The peculiar mechanism where defending pokemon drop motivation at ten times the speed if they start at 3000 CP or more has led a lot of players to decide that defenders below that cutoff are better.
Is that true?
If you're building territory based on remote gyms, yes. You also risk locking your defenders in, but given that you collect a coin per ten minutes for the pokemon that do return you could happily risk getting ten or so locked in.
If you're building territory based on high traffic gyms. No. You're basically assuming that passing players of the same team will feed the defenders. Apart from night time they'll either stay fully motivated or the gym's going down anyway.
Given that there's a brutal loss in motivation, and CP, when a defending pokemon is defeated, there's very little you can do about hard core raiders who attack your gyms during night. Below 3000 CP class defenders were a joke before, and nothing has changed in that departement.
The best you can do is to feed your gym before you go to sleep. Or have a team mate do it.
For extremely trafficked gyms, just dump your highest CP class defenders inside. It's not going to stay up anyway, and you could just a well be as much a major pain in the arse as possible.
All in all, if you have a few defenders left behind, proably due to poor IV, it could be worth it to push them to level 30 and use them for remote gyms. Better yet, use your low CP maxed out 'for fun' pokemon there instead. They'll get the full level benefit during combat.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Problems with the gym battle system
The current system has a number of problems associated with it. I won't even go into technical issues as those are problems which will go away eventually.
Gym raids
The low level tier raids are going to die in silence unless something is done to how a player access them.
My suggestion is nerfing the rewards for level 1 and 2 raids and make them more accessible.
Level 1 raids should be free for all. It's the perfect entry level way for new and lower level players to experience raids. Preferably you can't get TMs and rare candy from those, or at least make those drop extremely seldom.
Level 2 raids should be associated with a separate, stackable raid pass. Say a drop rate of one per ten gyms spun or something like that. TMs and rare candy should have a distinctly lower drop rate than today.
Level three and four raids could possibly be left as they are. Maybe a separate raid pass for level 3 following the same limitations as today. In that case lower the drop rate for TMs and rare candy.
TMs drop too often as it is. Since they basically remove the need to accept a lower IV pokemon with good moves they should be few and far between. A drop ratio similar to evolve items for those who raid once or twice a day would suffice perfectly.
If they really have to be accessible, then implement a streak system for raids and guarantee one every seven days.
Gym battles
The magic 3000 CP limit simply doesn't make sense at all. Basically it's the one percent degradation per pokemon below 3000 CP that doesn't make any sense.
Reduce a fixed percentage of the current CP per time unit instead. If 10% per hour is too harsh, then 5%. This would still penalise extreme CP pokemon since the drop is largest in the beginning, which corresponds to the nerfed increase in CP for levels 30.5 to 39.
When your pokemon has got its CP cut in half it will also drop half as much per time unit.
Obviously this needs to come with a fixed minimum loss to ensure that the defending pokemon eventually drops to zero motivation.
Everyone (to a maximum of six players) who participated in taking over a gym should be able to assign a defender without resorting to syncronising that action. Fine, if you can't decide within a minute you're stuck for another ten.
The combination of dropping the time for the defender bonus from one coin per hour to one coin per ten minutes and at the same time cutting the maximum reward in half is inane.
While it sucks to be me with 50 coins max a day I can live with that. Obviously I'd prefer to see the old 100 coins back. What really sucks, however, is the 10 minutes per coin. At a rate of half an hour per coin you'd need to stick a pokemon in there for a stiff day to receive the full bonus. That's more than enough. Actually the initial one coin per hour was perfectly sufficient.
As it is now there's no incentive to actively participate in gym battles and help team mates and yourself to keep the assigned pokemon inside a gym.
The 20 gym hard cap is idiotic. If anything it helps spoofers since legitimate players can't afford to lock down remote gyms. With 20 pokemon locked inside you're not participating at all.
I'm aware that the current numbers speak of a different story, but as it is no one keeps a lot of gyms since there's no point in doing so at all.
Come autumn and you'll see a landscape of desolate gyms with only the occasional spoofer and local player assigned. Whoever came up with the idea to increase the number of gyms by 30% and implement a hard cap needs to have their brain examined.
The dust reward associated with gyms is a joke. Even if Niantic wanted to cut the maximum reward in half, 125 fed pokemon on a daily basis is not going to happen.
Rant out.
Gym raids
The low level tier raids are going to die in silence unless something is done to how a player access them.
My suggestion is nerfing the rewards for level 1 and 2 raids and make them more accessible.
Level 1 raids should be free for all. It's the perfect entry level way for new and lower level players to experience raids. Preferably you can't get TMs and rare candy from those, or at least make those drop extremely seldom.
Level 2 raids should be associated with a separate, stackable raid pass. Say a drop rate of one per ten gyms spun or something like that. TMs and rare candy should have a distinctly lower drop rate than today.
Level three and four raids could possibly be left as they are. Maybe a separate raid pass for level 3 following the same limitations as today. In that case lower the drop rate for TMs and rare candy.
TMs drop too often as it is. Since they basically remove the need to accept a lower IV pokemon with good moves they should be few and far between. A drop ratio similar to evolve items for those who raid once or twice a day would suffice perfectly.
If they really have to be accessible, then implement a streak system for raids and guarantee one every seven days.
Gym battles
The magic 3000 CP limit simply doesn't make sense at all. Basically it's the one percent degradation per pokemon below 3000 CP that doesn't make any sense.
Reduce a fixed percentage of the current CP per time unit instead. If 10% per hour is too harsh, then 5%. This would still penalise extreme CP pokemon since the drop is largest in the beginning, which corresponds to the nerfed increase in CP for levels 30.5 to 39.
When your pokemon has got its CP cut in half it will also drop half as much per time unit.
Obviously this needs to come with a fixed minimum loss to ensure that the defending pokemon eventually drops to zero motivation.
