'Pokémon Go' Scan Time Increased: What That Means For Trainers

Pokémon Go has been much harder to play since it’s recent update. Pokémon have a much higher flee rate, there’s no step counter at all and Niantic said it is not okay with third-party app sites. Niantic has also been tinkering with some stuff under the hood to make sure nobody can use sites that they deem as “cheating” in their game.

On Tuesday night, players started to notice that the refresh rate for appearing Pokémon was raised to 10 seconds from five seconds. That means whenever you use the app and move to a new spot, it takes 10 seconds for it to search for any Pokémon. When the game first launched, it refreshed every one second, but that was quickly raised to five. It’s much harder to catch Pokémon while moving now, the game won’t refresh quick enough to find anything.

Keep in mind if you're still playing Pokémon Go in a car or on a bicycle (which is dangerous but doable) that you will find less Pokémon on your adventures. Try moving slower if your Pokémon spawn rate drops significantly, just lowering your speed by about five MPH can increase the area in which you encounter some Pocket Monsters.

The PokémonGoDev Subreddit is filled with theories as to why they implemented this change. Some say it’s to stop third-party apps from functioning while others think it has to do with lowering the load on the game’s servers . By increasing the amount of times your game pings the servers to get information, Niantic has essentially doubled its processing power.

If you're still struggling to find anything, there are still a few good Pokémon Go trackers up and running. Right now, FastPokeMap and Pokefind are the best Pokémon trackers currently out there, but who knows how long it will take before Niantic shuts them down as well.

This change won’t stop third-party apps, developers can easily find a work around. Instead, it inconveniences players and makes Pokémon Go more difficult to play.