So, does anyone else play Pokemon Go?

[tasonir]

I've been playing it a lot since release, and it's generally popular among the nerdy 20/30 somethings, yet I haven't seen it mentioned here. Do we all fear the sunlight, or is mobile gaming too shallow for people here?

I'm level 36, instinct, and working on establishing my empire in the local gyms...Anyone else?

[bcadren]

Level 28, Mystic. Rural Player and one of the higher level ones around here (hold some gyms for weeks)

[toastedzergling]

Level 34, Instinct. I work in SF, so it's pretty easy for me. I play a lot with my girlfriend, and love taking down gyms together. I joined instinct specifically to be on the underdog team, and I have a boatload of fun carving out yellow oasis amongst the seas of red and blue around me rallying my minority followers to reinforce the gyms (by training it up and leaving slots available).

[ZipZipskins]

inb4 fuck team valor and everything they stand for

[TeshiAlair]

Started to play again now that the weather is finally to the point where I walk everywhere again, Mystic, no idea what level I just wander and catch

[tasonir]

I was planning on going to a local machop nest yesterday, it had been sunny all morning and afternoon and then right around 4-5pm, boom, thunderstorms.

I had a large area carved out of all level 10 instinct gyms, roughly grouped into a north cluster and a south cluster with a gap between them of gyms that flip back and forth between valor/mystic. Sadly, about 2 weeks ago for the double exp event, most of the south cluster got taken down. North's still pretty strong, but I went from regularly holding 15 gyms to holding about 5, and having to temporarily take a few gyms to hit 10, then collect. If anyone's around seattle and wants to help, let me know

[Zooty]

Level 37 Instinct. I had a big gym empire but it crumbled while I was travelling. Gen 1+2 complete excluding regionals (though I have Farfetch'd and Mr. Mime)

[tasonir]

New gym rework is live! I'm going to be going around reclaiming all the old gyms I had before the reset, looking forward to it. Also already increased my bag space to 1500, with all the old coins I had from before the gym rework. Looks like getting coins will be harder now, but I've already got basically everything I need, so I'm not too worried.

[TeshiAlair]

The rework was suuuuch a needed change

[Zooty]

Here's my thoughts on the new update:

Gyms have been made more accessible, which is great. Maxed out gyms of your own team are no longer dead to you. Gym badges are a nice way to know where you've been. However, mechanism for getting coins is bizarre and bad. Any pokemon in a gym earns a coin / 10 minutes, up to a daily maximum of 50 coins. This is nice, but you only get those coins once your pokemon is kicked out of the gym, so staying in gyms longer than 8 hours is counterproductive. Feeding berries to someone else's pokemon is practically griefing. Opposing team also doesn't have much incentive to kick your pokemon out. Sure, they get an extra item if they spin the disc when their team owns the gym, but that's not worth spending 15 minutes fighting. They also level up their gym badge, but you'll eventually reach gold in any gym you frequent. Trying to get badges for gyms you don't frequent is pointless unless you feel like a completionist, since the only reward is extra items. Basically this means that I take the gym closest to my work after I leave and the two closest to my home before going to sleep and hope at least one of them survives long enough.

Raids seem like a nice concept, but it seems there are too few players where I play to try to tackle them meaningfully. The first Tyranitar raid around my neighborhood on the release day of the raids attracted 5 players and we couldn't finish it. Unless some way to contact other players is added, I'm just going to tackle a level 2 raid once per day and ignore them otherwise. Also, the attack warning doesn't seem to work during raid battles, but it doesn't matter since there's no point in dodging anyway. Raid boss will take approximately 3 minutes to knock out your pokemon, and even if it happens before time limit you can just throw some new ones into the fray.

Combat is even buggier than before. Syncing with the server is shaky, so energy and hp bars fluctuate pretty wildly. Switching pokemon usually means that the new pokemon is switched in, then the old one and then the new one again, so I've given up on that for all but the worst matchups. Revives are plentiful anyway.

Total rating: meh

[tasonir]

Yeah I definitely agree the coins returned on your pokemon being knocked out and limited to 50 coins is very, very odd. You really want to drop in random trash pokemon (I've seen weedles) and hope to get them back in a couple of hours for maximum gain. I'm hoping they come up with something a little more rewarding for actual defending, I think there will be enough turnover now that gyms are limited to 6 pokemon with a natural decay rate. Chances are you don't even have to fight the 6 at full power on your first pass, and you certainly don't after that.

I think the combat lag/syncing should improve as server strain goes down. I've had trouble where we had 4 players for a tyrannitar raid and couldn't kill it before timeout, we would have been fine with 5, but no 5th showed up. As with a lot of things in pokemon being in or near a city continues to be an advantage. At least you can take level 1/2 raids pretty easily alone, and it's only 2 people for a level 3 raid, although I haven't personally done one with 2, I think that's generally people's experience so far. Might take 3 if people aren't fully prepared with the best counters for the raid boss.