Possible Gym Solution
Ok, so everyone on here has really been going nuts trying to solve the problems that gym combat has, whether it is level restrictions, prestige adjustments, or whatever, and I think I've come up with a viable solution.
I think that one of the main problems with the game is a lack of diversity. People are sick of seeing the same dragonites, snorlaxes, vaporeons, etc. scattered throughout the gyms with no real differences, making for repetitive, grindy gameplay. So, in an effort to solve the diversity problem, we need to make more pokemon viable for something other than collecting.
My solution is to grant CP boosts to certain types of pokemon when you place them in certain gyms. For example, gym A will have a 40% boost when you put in a flying type so a 1500 CP pidgeot will now be 2100 CP. My idea would be that each gym would have the bonus, be at certain values for each types, weaker types get higher bonuses (ie. smaller bonus for water types than ghost types) to make more pokemon of the same level competitive. These bonuses would be random and would have 1 of 3 ways of being implemented:
1. All of X type put into this gym get Y% CP boosted for 48 hours whereupon all pokemon of Z type will get W% boosted. All pokemon already in the gym will continue to receive their boost until knocked out.
2. The next pokemon put in will receive a Y% boost if it is X type and it will change with every pokemon stationed at a gym, so that potentially each type can be represented at a competitive level in the same gym.
3. Individual players get a boost, where the next pokemon of X type that they put into any gym will get a Y% boost. Note: this one differs because it is individual to the player and not the gym.
This way we can have more diversity in our gyms, making matchups more fun and gym battles different than the same boring exeggutor vs. vaporeon, arcanine vs. lapras, etc. and make pokemon interesting.
Also, the prestige issues do need to be changed, taking down gyms faster has been a welcome addition, but building them up definitely needs to go all the way back up to where it used to be. I don't know about elsewhere, but around me people are so pessimistic about their chances of holding a gym they throw any old garbage in the gym, which leads to level 3 gyms everywhere with 700-1300 CP pokemon everywhere, with maybe a high gym leader. This makes it almost impossible to train because if I have a gym with a 1200 CP vaporeon in it I need to find a 600 CP grass type, or 3, just to make any reasonable progress at training this gym, and I'm wasting potions on 550 CP oddishes and what not. Personally that upsets me more than anything.
This is just a rough idea of a solution to making gym combat more exciting and fun, so please give me feedback on what you like, dislike, and how you might improve it.
Answers
Yeah, the idea would be that types that are already high, like dragon and water would get the smallest CP boost, maybe 10 % at max whereas ones that are CP low, like ghost would get 40 or 50%. Maybe there would be a system where specific pokemon like dragonite and snorlax would get a CP or boost % cap. Or also a system of diminishing returns, like if your pokemon is 2000 CP you get 20%, but at 2500 you get 10%, to the point where over 3k gets no boost at all.
I thought about it, but I think that it would be too easy to take down certain types. Like if you have an entirely rock gym it would be almost impossible to hold because it would just get shredded by vaporeons, and certain areas have less of a certain pokemon type that would make those gyms hard to be effective. Also, this would make gyms that could be dominated by a specific type of pokemon, like a fire gym around me would just be filled with 7 flareons and 3 arcanines, and that would still be the same repetition.
If they did something like this, they should randomly assign types, and let them rotate either once a week or when nest migrations occur.
The amount gained for matching types would need to scale inversely with base stats/max cp. A boost to psychic types would be nice to help Alakazam and Hypno, but would be unnecessary for Exeggutor.
Of course the best answer for diversifying options is still to weight how base stats for Atk+SAt and Def+SDf from the main games are used to calculate base stats for Atk and Def in Pokemon Go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig_jHL18NWs
There are empolyees and server costs so Niantic needs to make revenue or we would not have this amazing game to play. If i could put a common pokemon in a gym and it would be effective I would never buy a hatchery again.
I honestly like the current gym setup. Collecting on 10 gyms daily should be very hard and rare not a given to all high level players. I have a spoofer in my area so I like that I spend 30 mins taking down his level 5+gyms and he spends 3-4 hrs collecting pot/rev and training it back up only to have me take it down once 5 pokemon are on it. Now all 15 of his gyms are level 3 instead of 10 and all the low levels are taking over his gyms non stop. Im pretty sure the spoofers were a large factor in the current setup and untill they block them the current setup should stay the same.
Well this is just a rough idea, so I haven't thought through all the details, but it's intended to make pokemon like Golem, Electabuzz, or Kabutops a little more viable, pokemon that may still be rare, or need some work to get to, but that are made obsolete because they aren't one of a select few. Ideally there would still be a distinct advantage to the big ones, but hopefully there would be a little more diversity and more fun gym development.
While I agree stopping the spoofers should be important, it also makes it incredibly hard for regular players to do anything as well. For example some idiot put an 1050 CP vaporeon in one of the gyms in my town and now there's no way to effectively train it. Basically when there's a pokemon like that that has incredibly high HP stats it's almost impossible to take it down with pokemon 1/2 of the CP without them getting destroyed and flying through potions.
