Did Pokemon GO make Pokemon harder to catch?

There's been a lot of buzz going through the Pokemon GO community this week after the game received several small updates in the span of a few days. Most of the attention focused on the fact that Niantic removed the infamous three-step tracking feature that was supposed to tell players how close Pokemon were -- but didn't, as it never worked right.

While the debate over that change will likely continue to rage on, something else may have been slipped into the game without quite as many people noticing. Namely, it might now be harder to catch 'em all because it's harder to catch them at all.

Kotaku has a good breakdown of the whole thing.

Keep on throwing

Just when you'd thought you had mastered the art of throwing Pokeballs, they go and change the rules on you. Literally, in this case.

From Kotaku:

"Players around the web everywhere are reporting that they are using more Pokeballs in even low-CP encounters, and that monsters now run away with more ease. Apparently, it is worse the higher level you are, though I’ve noted at least a third of my encounters lately have ended with Pokémon bolting away. Additionally, you may have noticed that the capture rings on even weak monsters is smaller now."

That could raise a problem you've likely never encountered before, and that's running out of Pokeballs. If you live near even a couple of stops, it was always easy to refill just by hitting the stops a few times a day, especially because they reset so quickly.

If it takes you seven to 10 Pokeballs just to nab a Pidgey, that won't be the case. That could encourage players to spend more money on in-game supplies, and while making money is obviously a big goal for Pokemon GO, it;s been the top-grossing app on the App Store pretty much since launch. Not sure a monetization tweak was really necessary.

Of course it's possible the developers just wanted to slow people down, because the frenzy created by Pokemon GO means some mobile gamers are advancing at a ludicrous pace. They're going to easily outpace the ability to add content, which means they might get bored and leave. Making the base gameplay harder would mitigate that, but at the risk of frustrating others.

Less spawns on the move

The other half of the equation is having less Pokemon spawn in situations they were common before the update. Again, we go to Kotaku for an explanation:

"The second, more recent change, is a report from Reddit that states that Niantic changed how often the game scans for new monsters, from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. It may sound like a small alteration, but it has big ramifications for players who like to play on anything with wheels, such as cars, bikes, or public transportation."

Again, there's a non-cynical view to take here, and that is that Niantic and Nintendo are discouraged by people playing Pokemon GO while driving -- not doing so is one of the game's new safety warnings when you launch it, after all.

But it still stinks, because long car rides were made for Pokemon GO if you're a passenger. Even if you whizzed by stops too fast to utilize them, you could count on having a chance to at least add a few more monsters to your collection.

No longer, or so it seems. We're not ready to render a verdict on the changes made to Pokemon GO just yet, but let's just say we hope Niantic has an actual content drop up its sleeve sooner rather than later.