When Pokemon Go came to Malaysia, I was the thousands to hop on the bandwagon to test it out. The hype of the game, coupled with interest to know what the whole fuss was about, tempted me to join in to play the game.
After a week, or rather two, I can say that I’ve stopped looking for Pokemons, and I could bother not to even open the game anymore. In fact, I am considering uninstalling the game all together.
WHY?
It’s just a hard choice to make between spending money, and spending time. Two important things in life.
You see, when one plays Pokemon, one would need to have enough Pokeballs to catch Pokemons, and if your Pokeball stock dwindles, you need to restock at the ever popular Pokestops for free, or either buy it from Niantic Inc, the developers of the game.
Pokestops are not everywhere. They are mostly located in popular public places such as malls, parks and so on, which are in urban areas.
Here’s my first problem – I live in a semi-urban place (well, sort off), which has not more than five pokestops nearby, all far far away from home. This means my stock of pokeballs are limited, and I need to go into the city centre to restock them. Going into the city needs time, which is a luxury I don’t have these days.
Secondly, if I didn’t want to waste time, I’d need to fork out at least RM3.99 for ten pokeballs (worth 10 pokecoins), which to me is costly for virtual things that do not bring any long term investment benefiting me. The image below is just a sample of how much one needs to pay to get more pokeballs.
So, while the Pokemon do come to my house regularly, I can’t catch ’em all as I do not have any pockeballs! It is, yes, frustrating.
Then, here’s my second problem. The Pokemon game was designed to be harder when you level up, and since I am at Level 10 currently, it seems catching these Pokemons are slightly harder as they can break free easily. This again needs more pokeballs, which, yes, I need to either buy, or farm at the nearest Pokemon stop.
That said, a whole lot of the game revolves around these Pokeballs which I don’t have in abundance, and the fact I need to sacrifice either time or money to get them balls, makes the game really frustrating.
So, with no money and time to spare for Pokemon hunting, I have slowly got frustrated and now bored of the game, including the fact that most gyms (where allows my Pokemon to battle the rest) are far-far away and occupied by super powered Pokemons which are almost impossible to defeat. The unwillingness to spend, coupled with the need to spend time collecting pokeballs, and the fact I actually do not have much time to go ‘hunting’, plus the inability to actually take over a gym, have all contributed to this feeling that Pokemon Go is boring.
But hey, if you have spare time, and you are nearby pokestops and gyms, go ahead and play to level up. I’ll stick to my football manager for now. =)