"How to massively improve the game by giving players more options to achieve their goals"

#PokemonGO: So there's been something on my mind for a while now, ever since I've started playing Pokemon Duel and ever since Pokemon Go's Gen 2 came out. The simple addition of the Pinab Berry made me realize there is something that's been seriously missing in Pokemon Go. Options for achieving goals and attainability of those goals for the average player.My hope is that some of these changes might already be in the works with the gym re-work that we know is already being developed. If Niantic did this or something similar to this, they A. wouldn't change their philosophy about the game, B. solve a lot of problems, C. massively increase the player base again, D. possibly even reduce the amount of cheating or at least lessen it's effect on non-cheaters ability to compete with cheaters.TLDR - Major PointsExperience - Pokemon have an xp bar with an xp curve that equates to their levelCandies - Earned by catching Pokemon, walking Pokemon, OR attacking other team's gymsStardust - Earned by catching Pokemon, leveling up a gym, OR holding gymsLeveling Pokemon - Achieved by earning experience in gyms OR spending candies & stardustEvolving Pokemon - Achieved only by spending candiesChanging Movesets - Can be re-learned by participating in gym battlesLong Explanation / Full DetailsIt all comes down to achievability / attainability. In good game design, things need to feel attainable by the player. If things don't feel like it will ever be attainable or simply too grindy to ever get there, this demotivates players and they simply stop playing. One obvious example of this is the level 40 grind, but also the prospect of even getting the right team to be effective in the battle scene. Some things can be harder to attain than others, but there should be a natural progression curve of attainability, one which given amount of time or how hardcore of a player you are, you should be able to achieve.Here's some example goals that SHOULD be attainable in PGOGet to level 5Get to level 10Get bronze in all the badgesGet to level 20Get to level 30Get silver in all the badgesCatch em' all (minus region exclusives and legendaries)Get gold in all the badgesGet 82+% IV's of em allGet to level 40Get all male/female variants of 'em allGet best offensive and defensive moves on 82% IV PokemonGet all your Pokemon to max levelNow... these are all great goals that one could place upon themselves, but even as a gamer who plays games 20-30 hours a week (sometimes more), this is just unrealistic. As it is, the stardust / candy grind is so intense to level Pokemon from 30 to 40 that you have to focus on only the Pokemon that would be the best gym defenders and all other Pokemon you have are neglected.So how do you make it so these tiers of achievement possible for all players? How do you tie it in so that fighting at Gyms is involved?Leveling PokemonConvert the current Level bar (which is broken down in to essentially 40x2 levels) instead into an XP bar for the Pokemon. Make it so when powering up a Pokemon, you are essentially spending stardust and candies to "grant xp" to the Pokemon. The player would first click on the level up button and then drag a slider or some other UI mechanism to select the desired level, it will then show the candy cost and stardust to hit the desired level, then the user would confirm the level up. This would allow someone to level up a Pokemon from let's say 20 to 30 at once and know the cost to do so without a 3rd party tool like CalcyIV. This would also reduce the amount of calls from the apps to PokemonGO's API instead of 20 requests to the server to level a Pokemon from 20 to 30, it would be a single request / response. The stardust / candy to XP ratio would be fixed, but the amount of xp the Pokemon needs to level could have the same level curve that exists today.Gym BattlesStardust is a trainer level currency you gain it from catching, but why don't you gain it from training? Trainers should not only gain experience, but should gain more experience AND stardust for participating in the gym system. Currently unless you know you can hold lots of gyms, it's very demotivating to even try to participate in the gym system and a lot of people just catch only. When they complete their Pokedex, they stop playing. This would encourage players (even solo players) to at least participate in the system, even if they don't intend on holding gyms as a viable way to gain experience and stardust. This would add more GAME to the game.Pokemon involved in training, attacking, or defending a gym will gain experience, but only if they actively participated in the fight.Pokemon involved in attacking a gym (only attacking to encourage gyms flipping) will gain candy, like a reward for that Pokemon. This would fulfill every Pokemon trainer's dream of getting their starter, taking it to a gym, battling with it, it gains xp, gets candies after battle, then earning enough candy to evolve it eventually. In today's game your starter is a throw away Pokemon easily replaced by a better version of it. Sad and true.Pokemon involved in attacking or training a gym will have a chance at the end of the battle to want to learn a new ability. This could be a small chance like 5%, but it would allow people with good move set Pokemon the ability to get new moves on their existing good Pokemon. This would also reduce the amount of complaining that people do when nerfs / rebalancing / or when new moves are introduced into the game. It would also encourage people to maybe even change around the moves on their Pokemon over time to fit different playstyles or develop a "team" when PvP is introduced. It would also mean that there would be a chance at an actual "meta" developing in the game aside from simply "these 5-6 Pokemon are the best". This is especially crucial for when PvP is finally introduced. This is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of being a Pokemon Trainer that is missing from the game. Since the whole game is random, random, random, you have no ownership of your Pokemons' journeys from wild Pokemon to the Pokemon you wish in the end.GET RID OF CP as the primary designation for which gym spot you hold. Seriously, this needs to go. As a result there's only around 5-10 Pokemon which hold gyms. 5-7 High CP Pokemon for holding top spots and the 3 super tanks which are used to plug up the bottom of a gym and make it undesirable to attack. This makes the game incredibly stale and repetitive.Make type advantage matter more, closer to how significant it is in the main series games.WalkingReduce the walking distance to get candy for Pokemon. I'd suggest in half of what it is today, similar to what we got during the Halo ween / Valentines event. Well designed games have tight feedback loops. Spending 2 months to walk a Mareep is fine for the really dedicated players, but the vast majority of players will find this task to daunting and not even attempt it. You might not think this change is necessary with all the changes suggested above, but if this change isn't also made, people will think the buddy system is completely useless.Gym battle quality of life improvementsWhen healing Pokemon, allow the player to see the number of HP they currently have and max HP. Maybe add a new "Poke Center" feature where you go there and see all the Pokemon who need attention, then can click on potions, revives, etc using the same slide out kind of UI they have for balls / berries allowing you to more easily heal up Pokemon (players will need this because Gym battling happens more).Increase the number of characters we can name Pokemon and / or...When picking Pokemon to fight in a gym add the ability to see not only the Pokemon's types but their move types. This would reduce the need for us to have to go in and rename Pokemon to add move types to the names.Add the ability to filter the list of Pokemon (when picking for battle, placement, or just when viewing Pokemon) based on type or attack type.Other Misc quality of life improvementsThe appraisal system is nice, especially for a more casual player, but for the serious gym players, we need the numerical level and stats of the Pokemon on the stats screen. This would completely remove the need for programs like IVStats/IVFly from existing (which Niantic very much dislikes because of the server load).From the Pokedex, when clicking on a Pokemon, show the count of candies for that Pokemon (in the event that you have candies for the Pokemon, but have transferred all existing Pokemon of that species).Add a item inventory auto cleanup feature. Allow people to set the maximum number of items of different types they want to keep and then the game auto discards items you don't want (example: 0 low level potions, 0 nanab berries, 50 Hyper Potions, 100 Max potions, etc). via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2qRJTXe