I have seen the opposite around me. There were two T5 raids in a park that no one goes to in the winter. The pokemon were on the gym for 6+ days the last time I saw, and another day I went to a mall where a lot of people play (because of an EX Gym) and saw only one raid in about 5 hours. I was wondering the same thing, but I ended up assuming it was just random selection.
I agree it would make sense to have activity levels to effect the likelihood of the gym receiving a raid. It makes more sense because that's where the people are so more people would do the raids. That could make Niantic more money from people who end up buying passes.
It would be interesting to try to do a study and keep track of how often the gyms get turned over and how often the gyms we survey receive raids.
Gyms/Raids activity linked?
So we've had pretty bad weather the last 3-4 days, and not many gyms have turned over, and in the time we have had maybe half at most of the gyms get one raid at (I can see 16 gyms from where im at, and only saw about eight eachday)
This is compared to last weekend where we had more or less near constant raids.
so im wondering, could activity at gyms, ie turn over rate, be correlated to likelihood of raids? Would make sense for niantic to add, gyms that turn over more are likely more seen, there for more likely to be raided at by people than gyms say in the mountains that no one goes to.
Answers
There are other variables that go into how long pokemon stay at a gym. Seasonal (like when students arrive on campus, or destinations during holiday seasons), and if a gym is new, there will be a lot more activity for it. So this way of measuring gym activity is skewed by different factors, only some of which are relevant for raid frequency.
Note that triggering EX raids works almost exactly along those lines, but with regular raids being tracked - enough raids trigger an EX raid, unless there's something in the gym when invites go out, or it had an EX raid last cycle. So making all raids work on the same system would lead to severe raid clumping - popular gyms would get raids all the time (reinforced by the frequent raiding), and unpopular raids would get almost none.
I understand there are other factors that go into how long pokemon stay on gyms. The question above was wether or not the activity in gyms was linked to the amount of raids or how frequently raids are at those gyms.
I said that gyms with almost no activity still received raids daily, and the EX Gym that a lot of people go to (there's a lot of turnover because people are trying to receive an EX raid pass) didn't have one raid in 5 hours.
