I dissent. The game is now much better. What say you?
I love the rework of the gym battling system.
It has largely eliminated the spoofers, at least for me as far as I can tell. Spoofers had been the primary detriment to my enjoyment of the game. I would take over a gym, having walked there and battled long and hard to do so - only to have a spoofer, sitting at a computer, kick me out in 30 seconds. I don't think the spoofers are entirely gone, it is just that their impact on the game is greatly diminished.
Niantic instituted the single species rule - a system much recommended and supported on this site by a multitude of players for a long time. How can we gripe when Niantic gave us what we requested?
If I want to invest the time and effort, I can now take over any gym. Before, with Blissey towers, I could not do that.
Before the rework of the gym system, I was very lucky to get 70 coins per day, never 100. More typically, I was getting 40 to 60. Now, with some effort, I can get 50 coins pretty reliably. So I went, relatively, from the middle to the top at the coin accumulation game - but only if I work at it. That seems fair.
In my opinion, the gym battling system is now much better. Ok, the rewards are not as good as before, but that is a relative issue. If the daily coin limit previously had been 25 rather than 100, then the change to 50 would have been met with rave, rather than negative, reviews. But give it time - its 50 for everybody now. Just reset your expectations.
The raids have their problems, but they show some promise. They have only been around for about three weeks. Be patient. Make suggestions on how to improve. Maybe Niantic will take heed.
And don't blame Niantic for trying to make money. It is a business for them. You don't have to pay to play. I have not paid to play, but I am enjoying the game very much nonetheless.
Answers
I did not say spoofers were eliminated. I wrote:
"It has largely eliminated the spoofers, at least for me as far as I can tell. . . . I don't think the spoofers are entirely gone, it is just that their impact on the game is greatly diminished."
Since the rework of the gym system, to my knowledge, I have not encountered spoofers.
Same here. Haven't seen a single spoofer since the rework and if one showed up at a raid, well...who cares?
The problem with spoofers was never that they had access to all the good pokemon. The problem was that they were destroying the game for everyone else in the gyms. That no longer seems to be the case. At least for many of us. I do know that some people out there are still having spoofer issues.
I never collected 100 coins either. I had a few stretches where InstinctBots Locked down my town and I was lucky to collect 10-20 a day. Still the option was there. The new coin system is really my only grievance with the game.
On an aside I also think its pretty lame on the berry feeding limit. I agree there should be a limit, however I think it should be per mon and gym, not for all mons across all gyms. By the time I make it halfway to One end of my go to playing strip I can't feed anymore.
I was under the impression I would stop tossing bananas with this new update. I was wrong. Still drop that junk. Pretty minor complaint though. I can live with that.
Niantec would have encountered a lot less flax if it had left the limit at 100.
I have not encountered any berry feeding limit, other than each successive berry fed to a specific mon results in diminishing benefit. On the other hand, getting any benefit from the largely formerly worthless Nanab Berry is a boon.
I get errors left and right when I try to go on feeding frenzies. My ~1.5km play strip has about 8 gyms. We work hard keeping them blue. If they're all halfway down I error out by the 5th one. Seems to subside in 10 or 15 minutes but I usually forget about it or someone else goes in for the refill.
Also agree on the flak for reduction. Its the only thing people in my community complain about. The other changes have been pretty well received. We have regular enough turnover here. I could see that being a problem in some areas. If you have t defenders defending and don't lose a gym that day you should he rewarded form that too.
unfortunately the gym scene in my area go worse. Many are stagnant. Torn it down and got kick out in mins and went back to their team. Gym fights are less challenging but take longer time to finish all 6. And no more fights for own team. How can i find it interesting.
Raids are ok, at least I see some real people standing in front of me :)
Well, I am happy that it does work for yourself, but this is not the situation for many of players you know? Gyms in my area became stagnant faster than ever before, nobody wants to give other teams free coins so they just don't fight, there are less spots to fill, only 6 per gym, and without prestiging, which leads into no gym under level 6, if by some coincidence a gym is going down, there are two only possible options, or you get your mon back in less than 10 mins (no coins), or it gets filled and stay there for days because other players don't want to attack (again, no coins, even you can argue that you get 50, when you see your mon staying in a gym for more than 10 days, when it comes back even if you have the luck to get the 50 coins, feels like a HUGE waste of time and effort for a pretty low reward, 50 coins for 15 days = 3.33 coins per day...).
