Hi everyone! I’ve been playing Pokémon GO for a while now and I’ve been pretty active nominating Wayspots in my area, which is a small rural village in Spain. I’ve managed to build up a decent amount of PokéStops and Gyms considering the size of the place, but I’ve been trying to understand the mechanics behind how everything works a bit better so I can make smarter decisions about future nominations. I have a few questions that I haven’t been able to find clear answers to:
Do Power Spots count toward the Gym threshold in an L14 cell, or are they a separate category entirely?
Is there any known way to trigger or influence when Power Spots appear or rotate in a cell?
Do accepted Wayspots that are not visible in Pokémon GO (due to S2 cell conflicts) count toward the Gym threshold? I have several accepted Wayspots that appear in Ingress but not in Pokémon GO.
What is the difference between ‘Community Contributed’ and ‘All Sources’ Wayspots in Niantic Wayfarer? I can see some ‘All Sources’ Wayspots in my area that are not visible in Pokémon GO and don’t appear to be PokéStops, Gyms or Power Spots. Do these count toward the Gym threshold in an L14 cell, or toward Power Spot eligibility?
The reason I’m asking is that depending on the answers, it might change my nomination strategy significantly. I have several potential nominations that I believe would be accepted, but I never submitted them because I assumed they wouldn’t appear in game due to cell conflicts. However, if accepted Wayspots that aren’t visible in game still count toward the Gym threshold, it would be worth nominating them anyway to help reach the next Gym tier in my L14 cell.
I’m really trying to understand the underlying mechanics of how all this works, both to improve my local map and to grow my own knowledge about the Wayfarer ecosystem. Any resources, tools or guides you can point me to would be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks in advance!
That’s great that you are building up the influence of wayfarer in your area. It sounds as though you have a good submission technique.
All the information about the steps between a wayspot and use on the gameboard are purely from community observation.
First forget about Ingress and IITC since the split of Niantic last May the databases each uses have diverged.
Use the wayfarer map as it is up to date. If you google wayfarer tools you will find help.
Powerspots there appears to be a distance requirement from a Pokestop gym of 22m. Wayspots that are over 22m and unused can appear as Powerspots ( which is great so now those wayspots can be used in the game ) what triggers a wayspot to be used in any round of activity I don’t think has been established.
It is the number of pokestops/gyms that counts for gym creation - Powerspots don’t have a role.
The places that are imported - no photo - can only be used for powerspots.
I hope this helps your planning of wayspot submissions as it sounds as though you have places you can go and submit.
Thank you so much for your response, honestly all of this information is really helpful and clears up a lot of confusion I had. The point about Ingress and the database split is something I wasn’t aware of at all, so that’s really good to know going forward.
Just to make sure I understand correctly: the ‘All Sources’ Wayspots without photos can only become Power Spots and won’t count toward the Gym threshold, right? That’s really useful for my planning.
One thing I’m still not entirely clear on is whether community contributed Wayspots that have been accepted but are not visible in Pokémon GO due to S2 cell conflicts count toward the Gym threshold or not. Do you happen to know anything about that?
Also, I wanted to ask about something I’ve been curious about lately. Since Scopely has taken over Pokémon GO, do you think that might have any impact on the Wayfarer system and nomination criteria?
For example, could there be changes to what gets accepted or rejected, or any shifts in how the whole PokéStop nomination process works under the new management? I’m just wondering if it’s worth keeping an eye on any announcements or if it’s too early to tell.
Thanks again, I really appreciate you and everyone else taking the time to share what you know!"
If ambassadors know anything about this issue, they would be under NDA not to disclose it to the rest of us. It would not make sense to me to buy the product, then scrap the rules. However, we have seen testing of new Pokestops that don’t meet eligibility requirements and are simply placed by the team: Testing New Wayspots in Pokémon GO
Thank you both so much for your answers, this has been incredibly helpful! The article on S2 cells is really clear and explains a lot of things I wasn’t fully understanding before.
And yes, I actually read the Testing New Wayspots thread, it’s really interesting that the experiment is already running in Spain!
I haven’t noticed any of those auto-generated Wayspots in my area yet, but I’ll keep an eye out.
As for Scopely, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Fingers crossed they make some positive changes for rural areas!
Thanks again to everyone who replied, I really appreciate it!
) what triggers a wayspot to be used in any round of activity I don’t think has been established.