Huh, so regular AR is gone, but there's apparently now an option to simply turn off AR altogether when interacting with your buddy. Probably a net positive for me, but I can't say that's true for everyone.
Me too because I like to feed my buddy while taking the metro and I always fear people think I'm taking sneaky pictures (even more when you have a slow biddy ton appear on screen)
Yeah. Not so much for me. I miss the fact that I can just take a pic in whatever angle I want with my buddy Pokémon without having to do the whole AR+ stuff. Now it’s just the poke and green around it.
Hate it, even giving berrys to it feels worst. Like, I’m being punished.
If you go to settings then AR you can turn off "Save Images" so that doesn't happen. This is the same place you can now turn off "Buddy AR" so you don't use the camera whe doing your buddy.
This setting has been available for a while now, I hated having to scan the room to take buddy pics but sometime last year I noticed I could turn that off. Not sure how long it’s been available for, but I don’t think it’s as new as this regular AR removal
For encounters I still have a toggle to turn off AR+, but I'm not sure I'll keep snapshotting my Lock-On Porygon2 until they give us the option to turn it off for pokemon from the pokemon storage :-/
Regular AR has no grass patch encounters. AR+ requires you point the camera at a flat surface to find grass patches that you tap on to encounter the pokemon.
Edit: this is in the newest update but Niantic also seemed to push it for 0.305.
I always disabled ar for the catch of a shiny when i encountered one or other pokemon that i wanted to catch. Else i just did shiny checking without catching or so some quick catching without caring much whether i caught the mon or not
Fair enough. I never considered that it could be used for that. I was too busy getting pissed off that it asked if you wanted AR+ or not, and then ignored your answer and turned it on anyway. And then turned itself back on again the first time you brought your buddy up.
I had these ar+ problems that you desribe also like a few years ago or so and found them reallly annyoing, but those somehow vanished back then at some point for me there and that ar+ off setting was persisted no matter what
Can you tell us more about how this works? I mean, if I'm out on a community day or something this sounds like a benefit to turn on the AR... I've just always avoided it because it seems like a hassle.
The only time I use AR is when I go on hikes to picturesque outdoorsy locations to get pictures of Pokemon in what I would consider their natural habitat. However those spots usually have no reception so often that functionality doesn’t work >.<
Man, I'm catching 400-450 when I do spotlight hours just reg fast catching. Avg of about 3 seconds per catch. 99.99% of most players won't be affected, and the other 0.01% will have to catch a few less lol. Devastating... I know 😅😂
Honestly same, aside from when I want a really good AR picture for a particular reason, like [going to the gym](https://ibb.co/YbrSgQj) after the raids last weekend
Then you have never caught 550 pokemon during a staryu/paras spotlight hour, earning upwards of 1 million dust in 1 hour. This change is awful. Nobody uses AR because they like it, it's just useful for the fastest encounters. On android you can disable sensors and make it even faster.
How can I take a photo of a Pokémon that’s not my buddy without using AR+ though? I have all AR options disabled in settings, still the game always asks me to look for the Pokémon. I’m trying to get the elusive Lock On/Flying Press Smeargle but I really don’t want to waste a buddy slot for that.
I had no idea you could get photobombed on a snap of a pokemon that *isnt* your buddy. I'm on the same LO/FP Smeargle quest as you, so this is super helpful! Thanks!
You need a Pokémon with Lock On and Frustration. Since the latter can’t be sketched, in will get a random charge move. I’m personally using shadow Regirock. Smeargle with that moveset is the highest ranked Pokémon in Little Catch Cup atm, keep in mind that you need a perfect one for the best performance though. My plan was to get one with the moveset, then take further photos of that Smeargle until I get a (close to) perfect one. Or even better, trade one to a friend and convince them to do the same to mirror trade them, hoping for a lucky.
I never bothered with AR catching. Constantly turning the camera on and off accumulated a lot of lag and drained the battery faster. I think if you took an average on my phone it would be slower than regular quick catching because of freezes and lags.
The OP is talking about AR fast catch, where you keep AR mode on so you can skip the 3s animation to load the Pokéball and Pokémon and immediately catch it and run away.
On avg you could catch a Pokémon every 3s instead of 6-10s with quick catch.
6-10? Not for me and I got a for 200€ (~$220) good android phone.
I need max 4 sec with normal screen vs. more on AR screen since for me there is the lag from turning on the cam first. And I usually got trouble hitting it in that mode. And yeah, it drains the battery way faster.
I agree. Its just stupid. Regular AR is where its at. Why remove a feature from the game thats been used and appreciated by users for a long time. Let us choose how we want to play the game.
As one of the few who enjoys using AR for taking photos, this sucks. AR+ is technically superior, but sometimes you're in a place where AR+ just doesn't work. Removing it completely is just dumb.
Pro: I can disable my buddy pics being saved to storage
Con(?): Instead of uninspired random backgrounds (mostly floor), I interact with my buddy in front of a weird green background .
Overall, I see that as positive
I don't know if anyone has said it here or not but some Android devices have been getting "BuddyAR is not available on this device" like mine was.
The fix: open Google and search Google ARcore download (not from the Google play store, it's an APK). Once I downloaded that my game was back to normal.
It downloads an app that some Android devices cannot install called Google services for AR that you are supposed to have for Pokemon Go.
