I hate shaving
In my area this is a huge problem. No team spirit at all. Four days ago I found a nice gym so I put my Tyranitar (3162) just on top of a Blissey. Position 6 and 7 if I remember correctly. Then it started. Yesterday the Blissey was shaved and now my Tyranitar passed out. So now it's full of 3200+ Dnites. Can you imagine destroying a gym just to get 10 coins before it's tore down.
Answers
Although this definitely happens, I'd be cautious of claiming ppl shave without evidence. Many times other teams kill a few Pokémon in a gym and then leave, leaving it open for someone on r team to take later. I've definitely benefitted from this a handful of times (but also have been hurt). Shaving is despicable but it may not always happen when you think it does.
This is true when you see a gym go from say 50k to 42k or 38k , etc...
but when it's 52k -> 50k -> 49k -> 52k, I think the odds that it's shaving is pretty and very high...
Most real attackers don't just attack 1 mon and leave. They attack if they are standing in line and take out whatever is there, etc...for exp, time passing, etc...
I think gym shaving is so common now due to rival teams having no incentive to really attack other rival towers at all...I know I don't bother neither so until the gym rework, I think we'll see this more and more.
I have a lot of gym defenders now, but no where to put them since they are all level 10 gyms...They all feel like they are burning a hole in my Pokemon bag...
Hope gym rework allows us to put mons in gyms, but maybe keep the tear down time the same or something...
Also, with everyone leveling, there is no where near the spots available.
Huge problem, many suggestions how to solve it published here, no change since month - nothing you can do about it in a legal way.
I am glad to live in a small town, this problem exists here too, but with a 2800CP-Defender, i get a high spot and normally keep this spot until gym goes down completely.
I think that when a person uses a product in a way that it was not intended it is not the person's fault, it is that the product is not well designed/created.
Gym shaving has so many easy solutions, like remove gym placing by cp and making gym go down 10k prrestige in order to remove the first mon, instead from 50k to 49k, make them go down to 40k so people has to prestige back those 10k, gym shaving will be dead in a matter of seconds, or at least 99.99% of it.
Indeed, i have always told, this is very badly designed game.
I havent done gym shaving yet, but i will and im alrdy waiting that nightmare to happen when i need to prestige gym back up by 10k and then only get my spot sniped by my own team member.
This sniper can also use low cp pokemon as slowbro and then wait shaver do his thing again and then again snipe his spot.
This mean shaver must drop out 2 pokemons and then prestige up 20k, so this player can only snipe one spot and then hope there isnt anyone else to snipe second empty spot.
I play in an area where this is common but it does not affect me that much. I may get shaved out eventually but by the time they shave out one of my 3200 CP defenders ive sat and collected 10 coins daily from that gym for months. I play in an area where in ally level 10 gyms the lowest defender is at least 3000 CP.
It once was a game about defending against rivals taking over the gym but now its a game of candy and stardust against allies. In order to stay in the gym one must force low level allies to use their stardust to power up high max CP pokemon like dragonite or rhydon to stay in the gym.
Stardust is the true resource of this game.
The problem is as the game goes along, the only "viable" defenders will be Tyranitar and Dragonite...I already see this in some gyms where min CP is now 3000+.
Even Snorlax and Rhydon will get shaved off simply due to their lower max CP since the gap is so large between Dragonite and Snorlax.
In places like SF, I think people have 10+ or more Dragonites maxed out so it'd be a horrid place to play.
Maybe with the candy thing mined, you have to feed it a Dratini (or Rhyhorn/Snorlax) candy everyday to stay in the gym (it's hungry!) so people now have to decide if they want to be in the gym that badly...This will make Vaporeon gyms the dominant defender I guess.
This will also help with stagnation as people now have to weight Pokecoins / Stardust vs. rare candy for Pokemon...
I actually have plenty of Stardust, just not enough high CP viable defenders (800k+ prior to leveling)...
Candies are also limited for me after I hatched a good Dratini (and it wasn't double candy time to max it...)
I echo your sentiment. Sometimes I wonder if the makers of the gym system knew when they designed it what it would eventually turn into. Rampant shaving and bubblestrating really keep me from playing the gym seen too much. My hope is that they're letting it slide because they know the gym rework will make it obsolete.
I can see 3 gyms from my house. Half the time it is immediate shaving from a couple of regulars. The other thing that happens is someone comes to knock out 1 mon. The attcker will come back the next day to see if amyone has replaced the spot. If the spot is still open I guess he figures no one is watching and it is less likely someone will come back and retake the gym.
