I have had a few instances of GPS hackers taking gyms from under my nose when out and about at various gyms in my area. It was very frustrating, but it was only the odd person so I reported and carried on.
Very recently there has arisen a team of GPS spoofers who are taking almost all gyms in my area.
Today I watched them take one of the gyms whilst I was there and put their mons on. I checked carefully (people on foot and in cars) within the vicinity of the Gym and no one was there. I am 100% about this.
They then also immediately after, took another gym of ours half a kilometre down the road that I could see in Pokemon Go.
They appear to be a group of around 5-10 players on yellow team, who I believe are spoofing and taking up all the gyms in our area.
This makes my daughter and I not want to play anymore because we don't want to waste our time going to take gyms, only for them to be taken by a cheater straight after.
I have reported all these trainers to Niantic, but I don't know how good they are at dealing with cheaters. has anyone had any experience?
Thanks in advance.
iSambob
Welcome to the club kiddo, Now take a seat beside me in Niantic help center. Here's your number 42069 for GPS Spoofing Problem, i'm still at number 2 and still waiting for number 1 to finish :D Have a great day citizen coz i already have in the past year boy oh boy.
But in all seriousness, you just have to roll with it. Either take 1-5 gyms everyday or find a rural gym which everyone doesn't know about. And i'll guarantee you it will last for a week (if you're lucky)
kiddo? ok...
FYI...I know how to hold 10 gyms daily. I'm a level 34 trainer who collects 100 coins and 5000 dust pretty much every day.
I don't normally have a problem, as powering up high lvl gyms in obscure locations and holding them is priority, however, these GPS spoofers are actually taking some of these rural obscure gyms now, including the ones closest to my house that I make sure are mine daily.
Your attitude smells a bit, and your advice to just accept it is not good advice, or at all acceptable "kiddo".
When something is wrong and it bothers you.... you should do something about it, not just accept it.
Also, commenting that "i'll guarantee you it will last for a week (if you're lucky)" is ridiculous. You must think you are some sort of pokemon demi god who knows all and sees all in the pokemon gym world.
I have held gyms from several minutes, to several weeks. No luck involved, just down to a strong gym in a location that hasn't been taken by another team.
In this instance, the team in question is a bunch of no good lazy ass cheaters who are ruining the game.
/end rant
If you're offended by my jokes alrighty then.
Now then if you're taking 10 gyms everyday i assume you have friends or multiple accounts to do that. It is almost imposible to guard a gym even you have 1 blissey.
My attitude smells? Yeah no doubt about it pal. If my advice is bad, you weren't looking at my point of view.
When something is wrong and it bothers me, I have done it. I have banned 3 accounts lvl 30-35 with photo proof and specified their time taking gyms and send it to niantic. A week later, they were banned. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE, A week later they made 5 more fresh account at lvl 20-25 and taken whole city gyms filled with only valors. I presumed they use bots. So i have learned to accept it.
I'm a demi god HUE HUE HUE :D
Some times even a spoofer can overlook gyms that kinda far away from their "spoofing" grounds so that's why only the locals only taking the gyms, and the locals are a bunch of kids who are having fun taking down my gym. These kinds of things is making me stay on PoGo, even in good times or bad times.
Yep can't really complain on the last paragraph
/eyy kiddo here have some meme
Not offended by your jokes, I just don't like your smelly attitude.
People have a right to be annoyed at GPS spoofers. Making fun of that isn't cool.
I was asking if anyone had experience reporting.
I'm glad to hear they did actually ban some of the spoofers you reported, and I will continue to report them and not feel like it's a complete waste of time.
If they come back as spoofers again then I will report again, simple, as long as something is eventually done about it.
FYI, my 6 year old daughter and I play together. I'm 35. We have lots of follow valour players in the area who help power up our gyms.
No.. he's being nicer than I will but he's correct. You're not very bright. You don't seem to understand what a "joke" is, because you didn't make one. The patronizing tone is even more ironic considering that he clearly understands the game better than you.
You don't have to take 10 gyms every single day to get the maximum reward each day. Currently, I end up having to put a new mon in a gym on average maybe once a week to stay at 10. It is entirely possible to find plenty of gyms both in and outside of a city that don't turn over frequently.
