> If you were Niantic, and expecting Pokemon Go to be roughly as popular as Ingress, would you bother going to the effort of adding a caching layer when you could not, and expend your efforts on the front end and content, and get the release out sooner?
Because Ingress wasn't reliable either, and this way Pokémon Go has an opinion of being playable mostly when everyone else is asleep. It's only this week that I can actually run it somewhat reliably after work...
Speaking of Ingress portals - there were not much more dynamic than Pokéstops are (given that you can drop "Pokéstop modules" on them, which affect all players). This was my complaint against Ingress too - while portal state should be redownloaded continuously, the visual/information data changes infrequently to never. The name, the photo. The stuff you actually need to have to display portal details. Similarly Pokéstops. That kind of data should absolutely be cached. It cannot be used for cheating, and caching it is like elementary engineering.
Because Ingress wasn't reliable either, and this way Pokémon Go has an opinion of being playable mostly when everyone else is asleep. It's only this week that I can actually run it somewhat reliably after work...
Speaking of Ingress portals - there were not much more dynamic than Pokéstops are (given that you can drop "Pokéstop modules" on them, which affect all players). This was my complaint against Ingress too - while portal state should be redownloaded continuously, the visual/information data changes infrequently to never. The name, the photo. The stuff you actually need to have to display portal details. Similarly Pokéstops. That kind of data should absolutely be cached. It cannot be used for cheating, and caching it is like elementary engineering.