Hi everyone, I just wanted to say I’m really pissed off with this new update.
I believe the idea behind the new system is good, but with spoofers still active it’s almost impossible for legit players to keep playing anymore.
Spoofers have always been the biggest problem of this game, and with this update it seems everything is better for them and worse for legit and urban players.
These are the reasons I can find:
Gyms are way harder to conquer. Before, you could throw away lvl 2-3 gyms in 2-3 battles, now you need to battle at least double or triple times.
Gyms are easier to defend. Feeding berries is way easier than battling against the other pokémons to increase prestige, that means it’s easier for spoofers to feed their pokémons on their gyms (and the other pokémons on the same gyms) so the gyms are always at full strength. + Spoofers can easily spin tons of pokéstop giving them infinite berries.
Spoofers still have stronger pokémon. Nothing has happened to the old pokémons they had before the update, so they can still use them in gyms even if they were capture by cheating.
“Walking” to the gyms is neccesary to keep them active. Again, walking from home or from anywhere by cheating lets them keep their gyms a lot easier than for the rest of players.
Catching spoofers in real time is harder. Before you could see when a spoofer was defending a gym to increase its prestige before leaving a pokémon there, now all you can do is catch exactly when a spoofer has left its pokémon on the gym. You can’t even know who has feeded the pokémons. This makes reports less believable.
Spoofers aren’t punished. They still have access to any gym and reporting them doesn’t seems to ban/stop them anyhow.
Rural gyms have even more value for spoofers now. Rural gyms are less likely to be attacked so your pokémon can stay for a longer time there, making spoofers go even more to rural areas and screw even more rural players. Rural players don’t have access to so many pokéstops and pokémons so they’re weaker and their gyms are being taken over and over so they can’t gain coins. At least before they could conquer a gym and gain 10 coins before spoofers took the gym back.
And yet, most of the spoofers, who are over lvl 35, have access to the new raids, and those legit players who haven’t cheated at all since the releasing of the game and they’re lvl 25 - 34 can’t.
I’ve been playing sice the release, I’m lvl 32. live in a small rural area with only 1 gym. I’ve captured it more than 60 times since the beginning of 2017 and not a single time I’ve been able to keep it for 24h because of spoofers from the closest city taking it back. Same spoofers that keep taking it easier with this update. I’ve reported tons of time but nothing happened.
If Niantic doesn’t do anything to ban spoofers or prevent them from taking spoofing or taking gyms, I’m sorry but I’m leaving the game.
I think with this new update we will meet a lot of our fellow players in real life. I also think with the new rules, it will be easier for Niantic to catch the spoofers. Let’s see how it goes for a few weeks before we pass judgement. It hasn’t even been 24 hours yet.
Completely agree with you Chironex. The new system favours spoofers and means it’s no longer worth while locals investing time in the gyms. Complete failure from Niantic.
Okay, so here’s my take on it based on my first day really interacting with the gym system, raids, etc.
Yes, spoofers have not been eliminated and they still have the distinct advantage that comes with not having to walk everywhere. But the important change that the gym system has brought, that in my eyes makes spoofing much less of an issue for the regular player is this: With how the coin rewards work by now you want your Pokemon in and out of gyms within a few hours (max daily coin rewards can be reached at somewhere between 8 or 9 hours defending with a single defender ). I’m currently actually a bit annoyed with a gym I placed my Vaporeon in yesterday still being up, because a) I’m not seeing my coin rewards yet, and b) when it comes back I’ll get a maximum of 50 coins from it, even if it stays there for another few days. There’s simply no more big reward for the things that spoofers can do much more easily than regular players (keeping gyms up for long amounts of time, placing in a lot of gyms all over the place, etc.)
The whole system feels so much more active and interactive to me now. I can easily solo even full gyms with defenders that start around 3000CP (and with only one of each Pokemon being allowed in a gym there’s usually one or two of those high CP mons and the rest at around 2500 or even under 2000). It takes time to take them down, yeah, but at least it works at all. And not just for high level players, but also for casuals like me, giving spoofers potentially a ton more competition. Plus, if my 'mon gets kicked out I can just go out, retake the gym, place it back in and keep collecting coins.
So while the system isn’t perfect by far, I think what really helped to level the playing field is that they are rebalancing how coin rewards work. If max daily coin rewards are possible for any player who can invest an hour or two of playing a day, spoofers may not be eliminated, but they just won’t bother me nearly as much anymore, because they don’t really hinder my own interaction with the gym system anymore.
I’m seeing way less spoofers, so I compleel disagree with that post.
Maybe they don’t bother so much now as they can’t sit tight in their level 10 ivory towers at the top of the pile for weeks on end… now they have to feed berries, now they can’t rake in coins every day, they need to wait, now they worry more about the anti spoofing tracking Niantic has in place.
As an aside, I’m also seeing way more lower tier players e.g. 20-30 in gyms now.
It might not be ideal but I far prefer this gym version than the last one, i’ve seen more players, more coins, more fun. Old system was less fun for less coins and benefitted spoofers far more than this version IMO.