So, I was thinking of how this current gym system could be improved for everyone, both casual and hardcore players alike, and I’ve come up with an idea for how the gyms could be changed in the future.
So firstly, gyms would keep the motivation system to prevent stagnation(although at a much lower decay rate than now), and still feature six permanent slots when a team claims it. Like it is now, you can only put in one of each species per gym. Gym placement would be completely random, to be fair. AFTER a team has held a gym for 24 hours straight, without any turnover, a new permanent spot will open up, allowing another player to add to the gym, with a limit of 10 max spots per gym.(this would encourage some competitiveness)
Players would get 1 coin every half-hour they spend in a gym, and coins would be collected on a real-time basis.(you would see a coin pop up on your screen every half hour). Each gym will have a max of 25 coins per day that you can collect from it, but you could get a max 100 coins per day with 4 gyms.(encourages holding down an area for your team)
Now here’s the cool part: if you have a gold gym badge in a gym, and someone is fighting your gym, you will get a push notification, and if you respond in time, you can use ONE of your pokemon to help the gym defender fight off the attacker(s), PVP style, from anywhere you are! (Remote feeding will also scale in effectiveness based on your gym badge. )
Your system still favors competitive players over casual players (which was the problem with the old gyms) who dont have the pokemon or resources to compete and obtain the max amount of coins. A casual/middle-of-the-pack player doesnt have 4 pokemon that are strong enough to hold gyms for a while, and still have enough good pokemon to battle other gyms if they want. What people would start doing is throwing in more weak pokemon than they do now, and it would cause gym turnovers to accelerate and people would get even less coins.
True, but it’s still easy for a casual player to just throw something in some gyms and get coins fast. The competitive players do most of the heavy lifting, by defending the local gyms, but casual players still benefit from their work. Even if the casual player doesn’t have a strong defender, players with a gold badge in that gym with them can still defend the causal player’s pokemon with their own. This encourages teamplay, and encourages the stronger players to help the weaker ones, while still providing a challenge for the hardcore players.
This system would also greatly help players who live in rural areas, or areas without high turnover rates, as 10 players would be able to collect steady 100 coins without having to have someone fight down their gym.
And in addition, the competitive players are much more likely to put money into the game, so a system that slightly favors them will ultimately make the game more fun, and make Niantic more money. It’s not like casual players put hundreds of dollars into the game, and there’s no ads, so they essentially make no money off of casual players. I’m not saying that casual players are worthless or shouldn’t play or anything, I’m just saying the hardcore players put the most money into the game, so they should be rewarded with a fun system that is not blatantly made for level 20s and under.
My big three tips for the gym rework are relatively simple.
The first is getting more coins per day than just 50. I have had 2 Pokémon who both held down their spots for 4 days come back to me and only get 50 coins. At the very least the max (per day) should be 100 coins.
The second is to do with raids. I live in a rural area, so I have to travel far to complete the new raids and get anything (excluding tier 1 and some tier 2). The raid boss CP should go up/down depending on how many people are there for it. For example, a Moltres is 41953 CP at the moment but could be 9500 CP if only one person showed up. You still get the whole raid experience, and you can do it by yourself (not everyone has other players in their area).
The third one is about botters and others who use 3rd party apps. Gym hoarding isn’t big thing anymore, but you can still do it. I have seen apps that will continually feed Pokémon berries so no one can take it down. There should be a feeding limit, like there is a catching limit.
Yeah, those are some great suggestions! They should do SOMETHING about raids in rural areas, whether they give you some A.I. Trainers to help(which would be bad because they would just use all Blisseys like the game recommends XD), give extra time, or lower the raid boss CP for solos. As for the coins, yes, I don’t know why we used to get 100 per day, and now only 50(besides corporate greed), but I doubt that will ever change at this point. As for the berries, I think there are hourly limits, but not daily feeding limits. They should add software to track the amount of berries being fed within certain time periods and try to determine if it’s an unrealistic amount.
Oh my, that’s sad…The lone pidgey right there sums it up LOL! Are you even able to get coins from that gym?
I would say you’ve done quite well for an area like that, though. Almost level 34 is high for even my area, and my area is not really rural.
There’s my Poliwrath in that gym and he’s been there for roughly 20 days. I doubt he will ever return at this point.
How I level up is candy hoard and then go on mad lucky egg sprees. There was an one day (in April I think) where I got 1.3m XP from Pidgey, Magikarp, Weedle, etc:
Finally, I caught that pidgey and it’s a DECENT spawn😣
Even I as a Casual Player agree that Niantic should stop catering to my group. Let me explain. When I was in School I spent my time either at School or doing Homework. So, the only time I had playing Video Games was Friday and Saturday Knight. However, the Games that I played were Totally Awesome and Worth my time. POGO is not Totally Awesome and is Missing many Core Aspects of the Handheld and or the Cartoon. So until Niantic adds these Core Aspects the limited time Casual Players Play are going to be Boring and not Totally Awesome.
Exactly! This game could be so much more if some core features from the main series games were added (trading, PVP, tournaments, etc.). Now I understand that it is partially the fault of spoofers and cheaters that we are so slow to get features, because Niantic has to spend time creating software to combat cheaters instead of working on new features. But I think a system more designed for hardcore players will be WAY more fun, and it may even encourage more casual players to keep coming back instead of getting bored of the game.