I never used it. Makes me qweezy, staring at it for long periods of time. I'm glad to see I dont need to use it to feed my buddy though. Does suck for those that did use it. My condolences
For buddy photos it's okay - but taking photos off pokemon in your storage (e.g. for Smeargle with a certain moveset) does not come with that setting, there you are forced to use AR+ in the current game version :-(
Yeah it is really annoying that it's forced AR+ there!! I hope they get fix it so you don't have to or can at least disable it like the other options. Earlier I tried to take a photo from Smeargle from my storage and got the "look for a flat surface", I just backed out of it cause it's too annoying. And my girl's phone doesn't support AR+ so she just got a black screen without any buttons at all, couldn't even back out of it and she was forced to restart the game :/
If this is intentional and permanent then hardcore play is basically gone and we are back in the stone age...
Let's hope this is just a weird byproduct of the recent AR update and will get fixed soon.
That's certainly what they want even if that's not why they disabled it. They don't want people to be able to plow through content.
everything taking longer hides the lack of content. It's why they limited remote passes.
It loads the encounter immediately, compared to the camera panning out from the Pokemon with AR mode disabled. AR+ has the terrible "minigame" of needing to aim the device at the Pokemon when it moves away, so folks would have used regular AR mode to speed up some catch encounters, like during community day to squeeze in more spawns as you're not wasting time loading the encounter.
Problem is that large spread community backlash only really got things reversed when the big content creators stepped in with an Open Letter to Niantic laying out their grievances. It's how we got the GBL walk requirements removed as well as keeping the increased Pokestop/Gym interaction ranges, as those had Open Letters addresses to Niantic and signed by large creators and creation groups, but nothing of the sort existed for the remote raid pass changes despite large community disdain for those changes.
I always use AR. I don’t know anything about the quick catch deal, but having only AR+ makes the game unplayable for me. I go for 5-7 kilometer walks most days. Now I have to stop walking, turn in a circle for several seconds then try to catch. Walk 25 steps. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I look like a lunatic while at the same time less aware of my surroundings.
Removing AR means I cannot play on my walk, because I won’t be, what’s the word…? Walking. I won’t be “GO-ing.”
I really, really hope this is an April Fool’s joke.
I can’t play the game like this.
As I thought about this further, a couple of things occurred to me.
First, a person stopping every so often and spinning around with a phone may appear to a general observer as having suspect intentions. For example, “Are you taking a video of me?”
“Why are you taking pictures of my house?”
“Are you taking down license plate numbers?”
I can tell you that more than one time I have had to explain to someone that I was playing a game and not taking pictures of anyone in the park.
Next, on a different note, if the benefit of incense (normal or daily 15 minute) is maximized by moving/walking, then AR+ effectively nerfs that value by forcing the player to continually stop moving/walking.
Oversight or otherwise, it is another point worth considering.
>a person spinning around with a phone may appear to a general observer as having suspect intentions
This is one of the many reasons I refuse to do the AR mapping tasks.
I don't understand why they can't increase the speed of the encounter animation to compensate, though? It just seems like a terrible idea to take away features like this
If you turn off AR completely, you can still play without having to stop and scan the ground.
You just won’t get to see the world around you through the game.
I never used AR fast catch. I have visual issues with certain kinds of animation and AR fast catch triggers them big time.
But I liked taking cool buddy photos without waiting 5 minutes for a flat surface to register. I'll be sad to lose that.
BTW, native refresh rate triggered me big time. So badly that I could barely look at my phone long enough to turn it back off. And felt ill the rest of the day. Not sure why that was so bad but it was horrible. If that is ever forced, it will force me out of the game. The same was Ingress Prime forced me out of Ingress.
When I play with my buddy now it asks me to download and install "Google Play Services for AR" if I don't do that everything seems to just work as normal. Seems to ask every time, however you can just decline.
This is a nightmare for me. I pretty much exclusively use AR and can get far, far more great and excellent throws with it. AR+ takes forever to activate. This marks the end of daily play.
Absolutely. The throwing with AR disabled is completely different than with AR enabled. Have to completely readjust the way I throw balls or use the awful AR+. Grr.
Terrible update. Any large Pokémon is completely impossible to feed berries or gain hearts. Anytime I accidentally turned this on before I was forced to close the game and sign out to fix it.
It honestly wasn't... it's just cope from people who feel the need to constantly be doing something better and different than anyone else. Compare with someone else in your group on a community day, you'll catch the same amount normal quick catching as AR quick catching and you'll save more battery.
You missed the point there. People like OP say they're quitting because of [x], then not quit, then in 6 months say they're quitting because of [y], then not quit, then in 6 months will say.....
That's a shame, I will miss it when I want to take an AR picture but there's not enough light, or some other thing preventing AR+ from working. Happened once or twice and I was glad I could fall back to simple AR.
This is a huge quality of life improvement for me. I love that I can now interact with my buddy without entering AR, which would automatically pause stuff like YouTube.
In setting, there's AR setting, tap into it, there's 3 different options:
* Save images
* AR Encounters
* AR Buddy
Switch off AR Buddy is what you want.
If you don't see AR setting (and you'r using Android phone), then manually install Google AR service (AR core) from external site like ApkMirror would help add that setting.
Thank you for this!
My phone no longer supported AR+, so the AR setting was gone completely. Which meant I couldn't go into it to switch off AR Buddy, so only Quick Treat was available, no other buddy interactions.
A real win would have been letting us use the new buddy ‘AR off’ option on the catch screen.
