[alcimedes]

Going to see if I can take on a gym today, got to level 5 last night.

edit: Holy crap, people around here have some seriously beefy pokemon. the lowest CP at the gym over over 1000. My best is under 200.....

[drewprops]

I caught a Squirtle, first thing.



...

[Ebby]

Squirtle was my first too!

I took over a Gym... for about 3 minutes. I took a screenshot but dang, I lost so many fights. I've only been playing for 3 days and am still learning.

[turtle]

I have yet to win a gym and haven't found one for my team that I can add one of my higher CP monsters too. I'm almost to level 9 now though. My highest CP is about 550.

I'm getting tons of the pigeon things too. It'll be nice to get something else more consistently.

[Brad]

My nearest gym (and only one in walking distance) at the aforementioned church is clearly being dominated a few local groups of players. Every time I look at it, I see familiar names with pokémon each having cp in the high hundreds or low thousands. It currently has seven players defending it.

My strongest pokémon has 460 cp, an amazingly lucky/rare catch, and they quickly drop off from that.

Combined with the constant lag and hangs, I feel like I have no chance against these guys. I keep holding out hope that performance is going to get better one of these days. I've seen strategies for timing dodges in gyms, but when every third or fourth operation fails to get a response from the server…

Maybe I just need to start going out at 4AM. With it being summer and kids out of school, I wouldn't doubt that's what some of the local ruffians are doing.

[turtle]

Here are the top of my groups:

[alcimedes]

man, those are so much better than mine. I did read someone you are supposed to hold off on upgrading/evolving them until you reach level ten, as the player's level has an effect on the upgrade amount.

[turtle]

Well that sucks then. I upgraded a bunch and found a few with high ratings. I just hit level 10 today so I guess I'll see the difference If that's true.

It was so hot today that I didn't go walking. First time since getting the game that I haven't gone over 5000 steps. I'm not crying about it either. The heat on the other hand, I'll cry about it...until my tears evaporate into steam!

[Brad]

So I guess I'm one of THOSE people now.

I went out to the nearby downtown area around 1:30 AM to see if the game actually performed better, and I was shocked that everything was (generally) fast and responsive. I ran into a bunch of nice, quiet people keeping to themselves all trying to catch the pokeymans and spin those stops.

I haven't been able to play the game as much as I would like. There are literally zero pokémon spawning in my residential neighborhood. So, taking strolls here before or after work are purely for my health. That leaves me with my walking around downtown to and from my office, and although there are several stops around, pokémon are rarely spawning unless someone has dropped a lure. *shrug*

After a "full week" of playing, here's my top roster at level 11. Oh, and I still can't take on any local gyms. I tried earlier on a level four (the lowest I could see), and at my best I could beat only three of them. It's like an arms race, too. Every day I look at them, their CP is higher and higher.

[psmith2.0]

Anything that causes millennials to fall off a cliff, I'm solidly in favor of.

[turtle]

I read about that the other day and laughed so hard about it. Sure I guess I should feel sorry for them, I don't at all though. I mean, if you are staring at your phone trying to catch a monster then you should be able to see the world around you too.

[Brad]

My greatest achievement.



Glorious!

It only took driving out to a park on the other side of town and walking around a lake for 20 minutes to happen across a gym that was poorly defended. I realized that I was actually helping another guy (same team red) who had been trying it for a few minutes. Our reign lasted all of about 30 minutes before another team kicked us out. Definitely not worth backtracking to try again.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Anything that causes millennials to fall off a cliff, I'm solidly in favor of.

The thing that worries me most are people playing while driving. It's not just the kids who could get hurt, but innocent bystanders.

I saw this one girl driving through the neighborhood in a nearby park a few days ago, and I could see the Pokémon GO field on her phone in her hand from the sidewalk. She was driving slowly and erratically. She crawled to a stop on the side of the road (no space for parking there, mind you) and eventually did a weird U-turn to get back out. Thankfully there were no other cars around and it's a low-traffic area, but good grief I would have been pissed if I was behind her.

