"PokeStops are Mueller Devices with a peace:war ratio of 4:1"

#PokemonGO: In the great television series Alias, the Mueller Device could be used to make people peaceful or warlike depending on its output. In Pokemon Go, PokeStops are Mueller Devices. If they drop a lot of revives and potions, battling is cheap and thus attractive, while rare pokeballs must be used with care. If they drop a lot of pokeballs and berries, catching pokemon is cheap and thus attractive, and battling must be rare.We are in a peaceful phase of the game.Right now, you get about 2 pokeballs per visit to a PokeStop, but you only get a revive every 5-10 PokeStops (based on my journal, it’s 1 per 7.4 visits). In other words, visiting 20 PokeStops lets you catch about 20 mons, depending on how good your throws are. But visiting 20 PokeStops only lets you secure 1 gym, assuming 1-2 of your mons faint in the battling to earn a spot and you’ll get a fainted mon returned to you once your gym is taken over. You can get around this a bit by swapping mons or running to avoid fainting at all costs, but with lags and all, that’s a fine line to tread. Based on the drop rates from my journal, the peace:war ratio of items (i.e., balls + berries vs. revives + potions) is currently 4:1.You can think about what all this means from many perspectives. Is Niantic trying to make cash from shopping or does it want to build average time spent playing to sell tracking data and make future advertising deals more attractive? Is the expensiveness of battle and its minimal payoff ($0.10 and a little XP) keeping pressure off of servers? Or is there a less sinister explanation--battling goods are rare because gyms are rare?Whatever they want, PokeStops are Mueller Devices and we are their obedient masses.TL;DR— You spend more time collecting than battling because PokeStop economics. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2c26uf9