What are your current goals/joy for playing the game as a L40 player?
I asked this question when I was just L40. Time flies... Now more than half year...
What keeps you, L40 players playing? Hope you still enjoy the game.
Answers
I'm level 39...which is basically the same...I just keep improving my team, hoping they will make gyms fun again. I also use egg hatching for fitness...throw some 10k eggs in and go for a run.
Edit: Quick rant...I just wish they would improve the gym system to make it worthwhile to max out a legacy pokemon or a community day pokemon. There is so much potential in so many pokemon that can't be used because of the ease and lack of care of gyms. I throw a pidgey in there at 1AM, boom! 50 coins. Give us a reason to use cool pokemon like Alolan Ninetales.
I aggre..
I do prefer the old gym system than the current, if the only choice is to pick one as it is without improvement, i pick the old one..
I play PoGo for the battle aspect mostly, i dont have any nostalgia with pokemon as PoGo is my first pokemon game
I like raid also and try to make it more interesting like unique T3 solo challenge not using legendaries and try using all pokemon in squad
But raid is only once a day for free, while you can pretty much battle a gym whenever you want it
5 years ago I was running ultra marathons (100km and 161km)...quick rant, I wish they would improve the jogging/trotting/plodding system. I generate no Pokémon distance unless I’m walking with periodic long pauses (or driving). This game has become an anti-goal for me, it dissuades fitness.
***However, we are at a point where eggs barely matter...been that way for a year. Porygon/trapinch/Mareep are most common for me. Moving faster would allow more wild encounters, I can throw on the run w/o even looking at it...if something flees...well, we’ve caught/thrown at 50,000 to 75,000 things...
On the other side, I've seen a lot of players who are only doing it for the exercise, as it does motivate them somehow. I'm one of those and can say that in the last 20 months, I've walked 3650km I would NEVER have walked otherwise. Lost 30 pounds doing so and now at a VERY healthy weight. Still missing a tons of Gen 3 pokemons (those repetitive events seem to make other pokemons rarer) and I'm rural. Don't care, the slower I get them all, the better. Only drawback, I only do raids up to T3, or those rare one I stumble on where a group of players is already there. So, I'm starving for legendary, and kind of love the possibility to trade and improve the few I have.
Speaking as a level 39 myself: No way, no how is this the same as level 40, neither basically nor remotely. If at this point of the game you are still not level 40 (and have been level 40 for quite some time) you are either a noob or, even worse, a casual. You might not know from first-hand experience how much better the original footprint tracking system was. You were not around when the movepool changed for the first time and a stone-throwing watersnail became a legendary legacy. You do not feel the dread facing the prospect that your priceless stone-throwing watersnail might become common as dirt at some community day. You did not spend $$$ to get candy and stardust to boost your Snorlax and Lapras only to see them fall ever deeper into irrelevance with every update of the game. [crazyrantmodeoff] [backtoplayinglikethecasual39ernoobiam]
Current goals:
Grinding research to compete with a friend for ranking in the TL40 survey.
Reaching 100k catches.
Reaching 60m exp.
Maxing 100 pokemon (followed by maxing 100 unique species).
Getting up to 50 gold gyms.
Reaching the next 1000km in jogger.
Scoring a 100% Eevee from research.
Of course I like new content whenever we get any and I'm looking forward to gen 4 a lot. Used to be big on raid challenges but it's getting stale, the unique challenge hasn't been challenging in a while outside of very hard bosses like Jolteon and frankly I dislike Pokemon SIT.
I also used to have a cp666 and a L1 collection but I got rid of most of them recently to make space. Not sure if I'll start collections like that again, after a while they become frustrating.
For me keeping playing is about finding new challenges and goals.
1) I love walking.
2) Always have a couple of small goals (maxing the next mon, get to a nice number in some medal, etc)
3) Several different long term goals, so that you always feel you are progressing with something. Getting a full set of shinies or a full dex will certainly hit some roadblocks without any progression for several months.
I'm an addict.
Highlights include:
Shiny Karp hunting
95+% living dex
Toydex: good appraisal lv1s
Gold gymming
TheWorst0%
Working to have the highest numbers in raid lobby.
Building battles won on prererred mons
The social aspect is nice too. I'm sure most of y'all have a nice community of players: both allies and villains!
Powering up a Level 1 Mon 3 times is just 600 Stardust - that's literally less Stardust than catching a single Weather Boosted Beedrill or other Stage 2 Weather Boosted Pokémon. I generally do the same thing when I'm on the bus or otherwise in a bit of a hurry and want to finish that task off quick and cheap.
It's 6 normal catches down the drain. It being a small amount doesn't make it not a waste. You could easily name your current powerup project so that you can find it in a second with the search. It literally takes me more time to change to order by cp and scroll all the way down than to type 2 characters into the search bar to find what I'm currently powering up.