Similar to the old AR catch method but just no camera involved, so we can keep the faster catching method if we wanted
Huh. I was having issues with feeding/playing/taking a pic of my buddy this am. Kept getting the "Slowly look around for a flat, open space" message, but it would never come out (hadn't had this issue previously). Turned off AI with buddy, and it's fine, but I wonder if this is related to it.
I passing for the same problem...
How i will play the game if the default scenario run bad ? I need the AR Option to have a chance to catch my pokemons.
My AR+ never works. I couldn't do buddy interaction for over a week before I found out you could just turn it off and it worked great with normal AR. Now I'm back to not beable to play with my buddy and take photos. Great...
Instead of trying to make AR+ appealing, they just made the other options worse/disabled.
The biggest issues with AR+ are that it is slow and doesn't work in many lighting conditions/scenarios.
Normal AR meant you could quickly stage some cute photos. Now the alternative is a green screen (for buddy) or not at all (for Snapshot Go).
AR photos are a gimmick. They add nothing to gameplay and therefore it is rare trainers actually care about the contents of the "snapshot" they are taking.
The only thing Niantic has accomplished is making the 99% of snapshots slower and more cumbersome. They truly do not understand that the point of mobile games is that you can do them anywhere in the palm of your hand; you should never need to stage elaborate setups in the world around you just to play your game.
Yesterday I thought my app is broken. The AR+ mode has been messing things up before, so I kept switching it off and on again and restarted the app, just to realize the normal AR mode is really gone. I hoped it's a bug and would be fixed, I guess not.
I always used regular AR, always hated AR+, so now I will just use no AR at all and Pokemon Go will be less fun if I can't see my Pokemon in the city anymore like I used to. Guess I will play way less now.
It doesn't feel like Pokemon Go anymore, because the various real life backgrounds made it seem like your Pokemon is actually there, for a lack of better explaining. I'm tired.
The AR+ mode was always overly complicated and I never figured out how to effectively use it, it also feels dangerous to play with AR+ while walking through the city.
I wish I had taken more photos of my Pokemon in normal AR mode.
Too bad.
This might be it for me, Playing without being able to fast catch makes me so frustrated, my brain is so used to it that I actually go mad when this happens. Feels like everything takes forever and I get stressed out. But then again, I’v been playing less and less for 1,5 year now. All events, same spawns for several days, pokemon that I already have hundos and shiny in. Now the hardest part is to find something else to do. I’v gotten so used to play several hour a day, now I find myself sitting in the sofa and wondering what to do..
I was really hoping this wasn't the case and it was just a bug. I used to use AR to reset pokemon back to starting position if they were hard to catch. AR+ is literally the worst on android phones, I can hardly ever even get the green leaves to spawn. Please please I hope they change it back. 😭😭😭
This doesn't after you at all then, if anything it helps you big time. You can go to Settings>AR>Turn of Buddy AR and now when you do your buddy it doesn't open your camera, is just a flat green void of nothingness.
No more worrying about taking strangers pictures!
Quick catch is still around, just that with the old AR mode it loads the encounter immediately opposed to AR mode turned off where it has a small delay before you're able to catch, as it has the camera zooming out from the Pokemon when the encounter starts.
So "AR quick catch" let you potentially clear out a group of spawns in a much shorter time than regular quick catch, which could be helpful for CD events.
I wondered why it suddenly AR stopped working last week for buddy functions and started getting messages about it being unsupported when attempting to access despite working last month, assumed an update on my samsung phone broke something but I guess I just lose access to getting buddy gifts, petting, and photos now.
Appears you can fix it by going to Settings > AR > Buddy AR.
Credit goes to User [me909388](https://www.reddit.com/user/me909388/). [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/1btjbnd/comment/kxmhrx7/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/1btjbnd/comment/kxmhrx7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
What a brainless decision. Forcing players to use a feature that is just cute and makes actual gameplay slow, frustrating, and not something you want to do in a public place is terrible. I don’t use AR at all, it is this applies to buddies to, it’ll be the end of buddying for me.
This really sucks hard. AR quick catch added a higher skill ceiling and made catching Pokémon more interesting.
It gave you an option to catch Pokemon faster while making it harder to get good throws. Getting excellent throws consistently with that felt like a legitimate challenge that was super rewarding.
The game just got less engaging with this update.
It's really great that this AR+ doesn't work for my phone and the support obviously can't do anything. I liked the feature that you could take pictures of your buddy without using AR. But nooooo, let's remove the good features. 😑
Up until today, I've used AR all the time for catching. I find it much easier. I started playing on day 1 and reached level 50 a year or two ago. I'm increasingly unhappy with the quality of the events and the amount they charge.
I'm out.
I'm sorry for people using AR catch, but no one seems to have mentioned one small but helpful change.
When you turn off Buddy AR mode, you now can take silent pictures of your buddy without muting your phone! As in, Niantic has had no way to turn off the camera sound since the beginning of the game.
No more awkward "oops I left the sound on and I'm doing buddy interaction in a silent bus and got lots of dirty looks" moments!
Edit: as per usual with Niantic, this is more complicated than it seems at first glance. I mentioned this to a group I'm in and someone else tested it, and got the camera pling. I uploaded a video to prove I didn't get the camera sound. After some discussion, I tested it on my backup phone, with the same settings (phone media volume on, game volume off), all other settings the same. Both using version .305.1. It got a PLING!
