If you’re stuck in one place, but want to play Pokémon GO, the best way to make due is with incense. The consumable item lures various local Pokémon right to you. But a recent change to how incense works has people pretty unhappy.

A recent update to the popular mobile game has reduced the frequency in which incense invokes a new Pokémon spawning. Back during the start of the pandemic, Niantic changed incense to no longer require movement to work. They also tweaked it so that one Pokémon would spawn nearby every minute for a full hour. 

Now, a single incense will last longer, 90 minutes to be precise. But in turn, a Pokémon will only spawn once every 5 minutes while not moving. If the player is moving at a brisk pace, the rate is increased, like how it was in the pre-pandemic system.

When mathed out by the various folks on Reddit, this comes out to a disheartening 18 Pokémon per incense, instead of the previous 60. Others claim that walking at speeds of at least 6km/h makes the change more worthwhile. 

In our opinion, incense is best used when you’re not currently able to move around for 60+ minutes. Otherwise, you could just find naturally generated Pokémon. Returning to this old system seems counter-intuitive to their purpose.

Niantic has shown in the past that they are willing to revert to a more popular system should the community express themselves clearly. We can’t help but wonder if this will happen here, too.