Highlights
- Niantic Support is aware of the issues players are experiencing with the Routes feature in Pokemon GO, including difficulty in earning Zygarde Cells.
- The Routes feature allows players to record and share their walking paths with others in the community, but the reception has been mixed.
- Players have reported game crashes and freezing when using Routes, and Niantic Support is working on fixing these issues. The scarcity of Zygarde Cells is frustrating players trying to evolve Zygarde.
Niantic Support responds to players that are currently experiencing issues using the new Routes feature in Pokemon GO which is also impacting the ability to earn Zygarde Cells. As a live service title, Pokemon GO is always changing and evolving both through new content and available features. Recently, Niantic began testing a new Pokemon GO feature called Routes inside of the Campfire App integration. Routes basically allows players to not only capture their walking routes, but share them with others in the community. Recording their paths through the app, players can then share the new trail with others to help them discover new locations or potentially interesting areas.
While the reception to this feature has been decidedly mixed so far, Niantic decided to tie the latest legendary Pokemon Zygarde to this new feature. After earning the Zygarde Cube by completing the third step of the From A to Zygarde Special Research, players need to then collect special cells that may appear while walking on a Route created by another player. Unlocking the more powerful forms of Zygarde requires a good amount of cells, though considering how rare they are, and that Routes is currently available to only a select number of players, it has the community feeling a bit frustrated.
In fact, the Niantic Support Twitter account has been fielding a lot of questions and concerns related to this fact, ultimately pushing them to issue a statement after responding to a Pokemon GO player who is not only experiencing game crashes, but also not having any luck finding Zygarde Cells. Thankfully, it appears that there are others reporting similar issues where this seems to be more of a technical issue or bug rather than the RNG system being a bit too aggressive.
In addition to the Zygarde Cells issues, players have also been commenting on Routes causing issues with their game through crashing it completely or freezing at various points of a route creation. Either way, there appears to be plenty of Pokemon GO fans having issues with obtaining Zygarde Cells and considering that 250 are needed in total to evolve it to its final form, many are left feeling frustrated at the scarcity.
The Zygarde problem hasn't been the only issues players have faced lately. Last weekend saw Pokemon GO's July 2023 Community Day event take place, which featured Poliwag and promoted a 50% reduction to Stardust costs when trading. Surprisingly, the bonus never ended up happening as expected during Commuity Day, leaving many fans disappointed and upset that another issue with the game derailed an event.
Pokemon GO is available for Android and iOS.