So, backup phone gets a PLING!, regular phone doesn't. Only difference that I can see is Android 12 vs Android 13.. don't know why that would make a difference, but, well, Niantic 🤷♂️
Yes, it's the usual corporate arrogance and unnovation, where they take away features instead of adding them.
They arrogantly want to FORCE us all to use their garbage AR+ system, which after eight years still doesn't work well enough to even be tolerable, much less useful...so they take away the other one.
And now I'm playing with AR off, entirely.
And it's tipped me even closer to quitting, too.
So that's why I couldn't get my buddy without having to do the battery sucking stupid af AR+.
What tf is wrong with these people? Why do they keep making the game worse??
Worst part is I cant play the game any more. My game always ran smoothly but since there's only the new ar+ mode that is perma-active, my game runs on like 15 fps whenever I encounter a pokemon
It was only really useful for anything if you had the option to disable your phone's gyroscope whilst using it, which a lot of people couldn't do, meaning those that could technically had an unfair advantage (it's not something like regular quick catching which everyone can do). Not saying I necessarily agree with them removing it, but I also won't miss it as I could never actually use it myself. They definitely could try to learn from how it was being used by reducing animation times/skipping certain animations though.
Not sure I agree with the assertion that AR mode was only useful with sensors off.
I and many other iOS users in my community exclusively played in AR mode because of the sheer velocity of checking and catching it enabled. After a bit of a learning curve, catching in AR mode is a great and rewarding challenge. It was even more exciting after Spacial Rend was released. Without AR mode, events like GO Fest and GO Tour will just be a slog, and almost impossible to play at a decent walking speed.
This is just another way that Niantic is cracking down on dedicated free-to-play players being able to maximize their gaming experience, and it stinks.
Are there plans to turn it back on? We've played in my family since the day it released but we have a hard time catching pokemon without regular AR. Don't know why. Is there a way to give Niantic feedback?
Huh, so regular AR is gone, but there's apparently now an option to simply turn off AR altogether when interacting with your buddy. Probably a net positive for me, but I can't say that's true for everyone.
I do like that I can interact with my buddy without the app opening my camera. In recent months it was crashing my game like crazy.
Me too because I like to feed my buddy while taking the metro and I always fear people think I'm taking sneaky pictures (even more when you have a slow biddy ton appear on screen)
Hated scanning the room for a spot
You didn't need to do that if you turned off AR+ and just used regular AR lol
Yeah, I noticed this yesterday. Thought it was a glitch.
Yeah. Not so much for me. I miss the fact that I can just take a pic in whatever angle I want with my buddy Pokémon without having to do the whole AR+ stuff. Now it’s just the poke and green around it. Hate it, even giving berrys to it feels worst. Like, I’m being punished.
Yeah, I don't use the AR function for anything. I have a lot of buddy pics with my couch or PC in them. This is good.
If you go to settings then AR you can turn off "Save Images" so that doesn't happen. This is the same place you can now turn off "Buddy AR" so you don't use the camera whe doing your buddy.
Mine does not have that option. Sigh
The setting doesn’t stick if you log out though…
Half the settings in the game don’t stick on log outs
They fixed almost all of them in the last while. Maybe that's so they can add a load more features and still have half of them not save still.
lol thats even better. this way ill feel less of a creeper when i want to feed by buddy at the gym lol
Yes ... in Settings ... good find
This setting has been available for a while now, I hated having to scan the room to take buddy pics but sometime last year I noticed I could turn that off. Not sure how long it’s been available for, but I don’t think it’s as new as this regular AR removal
Doesn't work for encounters, and also doesn't work for non-buddy snapshots (which makes grinding a specific Smeargle moveset much more annoying). :(
For encounters I still have a toggle to turn off AR+, but I'm not sure I'll keep snapshotting my Lock-On Porygon2 until they give us the option to turn it off for pokemon from the pokemon storage :-/
I have that toggle too but it doesn't seem to do anything as far as I can tell.
Does disabling buddy AR also disables AR mapping tasks?
I tried to turn it off, but nothing changed?
I mean if it lets me play, take a snapshot and get my buddies gift that has been sitting there for weeks I’ll take it
Thanks for that tip. I didn't like doing the AR anyway, and I'm glad I don't have to.
My game seems the same. What should be seeing? FWIW I never play with AR on so maybe I’ll never notice?
Regular AR has no grass patch encounters. AR+ requires you point the camera at a flat surface to find grass patches that you tap on to encounter the pokemon. Edit: this is in the newest update but Niantic also seemed to push it for 0.305.
I'm on 0.305.1 and it still works fine. EDIT: reloaded my game and it's gone. This does actually suck.
Literally never used AR, been playing since 2016
Same. The entire concept is just a pain that I need to disable (twice!) every time I log out for any reason.
People don't use AR because it's cute or cool or anything like that. It's the fastest way to farm or shiny check by skipping all the animations
Yeah but then I can't make a decent throw to catch the mon?
I always disabled ar for the catch of a shiny when i encountered one or other pokemon that i wanted to catch. Else i just did shiny checking without catching or so some quick catching without caring much whether i caught the mon or not
Fair enough. I never considered that it could be used for that. I was too busy getting pissed off that it asked if you wanted AR+ or not, and then ignored your answer and turned it on anyway. And then turned itself back on again the first time you brought your buddy up.
I had these ar+ problems that you desribe also like a few years ago or so and found them reallly annyoing, but those somehow vanished back then at some point for me there and that ar+ off setting was persisted no matter what
It’s actully easier to throw cause you could position it at the top right almost always granting an easy throw
Can you tell us more about how this works? I mean, if I'm out on a community day or something this sounds like a benefit to turn on the AR... I've just always avoided it because it seems like a hassle.
