Pokémon Go is one of the most recognizable and most played games in the world in the past 12 months. Niantic’s app will soon have its first anniversary, and it will make some big changes to celebrate. Soon, Niantic will implement a fundamental reworking of the gym’s system. Pokéstops will be added to gyms to give players items when they visit, and also there will be a new raid system and a complete rework of the way the gyms work.
Gyms will not level up the way they do now. Each gym has six permanent slots for members of the controlling team. But now, all six Pokémon were displayed, giving us a better idea of which creatures we will be facing if we try to take the gym. Niantic will be limiting each gym to one of each species, which means that we will not see any Blissey gyms. Also, you no longer battle the Pokémon from weakest to strongest, instead you will battle the one that has been the longest at the gym first.
On the gym overview screen, there is a meter for each creature that is in the gym. This meter will show how much motivation each Pokémon will have for battle. The meter will drop when the Pokémon loses battles and even when time goes by. This means that you cannot put your Dragonite in a gym and get the benefits for months. The stronger the Pokémon is, the faster the meter drops down. You can refresh the meter by going to the gym and feeding the Pokémon with berries. You will also receive Stardust in return for giving them berries.
The low motivation level will drop the effectiveness of the Pokémon in the gym. When the meter goes down, the Pokémon returns to its trainer. Only after the Pokémon leaves the gym, the trainer receives Pokécoins for having a Pokémon in the gym. But the longer you have it in a gym, the higher rewards you get.
Each gym will give you a badge when you take it. The more you play at that gym, the more you can level up the badge.
From time to time, an egg will show up on the top of a gym. The egg has a countdown, showing when it will be ready to hatch. Once it hatches, a Raid Boss with a timer will appear. Before the time flies, you can join up to 20 players to take down a very powerful Pokémon. To participate in this battle, however, you will need a Raid pass. You get one pass per day by visiting a gym and spinning the newly added photodisc, or you can purchase the pass in the in-game store.
The first Raid Boss the player faced with its team was a Charizard featuring an astounding 13,955 CP. After defeating the Raid Boss, the player got a bunch of items, including new ones being introduced into Pokémon Go like Rare Candy (give it to a Pokémon you own to receive candy for them), Technical Machines (teach Pokémon moves), and Golden Razzberries (make it much easier to catch a wild Pokémon).
There is also an opportunity to catch the powerful Pokémon. After the Raid battle, his CP dropped back down to earth. The Charizard was only about 1,200 CP following the battle. Based on the performance in the battle, the player was granted ten Premier Balls. You can’t use the standard Balls during the encounter, so once you run out of the Premier Balls, it is the end for you. But you can use berries that you have in your inventory to make catching the creature easier, or earn additional candy.
The Raid Battle system is quite fun to take part in, and we are all glad that Niantic is giving its players more ways to capture rare Pokémon. We all got sick of catching only Pokémon like Pidgey and Weedle, so this is a bonus motivation.
If you use the Raid option often, you can earn an invite to Excluphotodisc, which have more powerful and rare creatures. Niantic said that this might be the way legendary creatures will be introduced to the game.
While there is not any date given for the changes, Niantic reported that the update will begin soon.
