What is the big deal with free gym coins?

I only care about the dust. Extra dust to power up Pokemon saves me time on 30-50 catches. Coins are a cool added bonus for extra incubators, but it's whatever. I only battle gyms for fun and to test out new Pokemon additions. Prestiging is way more fun to be honest. I'd rather have some more diversity in gyms as an opportunity to face different Pokemon, but hey that's how the gym scene is at the moment.

And that is why I was never a big part of the gym fighting when this game first launched. Literally each gym would change teams like 3-5 times each day. I suppose the idea was to buff up a gym to a higher level though the means of teamwork and team organization.

Simple: don't drive, walk! Then you get something that generates more happiness than money-fitness and health!

1) To catch 50 extra pokemon might require spinning 50 more pokestops (if my catch-to-spin ratio is normal) - and that takes time as well. Why not use those otherwise useless potions and revives for something dust-generating? By my rough estimates, I've gotten 50% of my dust from catches, 33% from gyms, and 17% from eggs.

2) Finding and joining high-quality gyms can be a game in itself. And besides, the whole game takes time. It's a game, and as far as I can tell one of its main purposes is to take time.

It's certainly not about the money, those crazies u see ain't doing it for the pokecoins. I feel young playing this game at the age of 41, and it takes a lil work to keep my sons interested, it's fun, but I'll estimate the cutoff line of non cheating players at 45+, and they could be the worst! The next time I see a car with a handicapped sticker all up in one of my gyms u may see me on the news.

Its not about whether we can afford it or not...its about not wanting to directly give any money to niantic. I'm a level 30 player, collecting 10-30 coins per day and never spent any IAP.

It's not about the coins, it's about putting a lvl 10 gym under the nose of that high level jackass on the other team that always has his shit in gyms as you beat them down. That's what it's always about. All games are about hating the other guys, and about winning. The rest is just aesthetics.

The gym coins is secondary. The Stardust is the real finite resource in the game. Without that dust the pokemon cant get stronger! This is the main reason to battle gyms. Of course one can catch pokemon to get dust but it takes longer and more time to get the same results.

Coins are useful for leveling up the trainer. Egg incubators and lucky eggs. There is no faster way to level up than lucky eggs and incubators. The can be easily purchased with real money or just battle gyms. There are youtubers that reached level 40 quickly because the constantly had a lucky egg active with incense, and incubating eggs.

Once someone becomes an experienced trainer they learn what their buffer is. For instance someone like me have a buffer (more than 10 pokemon in gyms) this way I don't have to constantly go out and battle gyms daily to collect the max daily bonus. Its essentially the same as money management, someone wouldn't keep just enough money in an account to pay a bill, they would keep extra just incase that bill come in higher than expected.

Gyms in my area are dominated by tryhard jobless kids, who can't buy shit. Maintaining gyms is all they do after school.

For me hogging gyms and collecting Pokecoins is a main part of the game, buying Pokecoins would be the same as buying the mons and would turn it from a game to a useless waste of money. Also I don't spend money for gas, I personally consider bicycles cheating and see motor vehicles as the hardware version of GPS spoofing.

Well, this is my point of view, I do gyms because two main reasons, the first one is dust, as a level 35 player the mon asks you for 8k-9k per power up, otherwise I had to catch a lot of mons to have dust for them and with the actual catching rate for non wanted mons like pidgey and rattata I feel very boring to get 50 of them while I can do my gym run while I walk to work.

Second point is I have no full time job at this moment, I am a graphic designer freelance and as someone that is starting a new business it is nice you don't have to spend money you need to other things in a game, for example 10 gyms per day are 3000 coins per month, around 30€ on the store, with those 30€ I can get other important stuff, like buy 2 books to learn new things, pay the water or light of my studio, or simply save them for the future.

I have payed in the past, yes, have spent around 80€ in total, but I really won't spend anymore until the release something new, and not new gens only, I mean some added feature to the game, like pvp, trading, legendary events, a new battle system, FIX THE F.... TRACKER ( why I would pay to a game that only gives me low tier mon over and over that are a mile from me while I have good stuff around?), or other interesting features.

Last time I payed was during halloween event, 4 months now, and won't pay anymore, to buy incubators and a bulk of lucky eggs I have enough with my gyms run, so if Niantic does not put their hands into something really new they won't see my money again.