Everyone (to a maximum of six players) who participated in taking over a gym should be able to assign a defender without resorting to syncronising that action. Fine, if you can't decide within a minute you're stuck for another ten.
The combination of dropping the time for the defender bonus from one coin per hour to one coin per ten minutes and at the same time cutting the maximum reward in half is inane.
While it sucks to be me with 50 coins max a day I can live with that. Obviously I'd prefer to see the old 100 coins back. What really sucks, however, is the 10 minutes per coin. At a rate of half an hour per coin you'd need to stick a pokemon in there for a stiff day to receive the full bonus. That's more than enough. Actually the initial one coin per hour was perfectly sufficient.
As it is now there's no incentive to actively participate in gym battles and help team mates and yourself to keep the assigned pokemon inside a gym.
The 20 gym hard cap is idiotic. If anything it helps spoofers since legitimate players can't afford to lock down remote gyms. With 20 pokemon locked inside you're not participating at all.
I'm aware that the current numbers speak of a different story, but as it is no one keeps a lot of gyms since there's no point in doing so at all.
Come autumn and you'll see a landscape of desolate gyms with only the occasional spoofer and local player assigned. Whoever came up with the idea to increase the number of gyms by 30% and implement a hard cap needs to have their brain examined.
The dust reward associated with gyms is a joke. Even if Niantic wanted to cut the maximum reward in half, 125 fed pokemon on a daily basis is not going to happen.
Rant out.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Personal from Japan
Second day in a village in Japan. Two stops, that's all.
There's a small city kind of close, and things are very, very different from home.
Just about every pokestop and gym is sponsored, so shopping malls sit on sweet clusters, and apart from that there's very little to be seen.
Farfetch'd is glaringly absent, again a major difference from the relatively common occurence of Mr Mime back home.
In this small community basically every gym I've seen, which is a modest thirty or so, is filled to capacity and well fed. This in turn speaks of a relatively low turnover, or at least one where opposing teams basically swap gyms in a coreographed dance of hostile cooperation.
Cluster spawns occur with a frequency I'm unused to from home, but apart from those this rural area lives up to every preconception I've had about spawn desolation.
While the gyms are well fed and filled, I've yet to see a single person play PoGo in an obvious way. No cabling running from pocket to phone, no erratic walking to reach a stop, and obviously no upwards sweeping over the screen to catch a mon.
Btw, wheezing was an absolute joke. I knew that level two raids were soloable, but I didn't expect them to be an insult.
There's a small city kind of close, and things are very, very different from home.
Just about every pokestop and gym is sponsored, so shopping malls sit on sweet clusters, and apart from that there's very little to be seen.
Farfetch'd is glaringly absent, again a major difference from the relatively common occurence of Mr Mime back home.
In this small community basically every gym I've seen, which is a modest thirty or so, is filled to capacity and well fed. This in turn speaks of a relatively low turnover, or at least one where opposing teams basically swap gyms in a coreographed dance of hostile cooperation.
Cluster spawns occur with a frequency I'm unused to from home, but apart from those this rural area lives up to every preconception I've had about spawn desolation.
While the gyms are well fed and filled, I've yet to see a single person play PoGo in an obvious way. No cabling running from pocket to phone, no erratic walking to reach a stop, and obviously no upwards sweeping over the screen to catch a mon.
Btw, wheezing was an absolute joke. I knew that level two raids were soloable, but I didn't expect them to be an insult.
Monday, June 26, 2017
Gym raids, first impressions
I was lucky enough to try out a raid on an airport.
Level 1 and 2 raids are definitely soloable. I'll argue that level 3 raids are as well for the extreme high level players.
As of now it seems you'll be rewarded the same no matter raid level until it's time to throw pokeballs at the defeated gym boss. This effectively translates into that you should solo a low level raid at a gym where you have a good badge status if you realise that it's unlikely that you'll participate in a high level one during any given day.
While it's fun to throw pokeballs at a premium pokemon most of us catch them in the wild anyway. Stardust is the real limiter, so another high CP level 20 snorlax quite honestly isn't as valuable as it would seem at a first glance.
The TM (technical machine) effectively turned the game into 'highest IV wins' and reduces the value of one more attacker. Gym defenders are still another matter.
Do swap the gym into your own colour prior to participating in the raid if you can. More rewards are, well, more rewards.
Level 1 and 2 raids are definitely soloable. I'll argue that level 3 raids are as well for the extreme high level players.
As of now it seems you'll be rewarded the same no matter raid level until it's time to throw pokeballs at the defeated gym boss. This effectively translates into that you should solo a low level raid at a gym where you have a good badge status if you realise that it's unlikely that you'll participate in a high level one during any given day.
While it's fun to throw pokeballs at a premium pokemon most of us catch them in the wild anyway. Stardust is the real limiter, so another high CP level 20 snorlax quite honestly isn't as valuable as it would seem at a first glance.
The TM (technical machine) effectively turned the game into 'highest IV wins' and reduces the value of one more attacker. Gym defenders are still another matter.
Do swap the gym into your own colour prior to participating in the raid if you can. More rewards are, well, more rewards.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Gym rework, the defence
As the lineup resembles a round robin, or FiFo, setup planning the gym changes drastically.
Observe that pokemon aren't automatically ejected in the order they got inside. This is very important. A pokemon with zero motivation doesn't have to be the first attacked.
Gym defence will become a matter of inserting pokemon and feeding them. You'll want to avoid feeding crap to make certain the gym keeps a certain strength.
At the other hand you also want the gym to go down from time to time, unless you couldn't care less for the collect bonus of course.
No matter what, the pokemon that has been assigned the longest suffers an increased risk of being ejected first. This because it'll always be the first one attacked.
While it's nice to have a huge blissey as a bouncer, when it's gone the next one will end up last, if that spot hasn't already been occupied by someting else to begin with.
The flip side of the coin is that you can, at the cost of slightly lower overall defensive capacity, slot in defenders so that a solo attacker will be more or less forced to change the attacking pokemon between defending pokemon. This increases time spent as well as potion usage.
