Just 10 days after releasing an update that fundamentally changed the look for Pokémon Go’s avatars, Niantic is still promoting the feature without responding to more than a month of community backlash.
Over the last week, Niantic has continued to share posts across official Pokémon Go social media channels promoting the “Rediscover Yourself” update that launched on April 17 and changed how the game’s avatars looked. And, while most of those posts simply talk about customization options players have access to, the community has not been happy with the feature’s implementation nor the lack of response from the developers regarding overwhelmingly negative feedback.
In the most recent avatar update post, Niantic posted about how players can “customize their eye color” now, even though that has been a feature since Pokémon Go launched with its original avatars back in July 2016. Sure, there are more options now, but the wider Pokémon Go community is calling posts like this “tone deaf” and calling on the company to finally respond to criticism levied against this update since March, when select players first got access to the new avatars.
From the soulless faces to the odd proportions, very few users have shared their enthusiasm over these avatar changes—but even more egregious is the lack of any public response from Niantic. We have at least one report of Niantic being aware of the feedback, though it only comes from an “anonymous high-ranking employee,” and nothing has been outwardly shared. That source also claims that the company is taking feedback seriously, though we have since learned that is not the case—unless that employee was solely referring to individuals and not Niantic as a whole.
In an interview with a long-standing Pokémon Go player who has been part of a Niantic-organized feedback group for years, they revealed that the version of the update we got featured “very little improvement [or] change since the beta version” that they had tested. Additionally, it sounds like Niantic has no plans to implement major updates to the “unpolished” avatars because no communication or request for feedback has been shared with that group, even as the players involved compiled points and issues with the update and shared it through the proper channels anyway.
Now that the new visual update for biomes is live, players are even more disappointed in the state of avatars—as the biome changes have been fairly well-received, even if it also made Wiglett hard to catch. “The new [avatar] update was not asked for and is a huge failure,” a user said on Twitter. “You should really revert it back to the old avatars until you put as much effort into it that you did the new backgrounds. Those look amazing. The avatars ain’t it!”
We still have over a week until this “Rediscover” set of updates concludes with the release of “Rediscover Your Reality” on May 7, which is set to upgrade elements of the Go Snapshot feature. It is unlikely we will hear from Niantic regarding feedback until after that final piece of the puzzle is out, though even then, it feels like hope for a response is dwindling while players are begging for a way to “undiscover this update.”
Dot Esports reached out to Niantic for these reports but received no response at the time this article was published.
