Pokemon GO duels is possibly the most awaited feature to be implemented in the game after the recently release trading and friends systems. If you were worried that Niantic isn’t working on duels, you are mistaken. The company has the feature already on their roadmap, along with some way to let players know where popular raids are stated, on a bigger radius than the existent one.
During a recent interview with Eurogamer, John Hanke, the boss of Pokémon Go developer Niantic has talked about their next steps for the game, featuring Pokemon GO duels and a potential tracking system like the one third-party tracking maps provide.
Pokemon GO duels will skyrocket the game even more than the community events and trading systems do right now. Players want to be able to challenge their friends, test out their Pokemon abilities and get rewarded for taking part in such activities. Hanke revealed that such a feature is already on their roadmap and will be developed as soon as they manage to eliminate bugs and apparent performance issues. He said:
We’ve talked about PVP ever since launch and it’s definitely on our roadmap… Since 2017 we’ve been striving for a major game update every quarter. The second half of 2017, in the aftermath of Chicago, we lost some time there when the team went into bug-fix and performance mode, taking on bots which is an unfortunate distraction. So the cadence in 2017 wasn’t all we wanted it to be, although we did get Weather out before the end of the year. This year it’s been more regular with Gen 3, Quests and Friends and we’re looking forward to finishing out the year with something interesting for people.
In addition, Hanke was asked about Niantic’s view on cheating on Pokemon GO. The interviewer stated that spoofing and botting aside, the third party tracking maps help players find raids and rare pokemon in their city so that the community can tighten by attending such “events”. Hanke had some interesting thoughts on the matter:
We have to find opportunities to make that information available through APIs or gameplay features. I’m not promising anything but it’s something we’re actively looking at – where there might be things which make the game fun for people and how can we provide that in a way that replaces people going in and hacking into the server.
As we see it, it won’t be long before Pokemon GO gets its next big update with new content. We already know that it won’t be long before the next generation of Pokemon will be introduced. For now, more older generation Pokemon have been leaked, giving players some hope on completing their Pokedex.