These are the new features coming to Pokémon GO

"Yeah it's good, but wouldn't it be great if you could [insert awesome feature idea here]", is a line that John Hanke - CEO of Niantic, creators of Pokémon GO - is probably getting pretty sick of hearing. 

Taking to the stage of Comic-Con this weekend, in front of a crowd of over 6,000 (some of whom had waited all day for the panel after rumours that Niantic was to release a legendary Pokémon in the room) Hanke was finally able to reveal some of the features that he and his team are looking forward to implementing.

Just as soon as they've sorted out the servers and fixed all the bugs crawling around the current game, that is.

Here's what's coming to Pokémon GO in the near future.

Team leaders

The biggest reveal of the panel was of the illusive leaders of each of the game's teams: Candela leads team Valor, Blanche leads team Mystic and Spark leads team Instinct.

Hanke confirmed that there would be a link between each team and the legendary bird that represents their team colours, but would give exact details on what that relationship will be. 

Easter eggs

Not a feature coming to the game as such, but Hanke teased that there were a wealth of Easter Eggs hidden in the game that players were still yet to discover.

If you need us, we’ll be spending the rest of the day stroking our Meowth in the hope it starts giving us a heap of Pokécoins…

They want to implement trading

It's the idea that just about every Pokémon GO player has had - particularly on hearing that some Pokémon might be unique to some continents - but Niantic wants to introduce trading between players at some point.

We fear for all the younger brothers out there who are going to get forced to trade off their best Pokémon to older siblings or face endless Chinese Burns and wedgies. Stay strong kids...

Pokécenters are coming

Need to store some Pokémon you’ll be wanting to level up at a later date? Want to put some Eggs in incubation? Got some healing to do?

We don’t know what functions Pokécenters will serve in GO, but Hanke confirmed they're coming to the app - we'd guess as a potential sponsored location.

Gyms are going to get more features

Again, Hanke was vague on this point, though he made out that Gyms were going to get more features. We’d put our vast Pokémon collection on this involving Gym badges, mirroring the original games, with the eventual introduction of a Pokémon League that requires badges to be collected in order for entry to be gained.

Hanke also mentioned that the app will introduce a feature that will stop players from poaching newly defeated gyms: at present, if you finally land the victory blow on a gym, you may discover that a passing player has dropped her/his Pokémon in the newly vacated gym, leaving you with no reward for all your hard work.

The Eevee evolve trick really works

Hanke confirmed that if you name Eevee “properly”, you can influence the resulting evolution.

While Hanke didn’t comment on what the naming process was, but players have found that the following names prove effective:

• Sparky will evolve into Jolteon
• Rainer will evolve into Vaporeon
• Pyro will evolve into Flareon

They want to introduce breeding

Been hoping to grow your own massive, chubby Beedrill? The Niantic team is keen on the idea of introducing breeding at some point in the near future, which might finally give all those unused Pokémon you've collected a useful purpose.