there are also definitely.... cons. Best medium is to get a small group of good friends together and play with them, imo.

“Hey, you here for the raid?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
Or
“What?”
“Nothing nevermind.”

if they are hot then i can be quite flirty but usually if its just a nerd then ill try not to talk and hopefully they are doing the raid

Hahahaha dude you made my day, I would do the same. All those poor players that downvoted are mad jelly

If you play long enough in a city you identify everyone around you who plays PoGo. I understand your initial reservation, specially when you mostly meet kids or teenagers. But in my experience, PoGo is more popular around grown ups than kids. Nothing wrong about being natural and saying "hi" when both of you are aware of each other. For example if you find battling the same gym, you may just show your phone screen and smile. Not necessarily start a conversation if you don't feel for it. You may say something like, do you need help taking this gym/raid? Be polite, "hi, thanks, bye..."

Is there any EX elegible gym in your town? Attending to a EX raid is the best way to meet people. Even a small community has chats to organise raids, etc. Once you talk to someone who can include you in the local raiding chat you will be able to participate in high level raids.

If your area is not dense but yet you meet people every day, try to speak with at least some of them - selecting them by age with whom you are the most comfortable speaking with. In the absence of an identified group chat, a small group can still organise through texting. I did that in the early days with 2-5 people to do gym raids in the old system, where we knocked 4 to 10 gyms to collect as many coins as possible before the gyms are taken over again.

I only approaching people and say hi in raid situation, people tend to be more keen in raiding together
I just pass by when they are doing a gym battle, maybe smile a bit to see their reaction..

"Ihopetheyarenotyetanothersmurf"

Usually hide in a hedge... then wait for them to wander away...then knock them out after 1 min if it's been a bad day.

Even better when they're a friend.

Living in a small tourist town we know just about every regular. Plenty of visitors are easily identifiable and I along with many others offer the discord raid channel.

Ill might make a few small talk questions: where are you from, do you have EX gyms at home, and mention where ours are. Everyone is friendly and most people are old.

I only like to walk with my little brother, and the place that I live at has a single gym, so it's not like there is a large density of players anyways.

I'm in a small town and players are few and far between, plus being pretty anti-social generally I'm not inclined to stand in the middle of the street and scream at an Alolan Raichu. Too many people are more interested in your personal business but if I'm going to beat higher level bosses I'll have to speak to some of them sooner or later and I suppose it's no different to any other social situation when you'll meet some nice people and some not - also notwithstanding the age difference thing. I do feel sorry for a young lad (aged maybe 15 or so?) who I see playing fairly often, always on his own but at 38 years old I'm not going to run across the road to make friends either.