Pokemongo: More Pokestops For Rural Areas!

For more than a year Pokemon Go trainers in rural areas have faced a lot of problems when it comes to playing the game. Since the game was launched about a year ago, rural Pokemon Go trainers have been complaining that they were unable to make the most of the game, since there is not much location data available in such areas, which is the root cause of the problem.

Another problem that was initially reported is that rural areas do not have many Pokemon spawns, now this one particularly true for a certain amount of time. Back in the initial days of Pokemon Go, Niantic used an algorithm based on cellular data traffic heat map. Now obviously you can expect a lesser amount of cellular data traffic in rural areas compared to downtown of big cities. This issue has been addressed to a certain extent in the game, but the problem of crappy rural spawns still needs to be worked on.

Well, to all of those rural Pokemon Go Trainers, there are is something exciting for you guys. Remember Operation Portal Recon, we have talked a lot about it in this community. Simply put it is a way for a certain section of the people to make an edit and add points of interest(Gyms, PokeStops, Ingress Portals etc..) in Niantic AR based games Ingress and Pokemon Go.

Now let’s talk a little about the big news for today, in a local Ingress event, there was an official from Niantic who has said that very soon, Ingress agents will be able to submit portals, to this giant shared mind palace of ours.

This leads us to believe that OPR’s portal submission backlog has finally been cleared and Niantic is really ready to take on the next major project to update the location data base in places that Ingress and Pokemon Go has not really taken off that well.

I really for one, hope that we get to see Niantic make some arrangements to improve their database in developing countries like Brazil, India, parts of South Africa and many more places.
The reopening of Ingress portal submissions could be a key step in improving Pokemon GO’s rural game play, especially if the level requirement for portal submissions stays low. Previously there were some rumors circulating that, Niantic will be making their own version of OPR for Pokemon Go. Looking at Pokemon Go’s popularity and public reception, in general, I think making a version of OPR for Pokemon Go is a better way to go.