Pokemon Go Hopes to Add PvP by End of 2018

A senior Niantic employee revealed that Pokemon Go is working to have player vs. player battling implemented by the end of this year.

Niantic recently held a major Ingress live event in Warsaw, Poland, in which European Head of Marketing Anne Beuttenmuller discussed upcoming plans for Pokemon Go. When asked about what was coming in the popular game, Beuttenmuller revealed that developers were actively working on having a PvP battle system available soon.

"Now we are working on PvP mode," Beuttenmuller said to a Polish game site. "Which will soon appear." After discussing current tweaks to the game's new friendship feature, Beuttenmuller added that Niantic wanted to add the PvP mode to Pokemon Go by the end of this year.

Now that trading is available in Pokemon Go, PvP battling is probably the most requested feature still missing from the game. Although players have had an indirect way of battling each other via gyms, players have always wanted the ability to challenge both friends and strangers to a spontaneous Pokemon battle.

The PvP battle system will likely tie into Pokemon Go's friendship feature and could operate similar to trading. Players have to be within close physical proximity to each other in order to trade, and it's likely that a PvP system will have the same requirements.

Of course, this isn't the first time that a Niantic official has promised the eventual addition of the PvP feature, so fans might be a little jaded to hear about the feature months before its eventual addition to the game. Still, it seems like Pokemon Go is making real progress towards giving players one of the last major missing features from the Pokemon experience.

So, what do you think, Pokemon Go fans? Are you hyped for the addition of PvP, or do you refuse to get your hopes up until you're actually battling against your friends? Let us know in the comment section or let me know on Twitter at @CHofferCbus!