Pokemon GO just released its new leveling update, which raised the level cap from 50 to 80 and gave players who were under that new threshold a boost. Part of that boost was a smoothing of the leveling process to ensure that players find the ramps between levels a little easier to climb. And a byproduct of that smoothing was that players who were under level 50 instantly saw their level jump up dramatically. For example, I was level 35 in Pokemon GO before the update, and post-update, I jumped up to level 43.
You would think that this would be a good thing across the board – a better leveling process and a boost to current players. And, truthfully, there are so many positives about the Pokemon GO leveling update, from the increases to storage to the daily adventure egg, but this initial rollout of the update highlighted a major problem the game still has to this day.
In Pokemon GO, More Items Can Mean More Problems
Any time that a player levels up in Pokemon GO, they earn a number of rewards, from cosmetics to Pokeballs, to berries to restorative items. It’s a bounty that, depending on your storage space, can be overwhelming or rejuvenating.
If you are teetering on the edge of full item storage space, the items are usually swiftly deleted or less valuable ones are sacrificed in their place. If you are hurting for Master Balls or Max Revives, the level up rewards are a welcome boost to your inventory. Now imagine gaining two levels at once. Now imagine three. Now imagine, in mine and many other players’ cases, gaining 8 levels at once!
Why Can't I Spin Pokestops With Full Item Storage?
At first glance, gaining all of these items should be a huge boon, regardless of if you are a hardcore or casual Pokemon GO player. But the problem is that the game limits one of its most important features when your storage is full. You can’t spin Pokestops with full item storage, and spinning Pokestops is important for several reasons:
- You can’t earn special research without spinning Pokestops
- You can’t earn your daily bonus without spinning Pokestops
- You can’t earn gifts without spinning Pokestops
- You can’t earn progress on tasks that require spinning Pokestops
Shortly after the leveling update went live, social media, forums, and subreddits were swarmed with Pokemon GO players showing their storage woes. For me, the storage overage was in the 200 range, but for other players it was in the thousands.
I can only imagine having to go through and delete hundreds of items in various categories, just to make space for the same types of items you get from Pokestops. That’s the real issue: you usually aren’t deleting items to make way for better items, you are just deleting items to open up space to get similar or lesser items (e.g., deleting Master Balls to then get Pokeballs from Pokestops).
Now, this has been an issue for quite some time, but usually it’s more of an inconvenience than it is a roadblock. You spin a Pokestop and see that your item storage is full, delete a few items, and then spin again. But when you need to delete thousands of items, that’s less of an easy fix and is extremely frustrating.
If players could simply spin Pokestops even when their item storage is full, then this wouldn’t be an issue. In fact, there is already a precedent for this type of feature in the game. If you toggle on a setting, you can still open gifts even when your item storage is full in order to level up your bond with a friend and earn Stardust. Niantic even at one point had the option to spin Pokestops with full item storage, but apparently it was too buggy and they removed the feature.
In the grand scheme of player requests, this might be low on the totem pole, but I do think it’s an issue worth addressing in the future. The loop of catching Pokemon and spinning Pokestops is at the core of Pokemon GO, and this limitation fights against it. Storage is always going to be something that Pokemon players have to deal with, and the solution of using Pokecoins to buy more storage plays into Niantic’s bottom line, which makes sense for a free-to-play game.
The October season pass offers Pokecoins on its free and premium tracks, so you should be able to buy some storage upgrades this month.
By and large, the Pokemon GO leveling update is a good thing, even if this one detail led to a lot of frustration among the more dedicated players. More levels to chase, rewards to unlock, and the new features are all welcome additions to a game that is still going strong nearly 10 years later. But please, Niantic, make it so Pokemon GO players can spin Pokestops with full item storage.
Pokemon GO is available now for iOS and Android.
