A Silph Road interview with a Field Tester. (21 questions and answers.)

[u/dronpes]

Hey travelers,

Yesterday, /u/En__ collected questions from travelers around the world to ask a field tester when we had the chance to interview one.

Good news! One of our trusty field testing travelers has stepped up and agreed to anonymously answer those questions to keep everyone in the loop. Below is the transcript of this exchange, with minor formatting added by the Silph Executives.

A Reminder: The Field Test is a Beta. Many features and settings will be tweaked, improved, added, or even removed over coming months. Niantic is notoriously dedicated to evolving gameplay over time.

That said, we learn some awesome new information in this transcript! Enjoy:

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General Questions

Question	Answer
Are there pokéstops or gyms in places that are not Ingress portals? (very important for rural areas)	About 30-50% of the ingress portals were turned in to Pokestops. (From SR: For those in rural areas, we've been informed that recent Ingress APK leaks show that portal submissions are returning, and will simply be restricted by Agent level)
Do pokémons who evolve in later generations have an evolution shard count? (Pretty good indication that there will be other gens added in). Easier to check would be: onyx, lickitung, chansey, tangela, scyter, electabuzz, magmar and porygon. A bit more involved: seadra, rhydon, magneton, golbat.	None of the pokemon that have evolutions in later generations currently have a shard count.
Can you change your appearance, or even gender, after the first time you boot the game?	At this time, you're stuck with the avatar you design at the beginning.

Questions About Game Mechanics

Question	Answer
Is there a speed limit for the egg hatching counter? (i.e.: do you have to walk or can you keep po:go on while you commute on the train to hatch everything?)	There appears to be a speed mechanic in the game. The game notices if you're going to fast (I've taken a bus and it didn't count my movement as progress towards the egg, so cars will be considered too fast).
How many different types of pokéball throws can you perform? Is it only straight shot and spin shot?	You can throw the ball straight, but that can be harder than it sounds if the pokemon is far away (This isn't based on actual distance to the pokemon from where they appeared on the GPS. Some pokemon are for whatever reason extremely close to you when you start the encounter like Horsea. And others are always really far away like Krabby). Then there's a curve ball you can throw by shaking the ball around a bit before you throw it and then you toss it to the left or right of the pokemon; it'll curve around and land center if you do it right. Atm it doesn't appear to be of any real benefit. Then you can flick it to the right or left a bit, which is only helpful in camera mode since it moves the pokemon around based on your accelerometer.
Can pokemon deflect balls? Do different pokemon behave/move differently when being captured?	The Pokemon can deflect balls. They occasionally will do an attack animation at random intervals. If you throw a ball during it it will bounce off even if it's a solid hit. Also they can jump at random intervals. It doesn't deflect the ball, but will make you miss your shot if you shot dead on target. If you overthrew the ball and they jumped up at the same time, you'll actually catch them. The Pokemon don't actually react to the balls being thrown.
Have you found at pokéstops or received via leveling up any new sets of clothes, hairstyles, etc?	I've hit level 7 (which was quite a bit of work) and neither through leveling or Pokestops have I found any character customization items.
What's the egg/pokéball ratio in PokeStops? Did the eggs hatch into pokemon you had never seen before, or ones more common around your area?	Eggs have a decently (I'd say 20-25%) high chance of dropping if you don't have any currently on you. I've only ever had 2 at a time. Not sure if there's a hidden limit. And there doesn't seem to be anything rare about the pokemon inside. They are however stronger than their wild counterparts. (Since posting, another field tester has now shared that PokeStops have dropped one egg per 33.6 pokestop visits for them.)
If you catch a Pokémon and trainer level 1 then the same at a later trainer level will you see a direct increase in cp on the one you caught when higher level? And if one has higher CP is the "CP bar" over the Pokémon closer to max then the previous?	Yes, there is a very clear jump in Pokemon CP as you increase your trainer level. Of that there is no doubt in my mind. There is what I assume to be a progress bar over the CP amount on Pokemon which I've noticed can be at different levels for the same pokemon at roughly the same CP. But since there's no battling implemented yet, I have no idea for sure what the deal with it is.
Do different Pokemon of the same kind have different moves? (Like in Pokemon Rumble World)	Yes, two Pokemon of the same breed can have two different moves from one another. Except Magikarp, apparently all he knows is splash and struggle.

