Central to the discussion in Futurism is a question: How should Niantic go about flipping Pokemon Go on its head for the betterment of the game? I’ve seen some great ideas on how to do this from the GoHub community thus far, here’s what I thunk up. Let me know what you think!
Picture this, it’s a Thursday, a new nest migration is coming, and Niantic just tweeted “As of today, 6/15/17, trainer’s and their Pokemon defending gyms have been recorded and are now apart of a new gym meta. Visit your local gyms to find out more”!
So you go to your local gym and your Dragonite is still in the gym but you notice a button you haven’t seen before. You click it and it prompts you to add 5 Pokemon of the same type as your Dragonite (dragon/ flying type). You then add your best 5 flying or dragon type Pokemon and collect some coins. On the other hand, a rival trainer who took down the gym your Dragonite was defending would not have the option to place 5 Pokemon of his that are normal types like the Snorlax he just placed in it to defend because his Snorlax was not defending the gym when Niantic recorded it.
For example, lets say the trainer who had the Dragonite in the gym was on team Instinct and the rival trainer that took the gym down was on team Valor. Once the gym was taken by Valor and the Snorlax placed in it the Valor trainer would still have an option to battle all of the other 9 Instinct trainers best 6 pokemon (the 1 Pokemon that was defending the gym when it was recorded and the 5 new ones of the same type) even though his team was now in control of the gym. This would naturally diversify the types of Pokemon in gyms and would be the perfect way for Niantic to implement gym badges into Pokemon GO. To earn a gym badge a trainer would have to beat all 10 trainers best 6 Pokemon and then be awarded a badge for that specific gym location. Earn all the gym badges in your town and that would make you eligible to be one of the lucky trainers chosen from your town to have their best 6 Pokemon of one type implemented into a Pokemon Go regional edition.
This Pokemon Go regional addition is where the cap date comes in. For instance, after the implementation of a badge system Niantic would give it say a year before they set a cap date. This cap date would be the date in which they evaluated all the trainers. If you have all the badges from gyms in your town then that would increase your odds of Niantic asking you to submit your top 6 pokemon of one type to be featured in gyms around your town that are reflective of the biome you live in.
My thoughts are that Niantic could best implement the gym recordings in concert with the nest migrations that happen every two weeks. This would create a battling season in Pokemon Go that runs for two weeks. Furthermore, making the gym recordings happen in concert with the nest migrations is also realistic as it would allow Niantic to keep their servers fresh.