[Elysium]

Originally Posted by Brad The thing that worries me most are people playing while driving. It's not just the kids who could get hurt, but innocent bystanders. I saw this one girl driving through the neighborhood in a nearby park a few days ago, and I could see the Pokémon GO field on her phone in her hand from the sidewalk. She was driving slowly and erratically. She crawled to a stop on the side of the road (no space for parking there, mind you) and eventually did a weird U-turn to get back out. Thankfully there were no other cars around and it's a low-traffic area, but good grief I would have been pissed if I was behind her.

Some idiot ran into a tree near my hometown.

[turtle]

I've seen this a lot in Ghent area of Norfolk. There are a couple of gyms near a place I frequent and almost all the time there is a battle in the gym it is from a car. I see this all the time down there. It is actually really scary to watch people not paying attention to their driving.

I did see an article about setting up a bike to go hunting and I like this idea personally. I have a great phone mount and ability to add a battery pack too. This would have me totally covered in that area. The fact that I don't enable AR means I don't have to point my phone in any one direction and I can get the Pokemon without moving to that exact point. I wouldn't mind using AR, but it still doesn't work with this beta OS I'm running.

[Brad]

I think the developers would do a lot of good to shut off the app if it sees you moving over a reasonable bike speed like 20 MPH. Plenty of apps have speedometers now, and Pokémon is already tracking your GPS coordinates constantly anyway.

I'm looking at Waze as a perfect example of this. When it sees you traveling at a decent pace and you try to do something, it throws up a warning dialog to prevent you from interacting with it, and it asks if you are the passenger. Do that (but be strict about it) and you'll have removed a ton of danger. At least the person will have to be driving slowly to use it, and they'd be less of a hazard to everyone.

[Brad]

Also, THE CREW FALL VICTIM TO ITS EVIL HYPNOTIC POWERS

[Capella]

Originally Posted by Elysium Some idiot ran into a tree near my hometown.

This was all over the Rochester news and causing most of my work to laugh about it.

Originally Posted by Brad I think the developers would do a lot of good to shut off the app if it sees you moving over a reasonable bike speed like 20 MPH. Plenty of apps have speedometers now, and Pokémon is already tracking your GPS coordinates constantly anyway. I'm looking at Waze as a perfect example of this. When it sees you traveling at a decent pace and you try to do something, it throws up a warning dialog to prevent you from interacting with it, and it asks if you are the passenger. Do that (but be strict about it) and you'll have removed a ton of danger. At least the person will have to be driving slowly to use it, and they'd be less of a hazard to everyone.

Ingress has a speedlock of I think 35mph? Over that and you can't set off XMP pulses to attack or throw mods or capture portals. Since Niantic based so much of Go off of Ingress, I don't see why they can't do the same thing. I sometimes gripe about the Ingress lock when I'm on the bus, but 90% of the time it's going under 30 so I can grab things.

[Capella]

Meanwhile, in my original hometown, man shoots at kids in a car playing Pokemon Go at 1:30 AM. They weren't in his driveway or trespassing, they were legally fine,but this guy saw them outside, got suspicious, shot at their car, and then lied to the cops that they accelerated at him. I hope he does in fact get charged with something for being an irresponsible gun owner.

[turtle]

So is there a good guide on how to fight in a gym? I won a gym once. It lasted for all of 5 minutes before being wiped out completely and then the gym go back to level 4 mere moments later for the color I beat.

[Brad]

I haven't found any good, thorough, and consistently correct guides, but here's what I've been able to piece together from a few sources and experience:

