Pokemon Go!

[Nerfherder]

its still there. and it has been for almost a week.

to knock out the bottom pokemon you have to beat EVERYTHING in the gym once...

No, just beat the lowest pokemon and flee, rinse and repeat. Every victory is less prestige for the Gym.

Even then, once the lowest pokemon is out they still have to fight the rest.

 

[Soul Assassin]

its still there. and it has been for almost a week.

to knock out the bottom pokemon you have to beat EVERYTHING in the gym once...

That's not true, all you have to do is keep beating some of them even if you don't get the top guys the gym will lose prestige until it drops a level and the bottom Pokemon gets removed.

 

[Sinbad]

Something is broken

 

[Baxteen]

cool I learned something today.
I have never fought an enemy gym and not beaten everything,
and I have left countless weedles/kakuna/catepie/metapod in gyms to level them up, and when I get them back the entire gym is defeated every time.

I know I still have all 3 of those gyms, I will check with my brother if he still has 3 gyms. it might be we got lucky and no one has fought those gyms?

there is a gym on my drive to and from work that I have never seen claimed by a team. its in a business park and you cannot get in (tried bribing the security already R20 was not enought)
and it is in a very obscure area, no pokestops around for like 4 km. so no GPS spoofers have found it yet.

 

[Pho3nix]

Something is broken

Means data isn't alright. Close and reopen.

 

[Necropolis]

Gyms it obscure locations are the best.

I've got a Pinsir sitting in a gym out in the sticks - don't think many people know that it is there - and I'm happily claiming the pokecoins daily.

Gym in busy areas aren't really worth it - was at a small dam near my house yesterday - the gym there changed teams about 10 times in the 2 hours I was there.

 

[Nerfherder]

cool I learned something today.
I have never fought an enemy gym and not beaten everything,
and I have left countless weedles/kakuna/catepie/metapod in gyms to level them up, and when I get them back the entire gym is defeated every time.

I know I still have all 3 of those gyms, I will check with my brother if he still has 3 gyms. it might be we got lucky and no one has fought those gyms?

there is a gym on my drive to and from work that I have never seen claimed by a team. its in a business park and you cannot get in (tried bribing the security already R20 was not enought)
and it is in a very obscure area, no pokestops around for like 4 km. so no GPS spoofers have found it yet.

I'm in a group that are scouting out a gym on a hiking trail.
I rate if you get something in that gym then you are sorted for life. Such a mission to get to the gym and then you have to take people with you.

 

[Nerfherder]

Something is broken

There is a new version out. I was just told to update now.

 

[Baxteen]

I'm in a group that are scouting out a gym on a hiking trail.
I rate if you get something in that gym then you are sorted for life. Such a mission to get to the gym and then you have to take people with you.

that is again until someone figures that out and uses GPS spoofing to find it, take it down and claim it.

I really have lost faith at the battle against GPS spoofing.
last night again at the dros on modderfonteain road.
we spent 20 min fighting the gym to get one poke in, and suddenly as we are fighting it POOF a wild 200CP ponyta is at the bottom.
no cars drove past.
no one else was in the parking lot. 100% sure that was GPS spoofing.

we gave up. and sat around for a few minutes to see if they would fight the gym as well, but nope. no dice.

this is what lead to the rant about bug pokemon at the bottom of a gym...

 

[Soul Assassin]

The number one and two spot in the gym at the casino could be friends or siblings but I have my money on a dirty bot user before the API changed, it's the same name just reversed for the two top users i.e. xxxyyy and yyyxxx.

 

[Scary_Turtle]

I don't think gyms are meant to be held because of how easy it is to beat them.

I can honestly say I have never lost a gym battle, I know this sounds like bragging but its not, it is to prove how easy it is to beat gyms. At the moment I have a 2100 Snorlax and it took down a 1800 vaporeon, 1800 charizard and half lifed the 2300 arcanine this should not happen.

