The Buddy System for Pokemon GO is probably one of the best features to pop out of the augmented reality app. It gives Pokemon Trainers the ability to choose a partner for walking, earning candies per distance travelled together. But there's one teeny rant I have for this. Having a Buddy in Pokemon GO, you should be able to see both your avatar and the creature walking together on the map, right? Then why aren't we seeing it now?
A friend of mine, let's hide him with an alias of Doms, was one of the fortunate people to have the first updates for the Buddy System. As explained on my previous article, every update needs to be gradually introduced to users to sort of regulate the traffic demands due to the number of Pokemon Go users. Anyway, I was also excited about the update so I rushed to see what it was all about and grabbed Doms' phone. I observed an awesome presentation of the player's avatar alongside a buddy Pokemon. It was indeed a big patch as the sprites for the chosen Buddy are animated, not just a steady image.
Now, Doms wasn't all that hyped, so I asked him why. He exclaimed, 'why the heck aren't I seeing my avatar walking together with my Growlithe on the map?' I then calmed him down saying something like, at least we can see them both on the avatar page and we can swipe left or right to view it in 3D, but my handsome friend wasn't satisfied. Time came when I got the Buddy Pokemon update in Pokemon Go, and right there, I realized what my friend complained about has some point.
Although you can see your avatar and your Buddy Pokemon on the bottom-left side of the map in Pokemon Go, it still lacks the aura of 'walking together' with your chosen creature, I mean why would Niantic call it 'walking together' with your Buddy Pokemon if they aren't shown walking on the map? There's just something missing. So I started to think, why Niantic skipped the feature (that makes sense the most) which would show the player and the chosen Buddy Pokemon actually walking together on the map. As I searched online for answers, I bumped into one article from OtakuKart.com posting about a similar concern.
If you'd read that article, there are many technical reasons why walking with your Buddy Pokemon on the map is not implemented. For one, I have experienced mobile development myself and loading animation sprites (graphic assets in a game) is a pain in the butt. This is probably one of the reasons why the board guys at Niantic decided to just drop the feature, for now.
So to sum it up, the reason why you do not see your avatar walking together with your Buddy Pokemon is purely technical. Niantic does not want to take the fun out from the game but if you weigh both sides, technicalities would win, they just couldn't sacrifice feature over performance, millions of users would get mad if their Pokemon Go app crashes because of a forced feature. Also, a part of me says, that maybe they are still working on its optimization, so it's possible that walking with your Pokemon on the map will be possible on the next builds, that would be a nice surprise for everyone. Here's a tutorial on choosing the best Pokemon Buddy.
