I'm more interested in how far popularity has crashed.
I was previously interested in the game but Niantic has shown zero interest in being responsive to the community's concerns.
I was previously interested in the game but Niantic has shown zero interest in being responsive to the community's concerns.
Even with the servers stabilized the game has plenty of other issues that need addressing. The "nearby Pokemon" window is still broken and shows no sign of ever getting fixed. People in suburbs and rural environments are still stuck playing in extra grindy hard mode. The distance tracking has a speed limit that is way too slow (10.5kph) and noisy so it largely fails if you jog and or get on a bike. The gym battles are comically out of balance (slow defensive Pokemon are blatantly overpowered).
They shouldn't be hard problems to fix but Niantic doesn't seem interested. They toyed with a half-fix to the nearby Pokemon window, but only deployed it in their hometown and then seemingly forgot about it. It's clear the client has enough data to do the launch style footsteps (see: all of the PokeRadar apps on the store), but for some reason Niantic has no interest in re-enabling it.
I've always suspected that was because they quickly realized that getting pokemon to not spawn in dangerous spots was an insurmountable task, so having tracking that encourages players to go to those locations was asking for even more lawsuits that what they face currently for that issue.
edit: added quote I was responding to
Especially a success that they went out of their way to avoid by creating a new battle system instead of using what's already there.