Then I put it in a gym and the other took him down with his 2300 arcanine. Huh!!!!

So I think you gotta race to get as many gyms as you can and then collect.

So normally after work I go to emmerentia and take the 4 gyms. I take the hardest first then 2nd, 3rd and 4th then take the one just outside emmerentia then down to the petrol station and take that one. Then I collect

By the time I get home all my pokemon have been kicked out of the gyms no matter how strong the gym was before I left.

 

[Baxteen]

I don't think gyms are meant to be held because of how easy it is to beat them.

I can honestly say I have never lost a gym battle, I know this sounds like bragging but its not, it is to prove how easy it is to beat gyms. At the moment I have a 2100 Snorlax and it took down a 1800 vaporeon, 1800 charizard and half lifed the 2300 arcanine this should not happen.

Then I put it in a gym and the other took him down with his 2300 arcanine. Huh!!!!

So I think you gotta race to get as many gyms as you can and then collect.

So normally after work I go to emmerentia and take the 4 gyms. I take the hardest first then 2nd, 3rd and 4th then take the one just outside emmerentia then down to the petrol station and take that one. Then I collect

By the time I get home all my pokemon have been kicked out of the gyms no matter how strong the gym was before I left.

there is a simple reason for that.

when you fight your quick attack takes between 200ms and 700ms.
the AI defending the gym only attacks every 2 seconds. regardless of the time the move takes. this is to allow the AI to use Charge moves, that take longer than quick attacks.

so you get to attack 2 or 10 times for every 1 attack they get in (when attaking)

so lets say you have a super slow pokemon, with low stamina. you use snorlax, with lick. over the 100 seconds a battle takes, you will deal 1000 damage. that is if you never use the charge attack.
if your charge attack is hyperbeam, and you use it every time it is ready, over 100 seconds you will do 1691 damage.
this ignores all modifiers what you are fighting, (no type avantage)

now that same snorlax is in a gym defending it. without using the charge attack it will do 500 damage, and with the charge attack it is going to do 845 damage.
this is simply because there is a attak every 2 seonds instead of every second.

make sense now?

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

They won't get rid of spoofing, it's too easy. I set it up in less than 30min just to see and it only took that long cos of an incorrect bios setting for the emulator.

I can warp anywhere in the world, wait an hour for soft-ban to be lifted or just spin a poke-stop a bunch of times and voila off I go.

Now I won't obviously because it ruins the fun of the game, but for people who just want to "win" then it's really easy and not much Niantic can do about it. But I do suspect they will come down harder on blatant warping around.

 

[Baxteen]

They won't get rid of spoofing, it's too easy. I set it up in less than 30min just to see and it only took that long cos of an incorrect bios setting for the emulator.

I can warp anywhere in the world, wait an hour for soft-ban to be lifted or just spin a poke-stop a bunch of times and voila off I go.

Now I won't obviously because it ruins the fun of the game, but for people who just want to "win" then it's really easy and not much Niantic can do about it. But I do suspect they will come down harder on blatant warping around.

the sad thing is there is an even easier way than using an emulator. there is a gps spoofing app that gives you a joystick to walk your avatar around. it does not require root, or even third party installation.
so not only can you spoof, but you can walk around.
I wanted to see how easy that was to set up, so instead of doing it myself, I send one video to the Fiance's sister. 10 min later she was spoofing walking around and caught her first pokemon. it was a new account. she spun a pokestop, caught a bulbasaur, the uninstalled everything, she is not interested in playing the game. and she is by no means clever when it comes to android, she constantly says she wants her blackberry back....

how will Niantic find those people? spoof to a location say, Emmerentia dam/ brightwater comons/flora farm while they are sitting at home on the wifi. they spoof the walking around, if they get a soft ban, they leave the app open for a few minutes and do nothing, then spin a pokestop to check if the ban is lifted. (this is how the guy with the level 40 bot got around softbans BTW)

from a code point of view it looks the exact same as a person who is really playing the game.
I am not condoning this behaviour at all, I am trying to think of a solution the developer side of my brain has been thinking of this problem for a week and I cant find anything.

