"Last night I met a player from the dominant team and came to understand impact of coin 'inequality' in PoGo"

#PokemonGO: I would like to start by saying this isn't intended as a whine, but as an observation and discussion on the impact of being rewarded for simply BEING in gyms, which is easy when you are the dominant team.I imagine this all sounds familiar to many players:StoryI bumped into someone taking down a gym on the way home. If I can, I like to chat with PoGo players when I see them - though I pretty much always play solo, I love the social aspect of the game and have never met an unfriendly player. This chap was a very nice guy too!Naturally we got talking about gyms. He was on the dominant team in my area (Valor), who have a good number of Level 10 gyms in the surrounding area. Only Valor have Lv.10 gyms round here. That's not to say that they own all the gyms, in fact many gyms here have decent turnover, usually change teams several times a day, but you have to travel a long way to find a secure gym that isn't theirs. I take down their Lv.10 gyms when I can, but I have only so much free time, and limited resources.He told me he was doing his gym run to top it up to holding 10 gyms before claiming his daily defender bonus. It doesn't take him long, because the majority of gyms he is in are stagnant. He generally manages to collect 9 or 10 gyms's worth of bonus a day, but because of sitting in these stagnant gyms, he only needs to re-claim 2-4 gyms a day. I checked with him, and he doesn't play much more than me (an hour or two a day, sometimes more at weekends).Therefore...He is putting in the same amount of effort as many other players, but instead of being rewarded with, say, 20-40 coins a day, he is getting 90-100 coins. Simply because he is on the dominant team, he gets a massive perk without any extra work.This is all very well known, and I've read a lot about people's feeling towards this here on TSR. But it wasn't until he showed me his inventory until I really understood what this means.This guy had...Thousands of coinsFully maxed out bag storageFully maxed out Pokémon storageSooo many incubatorsA very dapper top hat and jacketTwice as much XP (though this is not that big a deal as I'm not really a grinder)It was like looking at a save on an RPG which has used cheat codes! (Except of course, he hasn't cheated.)This means he can...Buy whatever he needs, whenever he wantsCan take gyms whenever with his near-unlimited potions and revivesCan take full advantage of events like Easter and go through tons of eggs (while some of us grind for a week to get one incubator)take advantage of other perks (that aren't super relevant to this)In short, this guy, and many players around the world who are lucky enough to be on their locally dominant team, have a huge advantage over others without putting in extra effort, and they get to have more fun as a result of this imbalance.So what?I am clinging onto hope that the upcoming gym 'rework' changes more than just the battle system, but radically changes the gym system as a whole. There are probably ways that gyms being 'owned' by teams could work well, but as you can hopefully see from above, it would need to not reward players for just holding gyms effortless, punishing players for being in the minority team. Reward plays for battling, a suggestion I see here all the time, would be a good first step! In my opinion, the more radical the rework, the better.Sorry for retreading old ground. It just really hit me from seeing this guy's account, and I hadn't yet seen a post here delving much into the effects of the inequality, wanted to articulate my thoughts and hear opinions of others.EDIT: I've had a few people point out that the XP discrepancy can't be because of gyms, and they are right. He is a grinder and I am not. Though if I were, he could still out-perform me with Lucky Eggs and more Pokéballs / Pokémon storage. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2pL5iQI