As for my response to the OP... there are two effective ways to handle the situation without relying on Niantic to step in (whether they do or don't). First, if you just enjoy playing the gym game - taking one down here and there and/or training them up most days, you can let go of the idea of 'your' nearby gyms and find some others that have a more suitable level of competition. Or, if you are determined to play for those gyms in particular, just stick it out and keep at it for a while. The thing about spoofers or whatever other form of cheater is that they can go anywhere. They obviously aren't doing it for the fun, so they can easily go find easier gyms to take and hold if they realize someone is taking their gym back frequently. They'll give up and move on before too long.
The other possibility is to stop playing the gym game daily yourself. Search wide around your area. Get to know the competition at a large number of gyms. Avoid the ones that flip constantly. Don't waste your time attacking an enemy gym. Ever. If you attack a gym, chances are someone will want to get it back. Whether they do or not, it's going to be easy for anyone who comes along to take it down unless you're also willing to put in the immense time it would take to nurture that gym up to at LEAST level 7. You can put a 3150CP Snorlax or Blissey, or 3400CP Dragonite.. whatever the most intimidating mon you can possibly think of.. in a gym, but if there are less than 5 or 6 other mons in that gym it's still going to be easy for anyone to come by and knock it out. Believe me, I can vouch for that personally. No one mon is scary enough to keep someone away from a gym.
If you are just trying to get your max reward each day with minimum effort, all you want to be doing is training up gyms. You have to choose the right gyms, though. Figure out where gyms are that don't turn over often. Know a gym that's always held by your team at level 10 and one day you happen to notice it's at 9 or maybe 8 or 7? Train it up to at least the next level and put a good mon in that will be at least top 5. Chances are that gym will end up back at level 10 and stay there for a while. There are too many gyms that flip constantly and sit at level 1-5 that people can attack to want to waste their time going after level 10 gyms that always belong to the same team, because even if they spend all that time to take it down, a handful of the 10 people from that gym will be back within the day to put it right back up to level 6 or higher. Same reason a spoofer is going to avoid one of those gyms like the plague. Don't waste your time training gyms until they get to 30k prestige, either. It might not take as much effort, but even when you put your mon in there it's still going to be easy enough to take down again. Find 10 to 15 good team gyms like that and with maybe a week or two of your normal level of effort, you will have gyms you only have to go replace once every few days.
Back when the game was pretty new, I had a 2200CP or so Vileplume that ended up staying in the same gym for 3 months. When it went in, it was one of the highest CP mons in any gym nearby. When it came out, most gyms had a bottom end around that level. The gym was just in an awkward place right in the middle of a city nearby that nobody ever felt like stopping at long enough to take down from level 10. Since I took up the strategy I just described, all of the gyms I have a mon in average a month or two before I have to go back to it, and the longest running of the lot is over the previous personal record of 3 months.
Wow. I got a lot more than I bargained for when creating this post, including having my intelligence insulted by some unpleasant people.
Just to clarify. I do not take 10 gyms a day. I like to sit on around 10-15 gyms to claim my rewards daily incase I haven't been able to get out to a gym tht has been taken down (there are some gyms near me I like to have on team valour and others further that I will leave and look for gyms to prestige instead)
I must make it clear that this post was created to see if anyone had experience with successfully reporting cheaters to Niantic. I have thus far been told yes and no.
I am an optimist so I will continue playing and reporting for now.
Cheers!
I'm so sorry, now that I have re-read it I see this.
Please accept my sincere apologies, maybe I'm a bit annoyed by his post and am on the defensive. :)
I now re-read your post in full and this is pretty much the strategy I employ. The 3 gyms in question are personal gyms closest to my home which are "my gyms". I must say that I enjoy the battle in holding these gyms as long as it's with genuine players. This is what the end game is a about. However, I cannot and will not accept GPS spoofers taking them so I will fight hell and high water until they are gone.
Thanks for your reply and sorry again for tarring you with the same brush as the guy calling me kiddo. This was my fault for not reading properly.
Peace.
iSambob
Yes, i think this is the same. Some of the names are similar and they have a horde of high level blisseys, snorlax, dragons and other high level mons. They are also all in the mid/high lvl 30 range.
I think more needs to be done about this and it should not just be side stepped and accepted.
My daughter and I spent a good couple of hours today taking the closest gyms around our house, only to be undone within minutes by cheaters.
