I kind of think it's too easy to defeat a gym, actually. If it's being heavily defended with GRBs you can just move on for the next gym or be determined and drain the defender's GRBs and patience. I for one would like to have the order of defending mons randomized so it's not so easy to line up counters.
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I think the gym system needs to be improved.
Imagine a scenario. You're trying to take a gym for coins. A spoofer with 4 accounts is feeding GRBs at a long distance, making it almost impossible to take all 6 defenders down. Even when you knock one's motivation to 0 ten minutes later the spoofer fills the empty slot.
This is something some people are experiencing almost every time they attack a gym. I know Niantic has reduced the drop rate of GRBs but that hardly affects multi-accounters with 300+GRBs in each account. Clearly something has to be done. I have a few suggestions:
1. Set the 10 minute new defender cooldown to 30 minutes. This gives the attackers a much better chance of taking the gym before all 30 mins are up.
2. Make it so that after 3 GRBs are given to a certain defender, a 30-minute cooldown will be set for the defender, during which time no GRBs can be given to that defender.
3. Just to ensure slightly more coins to those who just put their Pokemons in a gym recently, Pokemon which have been in a gym for less than 2 hours will have their base stats doubled for every battle. Motivation will be deducted as usual. This is also to prevent spoofers from immediately attacking the gym that you just took.
Any more suggestions?
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I agree with this. While trying to battle against multiple accounts dropping GR on a gym is essentially unwinnable if you're flying solo (and usually prompts me to go hit a different gym), normal gym battles are far too easy.
Now, I'm not saying that I miss the 10-deep Blissey towers of the old system, but I do miss the days when gyms were actually a challenge to defeat if they were well-built and trained up. There was a greater sense of achievement when you built up lvl 10 towers with your friends, and an equal satisfaction when you tore them down. It was interesting to see towns in my area as strongholds for the different teams. I get that Niantic wants to make gyms more accessible to everyone, but they've made gyms so incredibly easy to take down unless they're being actively watched and berried.
The only time it's easy to defeat a gym is when no one is feeding the defenders golden razz berries. In my opinion, the gym system disrupts gameplay as pokemon go is relatively fast paced: 1-2 sec to spin poke stops, 15-20 sec for catching pokemon. Contrasting that with the 5 min it takes to defeat a gym solo when no one is feeding golden razz berries makes it feel really long.
Also, I don't know how people are alright with taking half an hour out of their day to defeat a single gym. The golden razz berry system is simply an annoyance and needs to change. It's created people who just wait until someone is done whittling pokemon down from a gym to swoop in at the last one and defeat it and put their team's instead. They then just hold it with golden razz berries until the attacker finally gives up.
Randomizing the order of defending pokemon is just a bad idea in my opinion. Generalists would be all that people use and most other pokemon would be considered trash. The problem is already there to some extent right now. The nintendo games mitigated this by adding abilities and other stats but that isn't the case in POGO.
My proposal: The ten-minute timer should be reset each time a defender is knocked out. In other words, the attacker has ten minutes to knock out each defender (or fifty minutes to knock out all defenders) rather than ten minutes to knock out all defenders. The real problem with GRBs is the use of multiple accounts to bypass the “ten GRBs per defender per thirty minutes” limit.
Yeah the gym system needs some serious rework.
The first thing that is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion is how the person to beat the entire gym is put as the first defending pokemon while the person to add the pokemon last is the last defender. It should be the other way around! I don't have many golden razz berries, so every time I put my pokemon in after taking down an entire gym, it's gone in less than an hour. Whether it's due to the ridiculous shaving or someone trying to take down the gym.
The golden razz berry system leads to 30-45 min gym takedowns. I've seen pokemon that have been fed 100+ golden razz berries sitting in gyms. Some people even feed their pokemon after being in the gym for 8h 20 min in a day. And even if I manage to catch someone off guard (i.e. not looking at their game 24/7), when they realize their pokemon is low/defeated they'll just call their friends or use their other accounts, which start spamming golden razz berries, while they come on down and put their pokemon that I just knocked out back inside the gym.
It's also created people who just wait until someone is done whittling pokemon down from a gym to swoop in at the last one and defeat it and put their team's instead. They then just hold it with golden razz berries until the attacker finally gives up. (People who live on top/near a gym or spoofers usually take advantage of this.)
Finally, am I the only person who thinks 18 battles to take down a gym is too much? I think the rest of the game is relatively fast paced compared to the time it takes to take down a single gym.
Basically the golden razz berry centralized gym system needs to go. They need to implement a system that rewards players that take down gyms (with coins), not players that spam golden razz berries (keeping the game open on their phones throughout the entire day).
The whole system needs a full revamp and tying coin gains to getting kicked out of gyms after a certain point is the most ridiculous idea this game has ever implemented. I'd much rather see a gym system where players compete for rank inside one particular gym and try to become the gym leader or one of the top goons, against whom attackers then fight regardless of teams. Or really anything else functional and interesting. Two words that can't be applied to the current system.
In rich countries there's also the problem that the defense coins are a bad incentive, because they're worth so little. Average wage in my country makes enough money in 1 hour to buy a month's worth of defense coins. Doesn't make much sense to spend any time or effort on getting them from gyms.
A more radical change -- gym battles should only allow (3) attacking pokemon (not 6) against the gym. Ultimately, this does not do much to prevent a determined attacker from taking a gym, but it does mean that, if the defending players dont all stuff the gym with BlissLax ChaKing normals, it's harder to make an attacking team that perfectly counters the defending pokemon.
Attacks of multiple accounts on a gym often happen shortly before raids, in order to get the team bonus balls. Defense against this by GRB feeding should be possible; it is an exciting part of the raid experience. Anything that makes it impossible for multiaccounters to defend a gym also makes it impossible for legit groups and individual players to do the same.