Gym maintenance also becomes an issue. The feeding mechanism means a gym is no longer a fire and forget construction. It also means it's a huge benefit belonging to a large group of raiders and you can split up the task of feeding gyms between players.
It needs to be done. Not only does an unmotivated pokemon leave the gym when defeated, it also drops CP while dropping motivation. Your beefy blissey won't be beefy at all during its last combat.
Well, that's it for today. I'll be enjoying our Swedish Midsummer, and after that I'm off for Japan with my family. New posts will be sporadic the coming two weeks.
Observe that pokemon aren't automatically ejected in the order they got inside. This is very important. A pokemon with zero motivation doesn't have to be the first attacked.
Gym defence will become a matter of inserting pokemon and feeding them. You'll want to avoid feeding crap to make certain the gym keeps a certain strength.
At the other hand you also want the gym to go down from time to time, unless you couldn't care less for the collect bonus of course.
No matter what, the pokemon that has been assigned the longest suffers an increased risk of being ejected first. This because it'll always be the first one attacked.
While it's nice to have a huge blissey as a bouncer, when it's gone the next one will end up last, if that spot hasn't already been occupied by someting else to begin with.
The flip side of the coin is that you can, at the cost of slightly lower overall defensive capacity, slot in defenders so that a solo attacker will be more or less forced to change the attacking pokemon between defending pokemon. This increases time spent as well as potion usage.
Gym maintenance also becomes an issue. The feeding mechanism means a gym is no longer a fire and forget construction. It also means it's a huge benefit belonging to a large group of raiders and you can split up the task of feeding gyms between players.
It needs to be done. Not only does an unmotivated pokemon leave the gym when defeated, it also drops CP while dropping motivation. Your beefy blissey won't be beefy at all during its last combat.
Well, that's it for today. I'll be enjoying our Swedish Midsummer, and after that I'm off for Japan with my family. New posts will be sporadic the coming two weeks.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Gym rework, under the hood
As soon as the new client hit the APK-mirrors it got analysed.
So, looking under the hood, what fun will we find?
New items:
So, looking under the hood, what fun will we find?
New items:
- Golden Raspberry -- better than raspberry, and brings motivation to max if used for feeding
- TM Fast -- reroll the primary attack for one of your pokemon
- TF Charge -- reroll the charge attack for one of your pokemon
- Rare Candy -- turns into the candy of any pokemon you have
- Raid Pass -- once per day coupoon to allow you to join a raid. Can only have one of these at a time
- Premium Raid Pass -- shell out some cash to Niantic and bypass the one per day rule
- Premier Ball -- pokeball only usable for trying to catch a raid boss, and you may only throw premium balls at them
New medals:
- Legendary Battle Won -- win against legendary pokemon raid bosses
- Raid Battle Won -- win any raid fights
- Berries Fed -- keep them defenders happy
- Hours Defended -- for placing and keeping your own pokemon inside gyms
Raid Eggs (shown above gyms prior to a raid fight starts):
- Normal -- the raid boss is an inflated crap pokemon
- Rare -- the raid boss is an inflated version of something you'd throw yellow balls at
- Legendary -- the raid boss is a legendary pokemon
In game shop updates:
- A six pack Max Revives
- A ten pack Max Potions
There's even a map over suspected beta testing gyms for trying out the raid fights. I'm absolutely clueless about what entails beta testing. At leas you can find out if there's a potential beta testing gym close to you.
So now we know how the legendary pokemon will enter the game, and rare candies is mildly put a hint for how to pump them to max. Being able to shop gym material in the shop should help those who have very poor access to poke stops, and before you start laughing -- there are a number of gyms out there in the middle of nowhere with absolutely zero pokestops close by.
Implicitly we're also told to hold your horses about the gym raids. Should you jump at the first occasion, or is it worth waiting for a beefier boss?
Well, that's it for now. I'll wring another post together for tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Gym rework, gym battles
Today I'll try to clarify what the new gym system means for the kind of action we have seen in gyms since the game started.
My primary sources are:
Gyms are kind of pokestops
You can spin gyms like a pokestop. Items received will be slightly geared towards combat usage; potions and revives.
Spinning friendly gyms gives you a bonus. Having gym badges for that gym increases that bonus.
Gym badges
You can earn gym bagdes for interacting with a specific gym. Doing so a lot will level up those badges for even better bonuses.
Maximum one pokemon of one kind
To fill a gym you need six different pokemon. The big five and shitty four are enough to solve this limitation.
You might run into problems because your line-up is heavily skewed in the direction of a subset of these nine pokemon. Especially if this unbalance mirrors the local meta game in the area where you play.
Defenders are attacked in the order they were placed
The pokemon in the gym that has been there the longest is attacked first. Gone is the sorting on CP.
This accentuates that the shitty four are shitty indeed. High CP squishys that are no longer able to hide behind the big five. Teams that are serious about defending their high traffic gyms don't want this crap inside.
Defenders have a motivation meter
A newly placed defender will have a full meter. Motivation deteriorates over time and every time the pokemon is defeated in battle. When it reaches zero that pokemon leaves the gym when it's defeated in battle.
So it's possible to drop a pokemon inside a gym and have it stay there forever as long as no rival player ever attacks the gym.
You gain coins when a surly and defetated pokemon returns to you
Gone are the days of watching the timer for when you could collect your gym rewards.
Whenever one of your assigned pokemon gets kicked out of the gym it brings a bag of coins to you.
You can't receive more than 100 coins a day.
If your domination is so godlike that no rival players dare to attack your gyms you will never receive any coins.
Let's repeat that. If you keep your territory in an iron grip and blast any kind of resistance to kingdom come you will never receive any coins.
In case I was unclear. Unless you make certain your pokemon get ejected periodically, and by periodically I mean you need at least one ejected on a daily basis, wave goodbye to your daily coins.
