Training on Level 10 gyms
When you train on a friendly gym that's already at level 10, what happens? Is it at all possible to replace one of that gym's pokemon with your own?
Asking because I noticed the following tonight:
One of my pokemon has held the third-lowest place at a nearby level 10 gym for about 24 hours. However, I noticed something strange tonight: the gym is still at level 10, but now my pokemon has been bumped to the lowest slot. Two stronger pokemon somehow "jumped" my place in the gym.
Of course, it is possible that an attacker in the neighborhood kicked the two lowest pokemon out by reducing the gym to level 8, then a teammate came by afterward and trained until the gym was back up to level 10. But I think that is unlikely in this case: this all happened between around 1 and 4 in the morning, and based on what I've seen in the past at local gyms, I doubt that multiple people in my neighborhood have been up battling at this hour on a weeknight. At least three players would have to have been up for this to happen (one to take the gym down to level 8, two to train it back up and occupy both of the new slots at level 10).
So all I can come up with are two other scenarios:
1) My understanding of gyms was flawed. A single player can train at a friendly level 10 gym and eject his own team's pokemon from it so he can occupy it.
2) The gym was probably not attacked by three players walking by, but by a spoofer using three accounts on two different teams. He took the gym down to level 8, then logged into another account, trained it back up, put his pokemon in, then probably logged into a third account and placed another pokemon in the last slot.
Has anyone seen something like this happening before?
Answers
Any combination of 3 accounts (2 to put in pokemon and 1 to weaken it)
step 1 U attack the gym and beat 1 pokemon -> gyms goes to 49000 + it loses is lowest pokemon
step 2 player 2 trains it 1 time, goes up to 50k again, and put his pokemon in
Repeat step 1 and 2
Uses way less time, can be done within 1 min per pokemon (maybe less)
Unfortunately, there is a simple way to do this. You just need another account and then:
- Having a gym at 50k
- Taking it down to 49k (so the 10th pokemon will be kicked out)
- Use your main account to train it back to level 10.
- If you wanna kick out more than 1 pokemon, just repeat it 2-3 or 4 times, so you don't have to bump the gym back to lvl 7 to actually put 3 pokemons in it by raising at lvl 10 gaining over 20k prestige.
I wouldn't recommend this method tho, cause it's unfair for the spirit of the game, basically you are playing against your own teammates.
Pokemon should be kicked out of the gym when it's level goes down. For example, a Gym goes to level 9 at 40K and goes to 10 at 50K. Once level 10 is reached, it should go down to level 9 when it drops down to 40K, not 49K. This would really minimize this anti fair-play /close to cheating multi-account method.
Dude many people have 2 diffrnt account pokemon go so first they attack the gym with thr second acxount with a team valor/instict/mystic then open theyr main acxount and prestge it to put new epokemon.that a strategic way to place a pokemon with your team. i even doing that using may lvl 20 account to attack the gym and then used my main account lvl 30 to prstage and place my pikemont
Right. Meanwhile, your cheating is kicking out someone who went through the trouble of prestiging or even taking over the gym. If I had a buck for every level 5 gym I took over and left a so-so defender in alone thinking he wouldn't last the night only to find I'm at the bottom of a level 10 gym a day later just waiting for someone like you to come along and cheat me out I'd have enough to buy the coins I'm missing out on. I feel sorry for you if you think this is a legitimate way to play.
There is a lot of hatred towards people using second account, but truth is this is only possible by design. If it wouldn't be person with 2 accounts, some passing player from other team can kick lowest. It's very fast and only need like 2 battles. The only realistic way not to be kicked is keep and edge over majority in CP, the higher your CP is, the fewer and fewer people will be able to put pokemon above you.
Still, Gyms are just destined to slowly drift towards all Dragonite gyms because it's CP is considerably bigger than others, even Snorlax might be having hard time to compete eventually. And looking at perspective there is very little reason to power up anything with max CP lower than Vaporeon.
Yet again, this is by design. No matter of wishes, or arguments or whatever will beat numbers, gyms are going this way, to the highest CP pokemon, regardless.
As for your conclusions, indeed, gyms are flawed. And multi-accounting and fake-gps things are not helping either, but both this things are going to stay in game. I don't see any way for Niantic actually winning against it, unless they will find way to make 2 account not worth it by design.
A few things that would help:
1) Unless an all-clear is achieved, attack is the same as negative prestiging (a 1k+/mon AC bonus would compensate serious attackers)
2) Allow team switching at limited intervals and provide incentive for switching to a weaker team.
3) Develop/modify software to detect repeated suspicious activity (log off/log on activity, prolonged periods with zero separation, etc)
Meh. There are plenty of level 10 enemy gyms with meh defenders on the bottom around me. I never bother with them unless I'm committed to clear the whole thing out, which isn't often because I'd rather spend my resources prestiging into a higher level gym. Kicking out an enemy gym's weakest defender and running just gives someone the chance to replace it with a stronger defender, and makes it harder for me to take it over when I have the revives and pots I need.
Yeah it's a common strategy when you only have lvl 10 gyms around you.
When there is a level 1-9 gym i dont mind training it, it takes a few minutes (even from 42k to 50k it's quite fast)
But when you have a friendly lvl 10 gym near you, all you can do is watch it, as it's already full.
I am in Valor, my girlfriend is in Mystic. So i just need her to beat 1 pokemon (or 2 if it's 52k) to bring it down to 49k. Next step, I beat the lowest pokemon with myaccount and reach 50k. And there you go
I don't consider it as cheating, it's just like an agreement with other teams ^^
sometimes i quickly take mystic gyms down to 49k so that people can go inside.