In my area there are not many players so my situation has gone from around 70-80 coins per day to absolute nothing a lot of days even fighting the same amount or even more gyms.
Removing dust and rewards for attackers (before you at least got 10 coins and 500 dust to take down a gym) is one of the biggest mistakes they could ever done. And don't have reverted this situation yet is even worse, because they show they don't care at all for their players (check the amazing anniversary event with unique gifts they gave to us who pay their bills)
Your concerns seem to lie mostly with the reward system, not the gym battling system. What I like about the gym battling system is the 6 pokemon max, single species gym. This is a great turn for the better. I am also OK with the present reward system, including the 50 coin max. However, so that gyms do not become stagnant, I think Niantic might need to tweak the rewards system to encourage more play.
I agree with most of this.
I live in a large city. Pre-rework, it was next to impossible to get more than 30 coins/day here without resorting to spoofing. I'd take down a strong gym and would then be booted from it before I'd managed to walk the quarter mile to the next closest gym. Now, it's relatively easy to accomplish 50 coins/day. I suspect many of the loudest complaints about the daily coin limit are coming from people who fall into one of the following categories:
-spoofers
-players in rural areas that had few other active players, making it much easier to hold 10 gyms for a long time
-either legit or botting hardcore players who started to feel that they were entitled to constantly control every gym in their area
Raids do need some tweaking - I feel like it probably shouldn't require offline coordination to succeed at Tier 4 raids. Even in a big city it seems like the only Tier 4 raids that attract a critical mass of players are those with Tyranitar/Snorlax/Lapras.
I love it when people call Niantic "money-grabbers", as if that's somehow an insult to them. They're a business. All the stuff they say about wanting to get people out and about and exercising and playing together is basic marketing. They're in it entirely to make money, and I suspect they're doing a decent job of that.
I can definitely understand a lot of the complaints about the new system, especially the >3000CP nerf, which just seems unnecessary, and the "coins on return" weirdness. But personally, I'm enjoying the game a lot more than I was previously. I'm getting more coins (finally Instinct have a foothold in some city centre gyms!), meeting more people and having more fun rather than it feeling like an endless grind to evolve something that turns out to be useless anyway.
I'm genuinely pleased the new system works for some of you. Depends entirely on how u play the game & how u fit pogo into your daily life. Personally, I don't have a great deal of time on a normal week for gymming, the odd hour here & there I would spend driving into Mystic areas, powering up gyms & trying to hold the max 10 for coins & dust, which I was quite successful in doing. My local area is instinct controlled. Now, the same drive sees the same blue gyms, 9 times out of 10, full. If I take the time to do the local gyms, I give the instinct players on there 50 coins, put my Mon on there & promptly get kicked straight off within 30 mins. So the new system doesn't work at all for me.
I agree. I'm mostly fine with the new system. I can still battle in gyms as much as I want, and I can even use lower CP attackers (similar to prestiging), if I want. I used to get 100 coins every day, and now I only get 50, but the 50 are pretty easy to get. I just buy less incubators and other items now.
We have the gym diversity everyone wanted, and can actually put whatever fun pokemon we want into gyms without worrying about being the first guy shaved out because of low CP.
I do miss the daily stardust reward from gyms. Dust is much harder to come by now, due to the loss of the gym reward dust, and the reduction in incubators that can be purchased with free gym coins. The one real complaint I have right now is that I feel I have to waste a lot of time catching every garbage pokemon like Rattata, Spinarak, and Sentret, just to get a reasonable amount of dust (8-10K) per day to power up my pet projects. That aspect of the game really isn't fun.
I have read all the replies. Opinions vary, but one thing seems to stand out. The rewards system needs some changes to incentivize gym battling. Stardust seems to be the most desired incentive, or maybe coins. So Niantic should take an incremental step and add a stardust reward for attacking a gym. Maybe something like 100 stardust for each pokemon the attacker ejects from the gym, the same reward as for catching a pokemon.
