"Let’s talk about the state of PvP after 1 month (GamePress)"

#PokemonGO: Hi-I was trying to write a piece about PvP tournaments and it inadvertently turned into an analysis of what Niantic got right and wrong with PvP. Here is a link:http://bit.ly/2RzsDb2 enjoy PvP a bunch. Things like the shields and extra charged moves add strategy. When it works I like switching to absorb a charged move. I was skeptical of CP based leagues, but it’s very good for the game. As many as 3 dozen Pokémon may be viable in Great League, most of which never had a place in previous metas. Tournaments are really fun (Great job Silph Arena!!!), and while you can complain about the drop rates, the rewards are pretty good for minimal effort.However, the community as a whole seems remarkably unengaged so far. Any GamePress PvP analysis post is inevitably met with “This doesn’t belong on Silph Road” type posts. My usually highly engaged discord has about 5% of the ACTIVE player base ever going beyond their 3 rewarded battles a day, and around 2% showing up for tournaments. While there are outliers, this seems to match what is anecdotally happening around the world. I don’t think Niantic’s intention was 6 pidgey quickly battling it out to see who gets a stone.Why aren’t people playing more? This leads me to Niantic’s missed opportunities. First of all, a global match making system would have been great. Even if only 5% want to play, that’s a huge number worldwide. Short of Niantic creating a platform for this, they could waive the Ultra friend requirement and let us build our own space to find opponents.As mentioned above, Silph Arena is fabulous, but this was Niantic’s responsibility. Imagine 8 person online tournaments that fill constantly and offer small in game prizes. What about worldwide ranked play, and a true Regional/National/Worldwide championship structure? Think about how engagement in both PvP and the game itself would grow if there was a true in-game competitive ecosystem.Finally, they missed the boat on some mechanics. I want to believe this is a game of skill, but so many matches come down to who randomly gets to fire off a simultaneous charged move first. In addition, damage shouldn’t come down to who pounds their expensive phone the fastest.So what do you think? How popular is PvP in your area? What has people excited, and what is keeping others from playing? via /r/TheSilphRoad http://bit.ly/2AKt4Vh