Egg hatching is freaking expensive!
I just broke down and bought another round of the big coin pack. Where I live, the ONLY feasible way of getting Chansey candy, Snorlax candy, Dratini candy and Larvitar candy is through hatching of 10km eggs (and buddy walking, but that's super slow). I have seen exactly zero Chansey/Blissey in the wild, zero Snorlax in the wild, zero Larvitar/Pupitar/Tyranitar in the wild just three Dratini in the wild and one lone Dragonite in the wild while on a skiing holiday.
And the only way of hatching 10k eggs with any regularity is through getting rid of all the useless 5km and 2km eggs. My infinite incubator takes care of the 2km eggs, but I have to use regular incubators for the 5km eggs or the process is simply far too slow.
All of this would be OK, if the 2km and 5km eggs weren't so utterly terrible. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Machop, Exeggcute and Rhydon candy, but almost everything else is useless once you have the evolutions. I really really wish Niantic would make the eggs more useful. I'm in my 40's with a good job, so it's not a big deal for me, but I believe most players are young with very limited cash. Frankly, if I was 20 years younger, there's no way I would spend more than $10-20 on a game like this, whereas after playing for just a few months (since february), I'm already at something like $250-300 (!).
I definitely understand why Niantic have to make money this way and I'm 100% cool with it. I just think a lot of people will stop spending money on incubators if the egg quality doesn't improve. It was great during easter and shouldn't have been changed back, IMO.
Answers
At level 30 or even 35 should get a second infinite incubator. That is a great idea.
Also they should have specials/deals on incubators more often. Yeah they make all their money on this, especially during events but I agree getting coins for some people is very difficult.
Should be able to get a bit of coins as a daily quest for prestiging up a gym or maybe even beating X number of pokemon in a rivals gym. It would be up to a maximum but another incentive to get a few more bonus coins.
Their biome distribution really doesn't make any sense. I live in an area near hills, mountains, quarries, etc, yet I haven't seen a single Larvitar in the wild. I take a trip to Newport, RI on the coast and in addition to the expected water spawns, the resort where we were in had a rock spawn point where several Larvitars spawned and electric spawn point where I caught Mareep. What is up with that?
It also seems that the egg distribution is skewed in favor of the non rural areas as well. All of my Snorlax and Chansey hatches have been from eggs obtained from outside my area.
yep in the first month i caught a couple of larvitar near home and thought yeh living on this hill is finally going to give me a good local spawn but nope it was RNGesus f'ing with me. i drive down to Maloolabah (coastal) once a week to try for dratini and get a larvitar every other trip there as well.
But I thought the balance is supposed to be like this: in big cities, because gym turn-over rate is high, it is not easy to get coins so they have rare spawn instead. Whereas in rural areas, players are not that competitive so staying in gyms should be easier, which might compensate for their lack of rare spawns.