Sorted by Level instead of CP in Gym?

This would, of course, reward people who level their mons to 35+ or even higher...Love Poliwrath? Not everyone will be willing to level the normal high CP mons past 30 if this change was made (looking at you Rhydon).

Gym meta will change instantly as well and the current top 5 will be replaced by the best 5 actual gym defenders (which sorta makes more sense) since we're collecting a gym "defender" bonus after all. Would help Poliwrath, Slowbro and Exeggutor instantly since their Psychic moves are pretty hard hitting...

That said, I'd assume they will possibly implement a mix of mon level and CP to make it so a lvl 30 won't be dropping random magikarps when they aren't really that strong as a defender to begin with.

This would also hurt lower level players since any high level player can just put a trash mon with bad IVs wild caught (lvl 30) and be above a lot of stronger defenders so if you are level 27 and have a maxed Snorlax, someone with a lvl 30 Karp would place higher than you making it sorta lame too.

Don't think it would change too much, wouldn't deter players from dropping vaporeons in all the gyms.

A 'One Pokemon of each species rule' would force variety and reward players for taking down enemy gyms to get first pick of defender.

Any change would have pros and cons though.

I think this would work very well if you could only put last form mon at gyms, this would prevent that a level 30 pidgey get a better position then a level 29 snorlax. This would also give more importance for great defenders with a low max cp, like slowbro, venusaur and poliwrath. Lower level players would have more motivation to level up, today a level 24 player with a rhydon have better positions at gyms than a level 31 poliwrath or slowbro, so why work hard to level up if you can have hight positions in middle level gyms with a crap defender at level 26?

There is no magic option here and I don't think that it would make that much of a difference, to be honest. CP is just fine because you want the first people kicked out of the gym to be the low level mons (CP is mostly what matters in battle). And when you are the one prestiging a gym, you have the option of which gym to prestige and which mon to put in. You can always pick a gym where you know you'll have a favorable slot. This game rewards players of higher levels and this is just fine because these players are the ones who play A LOT.

Of course, this dynamic leads to Level 10 gyms with all the same mons in it (Dragonite, Snorlax, Vaporeon, Gyarados) but I don't think that it would be any different if going by Level (there may be a little bit more variety but CP rules this game - I don't think that folks would all of a sudden start investing heavily in Venusaurs and Charizards - I could see more Slowbros and Poliwraths, but that's about it).

Now that I think about it, I think it would be worse to have it by level because then many people would have many mons they could put in (including Pidgeys and Rattatas). It is much harder to have a Level 35 Snorlax vs. a Level 35 Pidgey given rarity. I have found many Level 30 Pidgeys and could spend a little Stardust to get them to Level 32+. I can't say the same about Snorlax / Lapras / Dragonite.

The problem with the gym game is that it gets stale very quickly with most gyms settling in at Level 10 with top mons. It would help if Niantic actually gave rewards for taking down gyms.

I'd rather them just enable a Team Switch Option every 3 monthes

Tired of being on the Team that has Static 10 Gyms you can't get in. Switch to another team and tear them down.

Gym's aren't hard at all to tear down anymore, even level 10 gyms. It's what 5 or 6 Clears to kill a full level 10 Gym. And with the average player approaching 30 + the 1/2 gains after 30. I bet you a large number of people now a days are capable of soloing a Level 10 Gym.

The problem with Static Gyms is that there isn't enough of other teams in an Area that tears down.

The root cause of a Static Gym is not enough players of the other colors in an area.

Another interesting twist to go along with this would be a Leaderboard type thing which you could break up by "regions". Say counties. Then if the leaderboard said "Blue has 200 Gyms, Red 150, Yellow 100." Dust (not coins Ninatic needs to make money) goes 100 for Leader, 150 for middle, 200 for behind team.

This extra dust to the behind team + the ability to switch teams would automatically lead the player base to self-balance more.

More Balanced teams = Less Static Gyms

It's not a good idea. Lvl 30 rattata would be higher than lvl 30 snorlax. Does not make sens.

The only thing to do is to create a new indicator. Defensive Power (DP) that will be more accurate to estimate a defender than CP. DP would consider stamina as the main factor since it is doubled for defender and since it determines the time necessary to kill a defender.

Gyms are still sitting at lvl 10 again because similar to before, the problem is that it's just not worth the time to tear them down...

In terms of EXP, dust, candies, attacking gyms only yields EXP so you are much better off I'd guess if you had a special route and just farmed catching mons, spinning stops for 30 minutes (or hour) straight rather than taking down a level 10 that would yield you some EXP. For lower level folks with no maxed out attackers (Dragonite), it's more like an hour so that'd be a ton of dust, candies, etc if you spent the time catching rather than wasting it on a lvl 10 gym that would get you near nothing.

I agree that some kind of new measure, DP (Defensive power) mixing stamina, defense, attack makes the most sense.

It maybe the same few different mons again, but the problem most folks see/face now is that it's just the top 5 mons now. I'd guess if some new formula was implemented, you would have at least a little more diversity...more, not insanely a lot more, but it'd be actually mons which are more defensive (maxed Chanceys, Psychic types, Polywrath) and favored mons if someone were to level up their Pinsirs, Flareons, etc...if they can be higher up (Pinsir hits hard actually).

Even though most people would consider Lapras a "top tier" defender. For high level gyms (2700+), which aren't tore down daily, I would venture to guess that for most people in most areas, there isn't a single Lapras in any of these. You'd need to power up to Level 34 to make it 2700+.

For Vaps, it's Lvl 30, Rhydon, Lvl 29...As you get more CP creep, the others will keep falling behind and never be in gyms. They are only put in gyms that get torn down daily. Level 34 isn't that much dust or candies (48k dust/48 candies), but that just gets you a bottom spot when the Vap and Rhydon now, at lvl 34 are hitting 3000CP+ (Rhydon).

I personally don't think that's great for the game considering Rhydon is MUCH MUCH easier to destroy with a high level Vap and taking only 1/4 damage in return.

Look around your towns with lvl 10 gyms, it's very hard to find anything outside of the main 5.

All in all, these are just ideas to try to improve the game...I can't see how having 5 "prime" defenders is great if that's all people need.