It's safe to say that Pokemon GO players haven't been happy with the removal of the '3-step' feature. This feature was essentially an in-game tracker for Pokemon that let you know how close or how far a Pokemon is.
Oddly enough, the moment that the tracking feature left the game, Pokemon locator sites also went down. Niantic claims that these third-party tracking sites had been "interfering" with their "ability to maintain quality of service for our users" in their latest post on Facebook.
In the same post, Niantic offers up some kind of explanation for the feature's removal, as well as a bit of insight on what is happening in their offices right now.
Here's their reasoning behind removing the '3-step' feature:
"We have removed the ‘3-step’ display in order to improve upon the underlying design. The original feature, although enjoyed by many, was also confusing and did not meet our underlying product goals. We will keep you posted as we strive to improve this feature."
It might feel like Niantic is ignoring fans, it turns out that they haven't been ignoring your pleas:
"We have read your posts and emails and we hear the frustration from folks in places where we haven’t launched yet, and from those of you who miss these features. We want you to know that we have been working crazy hours to keep the game running as we continue to launch globally. If you haven’t heard us Tweeting much it’s because we’ve been heads down working on the game. But we’ll do our best going forward to keep you posted on what’s going on."
Basically, Niantic took the feature away to improve upon the "underlying design," which sounds like they took the feature away so they could shut down the tracking sites and protect the game from sites like that in the future if they ever choose to reimplement the feature.
