Raptorpat

Evidently there are (or should be) all sorts of kinks Niantic should want to work out. Premium passes are only one-use and you can't stockpile the free ones, which means this much hyped feature - the type of thing harkening back to the social experiences from a year ago - is effectively paywalled. In addition, you have to use the pass before you enter the lobby so you can't see who is there or whether it is worth a try until after you've committed and can't back out. The new gyms, while increasing turnover, the value of teamwork, and accessibility for people who play casually and aren't godawful tryhards, throw that value away because they cap coins-per-day at 50 (and you can only collect when the pokemon returns). This means under the current formula, a pokemon's value caps out at around 8 hours, and even though gameplay incentivizes feeding/helping teammates' pokemon, there is no added value to additional hours accrued for that player after the first 8. Plus, if more than one pokemon die per day you still only top out at 50 coins. 50 coins is more than I've ever earned in a day, but I also don't make the effort to get a guy in a bunch of gyms or to try and control/expand "turf." I think it is evident a lot of this is also to disincentivize spoofers, because now they aren't gaining anything more than what real players can get at the expense of real, but it kind of creates long-term problems in function for actual players. I would definitely let the dust settle and see what or if they tweak anything before dropping money on the new stuff, but then again I don't spend money on the game in the first place.

I opened the game up briefly before bed and there were no raids, compared to during the day when it was all raids, all the time

How many times can you use it?

Perfect scizor finally died. 50 coins richer. I think that is a net improvement over previous income rate given how rarely I'd slap a guy in a gym before.

I did a raid and interacted with other people playing the game socially. It was a level three raid and there were only three of us but we managed to knock out the Gengar when one more hit would kill my last Pokemon. Got a whole bunch of items - revives, max potions, rare candies, and golden razz berries, and it shot me into level 29 and I got the items for that too. Caught the Gengar after missing with half the premier balls I earn because wtf, but I already have a better one I think. Whelp, there's another one for the books. Meanwhile, perfect scizor has been in a gym since like yesterday morning. I wonder if it will still be there come Monday and I go back to the office...

According to the internet you get the once-per-day freebie from the spinners at the gym

I don't know how to share mobile photos but there are countdowns to four raids within walking distance. I don't know how to get a raid pass though...

Auto-collect - this changes EVERYTHING

Did they eliminate the check-in required for collecting coins?

I am just on the cusp of level 29 so, yeah it might be a couple months

Hillary Clinton

My only interaction with a gym today was feeding a Mon a razz Berry to top it off

No, I meant them release the update. By the time I left work after 5:30 all the gyms by the office were full up, and then so we're all the ones in Troy. Also, they need to rebalance team proportions. I can see 8 gyms on this side of the Hudson within viewing range and one is red - the rest are blue. Being blue, this doesn't help me at all.

Why not wait until after work?

I don't think k he was mentioned at all. A lot of the commentary has been "we never hear of chuck or kim in BB so they obviously must die or have bad things happen to them before then"

I don't remember him saying that

So much going on you don't even realize Mike never made an appearance

It turned out to be a problem authenticating the Pokemon trainer club account and I had to manually force stop and then update the game. Streaks were both lost.

I haven't been able to log in today. If you lose your streak after 6 days is life even worth it anymore?

One type of Pokemon per gym, a 'decay' system to promote turnover/more effort to keep the money in the gym. The raid bosses look to be powerful pokemon, but not actually legendaries. But you get rewarded rare berries and TMs to change movesets. That will either be a good thing or will lead to one optimized moveset for every mon. I logged into the game and see at least three new gyms on the block towards where I park for work. Any ETA when they go live? Days, weeks?

I think so. Otherwise rip perfect scizor.

My other thought is that maybe gyms should mirror the pokestop and first catch streaks - every day in the gym your daily prize increases, but after the seventh day your Pokemon gets kicked out and can't go straight back in. That way there is increased incentive to holding the gym but at the same time it forces gyms to cycle out so they don't stay locked down forever by those same seven blissey and three snorlaxes.

They should make it so only one of a pokemon can be in a gym. Only one blissey, only one Dragonite, only one Snorlax, only one rhydon, etc.

Hi

I still feel all sorts of bad for Irene, like more than for any character currently on the show