My take on the new gyms and Motivation, a slightly different view?
First off, and I've said it before, Motivation IS NOT CP.
Don't assign a numerical value to motivation. Think of it only as a percentage. It's a new stat, not a new name for an old stat. All of the pictures we have seen, people say that the Motivation went down by XXX. Not true. The CP went down by XXX, the motivation is nothing more than how full the little heart shape meter is. 100% full, 50%, 25%, etc.
The CP of the mon is not going to go to 0 in order for the mon to be kicked out of the gym. The Motivation will go to 0. Yes, a decrease in motivation will lower the CP, but not to 0.
Here's what I believe is going to happen. (Assume a single mon in the gym.)
The mon is at full strength and with full motivation.
You attack it and defeat it. The Defending (D) mon's motivation will go down by a preset percentage, say 25%. This will also lower the D mon's CP by some amount. Say 12%. The higher the initial CP, the more the mon will lose. You battle and defeat the mon again. It's motivation goes down by another 25%, and is now at 50%. The CP also does go down, but not as many points as the first time. After 4 defeats,each taking 25 % of the D mon's Motivation, the D mon has 0 Motivation, but it still has CP. It must be defefated one more time, with 0 motivation, in order to be taken out of the gym.
CP never went to 0. In my scenario, the mon had to be beaten 5 times in order to be removed from the gym. If this gym were a full 6 D mon, then you would have to win 5 rounds of 6, or 30 battles, in order to empty the gym.
Remember, when a defeated mon comes back to you, it needs revives/potions to be made healthy. These do not (and never did) restore the CP, they restore the HP. It has always been the HP of the mon that made it ready for battle. The CP of the mon has always been the same.
If anything, Motivation is tied to HP, not CP. It's just that, if the motivation goes down, the CP also lowers TEMPORARILY. (Meaning, for the next battle, or for a given time period.)
A high CP mon with good defense stats and the right moveset will still be tougher to defeat than a low CP mon with bad defensive stats regardless of the moveset. I do not belive that a lower CP attacker will cause more 'damage' and therefor lower the Motivation or the CP any more than a higher level attacker. A loss is a loss, and all losses will result the same.
The new gym system is designed to accomplish a few things.
1) Make fighting in gyms a more integral part of the game. I believe that some Trainers will find that they spend way more time fighting than even catching.
2) Reduce the # of stagnant gyms. Even the Trainer who has their mon in the gym will want it to come out eventually. Since YOU can only earn 100 coins in a single day, leaving your mon in a gym past the 100 earned coin mark is a waste. ALso, having mor ethan 1 mon attempt to bring you coins, totalling more than 100 coins in a day, is a waste.
3) In effect, it will lower the total number of free coins each individual will earn. Since gym turnover will be occurring much faster in most places.
In truth, I can see Trainers using their old Prestigers as Defensive mon now. There may be an advantage. You want your mon in a gym, where it can earn coins. But, you don't get the coins until it comes home. You are limited to 100 coins per day. There is no need to place your high CP mon in the gym, and have it sit there for weeks or months. It will earn too many coins than it can carry for a single day.
Putting in a middle level mon might be a better option. You only want it to stay there for a few days, max.
Placing less than the best mons in the gyms will also result in you keeping the absolute best for both gym attacks and for Raid battles.
I also see that, since anyone on your team can feed the mon in the gym, and they get rewarded for doing so, having a mon come home due to not being fed is not going to happen very often. If I am near a gym that I can get credit for feeding those worthless Nanab berries to, I'm going to do it.
My percentage numbers may be off in the above example, but I'm willing to bet that my scenario, or something very close to it, is how things play out.
The important part of my post is, we all have to stop thinking that Motivation is CP. Motivation AFFECTS CP, but it is a totally new stat with it's own method of calculation.
Answers
"The other interpretation (that motivation = cp while in the gym) "
Makes no sense......
IF they just wanted to decrease the mons CP as it loses fights, they wouldn't have to make a stat called Motivation. They could just as easily put a CP bar on the screen and let it decrease as the mon loses battles.
Plus, the only place that Motivation seems to appear is in Gyms on defenders. Not in your bag, not on the gym attackers.
We've heard that you get your 10 cents after your pokemon gets kicked out of a gym and returned to you. We've also heard you earn an additional 10 cents for every 24 hours the pokemon sits in a gym.
I haven't heard anything about a clock (like the 20 hour one) to prevent one from "cashing out". With the more numerous gyms, probable increased turnover, and lack of a clock, you could potentially earn more cents per day than in the previous system.
But do we actually know that you earn 10 coins from your mon being kicked out immediately after entering (say after 10 minutes or so) and not only after staying for a full day.
If you are right, it would certainly become feasible to earn lots of coins if you have access to a lot of gyms (unfortunately I only have access to 5).
Unfortunately, wouldn't multiaccounters just exploit this endlessly?
Ther is still a limit of 100 coins per day per account. You can't just pop into 50 gyms and collect 10 coins per. Also, I saw something somewhere that there is a limit on how many gyms an account can be in per day. Can't seem to find that right now.
As to multi accounts:
Quite possibly. But the fact that a slot has to be empty for 10 minutes before anyone can put a mon in it should deter them. They don't want to be sitting there doing nothing for 10 minutes after they shaved the gym.
Again, my example is just my thoughts. But I feel fairly confident that it will work out like this.
SInce I first posted this, I have given some thought to compare this to the old gym system.
If you went to a level 10 gym and took it down: Them inimum number of defenders you had to face was 50, if you got lucky and the gym wasn't at 52K prestige to begin with. So, with only 6 defenders, it may be that the Motivation goes down by only 20% each time the mon loses. This would make it a total of 36 mon that you have to beat to empty the gym.
The gym can be taken out in stages. Fight only the first 2 -3 mon each 6 times. They will be gone. Then fight the remaining 3 mon. I used to do this same thing with level 10 gyms that were Blissey stacked. Take out what you can , maybe only 1 mon at a time. Either way, you have to fight the same # of battles to empty the gym.
Regardless, THIS IS ALL SPECULATION ON MY PART!
Oh, and although I didn't list it, another reason for this massive update is to encourage group play. 36 battles will be much easier if you aren't alone.
(I'll almost always be alone.)
And, you may get lucky and still find under-populated gyms with only 1 or 2 mon in them. 6 battles per mon isn't that bad.
