Routes seemingly have seen a rocky start in Pokémon Go as negative feedback is pouring in on social media following its launch event, Blaze New Trails.
Niantic introduced the feature on July 21. Players can create and submit itineraries players can follow to visit a place and its various points of interest. Those are easier to create in touristy or populated areas but more challenging in places where there aren’t many PokéStops or Gyms.
In the few days since their introduction, players have been complaining about not finding any Routes around their place. In addition to not being able to enjoy the new content as it launched, it prevented them from getting rewards tied to Routes, such as buddy candy obtention bonus and Shiny Yungoo chance increase.
The approval of Routes submitted takes around a week, according to Niantic, which means many submissions might still be pending and appear next week. But it’ll be too late for the Blaze New Trails event, which is ending on July 24 at 8pm local time.
Additionally, only a handful of players can submit Routes to limit the load of entries the developer reviews, which means less-populated areas have even fewer chances of getting new Routes to explore.
Some players who could explore Routes around their area also considered the event as disappointing due to the lack of incentive rewards—even though they featured the introduction of Zygarde as obtainable species.
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“I followed a route yesterday. No special Pokémon, no special prizes, same old same old. Routes are just like….Daily Incense,” a user wrote in a top-voted comment to a thread on the event.
A player who followed over 20 different Routes estimated players had a 50-percent chance of encountering a Zygarde on the first Route of the day only, as they never obtained one in subsequent runs.
The feature has only been introduced a few days ago, however, so many parameters on encounter chance have yet to be determined by players. The developer will also likely bring improvements to the feature over the next few months.
Many players have been reporting game crashes when following Routes, and the developer has already brought a hotfix to curb the issue.
