I would like to ask for clarification regarding a Wayspot nomination that was approved through Wayfarer but did not appear in Pokémon GO.
I understand that approval in Wayfarer does not guarantee that a Wayspot will become a PokéStop, and I have learned about the S2 cell system that limits which Wayspots appear in the game. However, I find this difficult to understand from a fairness perspective.
I live in a small rural village where there are very few PokéStops and Gyms available. A valid nomination was reviewed and approved, yet it does not benefit local players because it falls within a cell that already contains another PokéStop.
At the same time, there are well-known locations such as Zaragoza, Spain, where players can access a very high number of PokéStops within a small area. This creates the impression that areas already rich in game content continue to have significant advantages, while rural communities with very limited gameplay opportunities are restricted even further.
Could you please explain how this system is considered fair for rural players? If the goal of Wayfarer is to encourage exploration and community engagement, it seems counterproductive that approved Wayspots in underserved areas can effectively become unusable in Pokémon GO.
I would appreciate an explanation of the reasoning behind this policy and whether there are any plans to better support rural communities in the future.
I can appreciate it can be frustrating when you nominate something and it isn’t able to be used as a Pokéstop or Gym due to the cell rules, especially in an area where the few eligible things will likely be close together due to the nature of how villages are.
The wayfarer team isn’t responsible for these density rules being in place. It’s the Pokémon Go team who chose these rules back when they first developed Pokémon Go, and whilst they did tweak things to increase the amount of gyms when they redesigned the gym system, the rules have otherwise remained unchanged.
We can only really speculate on why the rules exist, as the Pokémon Go team don’t officially acknowledge them in the first place, but it’s likely that part of the reason is to make sure the map doesn’t feel overcrowded, making it harder for people to tap on the thing they want to interact with.
I believe Zaragoza was one of the locations where there was a significant amount of wayfarer abuse at one point. A few years back there was an oversight in the system, whereby if a location was moved into an already occupied cell, it wouldn’t force a recalculation to take place, and people abused this to overload cells with a lot more Pokéstops and Gyms than should have existed in the area. This oversight was fixed, and places that were reported to have been abused like this had their density rules manually enforced to remove excess Pokéstops and Gyms that shouldn’t have existed.
There are also other factors that can result in the density rules being exceeded though. Sponsored locations and Community Ambassador Campsites are both subject to their own sets of rules, and whilst they do interact with some of the regular density rules, they may bend or bypass other ones.
There have been experiments to improve gameplay in rural areas, and these are still ongoing. Maybe at some point they’ll come to your area if they prove to be successful or the experiment warrants expanding further. I know the wayfarer Ambassadors will always take feedback onboard about this issue as well, and whilst I’m not privy to what goes on in their discussions with the wayfarer team, I’m sure it’s a matter that they will keep advocating for.
I can’t really say much about the former. Playing PG and similar in rural areas can be really quite a rubbish experience, and while there are some initiatives being tested (imported waypoints at street junctions, for example), this doesn’t happen quickly.
You are correct that there are a few high-profile areas where players historically took advantage of moved waypoints failing to prevent others from appearing. I’ve heard about Zaragoza, and saw a similar situation first-hand in Tenerife a couple of years ago.
While this may not seem fair, it’s a worldwide issue and I’ve seen evidence that the staff are slowly updating the maps to behave as they ought to behave under current cell rules.
Staff do not acknowledge the cell rules and won’t discuss them or what they are / are not doing to deal with this issue.
I agree, there are still many areas with too many pokestops/gyms as a result of abuse in the past. I actually don’t know if these should be reported,
A few weeks few ago we noticed such an area in this forum ( Pokestops - Pokémon Go - #2 by salixsorbus ), but today there are still too many stops in this area. So I expect there is not a very active approach to rebalance these areas.
We do know rebalancing sometimes happens, but we don’t know what triggers a rebalance.
Also, the density rules have not been published, it is just community observation, so this would make it difficult to report, as we can’t officially say it is abuse.
I try not to compare truly rural (wayspot deserts) and major cities (packed) because personally I would not like either.
We need some wayspots to enjoy the game but I would hate to be somewhere that I could sit at home and constantly interact with half a dozen wayspots, that would not encourage me to get out.
I am not 1 of the “more stops = better game” players but I do believe that there must be an happy middle ground but this will be different for each player.
I can only suggest that you post the general location (DO NOT USE YOUR HOME ADDRESS) and people will take a look and suggest places that could be eligible.
Many here will be able to give accounts of their “wayspot deserts” that they have turned in to decent play areas. You are never going to turn a rural village in to Central Park New York.
Unfortunately there are locations that just don’t have many things eligible and you will have to accept if that is the case but very few have nothing.
As a player who grew up in a rather rural environment (it was so rural that the nearest fire station was 8 km away, similar for groceries, and even now there’s only one pokestop within a kilometer of my old address)… some places just don’t have things that will qualify, largely due to the single family residential exclusion.
However, I now live in the outer edge of a major metro area, and have added over 100 stops, nearly two-thirds of those in my own neighborhood (and over twenty are close enough to be visible in game from my house, though only one is in interact range). From that experience I can mention that sometimes, a lack of wayspots is because of a lack of wayfarers / lack of effort, rather than an eligibility problem.
For instance, a large church might have just one stop for its sign/main entrance, but have qualifying artwork that is far enough away to overcome the density rules (my church now has five wayspots!), independent businesses often have qualifying artwork, multi-unit residential communities may have site maps or athletic facilities that qualify (I’m in Southern California and probably 20 percent or more of my stops are apartment complex swimming pools)…
When I go to max zoom out and spin the map now, there’s 34 wayspots visible in game from my house - and about 24 of those are ones I submitted. In the process, the area went from two gyms to eight.