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Reasons to call for a gym rework

Hi fellow trainers,

I have seen many threads to call for gym rework, but I don't see a clear reason why. So please share your reasons if you have any then we can browse through them to find any solutions before Niantic can do anything for us.

Asked by Sparker8 years 1 month ago

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My level 25.5 Venomoth cannot get into gyms because of his CP!

;)

My level 35.5 Venosaur can't get into gyms because of his CP!

I have seen quite many Rattatas and Pidgeys in gyms recently. So your Venasaur and Venomoth are definitely can sit at top of a gym :D

My level 35 Umbreon can't get into gyms because of his CP. He's made for defense too.

I think the reason people discuss a gym rework is because Niantic have stated they are working on it...and so people like to speculate on what that would entail.

The reasons it is need is because
1. There is an imbalance between training up a gym and taking down a gym
2. bubblestrat
3. Shaving
4. Stagnant gyms
5. Limited number of relevant defenders
6. CP

...just off the top of my head.

I would rather see small changes to address the issues, than a sweeping rework. That isn't how Niantic has operated in the past.
1-3: Change the deprestiging formula to put more importance on all clears and less on individual battles. Factor in CP when taking down a gym. Develop software to identify and eliminate multiplay and spoofing (or at least make it more difficult).
4: Provide a significant definitive reward for winning battles. Meager XP and the hope of eventually collecting coins are not cutting it. Instead of thinking,"That L10 gym isn't worth it," get people thinking, "That's 10 pokes I can beat down toward (insert goal\prize)."
5-6: Addressing 1 will have an effect here. Also, reducing the role of attack in the CP calculation (no change to battle mechanics) will help.
Implementing these minor changes would have a major impact on the gym system.

Provide a significant definitive reward...

Even a random one would be welcome. Maybe something like spinning s prize wheel with random rewards: balls, potions, revives or berries. Decreased odds on better draws such as XP, coins, storage, or even incubators would make a lot of people happy. Seasonal event draws could easily be incorporated to future events too!

Technical issues, notably the dodge bug and gym errors due to GPS drift.

So I can give a second thumbs up.

Rage against the dodge bug.

HKN, your issue is great.
But that's the technical problem. They can solve it without a gym rework.

because 30 minutes of tap tap swipe against the same set of pokemon to collect jack and Sh!^ against the same group of spoofers every day is not likely to keep me playing and paying for long.

I also want much better gameplay experience in selecting the team - i.e. automatically pre-load last team chosen, allow multi-select of team, allow re-arranging the battle order after team chosen, allow healing the chosen pkm from the battle screen (after a battle of course). Oh, also dodge bug, gym freezing or GPS drift mid-battle, etc etc etc.

Hell yes to those! Making it easier to select a team may even be my number one. It's the main reason why I generally prefer taking down gyms to prestiging gyms. When I try to prestige the app will invariably crash when scrolling pokemons to find the right cp1200 mons (or whatever) for the task.

@aSp: thank for your contributions.

So may we work more deeply into them:

If they balance between training up and taking down, i.e 1000 prestige points for a win, that will lead to many more stagnant gyms as it's too easy to build a gym.
Bubblestrat: This may be the main issue that many call for gym rework. But it can be solved by changing quick moves' speed as they had done in the first week of Gen 2.
Shaving: it's a big hurt for low level players (and also legits). But whatever gym system they may change, if it is a fixed number level gym, ppl will still kick the lowest one out to put their mons in. If the gym system is change in favor of defensive ability, they will kick low defend stats pokemons out. Spoofers are blame most for shaving, but two account trainers or group of trainers can be shaver as well.
Stagnant gyms are a big issue too. Niantic had changed the gym system one to solve this problem. And we only saw level 3 gyms at that time. Then they changed back to this system, so they must have considered this problem really well.

5 & 6: I don't quite understand your points here.

Sweet!

Good point...there is even an imbalance in when, or at what point you train up or take down a gym.
That said, I think the way it is was designed is so 'nearly' every slot requires a minimum amount of time to actually place a mon in a gym...whether you are taking it down or training it up. The only difference is position 2 and 3 in a gym, but I suspect this is done so that if a team take down the gym, then they all get to place a mon in once they drop it.
This one is probably less of an issue...and harder to balance than anything else.
Bubblestrat...the easiest fix is simply to require a minimum level needed before a mon can be placed. Basically, making it impossible to place a mon lower than lvl10 would fix it. We need to be a specific level as a player before we can usew a gym...make our mons follow the same rules, and it solves Bubblestrat very simply.
Shaving/multi accounts etc - unfortunately there will always be those in any game that find a simple way to gain an advantage over others...and are willing to be less than 'fair' to do it. They claim it is clever or smart...but to me it is just an ass move.
In anything in life, there are always going to be people who think it is acceptable to screw over others for personal gain - they think they are somehow outsmarting those that are not prepared to screw someone else over. It is not isolated to this game, or even gaming in general.
Stagnant gyms - I think this is the big reason for Niantic wanting to change things, and as you have said, they have shown in the past that they want this to change.

5 & 6 These are pretty much the same issue...or at least result in the same issue.
Because gym placement is based on CP it means that only a certain number of type of mons make it into a gym. This results in most others simply becoming XP fodder for catch/hatch/evolve.
It also makes for a rather boring combat system. We know what to expect and we know how to battle them - so we are basically just repeating the same battles no matter when or where we battle a mon. Adding in the fact that most of the meta are biome dependant gives an advantage to players who live in specific biomes.
The biome aspect is more difficult to fix, but are all a result of CP being the determining factor for gym placement.

Also, I can list the issues people seem to have with the gym system, but I do not have any ideal fixes for most of them (other than bubblestrat) - and some will still be issues no matter what happens with the changes Niantic make.

Whooops...I seem to have waffled on a bit, even more than usual.

Yeah,

What I really want to do is finding simple solutions for these issues before calling for Niantic to change their system because some issues, sometimes can't not be changed with gym rework.

What if they have each mon 2 "scores" instead of just CP. Something like an "attacking quotient" (like CP) and a "defending quotient" this way, pokemon like Dragonite would be rated as clear attackers and then pokemon like Umbreon and others with disproportionately high defense stats become relevant defenders. I don't know. Just spit balling here.

At this point, they've already got a plan. Their engineers are working hard. So I'm afraid it's not the suggestion period now.
Just sit back, grab a cup of tea, and watch what happens next.

I very easy quick fix would be to limit the number of gyms each trainer can be in at one time to 12-15 gyms.
That would help limit lots of the over the top trainers who try to get into every gym they come across.

The main problem is the current system encourages weak defenders with high cp ahead of good defenders and leads to gyms packed with Rhydon and Gyarados.

Gym shaving is a big problem, as is spoofing.

Every coin has two sides.

I also feel very annoying when my defender got shaved from a stable gym but on the other side it helps gyms getting out of stagnant status :D

When I see a rival gym at level 10, with full of Blissies and Snorlaxes that I knew they built by bubblestrating, I will trim the lowest pokemon, leave a slot for some high CP but weak defenders. I do it again and again until those tanks are kicked out. And that the time for me to clear the whole gym.

Smooth move, Sparker! I never thought of that before. Will definitely give this a try one day.

My biggest issue with it is that so few Pokémon are relevant in gyms.

Only about 8 are really used as gym defenders. I think it would be so awesome if there was a reason to have a strong Poliwrath, Slowbro, Lapras, golduck,Arcanine, houndoom, Feraligatr, etc - but right now they (and most other Mons) are irrelevant in gyms