With the release of Pokémon GO on July 6, 2016, the free-to-play mobile game has rocketed into popularity, making it the most popular mobile game ever. This mobile game is so popular that it surpassed the Candy Crush Saga in the number of active users. Nintendo co-owns the rights to the Pokémon franchise and holds some stakes in Niantic and The Pokémon Company, which developed and published the game. Although the game is notably awesome, there are several ways that Pokémon GO could be improved.

1. The ability to trade Pokémon.

Trading Pokémon was a key aspect of the original games that we all loved as elementa

ry school children. Pokémon GO does not allow users to trade Pokémon, yet. Some people believe that adding the ability to trade would eliminate the entire purpose of the game: to "catch 'em all." Others argue that there would be security risks if users could trade with anyone. My suggestion would be to allow the trading of all Pokémon except for the rare and the legendary types to maintain the game's exploratory dynamic. One way to make trading safer would be to create an "add friend" element, where users could only trade with people they have accepted as friends.

2. Making the tracking radius larger.

Any Pokémon GO user will tell you that the GPS tracking system in this game is flawed, and in the newest update, the developers tried to improve the tracking system. Before the update, the tracking scan radius was 100 meters, but the new update changed it to 70 meters. This "improvement" makes it even more difficult to find Pokémon nearby.

3. Allowing users to train and battle while not at a gym.

When you currently battle at a Gym in the game, you are tapping yourself into oblivion to compete with a computer. Player to player battles would greatly enhance the game by allowing users to battle their friends or to battle nearby players in restaurants, parks or other public places without having to be at a Gym.

4. Improving the graphics.

Although the graphics aren't bad for a free-to-play mobile game, the gaming experience could be improved with better graphics. Users who have their camera enabled see their three-dimensional surroundings with a two-dimensional Pokémon floating on their desk or in the sky. Making Pokémon characters more realistic-looking would make the game more life-like and would make the gaming experience even more interactive.

5. Requiring more skills to play.

In the original game, you had to have some degree of skill to battle Pokémon that you wanted to capture. As the game is now, all you have to do is fling a Poké Ball at the character and feed it Razz Berries until you can successfully capture it. Requiring users to battle Pokémon in order to catch them would give users a higher sense of accomplishment and allow them bragging rights over their friends.

6. Fixing the egg-hatching distance mechanism.

There are few things more frustrating than going for a jog to help hatch your 10 km egg faster, only to find that the game only registered about 1.3 km of your distance. As the game is now, you have to walk, cheat by putting your phone on a turntable or ceiling fan or drive really slow around a parking lot in order to hatch eggs. By improving how the game registers the number of kilometers "walked," users would be more excited about getting an egg from a Poké Stop.

It will be interesting to see if the developers pay attention to their users' requests in future updates, but for now, the game is great but could be better. I think that most users would be willing to pay $.99 for a better quality game, but as a free-to-play mobile game, this may be as good as it gets.