I'm really hoping it's an actually QoL update and not a bug. Went from 3 spawns at home to 10. Anyone else have large increase in spawns they can interact with from home?
I have. At first I thought it was just GPS drift, but several spots across the street that used to be too far have shown up both times I opened the game today.
I've noticed that if you quick catch, all the Pokémon stay on the map (even if you walk out of range), so when they fix that I really hope they don't "fix" the spawn range as we now finally have parity with stop range.
If it's a bug, I don't know why it would be so bad to keep it as I'm pretty sure the spawns are already loaded in, but are just normally hidden (evidenced by catch devices catching Pokémon that haven't loaded yet, as well as modified PoGo clients forcing to show the spawns).
I'm feeling more and more that it's a bug. It's too out of the norm for Niantic to give players useful QoL without announcing them. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts and then lament it when it's taken away.
This is why I stopped playing. They rarely make changes for QOL reasons, only data collection or engagement optimizations. I really hope it gets better because I’d love to come back, it just started to feel more like a part time job and less like a game for me.
Hah I started playing yesterday for the first time in 2 years (whoops just checked 4 years). And I was surprised that I could reach 2 stops from my living room.