Anyone who plays in the village or small town knows it: You want to play Pokémon GO, but there are only a few stops or arenas far and wide. A coach also had the problem and then took matters into his own hands. We asked how that went.
Sure, if you play Pokémon GO in a big city, the distances are short. In cities like Hamburg, Berlin or Munich there are plenty of stops or arenas that you can use. Spawns, Rocket Grunts, items – you can easily collect all of this if you take a little walk.
The next 5-star raid boss is often only a small hop away – and with luck you will also meet a few other players who want to bag the monster.
But in smaller towns and villages things are different. It can happen that you have few or no stops at all and in case of doubt you have to drive to the next place to complete a raid.
An Italian Pokémon GO player also had the problem. Under the name “AMindJoke,” he shared a tweet from his small town in Tuscany in 2016. There wasn’t much going on in terms of stops or arenas.
On the other hand, he also shared a screen with significantly more stops – and explained that he himself had done a lot to ensure that his city became more and more a PokéStop paradise.
This is what it looks like in the “AMindJokes” neighborhood – 2016 vs Today
“It was really difficult at the beginning”
The trainer, who goes by the name “AMindJoke”, plays a lot of Pokémon GO and has been there since the summer of 2016 – a good six and a half years.
Among other things, he is active in the Battle League, occasionally streams on Twitch and has already recorded more than 2 million Pokémon caught in the game. Initially, the coach would play for several hours a day before work and relationships made it more likely to play in the evenings.
In order to achieve such large numbers, according to the coach, you need a schedule and fixed goals – but also a good place to play. And that’s exactly what he created himself with a few friends in the neighborhood. He tells us about it in an interview.
Why did you start submitting PokéStops? “In the beginning there wasn’t much of an incentive to play here. In the first year of the game, I kept going to bigger and better cities to play, mainly Florence and Viareggio,” explains the coach.
Then, in early 2018, he and a friend started creating PokéStops — in a roundabout way. The two had to resort to the previous game, Ingress, to suggest interesting locations.
Because that wasn’t possible in Pokémon GO itself: “It all started when a friend showed me that it was possible to create more portals through Ingress, which were converted into Pokéstops or Arenas in our beloved game,” recalls AMindJoke.
“We started playing Ingress together too, so we were playing two games at the same time for a while,” he explains. As a result, he had to use a GO Plus to catch them – because he only had one cell phone at his disposal.
Having a lot of PokéStops is worth it – also to get the Rockets
How did you manage to get so many Pokestops? “We knew there were an awful lot of attractions in the area that were never requested in Ingress. After all, many cities in Italy are blessed with many historical things,” reports the coach.
But just because you had suitable locations didn’t mean that it would work directly with the PokéStop: “In the beginning it was very difficult for them to be accepted. Only the Ingress community rated places at the time, and there were ‘wars’ between them, so it was hard for them to be accepted,” says AMindJoke.
For some really good candidates like historic palaces, even with the plaque at the entrance, it took us 7-8 requests to get accepted!
Sometimes it could take weeks or months for a request to go through. That changed when suggestions could also be submitted and rated by Pokémon GO players: “It got faster from there and we were able to fill the town faster!”
The “Niantic Wayfarer” program is used today to rate stops.
Do you have any tips on how to turn your neighborhood into a Pokestop paradise too?
AMindJoke suggests sharing: “In Italy there are communities where you can share via ‘portals’, if they are approvable, how to improve your requests and things like that.”
The clearer the queries, and the more experience you gain, the faster you learn what works:
I think the best way to have more success in accepting your requests and filling your town is to learn the Niantic policy for requests and also talk to people in each community to see what they approve and what not, because ultimately in every country there are certain things that are approved more than others!
The trainer also gives such an example: “For example mailboxes in Great Britain. They’re a common thing for PokéStops there, while they wouldn’t be accepted in Italy. So always try to figure out what are the best things to request, and also learn the rules of how to submit a Pokéstop (title, description, location, etc.)”
How to submit stops in Pokémon GO, we show you here.
But it is also clear: In order to successfully get so many stops, it takes effort and ultimately time. Because there are not necessarily suitable candidates for stops on every corner. How do you find them?
Here, too, the trainer has found a way: “How do I find all the things that I can apply for? During my breaks from work, I like to drive around my city with Google Street View, looking for potential candidates and finding the positions, then going there and requesting them,” says AMindJoke.
How is it in your neighborhood? Do you submit stops regularly, or are you always full? Do you try to submit stops more often? Tell us in the comments!
Otherwise, the high-voltage event is currently pending in Pokémon GO. You can find out what’s inside in the overview.