As much as I hate to point this out, for every spoofer on the enemy team there is one on your own, and by the same logic that has already been set out in this thread, they look for stable territories. In practice, that means that especially trainers like the op (and myself as well) who control stable gyms are likely to get help from spoofers when retaking a home gym that has been taken out. At least i have noticed that during my own repair actions. While i despise gps spoofers who engage in gym battles, and i certainly get annoyed when one of them takes down several of my gyms overnight, i cannot help but notice that these imbeciles are useful when reclaiming lost gyms as they make your home territory appear stronger than the still active player base warrants. Just a thought to give you a different perpective...
yes, I have seen 1 or 2 spoofers on my team as well who have previously nicked spots on gyms I have powered up from level 9 to level 10. this is even more frustrating. I report them too and will carry on doing so.
What prompted me to start this thread was the fact that this is not just the odd spoofer which I am not going to let ruin my gym fun... This appears to be a co-ordinated team of spoofers running riot. Hopefully I am not the only person to have reported them and they will get banned soon.
I am afraid it won't work that way, they will always come back with new accounts. The only thing that might help would be niantic systematically scanning their user base, especially shortly after introducing a new gen of mons. If someone has a tyranitar one day after launch, they either habitually live in a biome (easy to check) or spoof. Or if someone catches (and shows off at a forum like this...) a low level blissey on day three - just too good to be true unless it spawned in that trainers usual habitat (at not too unholy an hour)
Edit: come to think of it, niantic could even easily set traps this way. Like making blisseys spawn on top of a mountain or in other difficult to access places at night and wait for spoofers to take the bait
Niantic doesn't do jack shit. I've reported spoofers dozens of times and they return after a while. I lost all will to fight gyms in my town because half of them are Mystic spoofers, and I am the ONLY Valor player in the town. (small town in a third world country where even thinking about Pokemon is laughed at and shat on)
Instinct team in my area are half GPS spoofers. They take either rural gyms or the ones in the middle of the city. Each cheater has multiple accounts. So many, that they put their secondary accounts in less protected gyms and still are able to hold them. I keep reporting them but Niantic is doing nothing for now. They are scum and are ruining the game
I'm highly skeptical that Niantic will stop this. I used to have this exact same problem with both Instinct and Mystic players. They must have gotten bored with it, and understandably so because where's the fun in a game with zero challenge left? I've had some success with reporting some of the more obvious cheaters, with usernames like jf98p3p98hasrg;itoh taking 9 spots in a level 10 gym. Never saw them again. But here's the thing; since these tools stopped flipping the gyms next to me, I've started to get bored with it. I like taking down gyms, it's fun. So now that my closest gyms are all red all the time and I've kept the same ones for weeks, there's not much left to do but farm dust and candies, easily the most tedious and un-fun part of the game. I even stopped getting my streak bonuses for a short time. Gen 2 coming out has definitely helped, but I'm already getting as tired of Murkrows and Sentrets as I was of Pidgeys and Rattatas. I used to get more mad at the cheaters but now, I kinda want some of them back, if nothing more than to give me something to do. I'm a little sleep deprived and rambling but I think you're cheaters will get bored of it sooner than you if you really love the game. Hang in there. And it's super cool you can share this with your daughter.
Thanks for the reply. My daughter likes the game for the most part, but is not as enthusiastic about it as me, lol
Not completely understanding why you would want GPS cheaters to come and take your gyms tho...can't you travel further a field if you want the buzz of battling over gyms? I understand though if this is not possible.
I would gladly swap you the team of cheaters right now as it's annoying that no sooner have you taken a gym it's gone again to a spoofer.
P.S. I will come back and update this post if these cheaters disappear.
Yeah, it's a real problem. A few months back I was having issues with one guy from Mystic who kept spoofing into the gyms in my area. Over time I managed to fend him off by persistently retaking them.
Lately though, it's my own teammates on Valor that are the problem. They're sticking their 3000CP Tyranitars and Heracross (I'm in NY, they don't spawn here) in gyms 2 days after Gen 2 released. I mean give me a damn break, like anyone thinks you got those things legitimately?? It makes me want to switch teams so I can smash them.
I tried reporting people in the beginning but I've long since given up on that since those reports clearly never get read.
Maybe one day it will get addressed but I'm not holding my breath.
Thanks for your post. Keep fighting the good fight.
