Hello Trainers!
Niantic has just announced on the Wayfarer community forums that they are going to be embarking on a project to improve the location accuracy of up to 15,000 Wayspots located in several major cities.
From the forum post:
“We wanted to let you know that we are embarking on a project to improve the location accuracy of up to 15K Wayspots in total, between several major cities. These Wayspots will typically be smaller objects and discrete places such as statues, sculptures, signage, murals, and entrance locations to help improve existing and future gameplay experiences that rely on good location accuracy. This will help improve future AR game experiences at these locations across Niantic games.”
Target Cities and Dates
- New York City and Tokyo in Early April 2022
- London UK, San Francisco, and Seattle in Late April 2022
- Los Angeles and select smaller US cities in Early May 2022
There’s no word on what “select smaller US cities” means, so we’ll have to wait and see if Niantic clarifies this when the time comes or not.
Expected Impact
- Niantic announced that “Neighbourhoods with a healthy density of Wayspots may see a modification or removal of a PokéStop or Gym.” Essentially this means if they move a Wayspot into an S17 cell that already has an existing Pokéstop or Gym then one of the Wayspots will likely stop appearing in Pokémon Go.
- They also mentioned that they cannot predict how their edits will change the gameboard, as new Wayspots are being added and edits are being processed along with their changes.
- If you’ve submitted a location edit that was similar to the Niantic location edit it will be auto-rejected once they correct the location and lock it. Your submission will not be returned to your quota, however, they reset daily so that shouldn’t be much of an issue.
- Niantic also indicated that Wayfarer ratings will not be impacted by any edit suggestions that are rejected, and it will not impact your Upgrade earnings.
Support
If you feel you are experiencing any issues in the game during this period as the gameboards rebalance, please utilize existing support channels to reach out to Niantic.
Niantic will let everybody know, likely on the Wayfarer forums, when the work begins and is completed.
Parting Words
Niantic wasn’t clear on where they’re sourcing the information to make these edits, I would imagine that they are entrusting this to people that they trust. It will be interesting to see what happens with this, hopefully, we don’t lose too many Pokéstops and Gyms as a result. Let us know if you see any changes to your local map!