You can feed your team mates
Any berry can be used to feed a pokemon inside a gym belonging to your team. Doing so increases the motivation of that pokemon.
Intead of adding prestige to a gym you restore its strength by replenishing lost motivation to its defending pokemons.
You receive XP and stardust for feeding pokemon
It doesn't say anywhere that there is a 5000 stardust daily limit, and I don't know if there is one.
Mark one for death
Taken together this means you can eject any one specified pokemon from a gym.
Attack and beat every pokemon up to and including the one you want ejected.
Have a friendly player feed berries to the pokemon you want to stay.
Rinse and repeat.
I expect to see this abused a lot.
Shaving works like earlier
Instead of booting out the lowest pokemon in a gym, prestiging it back up again and inserting some unspecified crap with lots of CP, you just boot out the first pokemon and insert whatever when the new spot opens up.
And will THIS be abused or what?
There's an incentive to max out other pokemon
Slowbro, slowking, steelix, exeggutor and the likes are interesting pokemon to max out as chanses are you'll always be able to insert them into a gym with open spots. And you're not cheating too much with the defensive capacity.
Motivation, demotivation and remotivation -- balance
The motivation mechanics are likely to be where the initial problems with gym balance will show. Niantic aren't know for their competence when it comes to balancing the game.
Two main scenarios:
My primary sources are:
Gyms are kind of pokestops
You can spin gyms like a pokestop. Items received will be slightly geared towards combat usage; potions and revives.
Spinning friendly gyms gives you a bonus. Having gym badges for that gym increases that bonus.
Gym badges
You can earn gym bagdes for interacting with a specific gym. Doing so a lot will level up those badges for even better bonuses.
Maximum one pokemon of one kind
To fill a gym you need six different pokemon. The big five and shitty four are enough to solve this limitation.
You might run into problems because your line-up is heavily skewed in the direction of a subset of these nine pokemon. Especially if this unbalance mirrors the local meta game in the area where you play.
Defenders are attacked in the order they were placed
The pokemon in the gym that has been there the longest is attacked first. Gone is the sorting on CP.
This accentuates that the shitty four are shitty indeed. High CP squishys that are no longer able to hide behind the big five. Teams that are serious about defending their high traffic gyms don't want this crap inside.
Defenders have a motivation meter
A newly placed defender will have a full meter. Motivation deteriorates over time and every time the pokemon is defeated in battle. When it reaches zero that pokemon leaves the gym when it's defeated in battle.
So it's possible to drop a pokemon inside a gym and have it stay there forever as long as no rival player ever attacks the gym.
You gain coins when a surly and defetated pokemon returns to you
Gone are the days of watching the timer for when you could collect your gym rewards.
Whenever one of your assigned pokemon gets kicked out of the gym it brings a bag of coins to you.
You can't receive more than 100 coins a day.
If your domination is so godlike that no rival players dare to attack your gyms you will never receive any coins.
Let's repeat that. If you keep your territory in an iron grip and blast any kind of resistance to kingdom come you will never receive any coins.
In case I was unclear. Unless you make certain your pokemon get ejected periodically, and by periodically I mean you need at least one ejected on a daily basis, wave goodbye to your daily coins.
You can feed your team mates
Any berry can be used to feed a pokemon inside a gym belonging to your team. Doing so increases the motivation of that pokemon.
Intead of adding prestige to a gym you restore its strength by replenishing lost motivation to its defending pokemons.
You receive XP and stardust for feeding pokemon
It doesn't say anywhere that there is a 5000 stardust daily limit, and I don't know if there is one.
Mark one for death
Taken together this means you can eject any one specified pokemon from a gym.
Attack and beat every pokemon up to and including the one you want ejected.
Have a friendly player feed berries to the pokemon you want to stay.
Rinse and repeat.
I expect to see this abused a lot.
Shaving works like earlier
Instead of booting out the lowest pokemon in a gym, prestiging it back up again and inserting some unspecified crap with lots of CP, you just boot out the first pokemon and insert whatever when the new spot opens up.
And will THIS be abused or what?
There's an incentive to max out other pokemon
Slowbro, slowking, steelix, exeggutor and the likes are interesting pokemon to max out as chanses are you'll always be able to insert them into a gym with open spots. And you're not cheating too much with the defensive capacity.
Motivation, demotivation and remotivation -- balance
The motivation mechanics are likely to be where the initial problems with gym balance will show. Niantic aren't know for their competence when it comes to balancing the game.
Two main scenarios:
- Feeding berries to a pokemon in a gym is pointless -- they drop motivation at a rate where it's simply impossible to defend a gym
- Feeding berries to pokemon in a gym royally screws any attempt to take the gym -- adding motivation to a gym is so efficient that there's no realistic way to kick down a gym defended by as little as one player
I haven't forgotten the rest. I'll follow up this post with more on how I believe the new gym system will work out.
First errata
Seems I was wrong about the mechanics for raid bosses.
After the boss fight is over the gym is supposedly restored to the status it had before the raid boss fight. So no forced downing of a gym from the game.
As things are happening very rapidly now I lack a reliable source for this errata.
After the boss fight is over the gym is supposedly restored to the status it had before the raid boss fight. So no forced downing of a gym from the game.
As things are happening very rapidly now I lack a reliable source for this errata.
Monday, June 19, 2017
Spawn point rehash
We're getting multiple reports from our local players that spawn points were moved around after the gyms went down.
Gym rework, some information
And Niantic has gone public with quite a lot of information about the new gym system.
- Six permanent slots for assigning defenders
- Only one defending pokemon of the same kind in a gym
- Gyms are attacked in the order the defending pokemon were assigned
- Each defending pokemon has a refillable motivation number. When zero that defender leaves the gym
- Berries are used to restore motivation
- Gyms can be spun like pokestops for getting items
- Trainers receive gym badges for ineracting with gyms. Higher level badges increase the rewards for spinning gyms
- Raid bosses in gyms that need cooperation from several trainers to take down
- Rewards keyed to taking down a raid boss
- New items
So, what does this all mean?
