Pokemon GO News and Rumors: Sans Evolution Through Battles, Love For Game Waning Among Testers

Evolution of Pokemon in Niantic's Pokemon GO has fans groused and hoping for a change when the final release of the game comes out.

Beta testing of the game has seen testers explore evolution in great detail. The only way it can be done is by collecting evolution shards. A shard is collected when a Pokemon is captured. Collecting all shards to piece together an evolution crystal facilitates Pokemon evolution. The number of shards varies across stages and Pokemon. Championship and battling does not play a role, which has groused players who argue sans evolution through experience training, an emotional connect between the player and the game is missing.

"When we say 'Pokemon, you're my best friend,' 'To catch them all is my real test, to train them is my cause,' and "you teach me and I'll teach you,' we mean it. We want these little animated creatures to mean something. My pidgey is mine and I want that to matte," wrote a Reddit user on a post in the Sliph Road community forum.

Players are also unhappy with battles being restricted to gyms and that too without accompanying points.

"You can't battle against other players, or even train your captured Pokémon on their wild brethren. The only available battles are against Pokémon placed in Gyms - the equivalent of Ingress's portals - by other players, and they tend to be one-sided and extremely short-lived," wrote another tester.

Through a recent post describing features of the game that have been unveiled, Niantic hinted that the game's release is approaching.

In other Pokemon GO related news, users with Intel-powered devices and Windows Phones are unhappy at being left out. Pokemon GO testing has been restricted to iOS and Android users running phones powered by ARM processors.