[agar]

Yes, the lack of a functional Nearby feature - either integrated or with a third party app - really affects motivation while playing.

I was out walking today and saw an unknown Pokemon silhouette in my Nearby list. All I could do was shrug and hope I'd run into it (I didn't). Previously I would have gone significantly out of my way to find it, adding mileage to my walk - which I understood to be one of the design objectives of the game.

[xorcist]

Not only must the three steps have been buggy, the whole "nearby" list is useless and/or wrong. Two friends walking together, with the same exact GPS position on the maps, can have vastly different nearby-lists, sometimes without even one entry in common. How is that even possible?

[aleksei]

It could be that, since the nearby listing holds only 9 entries, that there are more Pokemon nearby and the query to display them is unordered.