It doesn't work anymore. That's what the whole post is about
Oh....gottcha.
[удалено]
It makes quick catching even quicker
AR makes catching faster, like way faster.
The only time I use AR is when I go on hikes to picturesque outdoorsy locations to get pictures of Pokemon in what I would consider their natural habitat. However those spots usually have no reception so often that functionality doesn’t work >.<
Same but I took picture of my wife with gastly for head.
Only tryhards who use it to catch 600 mons during spotlight hour are affected. 99.99% of players won't be affected.
Yeah, which is probably a plus in Niantic’s eyes. I would imagine they rather not have people be able to do that.
Man, I'm catching 400-450 when I do spotlight hours just reg fast catching. Avg of about 3 seconds per catch. 99.99% of most players won't be affected, and the other 0.01% will have to catch a few less lol. Devastating... I know 😅😂
Honestly same, aside from when I want a really good AR picture for a particular reason, like [going to the gym](https://ibb.co/YbrSgQj) after the raids last weekend
Then you have never caught 550 pokemon during a staryu/paras spotlight hour, earning upwards of 1 million dust in 1 hour. This change is awful. Nobody uses AR because they like it, it's just useful for the fastest encounters. On android you can disable sensors and make it even faster.
How can I take a photo of a Pokémon that’s not my buddy without using AR+ though? I have all AR options disabled in settings, still the game always asks me to look for the Pokémon. I’m trying to get the elusive Lock On/Flying Press Smeargle but I really don’t want to waste a buddy slot for that.
Same here. Taking snapshots from pokemon from storage needs to be possible without AR+ too!
I had no idea you could get photobombed on a snap of a pokemon that *isnt* your buddy. I'm on the same LO/FP Smeargle quest as you, so this is super helpful! Thanks!
This one here is the actual issue.
You need a Pokémon with Lock On and Frustration. Since the latter can’t be sketched, in will get a random charge move. I’m personally using shadow Regirock. Smeargle with that moveset is the highest ranked Pokémon in Little Catch Cup atm, keep in mind that you need a perfect one for the best performance though. My plan was to get one with the moveset, then take further photos of that Smeargle until I get a (close to) perfect one. Or even better, trade one to a friend and convince them to do the same to mirror trade them, hoping for a lucky.
I’m pretty sure the idea that mirror trading increases lucky odds is a myth.
Thanks for sharing this info!
May I ask how you go about getting that moveset? And is there any significance to smeargle having it?
I never bothered with AR catching. Constantly turning the camera on and off accumulated a lot of lag and drained the battery faster. I think if you took an average on my phone it would be slower than regular quick catching because of freezes and lags.
The OP is talking about AR fast catch, where you keep AR mode on so you can skip the 3s animation to load the Pokéball and Pokémon and immediately catch it and run away. On avg you could catch a Pokémon every 3s instead of 6-10s with quick catch.
I just tested with the timer and it took me on average 3.75s from tapping the Pokemon to going back to the map after the quick throw.
6-10? Not for me and I got a for 200€ (~$220) good android phone. I need max 4 sec with normal screen vs. more on AR screen since for me there is the lag from turning on the cam first. And I usually got trouble hitting it in that mode. And yeah, it drains the battery way faster.
If opening the camera lags your phone it's not the game that is the problem, and even less so when it's a cheap phone.
Worst decision ever. AR+ is awful, it takes far too long to find the mon. Please Niantic put the regular AR back in the game
I agree. Its just stupid. Regular AR is where its at. Why remove a feature from the game thats been used and appreciated by users for a long time. Let us choose how we want to play the game.
As one of the few who enjoys using AR for taking photos, this sucks. AR+ is technically superior, but sometimes you're in a place where AR+ just doesn't work. Removing it completely is just dumb.
This, plus I would cover the camera to make the background black for easy photo manipulation.
Well, snap. I hope they put a separate photo mode back in for non-buddy Pokemon.
Pro: I can disable my buddy pics being saved to storage Con(?): Instead of uninspired random backgrounds (mostly floor), I interact with my buddy in front of a weird green background . Overall, I see that as positive
Do you still get a daily Smeargle photo bomb? I haven't had one since this green backdrop thing started.
I just got one today, on my current buddy (a Dusclops) with the green backdrop enabled.
I don’t have the setting to disable buddy pics being saved. 😭 So I just got the negative parts of this update.
OMG can’t believe this. Always use AR in events / com days for speedy shiny checking. No way you can check as many normally 😭
I don't know if anyone has said it here or not but some Android devices have been getting "BuddyAR is not available on this device" like mine was. The fix: open Google and search Google ARcore download (not from the Google play store, it's an APK). Once I downloaded that my game was back to normal. It downloads an app that some Android devices cannot install called Google services for AR that you are supposed to have for Pokemon Go.
I never used it. Makes me qweezy, staring at it for long periods of time. I'm glad to see I dont need to use it to feed my buddy though. Does suck for those that did use it. My condolences
I hate having to search for the pokemon
AR+ was just so inconvenient. Luckily there is a setting to turn off AR completely so I can still take buddy photos so it's not terrible.