• When you fight in a gym, you always fight the defending members in ascending CP order, making the first one easier and the last one harder.
• Pokémon GO seems to follow the same effective/ineffective pairings as in the classic games. See: http://pokemondb.net/type. Use that to choose the best types of pokémon to fight the defending team at a gym.
• When challenging a rival gym, you can take six pokémon with you. The game automatically picks six for you, but you can change them out by tapping on them before starting the first battle.
• To attack, tap the screen. It seems a lot of players just tap like mad to try to get in attacks as quickly as possible while also taking damage themselves.
• To dodge, swipe left or right. When do you dodge? A fraction of a second after the screen flashes yellow. A yellow flash indicates an incoming attack. Unfortunately, in my experience on cellular (both 4G and LTE), there's too much lag, and dodging rarely actually works. If you are lucky enough to have access to and use proper wifi at a gym, though, dodging seems to work much better. If you can manage to dodge, you can get into a good rhythm of dodge-attack-dodge-attack all the way through to the end. The timing is pretty regular on the opponent's attacks, too. Because latency/lags/server hangups suck so much, it seems like nobody actually tries strategically dodging.
• If you defeat any members of a rival's gym, you reduce the gym's prestige. You don't have to defeat them all to reduce prestige as long as you defeat at least one. So, if you have lots of potions and revives, keep losing, resuscitating your best pokeymans, attacking again, and knocking down the prestige a little bit at a time. Eventually the gym will reduce in levels and kick out the lowest-cp defenders one at a time, making the next battle easier.
• If there is another player on your team nearby, you can team up to take over a rival gym at the same time. All you do is both start the battle around the same time, and you will each see the other across the screen helping with the fight. This can be hugely beneficial.
• Once you (or your team) have control of a gym, you can fight your own pokémon there to increase your team's prestige at that gym. You can only use one pokémon, though. When your gym has enough prestige, it levels up, and your team can add more pokémon to defend it.
• Once you have assigned a pokémon to a gym, it stays there (you cannot use it) until the gym level is reduced enough to knock it back out. When that happens, it immediately returns to your inventory.
• As soon as you put a pokémon in a gym, go to the store screen and tap the shield icon in the upper right. That's how you get rewards for controlling a gym. You can only collect the rewards once every 21 hours, though.
• You don't actually have to be in control of the gym for 21 hours to collect again. If you get kicked out, all you have to do is take it back over and be in control when/after the timer expires, and you can immediately collect again.

Reward for controlling a gym. Note the clock reset and counting down from 21 hrs at the top:

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Capella Ingress has a speedlock of I think 35mph? Over that and you can't set off XMP pulses to attack or throw mods or capture portals. Since Niantic based so much of Go off of Ingress, I don't see why they can't do the same thing. I sometimes gripe about the Ingress lock when I'm on the bus, but 90% of the time it's going under 30 so I can grab things.

Perfect. I guess I should file yet another under the List of Features Lost from Ingress.

[turtle]

Thanks for those tips. They actually helped me a lot. Enough so that I finally took a gym all by myself!


It didn't last for longer than 30 minutes though. As I was pulling away from the parking lot another guy pulled up and yelled he was Instinct too and he was going to reenforce the gym for us. I thought that was pretty cool.

[turtle]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

[alcimedes]

There's a water, fire and electric version of the one cat pokemon you posted up there Brad. (forgot the name)

If you name the pokemon after one of three characters from the show that each had a different version of the evolution, your cat guy will morph into the specific fire/water/electric morph.

otherwise it's random.

[turtle]

Eevee is the one you want to name "Sparks" to evolve into the electric one. I forgot the other two. I saw it on CNet or Engadget/Gizmado.

[PB PM]

Why do I feel like the only person under 50 who doesn't think this game is the best thing to ever happen? I liked Pokemon when I was a kid, but geez, is it worth all the crap that's happened? One young women in Vancouver was nearly raped by a guy at Pokemon Go meet up, although one could chalk that up to being dumb enough to meet random strangers in an isolated place alone, for any reason.

[Ebby]

Originally Posted by turtle Eevee is the one you want to name "Sparks" to evolve into the electric one. I forgot the other two. I saw it on CNet or Engadget/Gizmado.

Can confirm. It worked for me

[RowdyScot]

Sparky, Rainer, or Pyro. Note: Only the first name change affects the resulting Eeveelution. I switched a Rainer to Sparky and still got Vaporeon.

[turtle]

So I'm building a PokeMap! There is a build for it on git that allows me to run my own map. My main goal for the map is to see where poke stops and gyms are, but I'll enjoy the live character location details as well too. Right now I did it on a Digital Ocean droplet. I'm working to move it to my new Raspberry Pi though if I can make it happen there instead.