Seriously, you're taking this 600 Stardust thing way more seriously than it deserves. I'm betting that even our resident "I'm In A Stardust Drought! Niantic Needs To Give More Stardust!" poster wouldn't put this much effort into trying to convince people that 600 Stardust is a "waste".
Yeah, technically it's a "waste". So is tossing out an "empty" pop bottle when there's technically still liquid in it. So is tossing out the leaves and stem on a head of broccoli. So is throwing away most apple cores. It's barely a blip on the Stardust radar of most players - even players like me, who are regularly down to less than 1000 Stardust (because I tend to power things up on a daily basis by at least 2 power ups), can easily afford to "waste" 600 Stardust to get a research task done immediately, get that reward and get on with our Pokémon Go lives.
Level 39 here, but that's essentially Level 40 for all the mechanical benefits. And with these insane Triple XP/Double XP/10,000 XP for the Great Friends (I've got 10 or so now)/20,000 XP for Legendry Raids/Other XP boosting events going on, I've been taking it easy over the past month or so and I've STILL picked up more than 1,000,000 XP. Only used three Lucky Eggs in that time (for a triple Legendary raid sequence, and 2 for the Larvitar Community Day). Level 40 isn't going to feel like much of an accomplishment for me when that day comes.
But what keeps me going:
A) Male and Female 100% of each Pokémon family (ie: 1 100% Male of Weedle/Kakuna/Beedril and 1 100% Female of Weedle/Kakuna/Beedril)
B) 20,000 Gym Defense Hours (at 15,200+ right now; thinking of raising this to 25,000 to make it more of a challenge)
C) 50,000 Pokémon caught (at 31,000 right now)
D) 10,000 Gym Battles (at 1,950 right now - this one will be the toughest for me to get)
E) Level 40 for every one of my main attackers - including Legendary's (this... is probably more difficult than finding a 100% of each due to my bad luck with Rare Candies in Raids.)
Pretty much every personal goal in Pokémon Go is an abstract goal. That's almost the definition of "personal goal" - it's a goal that I decide for myself, based on what I want at the time.
As for these not being challenging if I don't put a date in there, why would I put a date in there? It's a game - I want these to happen sooner rather than later, they're what I'm currently working on, but the overall goal is fun. Say I put a goal of "20,000 Hours by October 7, 2018", and I take a gym today - then someone takes it from me in less than 10 minutes? (something which happens on a regular basis with one of the new gyms in my area - it's like some of the newbies to the area have decided to claim that individual gym, and will kick people off who aren't part of their group. Rather annoying.) Stress, stress, anger, aggravation, now I have to go back and take that gym again because I need to hold as many gyms as I can as quickly as I can since I need 48hrs of Gym Defense every day so I can reach 20,000 hrs by October 7, 2018 so I can't afford to have even one gym being taken from me so quickly and ARGH!
So no, no dates. Goals I'm working toward - I'd like them now, but I'm not going to stress myself out over it. I see a gym that the defenders have been defending for only 6 hours? Not going to take it down just to make my goal - I'll look for a gym where the defenders are at 8hrs 20min or longer. I've been on a gym for 8hrs 20min, and someone is taking it down? Not going to GR it just to get an extra few minutes. Etc. Putting a date on when I have to have these things done by puts more stress on the game than it's worth.
And there isn't much of a guarantee that I'll reach any of those goals without doing anything different - even the 25,000 hrs of Gym Defense and Catching 50,000 Pokémon will take extra effort to reach before the end of my days playing Pokémon Go. (Eventually the game will come to an end, and it's likely that I will have moved on well before that time as something else comes up that I like better, or I move to a rural or suburban area and can't play the game regularly anymore, etc.) 2 years is pretty nice for a mobile game, but these games have a finite lifetime.
Apart from the fact that I still like playing the game, I also set multiple goals for myself.
I've set three main goals for me this summer.
1. Reach 30 million XP. I am about 2 million short of that and unfortunately I am at a place with limited activity. Might reach 29 million.
2. Reach 1000 tasks. I am at about 940 so I should make it.
3. Reach 10 million Stardust. About 500k shy of that. Still hopeful of reaching the goal.
1. Shinydex. Genderdex. Regional trading.
2. Hit the 3k and 4K CP club for all mons that can.
3. T3 solo raid times. Eventually want to get teams for T4 and T5 speed raiding. Would love to 3 man M2.
4. We mapped out all the local gyms in our area, 41 total. We have a leaderboard we are tracking for most gold. That’s been real fun and sparked play/gym turn over.
5. Have each move of each mon.
6. Resource management. Getting the most out of the game and goal advancement with the least amount of commitment.
I’m sure there are other micro goals I’m chasing that I forgot to mention. All in all, it’s a great game that’s kept my attention far longer than most.