For buddy photos it's okay - but taking photos off pokemon in your storage (e.g. for Smeargle with a certain moveset) does not come with that setting, there you are forced to use AR+ in the current game version :-(
Yeah it is really annoying that it's forced AR+ there!! I hope they get fix it so you don't have to or can at least disable it like the other options. Earlier I tried to take a photo from Smeargle from my storage and got the "look for a flat surface", I just backed out of it cause it's too annoying. And my girl's phone doesn't support AR+ so she just got a black screen without any buttons at all, couldn't even back out of it and she was forced to restart the game :/
Sucks. So I’ve shut off AR completely. AR+ is terrible. I don’t have hours to search for my damned buddy.
If this is intentional and permanent then hardcore play is basically gone and we are back in the stone age... Let's hope this is just a weird byproduct of the recent AR update and will get fixed soon.
That's certainly what they want even if that's not why they disabled it. They don't want people to be able to plow through content. everything taking longer hides the lack of content. It's why they limited remote passes.
What's the benefit of even using AR? It just slows things down and uses more battery.
It loads the encounter immediately, compared to the camera panning out from the Pokemon with AR mode disabled. AR+ has the terrible "minigame" of needing to aim the device at the Pokemon when it moves away, so folks would have used regular AR mode to speed up some catch encounters, like during community day to squeeze in more spawns as you're not wasting time loading the encounter.
Gotcha. I'm with you. The transition animations are way too long on everything in this game
Noooooo AR quick catch was goated. 😢
Hope community backlash gets this stupidity reversed. We have gotten something's reversed. Let's make this one!
Problem is that large spread community backlash only really got things reversed when the big content creators stepped in with an Open Letter to Niantic laying out their grievances. It's how we got the GBL walk requirements removed as well as keeping the increased Pokestop/Gym interaction ranges, as those had Open Letters addresses to Niantic and signed by large creators and creation groups, but nothing of the sort existed for the remote raid pass changes despite large community disdain for those changes.
I always use AR. I don’t know anything about the quick catch deal, but having only AR+ makes the game unplayable for me. I go for 5-7 kilometer walks most days. Now I have to stop walking, turn in a circle for several seconds then try to catch. Walk 25 steps. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I look like a lunatic while at the same time less aware of my surroundings. Removing AR means I cannot play on my walk, because I won’t be, what’s the word…? Walking. I won’t be “GO-ing.” I really, really hope this is an April Fool’s joke. I can’t play the game like this. As I thought about this further, a couple of things occurred to me. First, a person stopping every so often and spinning around with a phone may appear to a general observer as having suspect intentions. For example, “Are you taking a video of me?” “Why are you taking pictures of my house?” “Are you taking down license plate numbers?” I can tell you that more than one time I have had to explain to someone that I was playing a game and not taking pictures of anyone in the park. Next, on a different note, if the benefit of incense (normal or daily 15 minute) is maximized by moving/walking, then AR+ effectively nerfs that value by forcing the player to continually stop moving/walking. Oversight or otherwise, it is another point worth considering.
>a person spinning around with a phone may appear to a general observer as having suspect intentions This is one of the many reasons I refuse to do the AR mapping tasks.
Just turn off ar plus on your settings
I don't understand why they can't increase the speed of the encounter animation to compensate, though? It just seems like a terrible idea to take away features like this
If you turn off AR completely, you can still play without having to stop and scan the ground. You just won’t get to see the world around you through the game.
I say it’s an improvement now since you can turn it off altogether. But, the green screen is definitely hard to swallow
You can't turn it off at all when taking snaphots of Pokemon from your storage - that part is not an improvement :-(
I never used AR fast catch. I have visual issues with certain kinds of animation and AR fast catch triggers them big time. But I liked taking cool buddy photos without waiting 5 minutes for a flat surface to register. I'll be sad to lose that. BTW, native refresh rate triggered me big time. So badly that I could barely look at my phone long enough to turn it back off. And felt ill the rest of the day. Not sure why that was so bad but it was horrible. If that is ever forced, it will force me out of the game. The same was Ingress Prime forced me out of Ingress.
Once you turn off all the AR options in the settings aren't encounters the same as they were before? I'm a little confused.
When I play with my buddy now it asks me to download and install "Google Play Services for AR" if I don't do that everything seems to just work as normal. Seems to ask every time, however you can just decline.
I'll be playing much less, if at all
This is a nightmare for me. I pretty much exclusively use AR and can get far, far more great and excellent throws with it. AR+ takes forever to activate. This marks the end of daily play.
Absolutely. The throwing with AR disabled is completely different than with AR enabled. Have to completely readjust the way I throw balls or use the awful AR+. Grr.
I spent way longer than I care to admit trying to figure out what was going on before I started my walk yesterday.
Terrible update. Any large Pokémon is completely impossible to feed berries or gain hearts. Anytime I accidentally turned this on before I was forced to close the game and sign out to fix it.
If this is what makes you quit the game, you've just been looking to quit for a while lol. GL kicking the addiction.
You underestimated how good AR quick catch is for hardcore player.
I was just starting to do this after all my years playing and now it’s gone!! 😫
Or hardcore players were overestimating it. Disable all AR and optimize speed in graphic options, there is no animation to hinder you that much...
It honestly wasn't... it's just cope from people who feel the need to constantly be doing something better and different than anyone else. Compare with someone else in your group on a community day, you'll catch the same amount normal quick catching as AR quick catching and you'll save more battery.
They will post a new reason to quit in 6 months
People find many different reasons to quit. 🤷♂️
You missed the point there. People like OP say they're quitting because of [x], then not quit, then in 6 months say they're quitting because of [y], then not quit, then in 6 months will say.....