Let's have a look at the gym raid bosses first. I'll cover the new gym battling in another post.
The raid boss mechanics will be delayed. At the start of the new gym system only some beta testers will have access, and only at some gyms. During an unspecified time frame this will be expanded to eventually cover all players and all gyms.
Give it at least one month before everyone can participate.
Prior to spawning a raid boss a gym will eject every defender inside. This means that gyms will no longer stand in the semi permanent ownership of one team for weeks or even months.
There's a timer above a gym where a raid boss will spawn. When that timer reaches zero the boss spawns. While there's no data on the exakt time this is obviously a mechanism for allowing trainers to physically move to the gym.
A boss fight lasts for five minutes.
A maximum of 20 (or possibly 21, the wording is unclear) trainers can participate in one raid boss fight.
You need a raid pass, a once per day item from spinning gyms, to participate. You can only hold on to one raid pass. The in-game shop will sell premium raid passes that bypasses this limitation.
Defeating the raid boss gives you a chance to catch an extra powerful pokemon. What 'extra powerful pokemon' means is not specified.
Defeating the raid boss gives you some new items:
- Rare candies -- can be converted into any kind of candy
- Golden razz berries -- a higher that the standard increased chance to catch a pokemon in the wild, can also be given to a defending pokemon to max out its motivation
- Fast technichal machine -- teaches a pokemon a new primary attack
- Charged technical machine -- teaches a pokemon a new charge attack
So hold on to your extreme IV pokemon. It got a crap moveset? Use a technical machine.
Hold on to your hats, gym's going defunct
Gyms going down really soon.
That message seems to have been posted around twenty to two pm CET. Don't expect to have dinner with functional gyms if you live in Europe.
That message seems to have been posted around twenty to two pm CET. Don't expect to have dinner with functional gyms if you live in Europe.
How to make the most out of a roadbump
This will be the last tips and tricks post valid for the current, and soon old, gym system.
If you're more than one player attacking a gym, and if the lowest placed defending pokemon is substantially easier to knock out than the one above (think CP 1500 flareon below a CP 2500 blissey), then attack in sequence.
Let's say you're three team mates attacking.
Player one attacks alone and declares when the roadbump is going down, at which time player two enters combat. Repeat for player three.
The third player should be done with the roadbump long before the beefier defender above it goes down, which means all three players work together from defender number two and upwards.
Why?
If all three players join combat simultaneously you'll be rewarded with the number of defending pokemon plus one, all multiplied by 1000, in gym prestige lowered.
Attacking in sequence adds another two thousand prestige lost for the gym (given the three player example above) at virtually no extra cost for the attackers.
This is because running over the roadbump one attacker at a time lowers prestige by 1000 for each attacking player.
So you get the extra bonus while at the same time keeping the added speed and lowered cost in terms of pots and revives used per player for downing the harder targets which stand above the roadbump in the gym.
If you're more than one player attacking a gym, and if the lowest placed defending pokemon is substantially easier to knock out than the one above (think CP 1500 flareon below a CP 2500 blissey), then attack in sequence.
Let's say you're three team mates attacking.
Player one attacks alone and declares when the roadbump is going down, at which time player two enters combat. Repeat for player three.
The third player should be done with the roadbump long before the beefier defender above it goes down, which means all three players work together from defender number two and upwards.
Why?
If all three players join combat simultaneously you'll be rewarded with the number of defending pokemon plus one, all multiplied by 1000, in gym prestige lowered.
Attacking in sequence adds another two thousand prestige lost for the gym (given the three player example above) at virtually no extra cost for the attackers.
This is because running over the roadbump one attacker at a time lowers prestige by 1000 for each attacking player.
So you get the extra bonus while at the same time keeping the added speed and lowered cost in terms of pots and revives used per player for downing the harder targets which stand above the roadbump in the gym.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Gyms going down June 19
Well, now Niantic has defined 'soon', at least kind of.
June 19 gyms are going down. No specific hour is specified, but sometime during office hours pacific time.
There's even less information about when gyms will be back up again.
June 19 gyms are going down. No specific hour is specified, but sometime during office hours pacific time.
There's even less information about when gyms will be back up again.
Friday, June 16, 2017
Heads up warning: gyms closing down 'soon'
The heads up warning is live at Niantic.
There's no information on the definition of 'soon'. A minimum of 21 hours, or in reality a full day is my guess.
I'm still betting on after the event ends. Ripping an income source for incubators while the reward for hatching an egg is five-fold in terms of XP risks alienating a number of players.
There's no information on the definition of 'soon'. A minimum of 21 hours, or in reality a full day is my guess.
I'm still betting on after the event ends. Ripping an income source for incubators while the reward for hatching an egg is five-fold in terms of XP risks alienating a number of players.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Getting the most out of a disco
Where I play we call the level one through three gyms 'disco'. The reason is old memories from when ad-hoc dance events sported blinking lamps in red, yellow and blue. For whatever reason the word stuck.
In an earlier post I wrote about why fully tearing down a gym is not merely preferred, but kind of important.
The other side of the coin is whether it's really worth the extra cost of a revive and a potion to drop a pokemon inside a disco you've just torn down.
Usually not, but long term, yes.
If players always populate the three first spots you'll end up with a level three gym at 6000 prestige, and probably two pretty iffy defenders out of the three inside.
A populated friendly disco is golden for a small raiding group. I'm talking three, at most four players, but let's say three. It's the kind of number that could be walking to a pub or a café. No real raiding is planned at all.
So we hit upon a level three gym. 2000 prestige is nothing. You basically need a perverted combination of a 1300 chansey, followed by one 2600 and one 3100 blissey to force friendly players to walk away.
At 8000 prestige a prestige defender goes inside and the gym pops to 10000. A battle each and the gym stands at 13000 prestige, at which time one of us adds a defender while the other two run another battle each.
