Thank you for creating Pokémon GO and the Wayfarer program. I enjoy contributing new Wayspots to my local community.
I would like to suggest an improvement to the current Gym selection system.
At present, when an S2 Level 14 cell already contains three Gyms, newly approved PokéStops have almost no opportunity to become Gyms. As a result, even after successfully submitting and getting new Wayspots approved, they remain ordinary PokéStops indefinitely.
This can reduce the motivation of players who actively contribute high-quality Wayspot nominations.
I would like to suggest considering features such as:
Re-evaluating Gym locations once a year.
Re-selecting Gyms whenever a new Wayspot is added within an S2 Level 14 cell.
Introducing a fair rotation system that gives newer Wayspots a chance to become Gyms.
These changes would make new Wayspot approvals more meaningful, encourage continued exploration, and motivate more players to contribute to the Wayfarer community.
Thank you for reaching out and sharing your thoughts with us. We truly appreciate you taking the time to provide such detailed and constructive feedback.
Ideas from our community are incredibly valuable as we look for ways to improve the experience, and I will make sure to share your suggestion directly with the relevant internal team for their review and consideration.
Thank you again for your passion and support. If you have any other ideas or questions in the future, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
I hope someday that the developers reconsider the number of required wayspots for the third gym because 20 is really a lot compared to the 6 required for the second gym. If they’d drop to 15 it would be awesome and there would be many new gyms all around the world.
Pretty sure it will never happen but who knows.
I think it’s not quite true that people aren’t motivated to add new wayspots once 3 gyms have been reached. I’m in an area that has been mostly saturated for years, but I’m still looking all the time, especially now that we seem to understand how Power Spots are formed. There’s still a lot of ground to cover to go back to get more Power Spots. But I’m also constantly looking for new places where Pokestops could go because people appreciate having a place to find more research tasks or hang a lure.
The 2-6-20 logic has been in place for many years and works well. It reduces the areas where lots of gyms appear close together and does a good job of persuading Pokemon Go players to explore areas and walk that little bit further.
Since Pokemon Go was started by a company who specifically indicated that they wanted people to go out exploring and that is a key component of the game, reducing the gym requirement to 2-6-15 (or anything similar) is just not needed.
I wouldn’t say it isn’t needed. I would say that it isn’t within our power to change. Making it 2-6-15 would have a positive impact on rural/suburban/less dense areas. But that is not Wayfarer’s call to make.
I understand and respect the idea that Pokémon GO encourages exploration. I also agree that PokéStops are valuable for research tasks, lures, and exploration.
My suggestion is not to reduce exploration, but to give newly approved Wayspots a chance to become Gyms over time. Even after successfully contributing high-quality Wayspots, they currently have almost no opportunity to become Gyms once an area already has three Gyms.
I believe a fair rotation or periodic re-evaluation could encourage players to continue exploring while also rewarding long-term contributions.
I’m not disagreeing with the idea of rotating the gyms I have concerns about how annoyed existing players would be when their favourite gyms (and clusters of gyms) get changed, and how vocal some players would be on social media.
(I remember when Niantic wanted to reduce the remote raiding in some regard, since it had been introduced during the pandemic, but was causing the game to go against what Niantic wanted since it was reducing exploration, but the (unjustified imho) noise on social media was too much and they backtracked.)
I don’t think more gyms are needed generally and anything that helps less dense areas would inevitably create more gyms in dense areas (even dense areas with 30 active wayspots in an S2 L14 cell will have L14 cells alongside which have less than 20 wayspots). This would do little to fix the disparity between less-dense and more-dense areas, but this disparity is natural and represents the reality on the ground.
I very much disagree with rotating the gyms. Many communities find the ‘best’ locations to hold meet-ups, and plan accordingly. Having the gyms vanishing and respawning on an annual basis would somewhat overcomplicate things.
What I do wish is that 64 waypoints in a larger cell (an almost impossible task in most places) would spawn a 4th gym. Now that would be a great target to aim for
If the target was set as 64, this would inevitably mean people creating fake wayspots, since almost nowhere has a legitimate POI in every cell. The target would have to be something like 40-50. However, this would further divide dense areas from less-dense areas and would reduce the need for exploration.
Personally i am against with gym rotation because it will make event organizer job harder to organize raid hour but again wayfarer cant dictate which wayspot become gym in pogo. Its something that need to be advised to pogo
I agree that in many places, gyms should not be adjusted because the players have good raid train routes that they know. Relearning where to gather might be a problem. But I also want to point out that I don’t think the OP or anyone else has advocated for more gyms, just a lower threshold for the 3rd gym to appear. Yes, ultimately, that would mean more gyms in less dense areas, but it would not change the number of gyms in areas that are already at a max of 3 gyms.
I’m not sure about rotating gyms, but I like the idea of re-evaluating the placement/activations of some gyms. There’s a couple instances near me where 2 gyms sit within the same residential property. In both of these instances, at least one of these gyms could have been assigned to 1 of 20 wayspots in close proximity to or at a nearby public park. This could help encourage further exploration and community cohesiveness, and it would absolutely help with organizing raid meetups. In cases like this, relocating a gym wayspot would do more good than harm.
Just as an “ideas” thread I do understand that some of the suggestions made here could mix it up a bit so I will add my “will never happen and has it’s own problems” post…
I did mention this before but I am what seems to be 1 of the few that doesn’t believe that “more wayspots = better game”.
People always mention that Rural Areas should get “easier” Accepts to try and level them up to cities. I would go the other way and limit the cities down. Maybe once they reach the 20 wayspots inc 3 gyms then no more are shown in game.
Similar to the gym re-select if additional wayspots are added then the wayspot with the most occupied neighbouring cells is hidden from game to space them out.
The main problem for me is that I do like to visit the Town Park for Raids so maybe Parks are exempt.
Having mobility issues the park does allow me to sit on 1 bench and reach 3 Gyms, I just wait for the group to go past and jump in the raids then wait until they are on their way back so rotating the Gyms will likely be a negative for me
Not expecting any of the suggestions in the thread to happen (but you never know) just spouting ideas.
Suppose this is a roundabout way of saying that people play / use the game differently so any of these changes will make it better for some and worse for others.
I wouldnt say im not motivated, but i am defo much more motivated to find something if im near to getting a gym, than I am if theres either ages to get a gym, for example, theres 3 cells around me that are 13 or 14 to the next gym, or if theres already 3 gyns, if i find something whike passing i’ll submit it, but im not actively hunting for something to submit
Admittedly, periodically re-selecting gyms might be problematic, as it could infringe upon the vested interests of those who established a gym early on by posting numerous photos and garnering many “likes.”
Regarding what NianticAaron said about sharing the matter " I will make sure to share hanahana5331’s suggestion directly with the relevant internal team for their review and consideration." I would really like for the results of that review to be shared with this community. I hope this doesn’t end up being a case of “will never happen,” as SlimboyFat71 suggested.
I have concerns about how annoyed existing players would be when their favourite gyms (and clusters of gyms) get changed, and how vocal some players would be on social media.
