New Gym System??? Why bother leveling Defenders
Since Gyms became so easy to take down, and so hard to power up.
Why bother with Defense Lists and powering up defenders.
I'm noting pidgeottos and ratticates and tauros and whatever just thrown in to hold a gym for a few minutes while people make the next gym
If there is no desire to level and work on your pokemon, doesn't that dramatically reduce the desire to play?
Answers
Where I live, the gyms across the center of town in busy areas are all level 3 with 3 pokemon and constantly flipping over. You might stay in one for a few hours.
The gyms around the edge of town have a chance to get built up and are are level 7+. You can actually hold one for a few days. And nicely enough in different areas there are large gyms of each color.
Sure it is easier to tear down gyms. Right after the gym change, a lot of players went around and tore down all the old level 10 gyms. After the first week or so though, between a level 7 gym and a level 3 gym, most players will ignore the larger gyms and just take over the smaller since it only takes a few minutes. The few players that go after large gyms are probably doing it more for the challenge than for the coins. Taking the time to build up a gym is the only chance of being in the same gym for more than a day.
Pretty much this, the area you play in matters a lot.
I live in a small town and gyms are mostly level 3, once in a while some get trained to about level 5 or 6, but the village near my town still had a level 10 gym from the time when gyms were super easy to train up, that hadn't been taken down until I did it just for the sake of it.
I'm only powering up attackers now. I put mon I am going to transfer in gyms. There are no gyms over lvl 5 in my town and they don't stay up long. Previously there were several lvl 10's up for weeks. I don't mind it this way myself since I am in a minority team and this makes it easier to get 10 gyms.
It's not changed things that much in my home town - there aren't enough gyms and the teams are fairly evenly split, so of a weekend they change hands constantly. During the week when there are less players about you might get one last a couple of days.
In the nearest city the outlying gyms sometimes get a bit higher and last longer, but that's got a 70% bias to Valor as one of the universities seem to have adopted that on mass.
It's pointless, I will use a good defender in a quiet area, where there's a strong lobby for my color (team mystic) but here in my hometown I just throw whatever garbage I get that's over 1000CP and then transfer it when it's fainted. I want to play as revive and potion efficient as I can and in my town the Gym's change all the time. Before the update everything was stagnant Level 10.
The double tear down was good for the game to prevent stagnat level 10s.
The 1/2 prestige up was bad for the game as there is no reason to work on a defender list
You would think *4 swap would be too dramatic to try first. Try the double down and see if that effect works.
As is, I am finding the motivation to play less since theres no point in powering up pokemon
I think low level players can participate more in gym fights when there are a lot of low level gyms. So even for them it is possible taking some gyms and getting coins. Taking down gyms that easily brings a lot of movement back these days. I know it is more comfortable to just press the button every day, getting 100coins without doing anything. But I guess the game holds another kind of spirit. (could be something like "movement").
Leveling up good defenders is imo still neccessary to force the enemy to use as much potions as possible.
Futhermore I think powering up gyms is still not that hard and still doesn't take that much time. You just need the right pokemon for every situation. That's why I don't have the focus on maxing pokes anymore. I search and evolve pokemon just for powering up gyms (all kind of "half wp" counters for every pokemon). Finally I can push every gym more easily even with a minimum number of potions.
I'm holding off powering defenders or attackers until things change. Gyms are so easy to take down that it doesn't matter much who you put in there. And vice versa, doesn't matter how powered up your attackers are because it's so easy.
I realize they might've thought the gyms were stagnating but I think it's more a lot of players dropped out. A couple months ago any open spots in gyms would be snatched up maybe before you could click on your desired player. Now I will level up gyms to open a space and nobody fills it for over a day.
I feel the changes they're making are not attracting new players but more chasing the die hard faithful away
