Soon, you’ll be swiping instead of tapping in Pokémon GO battles

Pokémon GO players/trainers will have to alter their approaches to battles soon, it seems. Having introduced a proper player-versus-player mode late last year, developers Niantic has announced that there will be an update to the PvP system that focuses more on accurate swiping, as opposed to the traditional method of tapping as quickly as you can.

Battle techniques in the past basically revolved around rapid taps—tap to make your Pokémon attack, charge up a move by tapping, and once you’re charged up, you can tap a button to unleash the charged attack. Then, of course, tap your screen as rapidly as you can to increase the effectiveness of that move. It’s all very repetitive, not that gamers seem to care—as of April 2019, there have been a reported 1 billion downloads of the game worldwide.

The core mechanics of PvP battles should remain the same, but more emphasis is placed on swiping accurately for charge attacks now. Basically, you have to swipe your finger across the trail of icons that fall across your screen. The more accurately you finger-swipe those icons, the more powerful your charge attack will be. This new game mechanic should be coming soon, according to the Tweet above.

Updated appraisal system

In that same Tweet, Niantic also revealed that the appraisal system is undergoing a bit of an overhaul. The appraisal system generally tells players about Pokémon’s Individual Values stats (IVs), which helps players determine a Pokémon’s relative strength, and consequently, its suitability for battle (or the bench).

In the past, players could only retrieve IV stats through Pokemon Go’s appraisal system via text-based cues instead of specific stats. Instead, the new appraisal system will feature a graph with three bars that helps players tell whether their Pokemon is above average or below average.

The appraisal system update (0.149.0) is reportedly being rolled out to Android devices now, but it should be pushed to all platforms soon. Do let us know if you’ve received the update in the comments section below!