Big Changes Coming to Pokemon Go’s Gyms

Pokemon Go’s gym system is broken. What’s supposed to be an active and competitive part of the game has become a stagnant mechanic avoided by all but the highest level players. Between the rampant spoofers and the time it takes to take down a high level gym, most Pokemon Go players totally avoid gyms.

Niantic Labs has acknowledged the weaknesses of Pokemon Go‘s gym system and has promised they were working on a solution. Yesterday, the developer announced a new update for Pokemon Go, which could contain the long-awaited changes to how players interact with gyms.

After getting their hands on an early copy of the update, dataminers from the Pokemon Go research site The Silph Road have discovered several interesting changes to Pokemon Go‘s code. Here’s a rundown of what they found:

Raids

Dataminers have found several lines of codes related to “raids,” which many assumed referred to eventual plans to bring in Legendary Pokemon via large, cooperative events. However, new lines in the code suggest that the raids actually refer to when your Pokemon Gym is under attack. 

Lines in the code refer to earning XP for defeating a “raid” Pokemon, as well as for feeding a Pokemon a berry during the raid. The speculation is that players will get XP when their Pokemon successfully defends a gym, and that players can actively help their in-gym Pokemon by remotely feeding them Berries during a battle. This would mimic a mechanic in Niantic’s other game Ingress in which players can defend their bases (called portals) remotely when they’re attacked. 

However, it’s also possible that feeding Pokemon could be a more passive activity, designed to keep players visiting gyms on a daily basis. Players could need to feed their gym defenders daily, or else risk that they’ll be much easier to defeat in battle. 

Gym Limits

Right now, the gym system is dominated by a small handful of Pokemon. Most gyms have some variation of the same Pokemon, with Dragonite, Gyarados, Blissey, and Vaporeon sitting near the top of just about every gym you pass. However, it looks like this is about to change. 

There’s now a line of code that mentions a limit to the number of Pokemon of the same species that can occupy a gym. Basically, this means that gyms won’t be loaded with a half dozen Vaporeon for much longer. This is great for gym diversity, a problem Pokemon Go‘s gyms have had for months. 

Anti-Cheating Tools

Pokemon Go has spent months battling spoofers and other ways of cheating the game. It now appears that Pokemon Go is actively preventing GPS spoofers from encountering Pokemon, via a new “anticheat” system. We’re not sure how the anticheat system works, but it appears that Pokemon Go is taking more steps to curb cheating all together. 

A Hint at Legendary Events

Pokemon Go has several lines of code related to sponsors, companies that pay money to Niantic for sponsored Poke Stops and gyms. The newest update adds a very unusual sponsor: “Nia_Ops.” This likely refers to Niantic Labs, the maker of Pokemon Go. So why would Niantic add itself as a sponsor? Probably so Niantic can make temporary Poke Stops and gyms when they run local events. 

Caveats

As with all datamines, players should take these findings with a grain of salt. Just because Niantic adds a feature to Pokemon Go‘s code doesn’t mean that they’re ready to implement it. We could see some, all, or none of these features when the new update goes live later this week.