It is a dick move, i agree with this of course
it's just a way to exploit another weakness of the gym prestige system.
As several people in this thread already proposed, they should kick the lowest pokemon when you get to 40k or something
this way, this technique is still possible, but at least you have to actually make an effort to get your pokemon in the gym
I've observed the same phenomenon in a gym nearby but deep in the mountains, which is always full of instinct spoofers.
At first, there were some Snorlaxes, some Rhydons, even some Gyaradoses. But afters some days, all are gone except for Dragonites - the bottom Dragonite is over 3300CP! The color stays yellow, even the IDs are same, but the Pokemon got 'replaced' with higher CP Dragonites. I'd say this is a natural outcome. There is competition within spoofers - gym slots are limited.
From the attacker's view, however, a gym full of Dragonites is much faster to be destroyed than one full of Snorlaxes or Lapras (or Chansey, to be extreme). This also implies that at least for that gym, there is no collaboration among the spoofers. Another Prisoner Dilemma it is!
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Another interesting thing to notice: A gym of 50000+ (say 52000) prestige is actually at 51000 prestige.
Proof1: beating the first mon only once won't take out the first mon (will be displayed as 50000 prestige); only by doing so again will.
Proof2: solo the whole gym brings the prestige to 40000 (beating 10 mons in a row means 11000 prestige deducted).
I'm starting to think niantic should change the game and make it that you can kick the lowest player of your own team by prestiging (something like 10k prestige?)
If you can get kicked out in a legit way... it also means you can take your place back in that gym.
It is a way better solution that what we have right now: only cheaters can do it and it completely screws up the game, especially since niantic does so little to ban them. If you get kicked out by a cheater, you can't get back in.
Right, and there are also legit cases where you'd want to log in on a friend's device (for instance, so you can catch a rare pokemon on their phone when your own battery is dead). That is of course far from the same thing as "just start 20 accounts and feel free to stack every gym in town with all of them".
After looking at the gym I posted about, I think it is very likely that this was done by a cheater using multiple accounts. The fifth slot in the gym is occupied by [name's] Dragonite; [name] is a player at level 32. The very top spot is a 3300+ CP Dragonite from a level 37 player with a handle almost the same as [name]. I reported the case to Niantic but not expecting them to do anything about it.
I won't go into reading the whole tos, but niantic writes the following under their guidelines : "Methods of cheating, unfortunately, are limited only by cheaters’ imaginations, but include at a minimum the following: [...] playing with multiple accounts (one account per player, please) [...]"
https://support.pokemongo.nianticlabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/221993967-Pok%C3%A9mon-GO-Trainer-guidelines
so yes, there is a problem with multiple accounts. Account switching is probably meant for families where more than one person shares the same phone/pad. Ban don't happen because Niantic cannot prove that it's the same person abusing the account change option.
As stated above, it's explicit in the TOS. We're not going to convince anybody here that's already using multiple accounts. These players exist and will try to justify their cheating ways regardless. It's really up to Niantic to try to find a solution to deter or end this, but likely will be difficult to do or enforce. I really just wish these players just admit it is in fact cheating, and the game was not intended to be played using multiple accounts. I mean we can't stop you, but don't insult us by saying hey it's not cheating, I'm just using another account to knock your mon out of the gym so I could put my stronger mon in and collect coins in my "real" "main" account. Get out of here with that B.S.!
Knock out your mon or knock out someone's from the enemy team, either way you are doing it for your own gain... and let's take clash of clans for example one of biggest grossing games there's been.. you are only allowed 1 account per device. If niantic really cared that much they would implement something like that but have they? Nope
I think we are in agreement then. It's a form of abuse as you stated above AND it's up to Niantic to fix as we both stated above. I wish they can do it like Clash of Clans then. I think we interpret "leaving a system open for abuse" differently. Some will interpret it as a free for all to maximize their gains despite it going against the explicit TOS. That would be like saying hey it's open for this type of abuse, so let's abuse it. By that logic, one can say they can't seem to stop all botters and spoofers, so it's Niantic's fault, so it's okay to bot and spoof. It's a real opportunistic way of looking at things. I would rather interpret it as even though there is an opening for abuse, why contribute to it? Why not just play the game how it was intended to be played? But hey I am probably just being naïve about the whole thing. All games have potential to cheat, and there will always be players to exploit it. I just don't want to give in to that... just a personal thing, just sucks for us that play it right.
Bots and spoofers totally agree that is cheating no question. But for having a second account to me isn't a cheat. Let's say you have achieved level 40 or even just completed your pokedex at the moment you've essentially completed the game as that's all there is to do in pogo at the moment. Is it then wrong for me to make a second account 'cheat' and play the game again from the beginning as you really enjoy playing the game and getting out and having that experience of hunting down those silhouettes again which were the enjoyable part in the beginning. I'd say absolutely not.
"Is it then wrong for me to make a second account 'cheat' and play the game again from the beginning."
Um, yes... it's against the TOS you agreed to. And while your motives may start out pure, how long until you're using your first account to aid your second?
You wanna start over that bad? Delete your first account.
So with all this talk, IS there a way to lock an account to just 1 device like Clash of Clans? I am not familiar with that game, but that would stop some people since you'd need 2 data plans/phones or something which costs monthly fees I'd guess to keep active...
Logging into a rival team's account, knock out bottom mon, re-login to main account, take spot, etc should be stopped anyway possible...
Carrying around 2 phones is also more work/heavy/costly...and I'd guess spoofers have tons of accounts, but not tons of phones to use.
