The most recent update to Pokemon GO has some players unhappy. An ongoing wave of fandom backlash was caused by the new patch, which significantly altered how Pokemon GO avatars looked.
Niantic dubbed the contentious update “Rediscover Yourself,” positioning it as the first piece of its Rediscover campaign, a series of updates intended to modernize its popular mobile game. Rediscover Yourself rolled out to Pokemon GO player worldwide on April 17.
Some Pokemon GO Fans Think New In-Game Avatars Are ‘Ugly’
The update was immediately criticized by a vocal fandom of the game for going too far in the opposite direction from the game’s established aesthetic. Within the first 24 hours of its release, the patch prompted thousands of players to express their displeasure with the changes on social media.
The new complaints are mostly the same ones that some players already voiced in late March, when they said that the beta version of the same Pokemon GO update turned their characters into “potatoes.”
While a large portion of the ongoing backlash consists of players calling the new avatars “ugly,” some players have made an attempt to give Niantic more constructive feedback.
Some of these comments talked about how the new update managed to eliminate a lot of middle-skinned characters, while others said it was weird that their Pokemon GO avatars’ necks had been cut off so much.
Following the Rediscover Yourself update, a number of players have also found a bug that causes the avatar’s lower body to be inappropriately highlighted on the Gym screen when wearing a skirt and using a small Pokemon to fend off a boss.
Aside from technical issues, some fans have said they’re having trouble designing their avatars in a way that doesn’t make them look too androgynous.
Others said they would have been okay with the new appearance options if they came in addition to the old ones instead of replacing them.
Before the contentious patch went into beta this spring, some players demanded that Niantic change the avatar system because they felt Pokemon GO customization was becoming dated.
Even though the Rediscover Yourself update did add more customization options, it seems like even more fans are now begging the developers to roll back the changes.
Niantic has been promoting the Rediscover campaign as its attempt to modernize the game for the next ten years, so the likelihood of that happening appears to be slim.