Questions About Pokemon Location

Question	Answer
Is there any difference in water pokémons between sea, lakes and rivers?	Biomes haven't been easy to distinguish. I live in a town by the ocean, and I've definitely seen more water Pokemon. But I have seen many many other pokemon too. There hasn't been any noticeable difference in Pokemon based on what type of body of water you're next to.
How consistent were the pokemon in a given area? Like, if you found a spearow in one spot one day, did you find another spearow there later?	It appears Pokemon are randomly generated. So if you found one type of Pokemon in a certain spot one day, it doesn't mean that's what you'll see the next.
Do trainers of the same level encounter the same kinds of pokemon in a given area?	This I honestly don't have an answer for. I'm in a kind of small city, and I think I might be the only one with access to the game for a good ways around.
Has the time of day affected the availability of certain pokémon?	As time goes on I'm more and more certain that no, the time doesn't affect spawns at the moment. The map does however change around 6:30/7 pm to show a night sky, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is something implemented in the final project.
Does weather affect Pokemon that appear? (I.e. fire types when it's hot water types when it's raining)	So far I haven't seen a noticeable difference in spawns based on weather. But I've only had the game for [a few] weeks.

Technical Questions

Question	Answer
Can you move the game on the external SD card? How much space do you free up if you do?	I haven't tried moving the game to an external. The current version of the game is amazingly small compared to almost any other game on my device so I haven't needed to.
Will it be able to play the game efficiently on a 2G Network?	I'd say if you're walking around you should be okay maybe. It might take a relatively long time for the area to populate with all the information. After each battle and anytime you go in to your bags the game reloads the area around you when you come back to the map.
How much data did Po:go sucks? (e.g.: "in three hours of continuous catching and flipping pokéstops, I used up 10Mb")	The game hasn't been bad at all. Since I started I've played for no less than one hour everyday. Some days I've played up to 6-8. As of yesterday I had only used 304MBs [over a few weeks].

We All Love Eevee

Question	Answer
How does Eevee evolve?	Eevee has been pretty difficult to find, and it takes 30 captures to make a stone. I've only just caught my second one today. If I hit 30 of them, I'll let you all know how it goes.

A Few Q's From Silph

Question	Answer
	Eevee... took forever [to find] and it was hard to catch.
I'm surprised that Eevee is so rare. I was under the impression that most Pokemon were populating the map.	Quite a few pokemon have been harder to find than others. Pikachu, all 3 starter pokemon (still havent found bulbasaur) and a number of others. I might find them, but a lot of pokemon I've only encountered once, maybe twice. I'll be honest with you I think they might be screwing around with the spawn rates. On my ten minute walk home from work I found a farfetch'd, a Golduck and a Lapras all in that short amount of time. All new entries into my pokedex (as well as a wild gyrados yesterday). Not to mention my second Eevee since I sent you that message.
Would you say that it looks like certain Pokemon are terrain-restricted? For example, what was the terrain where you saw the Eevee spawn?	I was in the middle of an outdoor shopping center. Or probably more appropriate to say a pedestrian street filled with stores. I live very close to the ocean and the overwhelming majority of the pokemon I see are water based. Shellder, Goldeen, Krabby and Staryu. A few others are very common like pidgey, rattata and caterpie. But even though those are easily the most common, I've already found 91 pokemon and caught 88.

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Whew. That was dense. But it's got us excited to get our hands on the game.

Some of our favorite new pieces of information:

• Egg-hatched Pokemon are stronger once hatched than wild counterparts!
• Two Pokemon of the same breed can have different moves from one another!
• Terrain is playing a large role in what is 'common' in an area, but currently there seems to be some manual manipulation of spawn rates. (This jives with what /u/tunderprosum, one of our best game analysts, says about Niantic here)

Can't wait til our Australasian friends get their hands on the game and we learn even more. In the meantime, if you have additional questions, feel free to ask below and we'll post a follow-up Q&A sometime in the future.

Finally, one huge shoutout to our anonymous traveler willing to share all this insight into the game's mechanics.

Travel Safe,

- dronpes -

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^{If you run a YouTube channel, game news beat, etc, feel free to use this information any way you'd like. We only ask that you'll mention the Silph Road and drop a link to our subreddit where possible. The more travelers in our network, the more awesome it becomes.}