"Thoughts on competitive play necessity for the games long term survival."

#PokemonGO: I'll start this post off with a disclaimer. Competitive play is a highly debated topic and each player has his or her opinions on the subject. That being said I believe optional competitive play is necessary for a game like PoGo to survive in the long run.The new gym system coupled with raids brought a refreshing new aspect of play style to the game when it was desperately needed. The gym rework did have one major negative impact however. It removed the competitive aspect of gym control from the game.Solo content such as completing a pokedex has a short shelf life. The only thing prolonging that portion of play is the regional barrier that is solved only with spending money for travel. It can be reinvigorated with the next generation of Pokemon but again it falls short of a long term goal for most players.Raids are enjoyable, until you have to burn a hole in your wallet to compete with the hard core raiders who do 20-40 legendary raids a day. At that point the only barrier to compete for legendary catches is your budget. Let's be honest, that's not very sustainable.The last aspect of competition that 'existed' was gym control, territory, and gym battles. This was a free and ongoing aspect of competition that does not exist on nearly the same capacity. These aspects have been toned so far back that they have little to no benefit outside of being a pokecoins farm.Without a sustainable optional competitive aspect, games like PoGo, which are grind fests, die off more quickly. Take Diablo as a popular and easily relatable example. Diablo is the ultimate grind fest but it survived for a much longer period of time due to 'free to participate" competitive play. Without a system that allows for players to compete with one another,I believe PoGo will only continue to lose players at an exponential rate.The old gym system satisfied the competitive player base to an extent but it had its flaws. The current gym system has completely voided the 'optional and free' competitive aspect due to ease of access and in game decay rates. A balance should be struck somewhere between the old system and new that rewards high level play but doesn't punish lower level players as much as the old system. That being said, the current system is not a sustainable example of competitive play.To summarize, the old and new gym system could be meshed together to strike a balance between competitive and casual players, as an example but by no means the best system. The current system isn't sustainable without a competitive aspect of play to motivate the extremely large competitive player base.Quick edit to clarify some possible confusion. I believe the competitive aspect of play needs to be 'optional'. It shouldn't be a necessity to participate so that the casual or non competitive player base isn't effected.^ Edit - Please read the above statement as I feel there are a few to many people making incorrect assumptions about the post. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2xZIdTf