Pokemon Go Gyms are broken and it’s time for a change

Pokemon Go Gyms have mostly had the same mechanics and rules to them since the game came out in 2016 and they need to change to keep players happy.

For over five years now players and fans alike have been calling for something to change with Pokemon Go’s Gyms. They are fun additions that provide another way to battle it out with other trainers and earn PokeCoins, but most of all they’re frustrating and situationally unfair.

The success of a Pokemon Gym and how many coins you’ll end up getting all seem to depend on the location of the Gym in question. It needs to be in a perfect situation or you’ll end up getting kicked out quicker than you can make any coins or even say goodbye to your pokemon for months when no one kicks it out. After over five years in the game, something needs to change with the Gyms.

Pokemon Go Gyms hinder more than they help

Gyms are a useful way to gain valuable PokeCoins which can be spent on items to help your journey through the game. However, that’s pretty much all they can do aside from hosting Raid Battles. When you compare that with the level of frustration coming from the community, it just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.

One of the biggest frustrations the community has expressed about these Gyms is how heavily their location impacts the rewards you’ll get. Ultimately, if you’re in a highly-populated area and you put a Pokemon into the Gym, it’s highly likely they won’t last for the ten minutes it takes to get any PokeCoins, making the whole effort pointless.

Players in rural areas with a lower population have the opposite problem, as any Pokemon placed in a Gym here could remain stuck for weeks on end before someone kicks it out, meaning you’re unlikely to get any truly reliable source of PokeCoin income from them.

Now it’s worth noting that this isn’t necessarily a problem that all Pokemon Go players share, but it’s definitely enough to pose a problem to a big part of the community.

Another issue is the way Gyms reward PokeCoins. Not only is the entire process a bit confusing but it also limits you heavily on how much you can collect. A maximum of 50 PokeCoins per day is quite low and makes it extremely challenging to ever get a considerable amount of them.

Unless you are in the right location to put multiple Pokemon in different Gyms and they get kicked out on separate days, you’re not going to get much of a haul after all your hard work.

How Niantic can fix Pokemon Go’s Gym problem

An obvious fix for this would be to allow players to remove their Pokemon from Gyms. It could still come at a cost, perhaps fewer PokeCoin rewards or not being able to put a Pokemon in another Gym for a certain amount of time, but at least it would free up Pokemon who have been stuck in Gyms for weeks.

To solve the issue of players not getting any rewards due to their Pokemon being thrown out before the 10 minutes, they could be made more durable or there could be smaller rewards like Candies or Berries depending on the time in the Gym and the stats of the battle.

Another way to tackle the issue regarding Pokemon Go Gyms is to allow players to collect their winnings while the Pokemon are still in the Gym. The aim seems to be to come back to the Gym and Pokemon Go’s primary function is still walking around to discover new creatures. So why not allow players to head back to the Gym their Pokemon are in and collect their earnings? There can easily be limits on these but it means the creatures don’t become stagnant and useless when sitting in there for a long period of time.

While Gyms don’t seem to be much of a priority for Niantic at the moment, just a few changes to the way they work would undeniably help improve the game’s relationship with the community who have been voicing their frustrations for a long time now.