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 as pokestops
• Gym battling
• Changes to Pokemon Go

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.