Rural gyms, not really a question
This is the gym situation in the village (around 8000 people) where my parents live. Before it was always level 10 blue.
Expected more activity with new gyms system. So now they get no dust, no gold and probably not enough participants for lv 4 raids.
Answers
No dust isn't exactly true because now you only get coins when your Pokémon returns. You now get
20 Stardust (and possibly a candy) by feeding a berry to the Pokémon in gyms. The update does indeed mostly suck for rural players, there are two level 4 Raids about to start here and I doubt there will be enough players to defeat them.
I feel sad for them, I know how they feel...Despite in my town is not that extreme there are gyms that can stay even a week without no one touching them, and about raids we have managed to create a small WhatsApp group, but we are only 6, so if one of us is busy or can't go to the raid goodbye to level 4 ones most of the time because other people that we have seeing playing is a lot more casual and normally doesn't show up.
Today a Tyranitar poped up at 10.00AM, we went there, we were only 3...This system sucks a lot for people that are not in high density areas or places with a good amount of players.
The new system sucks, period. Well, it does for anyone who has played this game everyday since the start, the very players Niantic SHOULD be looking after. Afterall, when the raid hype dies down & the casual players become casual again, what are they left with? I'm level 36 & haven't played much at all since the update, gyms are terrible, not enough spaces to make driving around the old gyms worthwhile & been on afew gyms for over a week now & collected nothing. No prestiging makes catching regular mons seem pointless & levelling up my 3000+ mons is a waste of dust. Bring back level 10 gyms, prestiging but leave the 1 Mon rule in place. Make the new gyms for under level 30 players only & keep the raids. Sorted, IF that happens (it won't) I will start playing regularly again.
I am in the very same boat. I am "orto" rural player and have 30 km to the nearby town ( 9000 people settlement is "quite a Town" at my place, I succeeded to drop a pokemon in all gyms in a town which seems to be same color as me. The only mistake was Snorlax which is now the 8th day in a Gym and not hungry at all ( lol)....but others are all still in gyms for days and it seems that although some are with notices that they need berry are staying in gym...it seems forever, no need to feed them (?). At the moment all are defending Gyms for 978 hours and no coins, and what is more important to me no stardust so far. I really don't see any use of Gyms. Raids... when visiting town I waited quite a time that somebody join me, several times (it seems that nobody play Pokemon anymore)... I can barely manage raid 2 (level 26) and no hope for raid 3 or 4 ... and even I would be level 36 I don't believe that I can pass raid 3 or raid 4 (I tried several times with raid 3 solo but it is just "no go"). I am playing this game one year and my low level is related only that I had no daily access to pokestops and pokemons appear only when I activate incense.
