Pokemon Go new gyms are awful, need new strategy for gym placement

I have been playing @PokemonGoApp since 8 August 2016. That’s about 11 months worth of time invested playing this augmented reality app! During this time there were many changes to make the game more interesting. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Niantic needed a way to keep the interest going for the off chance that people will invest real money to buy coins for upgrades.




However I know of many friends and colleagues stop playing within the first days after all the hype in promoting this game. Basically they didn’t understand the game concept. Mind you, there wasn't any manual or help file to get you going. Mostly just trial and error to learn the game. Thank goodness for the many diehards gamers out there posting their wisdom and tips. For the really hardcore gamers, they actually go out of their way to catch elusive pokemons and catching high CP (combat power) Pokemons!

I suppose I fared decently having managed to snag a few Sornlaxes, evolved a Gyarados from 400 Magikarp candies among other interesting but difficult to obtain powerful Pokemons. Basically there are two main objective in playing this game:

1. As a collector, such as like a stamp or coin collector. In this case to fill up your Pokedex as much as possible. Not easy. But I did read online of some guy catching all but one!
2. To go for gym placement in order to obtain enough coins to purchase upgrades. And for this you need to nurture, evolved a strong enough Pokemon to do battle, though in the old gym system it was not quite necessary to hold a gym.

For the casual players like me, the going can get pretty tough. With no friends to accompany, a lone wolf player has to play the game differently. With the old gym system, I would look out for low hanging fruits. Gyms that only contain one to three pokemons are within my Pokemon ability to take down and get a 10 coin rewards. Usually I would avoid the walls of Blisseys as those are way super tough to take down. Another strategy is to look out for opportunity for empty slot to place my Pokemon to collect coins. So those were strategy to play for the Pokemon Go gyms.

However with the new revamp gyms, such method of coin collection is no more applicable. There is no longer need to fight for a spot for gym placement. And taking down a single rival Pokemon requires three tries rather than a single combat from the previous gym battles. And to collect your coin rewards you need to hold the gym with your pokemon for 1 coin per 10 minute duration (which was an improvement from their earli 1 coin per hour, but still not good enough).

The process is daunting, and so far my winnings has been paltry. It is not because my Pokemon is not strong. It is the new gym design has been poorly thought out. Firstly, there is no need to fight for a spot. So a gym is easily filled up, giving you no chance for a placement. And if you do get lucky to find a spot, your Pokemon is taken down rather quickly. My rewards has so far been zero to a few paltry coins so far! I don’t know how those other players could hit the maximum cap of 50 coins per day!

Having spend much time invested in the game, the only other alternative strategy that I could think of is to create a secondary account with a different team. Push it up to a sufficient level to knock out one of your own team Pokemon to create a spot for your primary Pokemon Go account for gym placement. However doing so would need to invest additional time and energy to develop a secondary account, which I don’t feel like doing at this moment.

With the diminished coin returns, I felt that I’m no longer motivated to continue playing this game. The Pokemon Go App has now alienated the simple casual players with this horrible new gym system. For the hardcore players, this is probably nothing. They could easily dominate the gym or spend real cash for coins for upgrades. For the casual players, it is probably time to pack up the app and look for other more interesting games to fill up their time.