Pokemon Go’s friend system is game’s “biggest problem”

Pokemon Go’s age-old problem has yet again come to its peak – proving that it’s time for some major changes to the friend system.

Pokemon Go has a massive playerbase and a pretty committed community. While that means most events, raids, and even Gyms are fully equipped and enjoyable, it does also promote some rather unfavorable actions within the playerbase – which many fans are quick to slam.

The friendship system was introduced to Pokemon Go as a form of collaboration between trainers. They could trade Pokemon, battle together, and even send each other gifts from afar. In fact, leveling up your friendship granted some decent rewards too, with XP being the main desire.

Unfortunately, you only get XP if you’re still friends with the other players, meaning many exploit the feature to gain tons of XP for themselves while their ‘friend’ gets nothing. As such, it’s become a pretty problematic feature, and many fans have had enough.

Plenty of players take to the Pokemon Go Reddit to share their frustrations and the community is quick to demand Niantic make some major changes.

“So I seriously get no XP” posted one user, with many descending to the comments to share how “it really is one of the biggest problems with the game right now.”

Another echoed their sentiment, slamming the players that do this to others: “The dumbest thing is there is absolutely no reason to be deleting people immediately after. You can have hundreds of friends.”

While many were quick to share their frustration, some revealed ways Niantic could fix the issue, adding: “make it not give exp until both people have claimed it. immediately problem solved.”

While this could likely be a tougher feature to implement in Pokemon Go, it’s hard to deny that it would fix one of the primary frustrations of the playerbase and could stop some fans from manipulating the system.

Who knows, maybe it will be one of the QoL improvements highlighted in the next 10 years of Pokemon Go?