Pokemon GO Players Aren't Happy About the Avatar Update

gamerant.com:

Some Pokemon GO fans are currently taking to social media to criticize a recent update that significantly altered avatar appearances. While the changes do not appear to be available globally as of late March, many Pokemon GO players that took the time to reflect on them appear to agree that they switched things up for the worse.

All but the most minor of Pokemon GO updates tend to go through several limited tests until they are rolled out to all users. Niantic has historically favored restricting its pool of testers geographically. The game itself doesn't have an actual beta tester program, meaning players can find themselves receiving features that are not yet available to everyone.

While those changes are often received positively, that hasn't been the case with the Pokemon GO avatar system revamp that the developer started testing in the second half of March. On the contrary, a lot of the social media chatter surrounding the experimental update has been negative, with some fans flat-out asserting that their new avatars have been made uglier. The specifics of such complaints appear to vary quite a bit; some players have posited that the desaturated skin tones make their avatars «look like potatoes,» while others have taken aim at their new poses, which appear to be much stiffer.

Based on recent social media reports, it would appear that the changes are currently only being tested in the United Kingdom and parts of the U.S. Some British users have also claimed that Niantic actually rolled back the avatar update around March 25, only for the changes to come back the following day. This is fairly standard practice for the developer, as the company will often revert updates during testing in order to apply fixes and redeploy them. It is hence not a firm indication that Niantic is considering reverting the patch, although that is always a possibility with experimental updates.

While the player reactions to the update appear to skew negative, some fans have still pointed