Pokemon: GO

[zoraster]

Yeah. Popping an egg earlier in levels is definitely the way to go as you'll double any and all pokemon additions (including the first time you do a pidgey). As you encounter more new stuff early on, you get more bonuses from that.

If Lucky Eggs provided a % of experience needed boost, then it'd be different. But as a flat boost, it's all in the early stages. Still, nothing you can do once you're already up in levels.

[Zulfy]

And btw I ran out of pokeballs so I just lock my touchscreen and hatch eggs these days.

Sometimes I would land the ball in the middle and it would just roll away shooting confetti out its ass at me.

[Brandi]

why is this even really a debate when you get 2 eggs at level 20 anyway? Use them early, and then use them late.

Unless the idea is to save ALL of your eggs until 2x, which seems silly. Though I don't think it's worth it to use them if you can't at least get close to their full potential. My first egg I wasted because I didn't do the math and only got 12 or so evolutions in. I still gained a ton of levels because I was out catching new pokemon and using pokestops, but with patience I could have gained more.

[Not_Mafia]

At level 20+ you can get the coins for eggs

[Claus]

So on my morning commute today, four or five gyms in the path to the university were taken by this guy with a level 33 account and a level 35 account (usernames were the same one with different suffixes). In each gym they left a ~3000CP Snorlax and a ~3000CP Dragonite.

The cynic in me wants to cry foul. I just lowered my head and hit the incense.

[Not_Mafia]

No they're definitely cheaters

[zoraster]

How are they cheating?

[Not_Mafia]

Bots or something, I doubt they're that level legitimately on two accounts

[InflatablePie]

It's real easy to gps spoof and get easy Dragonite Snorlax Lapras etc and take over whatever gyms. Not sure exactly how but I'm sure it's easy to find via Google. Luckily no one near me has taken over gyms this way, the ones in downtown Raleigh are hard enough to battle as is.

Also I think if you really wanna min max with Lucky Eggs, you either buy a bunch and use them early for the new Pokemon bonus, or if you don't, then save them til post 20 (as leveling becomes slower AND it becomes harder to catch Pidgey Weedle Caterpie etc). It probably doesn't matter too much, especially if you're in an area with tons of Stops, gyms, Pokemon spawns, etc

[Sudo_Nym]

That's one of the reasons why there was such uproar against Pokevision getting taken down- people using that site but otherwise playing legitimately get punished, but the people who are gps spoofing and using bots to capture pokemon while they sleep are not getting punished.

[Psyche]

if you're using that site you aren't really playing legitimately

[Sudo_Nym]

I feel like, given the lack of any sort of reasonable in-game tracking, it's acceptable cheating, at the worst. I'm still going out and actually walking to the pokemon, which is the essence of the game.

[BROseidon]

save the egg leveling strat for after lvl 20 because you stop finding lucky eggs in the wild and uh the XP jumps DRAMATICALLY in terms of how much you need per level

eh... you're still getting the same XP from the lucky egg either way. In fact you're probably likely to get more xp the earlier you use them as you're more likely to be able to get the double xp on new pokedex entries the lower level you are.

Why are you finding pokemon during your Lucky Eggs?

Pop egg->Evolve Pidgey/Ratata/Doduo/Weedle over and over again for 30 minutes.

[BROseidon]

So on my morning commute today, four or five gyms in the path to the university were taken by this guy with a level 33 account and a level 35 account (usernames were the same one with different suffixes). In each gym they left a ~3000CP Snorlax and a ~3000CP Dragonite.

The cynic in me wants to cry foul. I just lowered my head and hit the incense.

Yeah I'd report that. Niantic can look into it and decide if cheating.

[BROseidon]

Niantic should talk to grindr about how to do geo-location based shit.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Why are you finding pokemon during your Lucky Eggs?

From evolving. It takes less time to get a new pokedex entry than to evolve a pidgey, so you get the most out of your lucky egg by evolving some of your pokemon into new ones.

[zoraster]

It'd be real cool if you could skip the evolve animation after the first time you do it.

[Fenchurch]

So on my morning commute today, four or five gyms in the path to the university were taken by this guy with a level 33 account and a level 35 account (usernames were the same one with different suffixes). In each gym they left a ~3000CP Snorlax and a ~3000CP Dragonite.

