"It's Time To Bring Parks to the Forefront of This Game"

#PokemonGO: Hey all, I understand this is essentially an idea thread, if it's not allowed here I'll take it over to the other sub but really think this is a core issue with the game and fixing the issue would solve many issues for many people.The Issue:In my opinion, my main issue with the game overall is how its supposed to get people outdoors and to explore nature but often times you feel punished for going places like state parks, wilderness preserves, etc. The simple fact is you're better off staying in cities (even in just parking lots) and you'll have more stops to spin and more spawns. This has really come to my attention while making Community Day plans. When going through the list of options, basically everything is in towns (downtown areas, malls, etc) and most parks I would otherwise like to be spending time in have very few stops and very sparse spawns. This is very disappointing considering how often Niantic themselves tell us to go out to nearby parks or to go explore.A Solution:One thing that I believe would solve this would be if parks (and only parks) received special "park pokestops" or even give them a new name. I personally love that Pokestops are tied to PoI's as I've discovered some amazing places, art, etc that were right around me that I never knew about. But the fact of the matter is, there just aren't many man made PoI's in areas which the point of them is nature itself. In my opinion, being in a park and doing things like walking around on a trail, seeing plants and animals, etc is its own point of interest. The PoI requirements made a lot of sense for ingress, but don't translate perfectly to PoGo and its supposed "go explore" mentality.Implementation:I think this could be fairly easily implemented. Obviously normal stops would take priority and be the base layer. From there it could randomly place these park stops X amount of s2 cells away and continue this until no more stops fit this criteria. Perhaps it could give priority to trails if these are marked on OSM but regardless, even if one or two were hard to access, ideally there would be enough that could be reached it wouldn't be a big deal.These stops could be a different color and maybe slightly smaller to differentiate them from normal stops so you can see where PoI's are. I think it would be fine if these even dropped 1 less item than normal stops. The biggest thing would be that you could still place lure modules on them, making parks an ideal place for get togethers and community days.A Boost For Rural Players:Additionally, it seems like this would be a small boost for rural players at the same time as even most small towns have a park or two (the town I grew up in had a population of 115 people and had a park). Likewise, rural areas likely are closer to things like county and state parks which they could go to. This would hopefully give a slightly more reliable baseline for rural players to ensure they have a few options of places to play that are a bit more dense like cities have. Its not a solution to the rural vs city gap but might make that gap slightly smaller. One key thing that would need to happen in addition would be more regular OSM updates to ensure park info was current, especially if players find their park isn't properly mapped and they add it.EX Eligible Gyms:One interesting aspect would be how these new park stops would be tied to gym creation. Ideally they would count towards the threshold to create a gym but couldn't be a gym themselves. For most parks this would very likely guarantee at least 1 gym if there was one normal stop/PoI in the park. This would also ensure more EX eligible gyms for more communities.Lures and Incense:Unrelated to the park stops but another thing that parks would be helped by, is incense and/or lures should really spawn nesting pokemon if the S2 cell they are in when they spawn a pokemon is within the S2 cells of a nest. Incense is one of the less useful items and this would be a good improvement to help you hunt in nests whether it be for candies or shiny hunting.Thoughts? Critiques? Anything else that could be done to ensure parks are more rewarding to play in?Additional Ideas From Comments:- Guarantee a minimum floor number of spawns per a certain size S2 cell within parks- During Community Day, change all nest spawns to CD spawns in addition to the normal CD spawns to boost the number of CD spawns in parks- Remove very common Pokemon from the pool of nesting species- Instead of new stops, introduce a "scavenge" type button which lets you collect items while in parks every 5 minutes- Shuffle all gyms giving first priority to gyms that would be in parksEdit: Formatting via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2vqkk4h