"[Complaint] The Gym System Has Killed Local PoGo Here"

#PokemonGO: I live in an area more rural than most. There isn't enough of a critical mass to support Facebook groups (tried and failed already), and the population isn't well versed in gaming enough to know what Discord is (tried and failed already). There wasn't enough of a community to organize T4/T5 raids (I already drive well out of the area for those), but there was enough of a community to have friendly rivalries and "turf wars" over the gyms.I use the past tense purposefully. There was a bit of a decline with the new gym rework system, but you still saw many of the regular suspects fighting and competing. Where I have really seen the decline is with ramped up motivation decay. Within weeks, I stopped seeing my Level 32-35 competition at all. It's as if they all vanished or were raptured. I battled gyms all weekend long. I saw exactly 2 players over Level 30 in my "domain": one Level 35 Mystic holdout (who holds a swath of territory I can't touch due to the 20-gym cap) and one Level 31 Valor holdout (who I know reasonably, and he admits the gym change killed his motivation to the point where he plays casually now).Every other player is under Level 30, and many are under Level 20. My wife, who quit this game for a solid year and just now started playing again, is Level 23, and is above the new median level here. This would be a less bad thing if those players were as active or plentiful as the former community, but they aren't. I took 20 gyms over the weekend. It took me until 9:54 PM yesterday evening to hit the 50-coin threshold for the day. That's disheartening.I yearn for the days of yesteryear, especially when it comes to gyms. When the game starts to be a chore and stops being fun, that's when the game dies. And we're it not for the vain hope that I may get the 2 remaining beasts and Mewtwo, I'd join my other friends in Pokémon Valhalla. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2gYj4gv