I wouldn't say that the vocal minority of reddit is representative of the player base in large but I see your point.

And yes, I've noticed the same thing. However, I don't think anyone thought it would continue like the crazy early days forever, where every other person you saw played. Just because that extreme hype died down doesn't mean no-one is playing.

I don't agree that it's due to the actions of Niantic though. I think it's just a natural fade of the hype. It would be completely insane if the player percentage had continued at that level until now. Even if they did all the right things I think the fade would have been inevitable.

I'm pretty sure they've been going after the mapping people both because those guys add a ridiculous load to the map servers, and because eventually people are going to start asking serious questions about why all of two cities have varying spawn areas for Pokemon, and the rest of the world put together has about as much detail as those two cities.

If you're not in San Francisco or New York, sadly, your most efficient method of "catching them all" is to simply sit and camp lures, because what doesn't spawn from that isn't going to spawn anywhere nearby so there's little point in searching. Flogging an RNG endlessly is _not fun_, and that's apparently a heavy player in what's driving players away from the game.