17000 prestige. The next player drops a defender inside and the two other run a battle each.
21000 prestige. We'll either leave it at 23000 prestige after adding the third defender, or we'll run another two or three battles each, which leaves the gym at 29000 or 32000 prestige. The latter is preferable as there's an open spot which would push the gym to 34000 prestige unless a rival player arrives to clean out the prestige defender.
All in all we're talking less than five minutes spent at the gym.
In an earlier post I wrote about why fully tearing down a gym is not merely preferred, but kind of important.
The other side of the coin is whether it's really worth the extra cost of a revive and a potion to drop a pokemon inside a disco you've just torn down.
Usually not, but long term, yes.
If players always populate the three first spots you'll end up with a level three gym at 6000 prestige, and probably two pretty iffy defenders out of the three inside.
A populated friendly disco is golden for a small raiding group. I'm talking three, at most four players, but let's say three. It's the kind of number that could be walking to a pub or a café. No real raiding is planned at all.
So we hit upon a level three gym. 2000 prestige is nothing. You basically need a perverted combination of a 1300 chansey, followed by one 2600 and one 3100 blissey to force friendly players to walk away.
At 8000 prestige a prestige defender goes inside and the gym pops to 10000. A battle each and the gym stands at 13000 prestige, at which time one of us adds a defender while the other two run another battle each.
17000 prestige. The next player drops a defender inside and the two other run a battle each.
21000 prestige. We'll either leave it at 23000 prestige after adding the third defender, or we'll run another two or three battles each, which leaves the gym at 29000 or 32000 prestige. The latter is preferable as there's an open spot which would push the gym to 34000 prestige unless a rival player arrives to clean out the prestige defender.
All in all we're talking less than five minutes spent at the gym.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Fire and Ice event, first impressions
Well, it's been live for a day now.
Triple XP for everything keyed to catching a pokemon. That's a base 300 XP for the mon itself.
Five times the XP for hatching an egg.
We're being flooded by cyndaquil and houndour. Ponita and growlithe swarm the streets as well, together with shellders, seels and swinubs. Lapras seem to spawn at an increased rate as well, but they're far from everywhere.
Strangely enough I haven't been invaded by neither slugma nor jynx.
The cost in pokeballs is brutal, which is to be expected when you're seeing two starters everywhere, but in the long run, bloody hell the XP keep pouring in.
The way I'm normally playing I'd expect around 50K XP from a day during which I can play a substanitial amount of time. That usually means walking around 20 kilometres.
Let's look at the eggs only. One ten kilometre and four five kilometre ones for some kind of low average since I tend to collect enough coins to get myself two incubators every three days. That's 15K XP during this event, from hatching eggs.
Add a low average of 400 XP per pokemon caught and my usual 200 mons caught should yield another 80K. Spin the 200 stops as usual and we have another 10K.
105K XP before I start hacking away at the gyms, and we're still looking at rather defensive numbers.
Players at the 30 to 32 level range should expect to gain a level without even trying. Add a few select lucky eggs and you're pushing two.
Triple XP for everything keyed to catching a pokemon. That's a base 300 XP for the mon itself.
Five times the XP for hatching an egg.
We're being flooded by cyndaquil and houndour. Ponita and growlithe swarm the streets as well, together with shellders, seels and swinubs. Lapras seem to spawn at an increased rate as well, but they're far from everywhere.
Strangely enough I haven't been invaded by neither slugma nor jynx.
The cost in pokeballs is brutal, which is to be expected when you're seeing two starters everywhere, but in the long run, bloody hell the XP keep pouring in.
The way I'm normally playing I'd expect around 50K XP from a day during which I can play a substanitial amount of time. That usually means walking around 20 kilometres.
Let's look at the eggs only. One ten kilometre and four five kilometre ones for some kind of low average since I tend to collect enough coins to get myself two incubators every three days. That's 15K XP during this event, from hatching eggs.
Add a low average of 400 XP per pokemon caught and my usual 200 mons caught should yield another 80K. Spin the 200 stops as usual and we have another 10K.
105K XP before I start hacking away at the gyms, and we're still looking at rather defensive numbers.
Players at the 30 to 32 level range should expect to gain a level without even trying. Add a few select lucky eggs and you're pushing two.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Gym rework, guesstimates about the process
So this is just me making a few guesses. I have absolutely nothing to base them on, apart from experience from the IT industry and several occasions of how to plan events with a decent number of participants (a bit over 1000 people).
Fire and Ice event
A week when the player base is occupied with collecting pokemon and XP is a sweet time to launch the (partially) updated client needed for the new gym system.
Basically it'll have the new features disabled as default, but the client probably comes with a backdoor for enabling it. It should allow for testing the gym rework on gyms that you and I, as normal players, never see.
Niantic will also find out if there are any strange side effects.
Two to five days after the event
Gyms go down, maybe as early as one day after the event. I guess two, because Niantic promised some kind of advance warning to players with pokemon assigned to gyms.
Assigned pokemon are returned to their trainers as the gyms go defunct.
Five to eight days after the event
The new (and finalised) client is pushed to the player base. When the update is forced gyms come back alive again.
Nine to fourteen days after the event
Niantic aren't known for placing any weight on regression tests. Stuff that worked earlier have broken following client patches before. I fully expect a hotfix to be pushed to the player base during this period due to some horrendously stupid mistake that was allowed to ship with the gym rework.
Before such a hotfix players will try, and succeed, to break the new gym system. At least partially. Depending on the type of bugs found and abused a second hotfix might be needed. That one could very well be limited to changes server side.
Mid July
Remember 'this summer will be legendary'?
Mid July is the absoutely latest Niantic can push any legendary events onto the game, unless they plan to dump it all into the game in one big bomb. However, if they want to squeeze out the most of the legendaries, they'll release them one at a time in order to keep their players glued to their phones throughout the summer, and 'throughout the summer' really can't start any later than mid July.
