"Meta Analysis of the Impact of Multi-Accounts and Defending Excessive Gyms"

#PokemonGO: There have been many recent threads regarding players having multiple accounts, as well as legit players that defend a large number of gyms. What impact does that have on the game overall?This post begins with an analysis assuming homogenous gym and player distribution. Of course, the game is not homogenous as in the following factors greatly influence small geographic areas:Low gym density (or one gym towns)Team imbalance (hard for minority team(s) to take and hold gyms, hard for dominant team players to get spots)High turnover citiesLoss of interest or player apathyInability or lack of desire to travel to other areas that do not have Level 10 towers everywhereThe purpose though is to explore whether or not the current system is viable even if homogeneity of the player base and gym distribution existed.There were until recently approximately 445,000 gyms in the game, but there have been recent additions as reported on TSR. So assume there are 500,000 gyms globally. Therefore, optimistically we have 5 million available gym spots worldwide.How many active people do we have competing for these spots? No one knows. The issue is that between bots and multi-accounts, it is really impossible for anyone to know including Niantic (if they could tell, then we wouldn’t have bots and multi-accounters in the first place).There are various industry sites, social media numbers, and other indicators to give us a ballpark ranging from 5 million (comScore’s daily users report reported by Recode in April) on the low-side to 65 million on the high side (monthly number stated by J. Hanke April interview). To be conservative then, assume 5 Million active people.From first hand experiences, as well as the multitude of posts on TSR and other social media, a significant number of players appear to have multiple accounts on the same team, account(s) on other teams for gym “shaving” or “flipping,” and/or maintain well in excess of 10 gyms per day. The latter of course is perfectly acceptable under the ToS while the former activities are ToS breaking. However, grouping activity based on taking gym spots and limiting its scope to a low percentage of the player base, let’s see the potential impact.Assume 1% of the active player base uses three accounts to maintain 15 gyms.1% of the player base is 50,000 people with 150,000 accounts each in 15 gyms. That is 2,250,000 gym spots.Now further assume 1% of the player base has one account in gyms but maintains 20 gyms. That’s 50,000 people with 50,000 accounts each in 20 gyms. That is one million gym spots.So 2% of the total player base (100,000 players) conceivably controls 3,250,000 out of 5 million available spots, leaving 4.9 million players fighting for 1,750,000 spots.Arguably players could still get 10 spots by taking 10 gyms every day, but that is time prohibitive for most players. The problem is exacerbated by spoofers that can easily take and hold gyms, as well as gym defense bots. The problem may get magnified based on local conditions.However, even if you remove spoofers and bots from the game, the current gym balance is severely damaged by multi-accounters and those that hold excessive number of gyms. The latter is part of the game enjoyment for many players, but current game design does not accommodate the tension between available gym slots and those that wish to defend a large number of gyms.We have posts by frustrated players daily (hourly?) about the gym situation and some players have stated or implied that they are tempted to beat the cheaters at their own game. Please note that if the number of people that maintain two or more same-team accounts doubles to just 2% of the player base, then theoretically every gym slot in the game could potentially be locked out for the majority of the player base. Please don’t do it. It’s an unwinnable war that will continue to escalate with people trying to get farther ahead with more and more accounts.I have no idea what Niantic plans to do for a gym update/overhaul and won’t provide any suggestions since I’m sure their plan is already under development, but if it doesn’t account for balancing player time, a range of local conditions, and a disincentive for players to have multiple accounts, then it will suffer even if the bots and spoofers are minimized. Food for thought.TLDR Don’t multi-account, it makes things much worse for everyone. The math presented is just illustrative, but the impact of multi-accounting and gym hoarding on the game is real. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2qOHobg