-another- Gym suggestion
So there have been quite a few suggestions lately on how to change the gym system since the rework was mentioned by niantic. I thought of something lately and I don't think I've seen anyone else suggest something like this. (you can correct me if I'm wrong though)
What if, instead of pokemon dropping out 1 at a time as the gym loses levels, all pokemon only get knocked out of a gym when the prestige hits 0.
Training a gym would still work the same as it does now. You prestige vs a gym to level it up and battle a gym to take away the prestige. However when say, you beat a lvl 3 gym(6000 prestige) and take away 4000 prestige all 3 pokemon are still in it. And you'd have to beat at least two more pokemon to take it down completely. (note: after beating the gym the first time, it would still be a lvl 3 gym, however, it would only have 2000 prestige left.)
Gym placement would still be by cp. However gym placement would be far less important since all pokemon get knocked out at the same time annyway. This would also make good defenders with avarage cp (see tier 4 of the defenders list) alot more viable. Leading to a more divers gym meta.
This change would stop people with second accounts from defeating the bottom pokemon of a lvl 10 gym and putting in something higher since you need to take down the whole gym.
If you made it this far:
Do you think this change would create the effect I think it will?
Would you like this change?
Anny feedback is appreciated.
EDIT: concers/possible problems/feedback from players:
1) Possibly more stagnant and players might get locked out of gyms if one team dominates an area and you can't get your pokemon in gyms anymore.
Possible solution: more incentive to take down lvl 10 gyms + cap on how many gyms you can hold.
2) Bubblestrat pokemon to make a gym unbeatable.
Possible solution: ad min cap of lvl 5 pokemon (possibly higher than that)
3) Lack of progression (less pokemon in the gym) could be discouraging to some players.
Possible solution: more rewards from attacking/ prestiging to make it worthwhile; add visual to show progression (this last solution is no complete fix on its own)
4) Trolls who leave the prestige of a non-lvl 10 gym at 5k prestige so its almost impossible to prestige it to the next level.
Edit: proposed alternative from pipjay to discourage gym shaving.
Change how gym levels decrease. (eg. gym level goes down from 10->9 at 42k prestige; 9->8 at 30k prestige etc.)
Answers
I've mentioned something like this before, maybe months ago...
That said, the downside is once someone puts stuff in a gym, it'll probably never get a chance for anyone else to play since every other player is pretty much locked out after the 1st 10 put theirs in.
My version just had a prestige gauge so it's 52k now, knock it down, and it drops like you mentioned. Prestige it up and it goes back up so those 10 folks can stay longer.
Unfortunately, if all 10 mon gets stuck in there, then it would encourage multi-accounting for someone to put a bubbler on the bottom, prestige and put themselves, other accounts, and will never get knocked out easily until the whole gym is torn.
At least with the current system, if the gym is 22k, I can now put something in if it's not completely torn down while with this suggested way, I'd WANT the gym to collapse since I'm locked out now no different than if it's a level 10 gym.
Ultimately, there needs to be more ways to earn coins/stardust and 10 spots is too few for most areas.
They should 1st, just limit all gyms to 10 MAX. Cut out the people with 20, 40, even 12+ gyms.
No other easy fix in my mind currently for gyms.
I think the total gym mon removal will make things even MORE stagnant since 10 people in early are set, everyone else can fugitaboutit.
I missed your post then, sorry.
Interesting points, maybe if there was a better reason to tear down lvl 10 gyms this wouldn't be as big of a problem?
Also there is a pretty even gym distribution between valor and mystic in my area, so even if I couldn't join some gyms, I'd still be able to take over others. But this probably isn't true for everyone though, which is why I didn't think of being locked out of gyms.
I agree that there needs to be a limit to the number of gyms one can hold.
Lastly: do you think if they add a 1.5k cp cap bubblers wouldn't be a problem?
I've suggested this a few times before (for the last 2 monts I think), just never bothered to make a thread about it, basically with the same reasons, the one thing I don't like about it is that before this can be implemented, there should absolutely be a incentive to attack AND prestiege gyms, because if I can't put a pokemon in a gym, why would I ever be bothered to prestiege it? And if attacking a gym doesn't make a dent in the gym unless I take it down completely, some players migth be discouraged, because they basically see no progress when attacking the gym, and no reward unless they take it down completely (this last point is true now, but seeing no progress can lead to a stagnant metagame).