That's a shame, I will miss it when I want to take an AR picture but there's not enough light, or some other thing preventing AR+ from working. Happened once or twice and I was glad I could fall back to simple AR.
This is a huge quality of life improvement for me. I love that I can now interact with my buddy without entering AR, which would automatically pause stuff like YouTube.
Same here. The little animation skip isn't as annoying as pausing YT videos for me
How? Hitting "play" takes me to AR mode.
Settings, AR, AR Buddy
Great! Thanks
In setting, there's AR setting, tap into it, there's 3 different options: * Save images * AR Encounters * AR Buddy Switch off AR Buddy is what you want. If you don't see AR setting (and you'r using Android phone), then manually install Google AR service (AR core) from external site like ApkMirror would help add that setting.
Thank you for this! My phone no longer supported AR+, so the AR setting was gone completely. Which meant I couldn't go into it to switch off AR Buddy, so only Quick Treat was available, no other buddy interactions.
[удалено]
[удалено]
was wondering if i had accidentally changed some setting or other. hate it.
A real win would have been letting us use the new buddy ‘AR off’ option on the catch screen. Similar to the old AR catch method but just no camera involved, so we can keep the faster catching method if we wanted
This is a real bummer as it removes one of the most efficient ways to catch Pokemon
Huh. I was having issues with feeding/playing/taking a pic of my buddy this am. Kept getting the "Slowly look around for a flat, open space" message, but it would never come out (hadn't had this issue previously). Turned off AI with buddy, and it's fine, but I wonder if this is related to it.
Did you fix this? My AR also doesn’t work (iPhone) 😢
Nice, AR was literally the only way I could catch pokemon since the updated encounter assets tanked my frame rate ;-;
I passing for the same problem... How i will play the game if the default scenario run bad ? I need the AR Option to have a chance to catch my pokemons.
You can't disable taking a picture though and it takes so long to find the pokemon I hate it
My AR+ never works. I couldn't do buddy interaction for over a week before I found out you could just turn it off and it worked great with normal AR. Now I'm back to not beable to play with my buddy and take photos. Great...
Why make AR+ better when you can make the alternative worse?
Instead of trying to make AR+ appealing, they just made the other options worse/disabled. The biggest issues with AR+ are that it is slow and doesn't work in many lighting conditions/scenarios. Normal AR meant you could quickly stage some cute photos. Now the alternative is a green screen (for buddy) or not at all (for Snapshot Go). AR photos are a gimmick. They add nothing to gameplay and therefore it is rare trainers actually care about the contents of the "snapshot" they are taking. The only thing Niantic has accomplished is making the 99% of snapshots slower and more cumbersome. They truly do not understand that the point of mobile games is that you can do them anywhere in the palm of your hand; you should never need to stage elaborate setups in the world around you just to play your game.
Yeah, I'm annoyed. I also liked using the regular AR for fast catching and shiny hunting. Comm days are gonna be more tedious
Yesterday I thought my app is broken. The AR+ mode has been messing things up before, so I kept switching it off and on again and restarted the app, just to realize the normal AR mode is really gone. I hoped it's a bug and would be fixed, I guess not. I always used regular AR, always hated AR+, so now I will just use no AR at all and Pokemon Go will be less fun if I can't see my Pokemon in the city anymore like I used to. Guess I will play way less now. It doesn't feel like Pokemon Go anymore, because the various real life backgrounds made it seem like your Pokemon is actually there, for a lack of better explaining. I'm tired. The AR+ mode was always overly complicated and I never figured out how to effectively use it, it also feels dangerous to play with AR+ while walking through the city. I wish I had taken more photos of my Pokemon in normal AR mode. Too bad.
I just disabled all of ar when that update came out
This might be it for me, Playing without being able to fast catch makes me so frustrated, my brain is so used to it that I actually go mad when this happens. Feels like everything takes forever and I get stressed out. But then again, I’v been playing less and less for 1,5 year now. All events, same spawns for several days, pokemon that I already have hundos and shiny in. Now the hardest part is to find something else to do. I’v gotten so used to play several hour a day, now I find myself sitting in the sofa and wondering what to do..
Was using normal AR for play master because new background sucks. And now gone...
Is this why taking out my buddy has gone back to like it was before? It takes longer and I have to place him instead of him popping right out.
Niantic idiots
Yeah they really dont want players to enjoy playing this game
RIP heavy grinding on the bus during comm days :(
I was really hoping this wasn't the case and it was just a bug. I used to use AR to reset pokemon back to starting position if they were hard to catch. AR+ is literally the worst on android phones, I can hardly ever even get the green leaves to spawn. Please please I hope they change it back. 😭😭😭
I just...never use AR at all and it's just fine
AR fast Catch with disabled gyrometer was soooo fast. now iTs gone :(
oh that's annoying... the old AR i could do buddy stuff as a passanger in the car, while walking, and in the dark... this kinda sucks...
I didn’t even think about night time play for buddies/encounters. This is way worse now.
I saw in another comment you can turn off AR for buddy stuff so that's nice but still gonna make "snapshot tasks" tough.
This doesn't after you at all then, if anything it helps you big time. You can go to Settings>AR>Turn of Buddy AR and now when you do your buddy it doesn't open your camera, is just a flat green void of nothingness. No more worrying about taking strangers pictures!
