Pokemon GO player complains “new update ruined” in-game experience

Pokemon GO has gone through many phases and updates during its time on the market. As mobile devices received upgrades, the game had to adapt. As a result, many older mobile devices have become incapable of running the game due to its requirements, or because of the many issues the game has, resulting in the mobile device just crashing the game.

One report of this process ruining the experience for players has become a popular subject on the game's subreddit, with the original poster detailing their experience with these issues causing significant problems for their group. They title their post by stating the following:

New update ruined my Pokemon Go experience...

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New update ruined my Pokemon Go experience byu/Guilos inpokemongo

They start their post by stating that they had a group of around seven or eight active players. They would play the game together in person, partaking in activities like raids and trading, but after Pokemon GO's recent wave of updates, their friends were having much more trouble running the application.

With the game requiring a connection to the internet and Bluetooth connectivity at all times to track player locations, there are a lot of processes that need to be executed just to play. Since many mobile devices end up performing worse after a software update, this may have led to an issue where their phones could not keep up with the resources required by the game.

Comment byu/Guilos from discussion inpokemongo

Comment byu/Guilos from discussion inpokemongo

What is unclear about this situation is whether or not it truly is a result of phones getting old or if this is one of the game's many glitches. Many Redditors on the original post have offered their share of advice on the matter for both situations. Considering Pokemon GO's laundry list of bugs and glitches, the answer is unclear.

Comment byu/Guilos from discussion inpokemongo

Comment byu/Guilos from discussion inpokemongo

Many players are unhappy with the recent Pokemon GO update. Niantic has a couple of different routes they can take to resolve the issue depending on what the root of the issue truly is. If it is a bug, they should patch it immediately. If this is an issue with older devices, Niantic should work better to optimize the experience for these long-time trainers.

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How to reduce lag in Pokemon GO

There are a couple of options in the settings menu that may help players with this new lag in Pokemon GO (Image via The Pokemon Company)

While these fixes may not totally eliminate the lag, there are some ways to turn down the game's graphics settings to make standard gameplay more consistent. These fixes will only work with standard gameplay, so lagging during Raid or Battle League battles may still be present.

If you go to Pokemon GO's settings menu, there will be an option that says "Advanced Settings" halfway through the page. From here, you should see two options that say "enhanced graphics" and "native refresh rate". The first lowers the graphic quality while the latter limits the game's frames per second to that allowed by your device.

If the lag persists, there is a good chance your device is almost out-of-date or you need to improve your internet connection.