Gym rework predictions
AI changes - less predictable
Placement no longer determined by CP - likely order of arrival
Maintenance of your mons - require a berry or candy or something every so often or they get booted from gym
No duplicate mons in a gym - less likely in my opinion, but has been rumored
Some type of cooperative play, but I'm not sure what
What other speculation is there?
Answers
Earn as you go. Same caps. Earn for taking down gyms. Still earn for holding them like normal. Earn amounts for prestiging gyms.
These are all activities we want to be happening in this inactive gym scene, right? So, how in the world is this idea not the right one compared to the current plan-zero action in other gym type areas or spoofer held areas where no action equals 100 coins for the few? Right now entire towns cannot earn. That's beyond stupid. No wonder folks tell the gym scene to F*k it's own face. There's no reward.
If you get paid to take down gyms then folks may bother to contribute.. Even if your team or town sucks. Hell then being a minority's can almost be a plus. Right now there's zero reason to go battle unless your team owns the town except righteous anger which I still drop daily on our spoofers....
...for no reward.
Their main blurb about the gym rework is about cooperative play...
My guess is all our speculation is probably way off (like CP changes, first in first out, 1 mon per gym, etc...).
Unless it's primarily focused on cooperative gym play, I think it'd be better to speculate what "cooperative" play means...possibly much much slower attacks, need a group to knock out gyms, maybe more abilities that can heal so you have the mmorpg games where someone is the DPS guy, healer guy, what else is there?
Hoping to collect 1 more time if shut off turns out to be 11:59pm PST...(just 3 hours till I can collect again!).
Thinking about the cooperative gameplay for gyms, I wonder if they may take a page from sun and moon? They have mentioned about trainers getting notifications, so wonder if they may tell you a battle is happening close by and you can go to that gym and it tells the attacker "the defending pokemon has called for help", and then you enter the battle with a pokemon to help defend the gym?
In the worst case, the rework could:
1) Benefit social players but disadvantage solitary players. Cooperation should provide some advantages. But then solitary play must still remain possible and offer an equivalent advantage in some form.
2) Benefit cheaters just as it does players who make the most effort. Most games will reward skill, experience level and hours of effort. Unfortunately this is why cheating was invented. Gyms will have to be accessible for anyone, resist large imbalances, should not be pay-to-win, offer limited rewards, and detect non-human patterns.
Of your list, "order of arrival" strongly benefits cheaters/bots. "No duplicates" is good, since it is neutral. It could be interesting if the game randomly decides which type of Pokémon can be inserted next.
Perhaps gym placement would result from the amount of berries you load up Pokémons with, but that benefits those with easy access and time for resources, and cheaters.
Placement may also not matter if "holding" gyms is not a thing after rework.
If it is, they can also make it where within 24 hours of someone attacking a gym, they need to clear it all or it resets with 50k prestige again (meaning no one gets kicked out)...After the 10 mons are there, there is no more shaving, put back, etc...unless the whole gym falls, etc...To stay in, you need berries everyday. If you don't feed your mon, it comes back...You buy berries in the shop...
All in all, all these ideas are bad and I don't have much to offer, but will just wait and see.
I hope - probably can't expect - that there will be ways to interact with friendly gyms when they are level 10 (if the level system stays in place). IMO this always was one of the main reasons for shaving, I'd happily try to see if I could get through a friendly level 10 gym with my attacking team if there was some sort of motivation to do so.
There is one prediction that I'm sure of....
If the new gym system still allows for spoofers (single or with multiple accounts) to take over gyms while basically locking out the real players,
Then I'm OUT.
Since Niantic can't seem to be able to ban the spoofers, they should redesign the gym system to not be user-slot-based. (since spoofers easily take all the available slots)
We can earn coin by fighting Niantic's mons in gyms.
Easy solution for attacking mons, but then we'd not need good defenders, so somehow defenders still need to come into play.
-Prize wheel for taking down enemy gyms. The higher the level the better the options. The more attackers, the more you have to share the booty. At worst could be a small pile of balls, revives, or good potions. At best coins, dust, 10km, or an incubator.
-Forced defender diversity. How? I could come up with a number of ways, none of them would please everybody. I've invested heavily outside of the big 7. Its their time to shine.
-Defending team can somehow reinforce their towers while being assaulted.
-Remote upkeep costs. In fine paying to keep my defender in the gym. I would be hella tight or I need to go to the gym to do so. Let me send a carry pidgey with the berries to keep my defenders happy.
-New berries. In the main series a Yache berry reduces damage from a super effective ice attack. I'm asking for a lot here, but if that's the berry that would keep my Dragonite in the gym that would be sweet. The reason this is likely to not happen is that would require some 16 new berries. Asking for a lot.