Yes, but even with a visual aid, it migth be a bit frustrating to some players to see no change in the gym, the other minor issue is, if no defender is knocked down, the gym should pop you out as soon as a battle that brings the gym to 0 prestiege finishes, otherwise you'd keep on figthing and you migth miss your hard earned spot, as it happends with prestieging.
The main problem I see right away: For gyms with less than 10 pokemon, if an opposing player were to fight it down most but not all of the way, say a level 7 gym with 5,000 prestige, then an allied player that wants to get into the gym would have to prestige A LOT to build back up all the prestige that had previously been taken down.
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Someone had a similar idea a while ago to deter gym shaving: A pokemon is not kicked out of a gym until it is lowered a full level. So the 10th pokemon is kicked out when the gym lowers to 40,000 prestige, the 9th is kicked when it lowers to 30,000 prestige, ... , and the last two pokemon are both kicked out when it drops to 0 prestige.
Yes, I think changing the shaving to 40k would help a ton since as we all know, shavers are lazy people so having to take a gym down 10k, then raise it up 10k is a lot of work.
Also, someone posted on Silphroad that they saw someone prestiging very slowly and was actually shaving the last few mons in a gym since that was the only way they knew how to get into a gym since they had no clue how to prestige 8k+...A lot of people don't seem to know how I've noticed honestly, even higher level folks so clearly, not everyone reads these forums.
I prestige gyms almost daily and can do 10k prestige in like 8-15 minutes worst case which I feel is fast enough for me so changing the prestige numbers alone will probably stop all shaving IMO.
This doesn't solve the stagnation, but the balance is hard because if they gave say 10 coins for every prestige level dropped, then you may have a situation where EVERY gym is torn down making it like when we had 1000 prestige down, 500 prestige up and nothing went over level 3-5.
Bottom line is that attacking gyms are a waste of time/resources and less exp than catching mons so no one bothers...me included since they get rebuilt within a day.
but you get to choose from whichever method you decide is simpler to do, depending on the situation.
Multi account players could just put a really easy to beat mon in the gym, and use that to destroy the gym - allowing them to ignore the defenders that others have spent a lot of dust/candy training up to be strong defenders.
Too easy to take advantage of IMHO
This would work a lot better if they put a limit of one mon/ kind along with it, it would prevent a impossible 10 blisseys gym to exists and force people to have a better arsenal of defenders. That would be my idea of perfect gym now, but if they really change a lot on gyms something better can be created from 0.
I do agree that a lvl 10 gym with 10 Blisseys would be very hard to beat. And a limit of how many Blisseys are in a gym might be justified. If we ever get to a point where we start seeing 3-4+ Blisseys in a gym regularly. (In my area there are 1-2 Blisseys max in a gym atm)
But for any other pokemon I think I'd be fine to allow multiples since most pokemon have good counters to beat them. (Maybe Snorlax too, but not so sure about him)
Other than the problems already mentioned, the main problem that I see here is that it would make gym placement mean nothing. I wonder whether most people would still be motivated to put in good defenders. If they were, it would work fine, but I already see people sometimes tossing pidgeys and things into gyms, so I'm not sure. Also, if even one person in a gym did this and this is the way the system worked, all anyone would have to do is defeat the pidgey repeatedly. It would be the only pokemon that mattered at all. Having the pokemon in reverse CP order would be better, but still there might be a rhydon or gyarados on top, and then the snorlax or blissey in the gym wouldn't matter.
Well the point of making gym placement less important was to give low max cp pokemon with good defensive stats a shot at doing what they were supposed to do.
Right now Slowbro, Umbreon, Cloyster, Steelix etc. are irrelevant as defenders, while they actually have good defensive stats, just because their max cp is to low.
By making gym placement less important you'd be able to make gyms tougher to beat so they are more likely to last a couple of days.
Edit: about the pidgey: I suggested a 1.5k cp min cap to prevent things like that, but since the lvl 5 thing as mentioned was sugested I added that instead.
I think a 1.5k cp min would be better, since a level 5 or 10 pidgey would still have the same effect. Even a level 30 pidgey would be bad.
Yours is an interesting idea, but I would prefer it if they went off a program like pokebattler to determine gym placement, going by what damage defenders would deal to their worst 5 matchups before fainting. They wouldn't need to make the change where the whole gym gets taken down at once.