"I've just finished getting every gym in my area to gold (165 badges) Here are my thoughts on the gym system."

#PokemonGO: Hey all,After a lot of berries, battles and blisseys I've managed to get every gym in my area to Gold. It's been an interesting experience and I'd like to share my opinions and thoughts based on this experience with you all here for discussion.Niantic introduced this gym system a little over a year ago and I think it's fair to say their goal was to create a more accessible system which they've accomplished. However I think they could go a way further to improve it.Remove coins from the gym systemFirst and foremost, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. The 50 coins a day whilst welcome to those that didn't get coins before (like myself) has also created an unreal sense of entitlement to some players. Gym swapping locally (this gym is yours today, mine tomorrow), shaving selves with alts and generally throwing a fit because 35p of coins can't be obtained have been common observations.You can blame the player and not the game, but Niantic would do well to move coin rewards to research tasks and away from gyms. Leaving the pvp for those that are interested.Revamp decay, including from battles.The CP decay was a somewhat successful attempt to make gyms easier to take down. The problem is that aside from decay being relatively fast, most players also now have access to readily powerful pokemon via raids, or even via trading. CP decay is a good feature for inactive gyms, but there should be gym input that prevents it.Golden razzes could contribute to a gym stack of which the maximum could be 500. Players passing the gym could add as many or as few golden razzes to the stack as possible. The gym then consumes x berries per hour and in return doesn't decay the gym.In addition to this, battling a gym now requires you take down the entire defending team before CP decays. This removes shaving and fixes several broken takedown tactics which are practically exploits. Once the entire gym defending team is defeated then their CP is uniformally drained by 1/3.Bring back trainingTraining was a popular mechanic, and I think there's a good way to bring it back. Gyms now have a box of 20 Pokemon that can be held. At any one time a gym will only display up to 6 Pokemon that can be battled, and that is the default starting point. However if you train against a gym of your own team and defeat it, you can increase the box storage by 1. At that point you can then add your own Pokemon into the gym.This allows you reap the rewards of defending a gym even if a gyms battle party is full. In addition there could be a system where the 6 mons in the lineup will always be the 6 highest CP mons stored in the gym, though I can see how this could have drawbacks so I'm unsure about this feature.Gyms that you are in will display their raidsFirst steps to a raid map - if you're in a gym you should be able to see any ongoing eggs/raids in your raid screen without having to manually check it. This could theoretically be a toggle feature depending on personal preference.Increase gym cap to 30Because defending 20 is a low cap to any dedicated gym playerFinal fun stats:Battles Won: 27,723Berries Fed: 47,945Hours Defending: 72,517That's my thoughts for now, would be interested to hear feedback and also happy to answer any questions about my gym suggestions or my journey to completing my gold badge quest. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2v8hgJ7