"[Discussion] The Problems of being a solo rural player (and why absolutely nothing is being talked about us)"

#PokemonGO: I am Level 33 and the area i live in has 1 gym (4.5 miles away to be precise) and 4 pokestops (1 right beside the gym and the nearest being 2.7 miles away). None of the people here have heard of Pokemon Go let alone Ingress so i have no hope of getting anything from Niantic currently.My way of managing to play before the update was this -For just normal play (as the number of spawn points in a 2 mile radius around me were just 12) - I travelled on a bike Everyday for 30 miles (to and fro) to an area which had 11 Pokestops and 3 gyms.For Gyms - along with the 4 gyms (1 in my area and 3 in the area i travel to), I went out of my way to search for gyms in areas which cant be accessed easily, i even trekked for a couple of them. I also went to a city 60 miles away which was Valor dominated everyday for a week to 10 days until i could put my Pokemon in. After doing all this i used to get 50 coins on an average per day. A spoofer used to take the gym in my area everyday but i used to take it back while i returned home, and i collected my coins after getting my gym back.Fast forwarding to after the update -Gyms - I was done for. Seriously. All the hard work i put in evaporated in a day. But i didnt lose hope and went to my gym first. The spoofer already had it and i started the battle. To my shock when i defeated all six of his bots, i saw their health (motivation) and it was full! He was just feeding them berries while i was battling. It was purely out of spite and to torture me that he was doing this. After an hour long battle (to add to that the lag was unreal so i lost a lot of potions and revives unnecessarily), I had to give up.I then travelled to the area which had 3 gyms and they were all Valor so i thought 'Phew, atleast i can put my Pokemon in this time' But no, all of them were full. I could do nothing else there so i played for a couple of hours and returned with 0 coins earned.And now -Raids - First thing the gym was too far away for me to get a raid notification so i went there and waited for 3 hours to see if i could get one. Finally i did get it and it was a Level 3, waited for a couple more hours to see what it was ( all this while i was alone), It was Arcanine. I had a Rhydon, Vaporeon and Golem Squad Ready. I got it down to 25% but couldnt take it down. I used half of my stardust powering up all of them to an extent and tried again. This time the lag was so bad it went this way - Fast attacks dont make any damage, but i kept receiving damage. After using a charge move, initially i could see the damage but the health was being returned to Arcanine. I lost health in the meantime and also valuable time. It was a complete mess. I just wanted to punch something so badly at that point of time. After 4 unsuccessful attempts, I gave up because i was so frustrated by then.After this horror experience i thought, maybe if i go to the nearby cities i can meet the players there while they come to raid. I went there the next evening and a raid was going on, But i could see no one. Same with 3 more raids. I didnt want to waste my raid pass again so i just did a Level 2 raid and returned disappointed.My question is - Arent rural players important at all? I did all i could to bypass our problems, i tried meeting players, going to distant areas each and everyday just to play the game. All this time, nothing is being done to add Pokestops/Gyms for us. Please dont say Ingress , Its easier for people here to know about Pokemon than Ingress and i couldnt find a single Pokemon Go player in the last few months. I also have spent a decent amount on incubators, Pokemon/Bag space, Lucky Eggs etc. But How long am i supposed to spend obscene amounts just for travel to play this game? If i saved up all the money i spent for travelling , i could have gone for a week long vacation to a foreign country easily. I have been waiting patiently since the game was launched and not a single improvement has been added for rural players. The rich keep getting richer and the poor stay the same (Pokemon go Experience wise)TL;DR - Rural players have been ignored for such a long time. Its frustrating to see that every update makes it worse for us rather than better. Now seeing people taking down Level 4 raids together on Youtube or talking about it on TSR and also seeing the insane items you get from such raids is far more jealousy inducing than before raid update. Please Niantic Ghost employees on Reddit, take note of us. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2sMzq2Z