Pokemon Go

I'd hug the fence and hope the GPS messes up so I can get a Pokemon inside the gym.

edited 24th Aug '16 7:16:17 AM by Malco

Most likely an Ingress player who wanted a couch portal. If you tell me where it is, I can look it up on the Ingress map and see if it's active in that game.

Got a Dratini. Nice. Dragons are always a treasure to have.

First, yeah, I've had the super throw bug - and not just on the first throw of a capture. I've also gotten it for a throw immediately after something breaks out of the ball, too.

Oh, and for today's (well, actually yesterday's, but still) super annoying moment... anyone else ever have that bug where they see a spawn, they tap it, and it immediately despawns rather than go into the catch mode? I had that happen again. But instead of against Pidgey or Rattata (not surprisingly, the most common Phantom Spawn I've dealt with), it was a flipping Kabuto. I mean, running into an uber-rare spawn and having it run from me would be annoying enough (looking at you, Abra), but for it to show a spawn and then not even give me the chance to catch it? So very, very frustrating.

Whoa.

The Pidgeot I left to guard the train depot catwalk returned to me... fainted. I thought kicked out gym pokemon were sent back with 1 hp, what gives?

And wow, someone took a gym from a probably restricted area that fast. Can't even ambiguously trespass through hazardous smoke without some Mystic(presumably Mystic, because come on) on your tail anyway.

They said it was a bug that returned defending mons came back with 1 HP instead of fainted, which makes me think that it was really PR doublespeak for "we heard complaints about inconsistency between health of attacking and defending fainted mons so we'll just call it a bug fix and put it in the 'listened to the fans and fixed stuff' achievement box".

I am noticing more variety lately.

Zubats never really were that much of a problem for me, I just curve and throw with force and usually am able to at least hit the circle.

Caterpie tends to be the break out and run extremely often mon for me.

But I've been instituting a 2-ball max for all the half-cost evolutions and just not bothering to catch their evolved forms.

That was changed in the last update, now Pokemon are fainted after coming back from a gym or losing in training. A lot of people wanted this to make Revives more than just trash items.

IMO a good change. Prior to the patch, my super potions counts was getting destroyed by my gym trips.

Properly done never get fainted in sparring anyway... I usually flee when I get to the encounter I can't win anymore.

edited 24th Aug '16 10:15:49 AM by Malco

Oh, I don't have a problem with the implementation. Revives bringing them back at half health saves me potions. I'm just more amused by the classification of it as a "bug".

Oh. Well it's no Caterpie for sure.

Haha, I guess their PR guy is hard at work. But "changed the way things work in gyms" or something would've gone better.

Well, I can see the "defender returns with 1 HP" thing actually being a bug (probably related to the fact that you don't get knocked out when you lose all your HP when training a gym), and it just went unaddressed because there were much bigger issues to tackle prior to yesterday. Though it's just as reasonable that it wasn't a bug and Niantic is just reacting to how many people were throwing out revives regularly. Honestly, I just wish they had sent out a notification of the change, rather than me discovering it last night when I wasn't sure why I couldn't heal the Magmar that had been on defending duty.

To augment this, pokestops are now giving out LESS Revives. Go figure.

A notification would have been nice, yeah. I bet lots of people were like WTF why can't I potion this.

Welp, better buy more revives with real world money...or just battle less.

Healing items aren't in the shop. Otherwise people with cash to burn could just heal their way through gyms.

edited 24th Aug '16 3:53:21 PM by Anura

So what's up with these crazy 3000+ Dragonites, Lapras, and Snorlaxes everywhere in gyms? People friggin being level 40 already? How? Playing 24/7 nonstop?!

Some of them are probably hackers. Niantic is working on this, I think....

Most people level 40 or mid to high 30s are botters, though most bots were taken out in a recent ban wave/code change that killed a lot of bots. Even people who GPS spoof can't get that high of a level that fast. You can't really do much against them though since even Niantic can't ban every possible type of bot out there.

At least when they get banned their mons are kicked out of the gym and it might become gray again?

Huh... I've been getting as many revives as usual. I don't know if that means that I'm an outlier or that other people are.

I'm not sure just how high right now is a solid fair level for most people. I only get to do more than my daily commute about two or three times per week, so someone with fewer commitments has a lot more potential... but then, when I do go out, I schedule 3-5 hour blocks (or more), which enables me to get in a ton of walking about and catching. I just hit level 24 yesterday, with nearly 2 months of play, and I have no idea if I'm ahead of the curve or not. I do know that, with the absurd ramp-up in experience required for the next level, that there are probably extremely few that are legitimately level 40, but I don't know if even level 27 is a far cry from what a dedicated player with fewer life commitments could have.

I'm really enjoying the "evaluate" option for what I've caught now, particularly as I'm Mystic and Blanche is as cool and calculating as I had hoped. I'm particularly enjoying when a given 'mon is at some variety of extreme. For example, my Gengar is 1.99 kilos, and she's amazed about how it's smaller than any other Gengar in existence (for those that don't want to pop over to Bulbapedia, the average weight for the species is 40.5 kilos, so mine is less than 5% of the average weight).

EDIT: I spoke with a couple of other players I know locally a few days ago, and one was level 22 and the other was 24 (when I was right in the middle at 23). That said, all three of us have similar life situations (working parents who also have regular tabletop sessions), so the only thing I can gather is that if you have a job, a kid, and participate in a tabletop game at least twice a week, it's reasonable to be in the low 20s if you started the game at launch. Take that for what you will.

edited 25th Aug '16 8:06:32 AM by 32_Footsteps

Most people around me are level 22-27, judging by the constant fluxuation of gyms. That's probably the "fair" levels.

edited 25th Aug '16 8:04:08 AM by Luminosity

I'm lv. 23 myself, and i've seen lv. 14-28 in nearby gyms that I consider fair.

I believe most of us here in this city are just interested in sneaking a mon in a gym and getting the 10 coins that we deserve.

For reference, I usually play 1-2 hours a day after work, and tend to not play on Saturday, and sometimes in Sunday if I need to take my parents to a mall.

edited 25th Aug '16 8:37:49 AM by Malco

Level 25 here and suddenly there are mega potions (full pokemon health refill) No idea how these come in handy since revives do half health to begin with. Seem like overkill.

Level 11 here...

Yeah, welcome to Max Potions. Not very useful in the main games, even less so in Go.

Well, I've taken advantage of hyper potions in a few cases... generally either after training (where my 'mon is left with 1 HP) or in cases where I came pretty close to fainting but pulled out the gym victory instead. That said, yeah, super potions now are just as useful for the most part.