Currently, in Pokemon Go, there are two ways to earn PokeCoins - the first being to defend gyms, and the second being to purchase the coins for real money as a microtransaction. With the current situation restricting many players from going out to gyms, as well as some general grumbling about the only ways to earn PokeCoins being from defending gyms, Niantic has proposed a new Pokemon Go PokeCoin earning method that it is testing in Australia.
With this new methodology defending gyms will still earn you PokeCoins - only instead of getting six per hour, it will be down to two per hour, meaning to earn all the coins you can in a day, your pokemon will have to stay 25 hours combined. To make up for that though, there will be an easier dropfeed of smaller amounts of coins - as you'll now be able to get up 55 coins per day.
Those extra five coins are going to be earnable from doing a selection of activities during the day. The featured activities aren't all listed but here's the sample list that you might have some of pop up with this overhaul:
- Make an Excellent Throw
- Evolve a Pokemon
- Make a Great Throw
- Use a Berry to help catch a Pokemon
- Take a snapshot of your buddy
- Catch a Pokemon
- Power up a Pokemon
- Make a Nice Throw
- Transfer a Pokemon
- Win a raid
When you complete all of the days featured activities (however many that will wind up being), you get 5 coins.
Right now Niantic is rolling this out to Pokemon Go trainers in Australia to test and will open it to future areas after the test.
Quick Take
As a newer player to Pokemon Go, my feelings are a bit split - while I like the tasks meaning that all the coins aren't based on gyms, the fact that they are reducing the gym amount to such a low number, with a low payout for doing all the tasks, seems like it is trying to push people to spend more coins in the store. During a pandemic, when people playing Pokemon Go have already spent huge amounts that seems unwieldy and cruel and goes against the idea of making it good for free players as well as those able to pay.
I think there's a good idea here, but that Niantic has overcorrected on the gym amount and other areas and could afford to be a bit more generous on it overall. Perhaps that's the idea of cutting it down so low - then they can increase it back to somewhere between and get fewer complaints and instead praise for listening and putting it up to 4 coins per hour in the gym.
What do you think of the Pokemon Go PokeCoin overhaul? Do you think that tasks need to perhaps be repeatable so that people can earn more coins without engaging in the gym system? Should the gym amount be higher? Let us know in the comments below!
