Pokemon: GO

[Fenchurch]

We took two gyms yesterday, held them for at least 5 hours, but this morning they'd both changed hands. So I realise now it's not going to be realistic to claim coins from a gym by holding it for +21 hours, because the game is designed to make that difficult. It's better to just wait until your shield timer is ready, take as many gyms as you can in a short space of time, and then claim the coins straight away.

Also zor you might be able to take down a trainer who is at least a couple levels higher than you, assuming you have reasonable pokemon for your level. Attacking is easier than defending, and you can also use types to your advantage.

Edit: oh I just read that the lowest pokemon in the gym is a few levels higher. Well you'd have to be prepared for multiple battles as you chip away at it. If you can defeat just one of the gym pokemon each time, using 6 of yours, eventually you can weaken the gym to zero. You'll need a lot of potions and revives though.

[Fenchurch]

reply: 168
From what I understand you can co-operate with someone from your team in a gym battle by fighting at the same time. Supposedly the enemy pokes take damage in real-time. Haven't had a chance to try this out as a lot of the locals are either Mystic or Insight, and I'm Valor.

I don't think this is true... we've attacked a few enemy gyms together and once one person enters battle, it locks anyone else out of the gym until the battle is complete. There isn't any option I've seen for other trainers to join in either before or during.

The one thing you can do with multiple players is take turns; since you generally have to do multiple battles with the gym in order to take it over.

Also, once a player claims a gym, it can immediately hold up to 3 pokemon, even without training to raise the prestige. So one thing you could do if you want some pokecoins but can't battle gyms yourself, is look for a gym that your team controls with less than three pokes, and add to it.

[Fenchurch]

i dont think that's quite true
ive been to plenty of gyms with a max capacity of 2 or even 1

Are you sure that's the max capacity? I've seen plenty of Level 2 gyms but never a Level 1. Maybe if the prestige has been lowered through a battle, but not wiped out completely? Not sure if that's possible, though.

My experience based on taking over gyms and viewing the gyms around me is this:
As soon as 1st pokemon is placed - Gym Level 2, Prestige 2000/4000
As soon as 2nd pokemon placed - Gym Level 3, prestige 4000/8000
As soon as 3rd pokemon placed - Gym Level 3, prestige 6000/8000
Then:
Prestige must be raised to 8000 by training, to place a 4th pokemon
Prestige must be raised to 12000 by training, to place a 5th pokemon

I've never seen a gym higher than level 5, but I'm guessing level 6 might be the max.

[Fenchurch]

reply: 168
From what I understand you can co-operate with someone from your team in a gym battle by fighting at the same time. Supposedly the enemy pokes take damage in real-time. Haven't had a chance to try this out as a lot of the locals are either Mystic or Insight, and I'm Valor.

I don't think this is true... we've attacked a few enemy gyms together and once one person enters battle, it locks anyone else out of the gym until the battle is complete. There isn't any option I've seen for other trainers to join in either before or during.

I take this back, I was 100% wrong. You totally can attack a gym simultaneously with someone else on the same team. We did it this morning and it's awesome!

You don't have to click anything special, just enter the gym at the same time or at least make sure that the second person is in before the first battle ends. A good way to take over stronger gyms.

[Fenchurch]

while others are either more ambiguous (eg hitmonchan, porygon kanghaskhan) or sure unavailable (legendaries)

CES has caught a Porygon in the wild, and we've seen Hitmonchan on the 'nearby' list. I've hatched an Onix from an egg.

[Fenchurch]

If you get the ball-glitch, you may still have caught it. The game will have already decided whether he broke free or you caught it, but it got stuck trying to load the relevant animation. If you end up having to restart the game, the bulbasaur will be in your inventory and your journal if you caught it. It's happened to me a lot.

[Fenchurch]

Today I found out why I never got anything from lures and incense. I was pretty sure there was something wrong since CES would always see stuff there and I couldn't.

Looking forward to finding a lure now that it might have actual pokemon

[Fenchurch]

Oh maybe this also explains why my lucky egg only lasted for 26 minutes

[Fenchurch]

I have the glitch that only lists Pokemon that are three paw prints away, so it's impossible to actively hunt Pokémon. Instead of the joy of discovering side streets and new locations while searching for a rare Pokémon (which seems like the major appeal of the game), I can only walk down the street and wait for a Zubat to jump in my face.

I think everyone has that at the moment. It's not a glitch with you, it's the server. The pokestops freezing is probably also the server; mine have been iffy all day. It'll probably get better in a day or two, especially if the Canada launch was today.

I can certainly understand why it's so addictive, though, given how much effort I've put into trying to play it despite its unplayability.

[Fenchurch]

Looks tasty zor!

I was trying to find a pokemon ball looking eating bowl so I could make the Hawiian dish Poke in it.

Like this? Oh but that seller only ships within UK. You could go to a pottery cafe and make your own?

Edit: Okay I've only just figured out that thing you posted is a pipe.

[Fenchurch]

Has anyone else had mixed results with the Eeveelution naming trick? My first three worked, but my next two failed. So now I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, and if some of the first were just flukes.