The cynic in me wants to cry foul. I just lowered my head and hit the incense.

That's funny, we saw something similar in a gym yesterday - two accounts with the same name (and sounded like it was based on the player's real name) but a different number at the end. I just assumed it's someone with two mobile phones I guess? In this case though I think the guy was actually there at the time, with a friend (on a differently named account), although I didn't ask to check it was him.

[UpTooLate]

We have some guys that came up from Anchorage that are Instinct and obvious GPS spoofers. 3k plus dragonites taking gyms when there isn't anybody there. It's terrible.

[Papa Zito]

The combination of blatant cheaters, lack of tracking, and sudden weirdly increased difficulty is putting a serious damper on people's enthusiasm for the game.

[UpTooLate]

Yup. It's becoming more frustrating than it's worth.

[zoraster]

I also think a lack of depth. As my participation in the game grows, the depth actually gets shallower. Whereas in the first week or so I'd regularly come across a new pokemon and get excited about that, not to mention lots of OTHER people engaging in that excitement, now I basically wait to see if an egg will give me something new and collect pidgeys.... because frankly a pidgey is worth 2-4 times more to me than other pokemon who I've discovered simply because I can evolve them that much faster.

There's just not much to do that doesn't seem repetitive. And of course gyms suffer from two problems: first, their combat is repetitive. second, there's not a very good system in place for competing with people with far stronger pokemon. If you could team up or something to take down a 2500 CP Snorlax it'd be one thing. But having to win solo is a very frustrating system.

[Fenchurch]

If you could team up or something to take down a 2500 CP Snorlax it'd be one thing. But having to win solo is a very frustrating system.

You do know that you

can

team up, right? When you say 'having to win solo' do you just mean because you don't have anyone to play with?

~~~

I still find there is plenty of depth to gyms. Planning our daily gym raid, we have to consider the different gyms in the area and their turnover rate - e.g. the one by the tramstop usually changes hands every 5-20 minutes, whereas the Navy club can hold for up to a day. Ideally we want to start at the steadier gyms and do more volatile gyms just before claiming. Also identifying which gyms are worthwhile for our time and resources. It's usually far quicker to take an enemy gym than to add to our own team's gym, if we don't have a good type advantage to building up prestige.

We've also developed a system in order to make the best use of potions. We have a group of attack pokemon (mostly electric and water types) for attacking enemy gyms, and these only ever get given revives. This is probably made easier since there are two of us battling together, but even solo, since you can chuck a whole team at an enemy gym, it's often okay if you go in at half health. We have some trash pokemon that we're planning to transfer anyway, and we can stick these in the final gym, because we don't need to hold it. And then we have the high level defence pokemon, these are the only ones that get potions.

[zoraster]

If I can take on a single individual pokemon to take them out at the same time as someone else tries, I have not gotten it to work.

[xRECKONERx]

save the egg leveling strat for after lvl 20 because you stop finding lucky eggs in the wild and uh the XP jumps DRAMATICALLY in terms of how much you need per level

eh... you're still getting the same XP from the lucky egg either way. In fact you're probably likely to get more xp the earlier you use them as you're more likely to be able to get the double xp on new pokedex entries the lower level you are.

yes but leveling becomes much slower later whereas 1-20 is pretty steady and quick-ish so it makes more sense to save it for the slog when you stop getting lucky eggs and have caught all the pokemon so you're not getting that new pokemon bonus either

No, the opposite is better.

Last night I was barely 17, popped a lucky egg when I was about to hatch two eggs. 7 new pokedex entries from evolutions, and roughly 35 other evolutions later, I'm 20. Which means I have access to Ultra Balls (and likely higher CP Pokemon) now, rather than a few days from now. Popping the Lucky Egg after I hit 20 would have zero net benefit to my total XP, but I have the capacity to collect better items sooner. Getting from 20 to 21 gives me relatively little, but racing from 17 to 20 netted me much bigger benefits sooner.

Yeah but now it's going to take you much longer to level post-20 and you have less new Pokedex entries to find

new Pokedex entries are big XP boosts, which you lose over time as you find more Pokemon