Another frustrated veteran.

Mentioned many times already...Key to getting coins/gyms is to be the "last" (late night) gym taker and collect 6+ hours in the morning...Ideal if you have 6 accounts to deter casuals by forcing them to fight 18 fights minimum...

Sadly, I don't see them changing things back so I agree that in a month or so, casuals will be bored with the raids (my wife is already bored and feels forced to use her free pass) and hardcore already are pulling back...

The change has also made levels irrelevant (lvl 5s can get level 20 Tyranitars now if raiding in a big group), hatching eggs, buddy candies (rare candies are far easier to get than walking 5km for 1 candy), high IVs, leveling, walking, exploring far and out of the way gyms are all completely pointless...I see my favorite, undriveable gyms with the same players sitting there for 5 days...rivals won't bother attacking to reward you and players have limited/no incentive to hike/walk anymore to far off places.

Also, 75% of the mons (defenders, prestigers) are now even MORE useless and gym diversity isn't any better than before IMO...(always see Blissey, Snorlax, Dragonite, Vap, Rhydon, Gyarados in gyms now)...

They solved nothing and gyms will stagnate even more since I'm even less motivated to kick our rivals and REWARD them with their coins for the day...esp when I will be kicked out in < 1 hour.

I just play to try to solo Level 3 raids (building my team) now (Lvl 36+, used to collect 8-10 daily, free2player) and hope this gym rework is completely tossed out (very doubtful and IMO worst than before)...

Yeah I have lost all motivation with this gym update before I was mainly playing for gyms with my town very competitive between the teams. Now that is all gone and grinding seems pointless while I don't find raids fun. Not playing for now even for my streaks, will see if it changes otherwise I'm done.

Another frustrated lvl 36 veteran here, I played v much the same as op, collected from 10 gyms daily & generally enjoyed the game with a good local rivalry. Zero motivation to seek out those out of the way Mystic gyms that were a coin farm for me before. But herein lies the problem. Players like me were not a good fit for Niantic, I had enough coins & dust to build my collection of high level mons WITHOUT spending any real money. Sure, I bought afew incubators on special events but I didn't even need to do that. As the player base dropped, the hardcore thrived & this didn't go unnoticed by the powers that be. These changes were all about the money via raid passes which I'm sure for now & until we get legendaries will make them millions. After that? I think the game will be in trouble unless another gym rework is done & gen 3 is pushed out before the end of the year. I've gone casual for now & will keep ticking over as many of my high level buddies have.

It's just a game. Owned by Niantic. Go hug your wife or help a friend in need instead. The new game dynamics have offered, perhaps taught me that much.

I actually question how much do casuals really pay/support the game? I think like most models, 10-20% of the players pay 80-90% of the revenue here. You have some hardcores here with 1000-2000 eggs hatched...They're the ones with 20-30 gyms, etc...

I would also think those 10-20% are the hardcore people who have a need/desire to get own territories, gyms, etc...

Casuals just won't bother/care or even pay when there are so many free mobile games...

We'll see I guess since biting the hand that feeds you usually is not a wise strategy.

I have tickets to Go Fest and I'm planning on grinding stardust for 3 weeks to power up as many legendary counters as I can. Then, if they don't unleash legendaries in Chicago, I'm probably done. Raids were fun for a few days but I've already used successful TMs on everyone I wanted and now they're collecting bag space. It seems every Niantic update just breathes a few breaths of life into this game and that's all. Game used to be about catching and evolving to build up enough strength to get 100 coins a day. Now, at least for the next couple of weeks, it's all about raids. Once everyone blows through their passes or gets all the pokes they want, those will dry up. But hey, I'm sure there will be a fighting event next week that will flood all of our sightings with mankeys.

well I do see this a better course change as I am semi hard core and the gym here are valor or mystic I am on the losing side with team instinct have yet to get any tms but before the change the spoofers had control of the gyms now mostly locals. I never got a lot of stardust or coins from gyms and I just have 900k and spent maybe 200 usd and 12 heavy hitters cp 2900 to 2300 all types mostly vapirons . I hatch eggs for stardust coins pfft I can buy them. I will hit lv 40 someday until then its all good gaming

Started playing second week game released... watched Niantic FCK it all up with each update. The gym rework topping all of the crappy updates by far. I have basically quit playing. Since i live on a spawn point i can keep one of my streaks alive, the catch bonus. But until this crap game is fixed i refuse to walk down the street to spin a single poke stop. I have enough balls to keep this up for over a year. LV 39 1/2 and i have built a team of 16 give or take fellow instinct players in my town. Used to collect on 10 a day all while taking on the local valor spoofers. We Instinct are in a group chat. Used to coordinate attacks, strategy... now its all about who can help with raids. Since i can only do 1 a day unless i pay a dollar to FKNIantic, i have lost all interest in this game and its only a matter of time before i tell my team mates to remove me from our group chat. Any other gaming company would have treated this game well, IDK why niantic is such a piece of sheet?

I've been playing since the beginning and have a big collection of high CP, high IV Pokemon, I love the new update, TMs are a big incentive for me to play right now. Getting all my big Pokemon perfect moves will take a fair bit of effort.

The only thing I'm slightly despondent about is how much stardust I spent powering up Pokemon that now see little use.