First three eeveelutions before I knew about naming: Flareon, Vaporeon, Flareon

Next three eeveelutions with naming:
Sparky -> Jolteon
Rainer -> Vaporeon
Sparky -> Jolteon

Then I did two more today:
Rainer -> Flareon
Rainer -> Flareon

I restarted the app in between naming so I'm sure that the names had stuck. The first failure could have been down to the unique naming thing, as I still had another 'Rainer' in my inventory. But the last time I made sure it was my only Rainer and it still failed. Maybe the naming does only work for the first of each type, and the other two times I just got lucky. Which would be a shame because I really want more Vaporeons....

[Fenchurch]

Well, I'm still really enjoying it, and I'm glad that it's different from the console versions. Pretty much every aspect of the game forces me to get out and about more than I did before, which makes me feel good about playing it, rather than guilty.

I guess the main driving force for me is hatching eggs, because it's a reliable way to get the missing pokemon for my pokedex. But to hatch eggs I need incubators, and to get those I take gyms. We've been averaging 3+ gyms per day for the past couple of weeks.

Also an element of the game that is not really pay-to-win is tackling gyms, since you can't buy potions from the store. The main limiting element for us has been number of potions, which just means more trips to pokestops, which means more walking. All in all, playing the game makes me happy.

Spoiler: my badge collection, 10 days ago and today

[Fenchurch]

See, I'm pretty sure I found battling in the console games just as repetitive, and slow. And there is still a challenge in choosing the right pokemon to gain worthwhile prestige and still win (especially when you are low on potions). But to me the main point, in this game, is being there; it's about having to spend your time travelling from gym to gym, doing it every day.

Battles are also a bit more balanced with today's update which has averaged out the DPS, so type advantages are a bit more meaningful and you can't just win everything with a Vaporeon.

[Fenchurch]

So on my morning commute today, four or five gyms in the path to the university were taken by this guy with a level 33 account and a level 35 account (usernames were the same one with different suffixes). In each gym they left a ~3000CP Snorlax and a ~3000CP Dragonite.

The cynic in me wants to cry foul. I just lowered my head and hit the incense.

That's funny, we saw something similar in a gym yesterday - two accounts with the same name (and sounded like it was based on the player's real name) but a different number at the end. I just assumed it's someone with two mobile phones I guess? In this case though I think the guy was actually there at the time, with a friend (on a differently named account), although I didn't ask to check it was him.

[Fenchurch]

If you could team up or something to take down a 2500 CP Snorlax it'd be one thing. But having to win solo is a very frustrating system.

