This is the way i look at it..... when PvP rolls around. Are your six better than mine? Pay to Play will not help that. Maybe they will cover a better base of raiding, but in the end they are buying passes to catch pokemon to help them buy more passes and catch those pokemon Alakazam-Machamp-Tyranitar.
Just have faith in your six!
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The free play/pay play gap
I am a f2p player, level 33. I played almost exclusively solo before the update. For a long time, I've been competitive in my local meta without many issues. Now I still play solo, but I'm in a discord group to do raids. It's great because it turns there is quite the active community paying here! I've gotten to do quite a few level 3/4 raids.
So anyway, my question: as I meet up with these players, I realize that by doing one raid every day I fall quite far behind those that spend real money and do 3-5+ raids a day. They talk about their armies of Machamps, Alakazams, and Tyranitars. So it seems like the f2p-ers are falling behind. However, at the same time, they're not getting that much more dust than I am so it's not like they can power up their level 20 army.
In your opinion, is the free/pay gap growing, our am I just now noticing it as I start playing with others?
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I am f2p and do one raid per day. I am in a group chat as well so I mostly do tier 4 raids. I haven't noticed many pay play players yet, actually only one, but I don't mind about the gap at all, they pay for what they get, it is all fair. I am happy with my haul so far, assuming 300 coins every week, that is 3 premium+ 7 free =10 passes every week for me. That fits my pace well. However if legendary ever comes out in raids, I will have to pay if legendary pass is even available for buying
Well, the pay players have always been able to buy unlimited incubators, so there has always been a gap, if you want to consider it that.
I'm a free player (level 37), and I don't really care whether there is a gap, or how big it is. I play the free game, and I have no need to compare my progress with that of pay players.
I think in general, people would enjoy this game more if they played for themselves and stopped comparing their advantages and disadvantages based on free vs. pay, city vs. rural, water/ice biome vs. fire/desert biome, etc. Who cares if someone else makes progress faster?
As another f2p player, level 33, I agree that our growth is slower. What I care about is whether I'm having fun or not. And if the pay players were walking around with all level 39 Ttars and Ho-Ohs and Mewtwos, that would kill the game for me. But they aren't, and won't be when the legendaries are out, because Stardust will still limit them. Walking 9 incubators approximately doubles one's stardust take, so they will have a few more tough mon, but I'm being efficient and making it work.
I just hope Niantic doesn't decide to give pay players a huge edge. That would kill the game for me.
I think in general, people would enjoy this game more if they played for themselves and stopped comparing their advantages and disadvantages based on free vs. pay, city vs. rural, water/ice biome vs. fire/desert biome, etc. Who cares if someone else makes progress faster?
I couldn't say it better. I used to think people who use city (3rd party, against TOS) trackers are cheaters, but if everyone there is doing that, I guess the playing field is even.
It doesn't concern me, and although my mon would never be able to compete there, they are quite impressive in the local small town gyms, and that's really all that matters.
I didn't pay anything for a long time, I would only use lucky eggs when I got to a level that awarded them. However, if you didn't do lucky eggs and mass evolves during a huge event, you were losing at least a level--so you should have been aware of the reality before these raids. Marginally matters now, but I have 15 lucky eggs in the bank and at least 300 candies of most of the pointless species and also the ok ones. Goldeen, Psyduck, Growlithe, Natu, zubat, wooper, sentret, marill, on and on X 40
I play for free and see no difference. If you are strategically minded then you can easily compete. I have never paid on principle as spoofing was/is epidemic however with the current changes I may reconsider as it has certainly died down. Although having gone such a long time as a free player, also free from all poke and gym trackers and a none shaver I am lothe to lose that status.
Also free2play here...If anything, the pay gap has actually gone down since "buying" stuff doesn't get you much anymore...The only thing is they can buy more stardust from hatching more eggs, but honestly, you don't NEED that many mons powered up to do relatively well IMO.
If you didn't waste dust early on, you would have a ton IMO...I burned a ton of dust early on for defenders, but don't regret it one bit since it earned me free coins and stardust for a long while...
My wife and kids never really did gyms so she and them are just sitting on like 1.5 million dust and just collects mons...They can power up a ton of attackers, but even then, so what? No paying player can solo a Level 4 boss alone so they still need "your" help.
Most folks playing free can easily also solo level 3s so paying got those folks nothing.
There is little end game anymore so a paying customer doesn't even need high IV or hatch great mons since you can just get them just as easily...
Level 40 doesn't really get any benefit at all...Buying more raid passes just gets you more of the same, but the BIGGEST unfairness is simply dense city vs rural/small/suburb players since they aren't doing tier 4 raids daily (me...still no tyranitar raid yet).
I enjoy fun, and raids are fun, so I pay for raid passes when I have no coins left. The only "gap" I see is that I'm lazier and trade money for a bit of convenience.
You'll be more than fine as a F2P player. Like you said, the only potential gap is the number of Trex and Snorlax we have. You can also have 12 Trex, but it requires 12 days instead of <12 days with paid passes.
