The more I play the new Buddy System, the more I like it. I like the idea of feeding (good way to use up some berries) my buddy to make it active. The hearts system is fun. I like gaining them and look forward to getting as many as I can per day. However, there are still improvements that can be made.
First thing that is very frustrating is the “Visit a New Place”. Maybe it’s inertia at work, but I have found a couple of places I like playing since it has a lot of stops and is easy to walk. It also has a lot of Pokemon to be caught, which is the best part of the game. There are not too many places that I know of in my area that has this much that is close to me. I can imagine other rural players are in a similar situation. Only in the more urban areas would there be a lot more places to go and play outside. At first, it was easy since even place I played might have counted. Now I cannot really find too many new places and it seems very random to get that heart. Sometimes when I go somewhere I have not been in a while, it counts. Sometimes not. Why? Make it something like a new place in 96 hours or something like that. This way you don’t get credit for the same place every day, but at least there is a chance on weekends (or days off from work/school) that a player can get this extra heart. After all, that is the only way to get into the bonus where a Buddy can get double hearts bonus.
Speaking on the hearts, why is it a secret how far along we are to Best Buddy? We know how far along we are to Best Friends with other players. Instead of play together for x days with a friend, it’s create x number of bonds (or however the game wants to call it the small hearts). I work two or more buddies at a time. I do this since once I max out the feeding hearts, I usually am done for the day with that buddy, unless I still need to walk a certain distance. I then change to the other buddy to get that one closer to Best Buddy for the CP Boost. I also pick the buddies that I know I want to max out. I usually have multiple buddies with 2 or more hearts (Great Buddy) to get the Catch Assist that I am working on. I would like to know how far along I am towards that… especially as I get closer to Best Buddy. It is very difficult after a while to tell since the fill of that last heart gets to be such a thin sliver. At least with friends, that sliver is translated into a number of days to play together for us.
Also, please move the gifts from the Buddy away from the camera button. It’s a pain trying to click on the gift to open it.
UPDATE: March 4, 2020: Even though I forgot to mention this, I was hoping for Best Buddy Medals like we have for Best Friends and I saw this afternoon that we have such. Hooray!
Moose's Pokemon Go Blog 