You do know that you

can

team up, right? When you say 'having to win solo' do you just mean because you don't have anyone to play with?

~~~

I still find there is plenty of depth to gyms. Planning our daily gym raid, we have to consider the different gyms in the area and their turnover rate - e.g. the one by the tramstop usually changes hands every 5-20 minutes, whereas the Navy club can hold for up to a day. Ideally we want to start at the steadier gyms and do more volatile gyms just before claiming. Also identifying which gyms are worthwhile for our time and resources. It's usually far quicker to take an enemy gym than to add to our own team's gym, if we don't have a good type advantage to building up prestige.

We've also developed a system in order to make the best use of potions. We have a group of attack pokemon (mostly electric and water types) for attacking enemy gyms, and these only ever get given revives. This is probably made easier since there are two of us battling together, but even solo, since you can chuck a whole team at an enemy gym, it's often okay if you go in at half health. We have some trash pokemon that we're planning to transfer anyway, and we can stick these in the final gym, because we don't need to hold it. And then we have the high level defence pokemon, these are the only ones that get potions.

[Fenchurch]

If I can take on a single individual pokemon to take them out at the same time as someone else tries, I have not gotten it to work. I've been able to team up to try to lower gym reputation, but that's a very different feeling.

If you're training at your own team's gym, then no you can't team up. You can only take in a single pokemon and yes this is hard.

If you're attacking an enemy gym, then you can team up, you just need to enter battle at the same time as someone else (not sure whether you have to be on the same team as your accomplice for this to work, e.g. whether blue+yellow can join battle against a red gym).

The system is designed to make taking over a gym

much

easier than strengthening a gym. I'm pretty sure a couple of lvl 20 players could take down level 10 enemy gym, with bit of time and a few potions.

Not sure what you mean about it being 'a different feeling'?

[Fenchurch]

That's pretty cool to see tans

Caught my first Mr Mime the other day. Far and away the creepiest pokemon encounter animation.

I'm liking the cycling of spawn spots with each update; our local spawn has gone Eevee > Magikarp > Omanyte, and the campus has been a hotbed of Growlithe > Meowth > Psyduck.

[Fenchurch]

At this point any further progress will come from driving out of town to various nests.

It's also possible that some of your local spawns switch to something new. In the last update our at-home spawn changed to Omanyte, giving us both enough over the past couple of weeks to get Omastars. I'd not found either previously in the wild and so it might have been a long time before I could add them to my dex otherwise.

I'm currently at 102, but will get to 108 with my next evolve batch.

[Fenchurch]

Ooh, where's the info? Is it this?

The two nests shifts local to us are:
Eevee -> Magikarp -> Omanyte
Growlithe -> Meowth -> Psyduck

The first shifts seem to be on the list but second ones don't match. So this doesn't actually predict what the next shift will be I guess... it just shows that all shifts are the same when they happen.

[Fenchurch]

Was that first migration (29 July) or second migration (22 August)? I'm pretty sure that list applies only to first migration (although maybe it's a muddle of the two).

[Fenchurch]

Also, found out about the Global Nest Atlas project, which is pretty cool. Although sadly there are not a lot of nests marked in our area, aside from the ones I already knew about... apart from a reported Exxegute nest on the edge of town which looks promising.

[Fenchurch]

I don't know if you

can

hatch other regional pokemon... I think most reports have been discredited as potential spoofers?

We visited that exeggute nest I mentioned and it was awesome! Also I combined info on max CPs and IV calculator to build up a nice team of 2,000+ CP gym defenders.

Our local gyms are changing hands faster than ever though; where previously we could collect 7-9 coins at the weekend before our batteries ran out, recently it's been a challenge to hold more than 4 simultaneously. But then last weekend we cycled out to a nature reserve and managed to find some off-the-beaten-path gyms, and for the first time, have held onto a handful for more than 3 days in a row.

What do your stats look like? These are mine:

Spoiler: badge collection

[Fenchurch]

3003 2190 6606

Trainer name: Semley

Gonna try and get y'all to Best Friends so if I ever see you at a meet we can trade surplus legendaries for -800 stardust and +3 candy.

[Fenchurch]

We’ve got some division in our local community around what is and isn’t acceptable play. Curious what the opinions are here are on which of these are okay or not, and why? I know what my gut feelings are, but I find it hard to articulate the reasons.

1. Getting a player on a different team to knock a space in a gym of your own team so that you can add to it
2. Using a second account on a different team to knock a space in a gym of your own team so that you can add to it
3. Using golden berries to defend a gym you are holding, whilst someone is trying to take it down
4. Getting players on your team to help defend a gym before an ex raid, even though they don’t have a pass to that raid
5. Using a second account on your own team to help defend a gym before an ex raid
6. Getting a player on a different team to help you remove a specific player from a gym, without affecting the rest of the players occupying that gym
7. Using a second account to knock your own pokemon out of a gym so that you get coins

[Fenchurch]

If the game allows it it should be ok
mark of a poor game if it’s not enjoyable following this general principle

Sure, it'd be great if the game was designed in a way that made these questions unnecessary. But the same kind of questions apply to a mafia game. You could be a total shit to other players. You could lie about your real life circumstances to avoid pressure. And so we have debates over whether these kind of things are okay.

Also, using multiple accounts is explicitly deemed by Niantic to be breaking the rules, but it's very difficult for them to enforce and so they don't. But that's a bit like... joining a pvp game with an account on both sides and then throwing on one so that your other account wins.

[Fenchurch]

3 and 4 are acceptable, the rest no

Thanks for the answer! Can you explain why? A particular dilemma I have is between 1 and 4. These both involve other players helping you in a way that doesn't directly benefit them. Why would one be okay and the other not?

[Fenchurch]

No to anything involving multiple accounts or spoofing. Everything else is cool.

Even 6? That one seems pretty malicious to me.

Luckily our community is pretty united on opposing spoofing, so that doesn't make it onto the list.

[Fenchurch]

Well, the truth is I’d rather not have to. But unfortunately I’m an admin of one of our local raid groups, and a pair of players have been taking part in some of the scummier kinds of play in that list (1, 2, 5, 6) as well as some things I didn’t bother putting on there, e.g creating extra alts just to fill gyms and block spaces from the players who they are targeting. And yes, 6 is pretty clearly bullying in my book, since it’s been used multiple times to target individuals who have spoken up against them.

They’ve claimed at various times there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing, that it’s equivalent to other kinds of competitive play and teamwork (e.g items 3 and 4), or that it’s not been made clear what is and isn’t allowed. I’d love to say, ‘just don’t be an asshole’, but it seems like that’s not enough. So I’ve been trying to set some clear boundaries and wanted to sense check that they’re fair, and I’m not being biased that a certain playstyle is bad just because I associate it with someone who does other nasty things.

I’ve decided that even though 1 might be not be strictly banned by what Niantic has written, it’s shitty enough that I’m not okay with it. And actually, I don’t know of any other players who feel it’s necessary to do this.

Thanks for the help guys, it was really useful hearing outside opinions.

[Fenchurch]

Who is cityface on pogo

It’s Cogito Ergo Sum.

For Psyche’s benefit, to me the current challenge of PoGo is being able to do raids with the minimum number of players where necessary, which means building teams of the best counters and have enough rare candy and dust to power them up, which means doing daily legendary raids to get rare candy.

And I too would be really surprised if there isn’t at least one raiding group local to Sudo.