#fearofmissingout — Public Fediverse posts

Am I overreacting? Probably yes. But I was thinking about closing my #ResearchGate account since a long time anyhow. It rarely provides my any meaningful use and it was just the #FearOfMissingOut that kept me there.

The following is a long-form response to a video on the Trainer Tips YouTube channel between Pokémon GO player/content creator Nick and Mx. Kelsey Danger, community manager for Niantic:

It's interesting to me how the pre-COVID Pokémon GO is described as "legacy" gameplay, whereas what I consider "legacy" PoGO changed quite some time before that already.
The core gameplay difference to me between true legacy and pre-COVID gameplay / current gameplay, is the near-constant stream of events that fuels Fear Of Missing Out and personally burns me out on the game.
When I started playing PoGO I felt like I could play whenever I wanted, without the fear of missing out on some shiny, costume or legacy move Pokémon. I could skip a day if I not felt like it, without ruining my streak, missing a spotlight hour, a raid hour, or one of the constant weekend events, some timed research, or a collection challenge. Spawns, in my memory at least, also felt better/more logically distributed. For example, if I wanted Magikarp, I'd go to the piers. Now it just feels like whichever set of Pokémon of the week are spawning everywhere regardless of location. Sure, my city for some reason had overabundance of Voltorbs and Magnemites, and my sister-in-law's was Drowzee-land, but apart from that it felt a lot more like a world where exploration actually paid off; especially before the footprints radar got replaced by the Nearby and Pokéstop spawn lists.
I think Niantic is actually trying to cater too much to a too wide variety of players. Kelsey said something like "we cannot be everything to everyone but we can still make an excellent product", and I feel like that Niantic is in fact trying to be everything to everyone, and as a result is hurting their game.
Last Community Day was another example in a way of this. On the one hand Niantic seemed to want to focus on making people move, with the walking distance timed research and the incense nerf combined with incense duration extension, but on the other hand the spawn clusters and Lure bonuses made me want to just stay in place to catch and shiny-check as many as I could to benefit from the bonuses and to 'catch them all' rather than explore.

And yes, I know that as a player I don't need to do everything, but knowing that and what FOMO is, and not actually feeling the effects of it, are two different things. I think that if Niantic wants to show that they care about the player-base's well-being by focusing on the exploration and exercise part, they should also put more focus on the mental well-being of their players, and make the effort to stop pushing the FOMO-aspect of the game, even when that is at odds with their financial focus.

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While I like playing #PokémonGO, it can be such a big source of #FOMO i.e. #FearOfMissingOut, especially with the current increased number of events...

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