here are some of the problems:
erratic GPS signal or bad network connection means there are lots of IRL players who jump 200 to 300 meters in one go. and they are not spoofing.
if they build checks into the code to see if GPS spoofing is enabled on the phone there are tools to fool that that is already built into the app I mentioned above.
travel speeds are not updated enough to (decrease server load) leading to no way to spot spoofing of jumps less then 1KM per minute.

so again, if you guys can think of a way for Niantic to spot GPS spoofers, other than reports by players (open to abuse like the pokestop removal is already suffering from in the USA) post it here so we can work together to maybe send them a sugjestion.

 

[schuits]

umm. That's not the worst of it Baxteen.

The Bot programs do the walking for you. There you just let it run 24/7 and it does the walking, the spinning and the catching for you.
It trades out weak pokemons, deletes items when you inventory is full etc.

I'd think hard bans should be implemented.
Jump x distance within y time and you get perma-banned. Like from New York to Tokyo in < 10 hours.

 

[Baxteen]

umm. That's not the worst of it Baxteen.

The Bot programs do the walking for you. There you just let it run 24/7 and it does the walking, the spinning and the catching for you.
It trades out weak pokemons, deletes items when you inventory is full etc.

I'd think hard bans should be implemented.
Jump x distance within y time and you get perma-banned. Like from New York to Tokyo in < 10 hours.

that is all fine and dandy. dan the big jumps in unrealistic time frames. that is real easy.

but what about that bot that walks around central park 24/7 gets the account to level 30, and then the account owner sells the account?

or the lazy guy sitting on his couch at home, "walking around" wiht a third party app, taking the gym 2km from his house 15 min after he started spoofing. how does Niantic find those ones?
that is where the real problem is. bots being sold off, without ever looking like they were not a real human (other than the non stop catching, spinning hatching and walking)

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

You can't add in a hard ban feature that has even the slightest chance of banning a legit user. GPS freaks out a lot...

It's simple, Niantic need to add in their own spoofing and joystick, you want to sit in your undies instead of walking around, fine ok you can pokestop and catch and whatever, you just can't battle gyms. Then region lock the gyms.

*poof* there goes 90% of the spoofing apps audience, therefore less development of the app because of lower returns and easier to outwit them.

The really hardcore cheaters you'll never beat though.

 

[Baxteen]

You can't add in a hard ban feature that has even the slightest chance of banning a legit user. GPS freaks out a lot...

It's simple, Niantic need to add in their own spoofing and joystick, you want to sit in your undies instead of walking around, fine ok you can pokestop and catch and whatever, you just can't battle gyms. Then region lock the gyms.

*poof* there goes 90% of the spoofing apps audience, therefore less development of the app because of lower returns and easier to outwit them.

The really hardcore cheaters you'll never beat though.

I actually really like this sugjestion. I truely do.
but it HAS to be a premium app. so Niantic can make money off spoofers.

its basically the Dutch approach to drugs, legalize the lot and let Darwinism sort out the problem, while the government makes money via tax on drugs. (I know this is taking it a lot further than what is actually going on in the Netherlands with regard to legal drugs, its a hyperbole)

 

[schuits]

It surprised me that they didn't do a region check already.
Half of South Africa is playing Pokemon and it's not released here. It's not that hard to check.

 

[tsume]

I don't think gyms are meant to be held because of how easy it is to beat them.

I can honestly say I have never lost a gym battle, I know this sounds like bragging but its not, it is to prove how easy it is to beat gyms. At the moment I have a 2100 Snorlax and it took down a 1800 vaporeon, 1800 charizard and half lifed the 2300 arcanine this should not happen.
/QUOTE]
According to stats, those are 2 out of the 4 best pokemon to take and hold a gym with.