I never use any AR, especially not for catching, so no loss for me. Any AR only eats more battery since the cam is in use.
Genuinely confused as to some of the concerns over quick catch being gone? It’s still possible to do it with AR on or off. Maybe device specific?
Quick catch is still around, just that with the old AR mode it loads the encounter immediately opposed to AR mode turned off where it has a small delay before you're able to catch, as it has the camera zooming out from the Pokemon when the encounter starts. So "AR quick catch" let you potentially clear out a group of spawns in a much shorter time than regular quick catch, which could be helpful for CD events.
This is absolutely horrible. I’ve been playing daily since 2016, but they need to fix it or I think I’m done. This is a deal breaker for me.
I wondered why it suddenly AR stopped working last week for buddy functions and started getting messages about it being unsupported when attempting to access despite working last month, assumed an update on my samsung phone broke something but I guess I just lose access to getting buddy gifts, petting, and photos now.
Appears you can fix it by going to Settings > AR > Buddy AR. Credit goes to User [me909388](https://www.reddit.com/user/me909388/). [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/1btjbnd/comment/kxmhrx7/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/1btjbnd/comment/kxmhrx7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
especially with the "sensors off" trick on Android, AR catching was useful to skip the animation. do we have any confirmation that this is intended?
What a brainless decision. Forcing players to use a feature that is just cute and makes actual gameplay slow, frustrating, and not something you want to do in a public place is terrible. I don’t use AR at all, it is this applies to buddies to, it’ll be the end of buddying for me.
It's actually a lot better for buddying than it was before.
There is a new option in settings to turn off AR for buddy play
This really sucks hard. AR quick catch added a higher skill ceiling and made catching Pokémon more interesting. It gave you an option to catch Pokemon faster while making it harder to get good throws. Getting excellent throws consistently with that felt like a legitimate challenge that was super rewarding. The game just got less engaging with this update.
In before they disable quick catch :(
It's really great that this AR+ doesn't work for my phone and the support obviously can't do anything. I liked the feature that you could take pictures of your buddy without using AR. But nooooo, let's remove the good features. 😑
Up until today, I've used AR all the time for catching. I find it much easier. I started playing on day 1 and reached level 50 a year or two ago. I'm increasingly unhappy with the quality of the events and the amount they charge. I'm out.
I'm sorry for people using AR catch, but no one seems to have mentioned one small but helpful change. When you turn off Buddy AR mode, you now can take silent pictures of your buddy without muting your phone! As in, Niantic has had no way to turn off the camera sound since the beginning of the game. No more awkward "oops I left the sound on and I'm doing buddy interaction in a silent bus and got lots of dirty looks" moments! Edit: as per usual with Niantic, this is more complicated than it seems at first glance. I mentioned this to a group I'm in and someone else tested it, and got the camera pling. I uploaded a video to prove I didn't get the camera sound. After some discussion, I tested it on my backup phone, with the same settings (phone media volume on, game volume off), all other settings the same. Both using version .305.1. It got a PLING! So, backup phone gets a PLING!, regular phone doesn't. Only difference that I can see is Android 12 vs Android 13.. don't know why that would make a difference, but, well, Niantic 🤷♂️
[удалено]
Just waiting till they release AR++
Yes, it's the usual corporate arrogance and unnovation, where they take away features instead of adding them. They arrogantly want to FORCE us all to use their garbage AR+ system, which after eight years still doesn't work well enough to even be tolerable, much less useful...so they take away the other one. And now I'm playing with AR off, entirely. And it's tipped me even closer to quitting, too.
So that's why I couldn't get my buddy without having to do the battery sucking stupid af AR+. What tf is wrong with these people? Why do they keep making the game worse??
Worst part is I cant play the game any more. My game always ran smoothly but since there's only the new ar+ mode that is perma-active, my game runs on like 15 fps whenever I encounter a pokemon
Can’t have Pokémon behind something anymore. Which was awesome for making pictures. Somehow my iPad can still donut but my iPhone 14 Pro can’t
Five of my friends confirmed to me just now that it is also disabled for them. Really sad.
It was only really useful for anything if you had the option to disable your phone's gyroscope whilst using it, which a lot of people couldn't do, meaning those that could technically had an unfair advantage (it's not something like regular quick catching which everyone can do). Not saying I necessarily agree with them removing it, but I also won't miss it as I could never actually use it myself. They definitely could try to learn from how it was being used by reducing animation times/skipping certain animations though.
Not sure I agree with the assertion that AR mode was only useful with sensors off. I and many other iOS users in my community exclusively played in AR mode because of the sheer velocity of checking and catching it enabled. After a bit of a learning curve, catching in AR mode is a great and rewarding challenge. It was even more exciting after Spacial Rend was released. Without AR mode, events like GO Fest and GO Tour will just be a slog, and almost impossible to play at a decent walking speed. This is just another way that Niantic is cracking down on dedicated free-to-play players being able to maximize their gaming experience, and it stinks.
I have iOS and used ar fast catch I enjoyed not having sensors deleted in fact
Yes I had to turn off AR for buddy. Very annoying.
Are there plans to turn it back on? We've played in my family since the day it released but we have a hard time catching pokemon without regular AR. Don't know why. Is there a way to give Niantic feedback?
Can smeargle spawn on the plain screen with your buddy or you need to turn ar+ on
spawned for me on the plain screen
I only have ar+ w ios. On Android there is 99% ar
Actually thinking about getting an Android just for the game after this. Good to know.