So, in short, I expect the new gym system to be live and broken during the shift from June to July. A week later I expect it to be less broken.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the client patch that enables the gym rework already contains the code needed for handling legendary pokemon. If so, then some reverse engineering from the people out there should reveal it really quickly.
Fire and Ice event
A week when the player base is occupied with collecting pokemon and XP is a sweet time to launch the (partially) updated client needed for the new gym system.
Basically it'll have the new features disabled as default, but the client probably comes with a backdoor for enabling it. It should allow for testing the gym rework on gyms that you and I, as normal players, never see.
Niantic will also find out if there are any strange side effects.
Two to five days after the event
Gyms go down, maybe as early as one day after the event. I guess two, because Niantic promised some kind of advance warning to players with pokemon assigned to gyms.
Assigned pokemon are returned to their trainers as the gyms go defunct.
Five to eight days after the event
The new (and finalised) client is pushed to the player base. When the update is forced gyms come back alive again.
Nine to fourteen days after the event
Niantic aren't known for placing any weight on regression tests. Stuff that worked earlier have broken following client patches before. I fully expect a hotfix to be pushed to the player base during this period due to some horrendously stupid mistake that was allowed to ship with the gym rework.
Before such a hotfix players will try, and succeed, to break the new gym system. At least partially. Depending on the type of bugs found and abused a second hotfix might be needed. That one could very well be limited to changes server side.
Mid July
Remember 'this summer will be legendary'?
Mid July is the absoutely latest Niantic can push any legendary events onto the game, unless they plan to dump it all into the game in one big bomb. However, if they want to squeeze out the most of the legendaries, they'll release them one at a time in order to keep their players glued to their phones throughout the summer, and 'throughout the summer' really can't start any later than mid July.
So, in short, I expect the new gym system to be live and broken during the shift from June to July. A week later I expect it to be less broken.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the client patch that enables the gym rework already contains the code needed for handling legendary pokemon. If so, then some reverse engineering from the people out there should reveal it really quickly.
Monday, June 12, 2017
The fire and ice week is almost here
So, what to do?
Grabbing XP
If you're interested in that extra XP, leave that PoGo Plus at home You want to catch manually to get the bonuses.
The XP bonuses are keyed to first throws, curve balls and placing a nice, great or excellent ball.
If you've rebuilt the pidgey storage you depleted during the last XP-event, well, at least Lucky Eggs are half price. While you won't get more XP for mass evolving you'll do so for cheaper.
Extra XP is fine and everything, but I'm after the mons!
I've been looking for lapras, but I don't see it mentioned. Still hoping since it's an ice-type after all. Apart from lapras there really isn't anything fun in the ice departement.
Charizard for those of you who are still lacking a good one for bragging rights. Typhlosion for the same reason. Houndoom might get the candy reserve for pushing one a bit.
For the collector I guess there's always ninetails.
Did I forget flareon? No, I didn't. Eevee isn't a fire type pokemon, and I doubt the streets will become flooded by eevee evolves.
If you're unlucky you'll get swamped by slugma again.
What to aim for?
I'd go for charmander, cyndaquil, houndour, and if they do spawn more often, lapras.
Maybe vulpix if I didn't already have enough candy to push my best ninetails should such a day ever arrive.
Grabbing XP
If you're interested in that extra XP, leave that PoGo Plus at home You want to catch manually to get the bonuses.
The XP bonuses are keyed to first throws, curve balls and placing a nice, great or excellent ball.
If you've rebuilt the pidgey storage you depleted during the last XP-event, well, at least Lucky Eggs are half price. While you won't get more XP for mass evolving you'll do so for cheaper.
Extra XP is fine and everything, but I'm after the mons!
I've been looking for lapras, but I don't see it mentioned. Still hoping since it's an ice-type after all. Apart from lapras there really isn't anything fun in the ice departement.
Charizard for those of you who are still lacking a good one for bragging rights. Typhlosion for the same reason. Houndoom might get the candy reserve for pushing one a bit.
For the collector I guess there's always ninetails.
Did I forget flareon? No, I didn't. Eevee isn't a fire type pokemon, and I doubt the streets will become flooded by eevee evolves.
If you're unlucky you'll get swamped by slugma again.
What to aim for?
I'd go for charmander, cyndaquil, houndour, and if they do spawn more often, lapras.
Maybe vulpix if I didn't already have enough candy to push my best ninetails should such a day ever arrive.
Friday, June 09, 2017
More news, event and gyms
The fire and ice event is verified. June 13 to June 20.
The gym revamp is finally coming. It's not set in time, but 'soon after' the fire and ice event.
Gyms will become disabled for an unknown amount of time prior when the new system goes live, and all trainers will get their assigned pokemon returned. Some kind of warning beforehand will be issued as well.
Throughout the summer some kind of events will occur at Unibail-Rodamco shopping centres in Europe.
The gym revamp is finally coming. It's not set in time, but 'soon after' the fire and ice event.
Gyms will become disabled for an unknown amount of time prior when the new system goes live, and all trainers will get their assigned pokemon returned. Some kind of warning beforehand will be issued as well.
Throughout the summer some kind of events will occur at Unibail-Rodamco shopping centres in Europe.
Wednesday, June 07, 2017
Adding a pokemon mid-prestige
So you and your friends are adding prestige to a gym. It's going up pretty fast and then suddenly the gym is counter attacked.
You basically have four options, and some of them can be combined:
You basically have four options, and some of them can be combined:
- Burn through the opposition
- Start populating the gym mid-prestige
- Hover around a level break (30 or 40 K prestige)
- Give up
The first option is best used when you notice that the prestige lost can't be compared to the prestige gained.
The second is there for two reasons. One is that you gain 2K prestige when you assign a pokemon to the gym, and the second is to force an error on the attacker.
The third option is mainly a combined burst just as the gym falls below a break point to push i a level and quickly assign a pokemon to the gym.