I've suggested this in previous threads about the gym system, but I'll continue to do it when the subject arises.
There needs to be more incentive to hold more gyms. After the 50 coin per 24 hour reward, players should receive potions, candies, stardust. 10 stardust per hour -- minimum of (12) hours defending, for example. A candy of the defeated pokemon type per 24-hours?
I've deleted hundreds of revives because I don't need 100+ revives... but I'm chronically short on potions because I like to control gyms in my neighborhood (TEAM VALOR flex flex flex), and I see the same trainer names in Instinct and Mystic, so the other teams have active players in my neighborhood, too.
However, it gets kinda boring seeing all these "POKEMON FOUGHT BRAVELY AND RETURNED. LOL DAILY COIN LIMIT EXCEEDED" notifications when I log in ... and I get nothing for it (except a drain on my already limited stock of potions).
Agreed. I've posted similar ideas in the past. The mechanism for monitoring gym "effort" is already in place with the badge system.
Additionally, all-clearing should be more important than it is. There needs to be some reward for clearing the gym in one sequence (perhaps that's where your 1 and done idea comes in). Both these would be an improvement in the current and former gym systems.
And a week after the changes suggested are incorporated into the game .... the exact same people will be here complaining that it’s unfair that they get kicked out of gyms so quickly... The fact is the attacking player has every advantage in gym battles, they know exactly what Pokémon they are fighting, can use legendary Pokémon, can use the weather to gain an advantage and get a bonus when attacking with a friend... And the biggest advantage of them all ?!?! Simply walking away from a gym that is being actively defended.... The only thing that needs to be improved is your gameplay...
I live somewhere where GRB gym defense and spoofing isn't nearly as rampant as say Singapore, but I do have a couple ideas to make gym defense a little more robust.
1.) Nerf the amount of motivation GRB's restore. The fact that someone can be across the globe and instantly restore their Pokemon's motivation from rock bottom to full with one berry is nuts. A single GRB should restore about a third of the motivation, the same as what's lost when attacked.
2.) Allow legendaries to be placed in gyms to some degree. Obviously some of the walls like Lugia or Cresselia may prove to be better stalls than the Kanto birds or Johto beasts but at this point a majority of players have at least one legendary. They aren't some super exclusive gamebreaking force, even if only the first three slots allow for legendary defenders I think we're well past the point of completely barring them.
3.) Incentivize longer gym holding time. I know they want people to spend real money on coins which could be in part of why the daily gains were nerfed so much from the old system. Fine, but being able to receive additional bonuses for defense beyond the 8 hours 20 minutes to accrue the daily 50 might encourage people to be more strategic in what they place. Additional stardust, candy for the Pokemon defending, balls, berries, etc. would be welcomed if I can hold a gym for longer than expected.
4.) Reward the attacker with something more than just badge exp. I'm someone who gets most of their defensive points from dropping something in a gym that's already owned by my team and not quite full yet. Rarely ever do I go after a gym with 6 fully motivated Pokemon in it because it's not worth it to me. My only rewards for doing so are badge points which are meaningless if I have a gold badge there and the ability to use healing items. Since more stardust costly mechanics have been added to the game it would be nice to receive some dust proportional to the CP of the Pokemon you just fought, similar to how badge points are given out relative to the defending Pokemon's CP.
Getting Stardust for taking a gym would be great, too. More motivation on the defending pokemon, more Stardust for the attacker(s). Divide it up between multiple attackers, if applicable. Taking down a gym with six, fully-motivated pokemon solo should be rewarding. Adjustments can be made for the difference in CP between the attacking and defending pokemon. It's all doable -- if Niantic would just ... do it.
I would suggest that Coins be given for TAKING a Gym in addition to holding a gym. So let's say that I take down a Gym. I should get 10 Coins for that, up to 50 coins a day. (or 5 Coins, up to 50 Coins a day) Then get Coins for holding the gym.
The biggest problem I see with this scenario is when two people are battling on a Gym, and the "faster" person (better device, better connection, better Pokémon, etc.) is the only one able to battle due to knocking the Defender out before the second attacker can begin their battle. I'm not sure if that second attacker can be noted as "Taking The Gym" simply because they were able to use the "Battle" button, and so would gain coins for taking the gym.
It would also allow for cross-team cooperative play to a limited degree, where members of two teams could join forces to take down a gym from the third team.
This would prompt spoofers to take even more gyms. Although they are probably always at their maximum 20.
My problem is that gyms are too easy to take down. I find that my friends and I cannot defend gyms even when all 6 of us have a lot of goldens. We can defend it at the time but if it’s a spoofer he’ll just go eat a bag of chips or watch a tv show and try again in a half hour. Plus most of the spoofers here I feel are from the other side of the world because they attack constantly overnight
It wouldn't prompt more Spoofing at all. It might even cut it down as Spoofers would get their daily 50 coins much faster (only need to take down 5-10 gyms per day, no need to hold 20) and would have time to go troll people on Twitter or flag YouTube videos or use up more bottles of hand lotion while browsing through 4Chan.
Also, you wouldn't need to keep a gym - you get 5-10 coins for simply taking it. So you take it, they take it back, you take it again and get 5-10 more coins. You haven't held the gym for more than 1 minute because Spoofers Spoofing, but you're up 10-20 coins anyway. Spoofer does that 5-10 times and you've got your 50 coins for the day from a single gym just fighting a Spoofer.
Bonus: If you don't have a Gold on that gym already, and that Spoofer is putting 6 3000+ C(ombat)P(power) Defenders on, you're getting more Gym XP by taking it down 5-10 times than by holding it for 500 minutes. It's a win-aggravation-win.