The fourth, well, you can't win all battles.
The most interesting one is how to assign a pokemon in order to force an error on the attacker. Basically the game gives you the gym line-up when you enter combat. If the next opponent changes during mid-fight, then you're likely to get an error. That error usually prevents you from fighting in the gym for a few minutes. That time should be more than enough to push the gym and populate it.
Hence you should slot in pokemon where they're likely to create this error. Just remember to communicate between raid members. You're just as likely to enforce this error on one of your own, so make certain team members have finished fighting, or are fighting a pokemon where they won't be subjected to the error.
Sunday, June 04, 2017
Even more rumours, fire and ice event
According to this, and a few other, articles, there's another week long event coming up.
This time it's fire and ice type pokemon that's going to invade the spawn points.
If the leaked information is correct the event should occur June 13 to June 20. If so it'll most likely start at 10 pm CET.
Rather than a flat 100% xp-increase the experience point bonus seems to be keyed to catching pokemon with xp-bonuses for first ball, nice catch, etc increased as well as an increased XP-reward for hatching eggs. Lucky eggs should come at half the standard price.
Once again, this is not confirmed.
This time it's fire and ice type pokemon that's going to invade the spawn points.
If the leaked information is correct the event should occur June 13 to June 20. If so it'll most likely start at 10 pm CET.
Rather than a flat 100% xp-increase the experience point bonus seems to be keyed to catching pokemon with xp-bonuses for first ball, nice catch, etc increased as well as an increased XP-reward for hatching eggs. Lucky eggs should come at half the standard price.
Once again, this is not confirmed.
Friday, June 02, 2017
Finish the job, why you shouldn't stop halfway
Obviously we sometimes run out of time when we're attacking a gym and have to leave it. Well, it's bad but that can't be helped.
I've also heard the argument that someone else can clean out the last five or six levels in a gym because the hard job is already done.
Sooo, what to make out of the last argument.
It's true that burning a gym down from 52K to 19K represents the bulk of the job, but what's left inside the gym is usually the real defenders standing below the utter crap at the top, mostly consisting of the shitty four.
So people tire of not getting two or three cheap kills and leave the gym. And that's pretty bad.
Let's have a look at it from the other side.
Let's say I'm walking around town with a playing friend. Between us we have access to one prestige account for bubbling (content in link partially obsolete). It's pushing the rules, and it'll vanish when bubbling simply isn't worth it in terms of prestige, but it's the standard setup in raiding teams.
If we tear down a rival gym we pass by we'll either drop and walk or drop a prestiger inside and push it to 20, assign two defenders and walk away. In either case it's easy prey for rival players.
Now let's se what happens when we walk into a level five friendly gym. It sports a blissey, a vaporeon, another blissey, a dragonite and one tyranitar. I assume you can guess the order, and it explains why someone left it standing.
Another rival player (rival to us at least) probably found it at 15K prestige and applied my theory about when to stop attacking if short on time, so the gym is now at 13K prestige.
Blissey is admittedly a major pain to prestige against, but this friendly gym is golden for two raiding players. Pushing seven thousand prestige against this kind of opposition isn't happening though, so we'll settle for three.
At 16K prestige a prestige defender goes inside and the gym pops to 18K. Two quick fights and the gym stands at 20K, at which time another defender goes inside, most likely a vaporeon or snorlax if it's our local raiders we're talking about. Let's say another vaporeon that drops between the two blisseys already inside the gym.
22K.
Eight quick prestige battles later the other player will drop a snorlax inside and we walk away.
The gym now has the following composition: 32K, prestige pokemon, blissey, vaporeon, vaporeon, blissey, snorlax, dragonite and tyranitar.
It's likely to be pushed down to 29K quickly to remove the prestige pokemon, or if another two friendly players arrive it'll hit the full 52K prestige.
So, if you have the time, better finish the job.
I've also heard the argument that someone else can clean out the last five or six levels in a gym because the hard job is already done.
Sooo, what to make out of the last argument.
It's true that burning a gym down from 52K to 19K represents the bulk of the job, but what's left inside the gym is usually the real defenders standing below the utter crap at the top, mostly consisting of the shitty four.
So people tire of not getting two or three cheap kills and leave the gym. And that's pretty bad.
Let's have a look at it from the other side.
Let's say I'm walking around town with a playing friend. Between us we have access to one prestige account for bubbling (content in link partially obsolete). It's pushing the rules, and it'll vanish when bubbling simply isn't worth it in terms of prestige, but it's the standard setup in raiding teams.
If we tear down a rival gym we pass by we'll either drop and walk or drop a prestiger inside and push it to 20, assign two defenders and walk away. In either case it's easy prey for rival players.
Now let's se what happens when we walk into a level five friendly gym. It sports a blissey, a vaporeon, another blissey, a dragonite and one tyranitar. I assume you can guess the order, and it explains why someone left it standing.
Another rival player (rival to us at least) probably found it at 15K prestige and applied my theory about when to stop attacking if short on time, so the gym is now at 13K prestige.
Blissey is admittedly a major pain to prestige against, but this friendly gym is golden for two raiding players. Pushing seven thousand prestige against this kind of opposition isn't happening though, so we'll settle for three.
At 16K prestige a prestige defender goes inside and the gym pops to 18K. Two quick fights and the gym stands at 20K, at which time another defender goes inside, most likely a vaporeon or snorlax if it's our local raiders we're talking about. Let's say another vaporeon that drops between the two blisseys already inside the gym.
22K.
Eight quick prestige battles later the other player will drop a snorlax inside and we walk away.
The gym now has the following composition: 32K, prestige pokemon, blissey, vaporeon, vaporeon, blissey, snorlax, dragonite and tyranitar.
It's likely to be pushed down to 29K quickly to remove the prestige pokemon, or if another two friendly players arrive it'll hit the full 52K prestige.
So, if you have the time, better finish the job.
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