Thursday, April 14, 2016

PoGO - Everything I Know About Gyms So Far

EARLY REPORTS ON GYMS IN POKÉMON GO

Pokémon GO app icon.

SHORT VERSION: If the thought of reading all of this stresses you out, here are the sparknotes.

As you are walking around in the real world, the Pokémon GO app moves your avatar around on the in-game map using your GPS location. There are specific real-world places that are designated as Gym locations, at public points of interest such as art installations, historical sites, and the like. (The closest such sites to my home, for example, are a public garden and a skate park.) Once you arrive at one of these designated places, you are able to interact with a Pokémon Gym.

Once you have caught a few Pokémon and progressed a little bit through the game, you will have the chance to choose a Team. The options are Red, Blue, and Yellow, just like the original Game Boy games released in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. When you get to a Gym in the real world, you can check your screen to see the status of that Gym. (You can also check this from far away on your map before you decide to travel there.) There are three potential statuses: 1. Gym is unclaimed, 2. Gym is owned by your Team, 3. Gym is owned by a rival Team.
The Gym symbol used in Pokémon games.
  1. GYM IS UNCLAIMED
    • If the Gym currently has no Gym Leader, you can claim the Gym for yourself and BECOME a Gym Leader! (As if you haven't dreamed of this for decades.) Choose a Pokémon from your Team, and that Pokémon will stay at that real life location to defend the Gym. As the Gym Leader, your customized avatar will be displayed standing behind your Pokémon if anyone ever challenges your Gym. There will also be a crown displayed next to your avatar to show that you are the Leader of the Gym, and from now on if any other player approaches the Gym, they will be able to see your Username and Pokémon, stating that you are the Leader there. You can personally only leave one Pokémon at the Gym. You will need other players from your Team to leave their own Pokémon to help you make your Gym stronger.
  2. GYM IS OWNED BY YOUR TEAM
    • At a friendly gym, you can strengthen its defenses by leaving an additional Pokémon to defend it, increase your battling prowess by training in combat, or increase the Prestige of the Gym.
      1. You can assign a Pokémon to help defend the gym, if there are still slots available, and you haven't already assigned one. Deploying a Pokemon to defend a Gym grants the Gym 500 Prestige for each Pokémon. If you intend on using this Gym to train, it is a good strategy that you don't defend with a Pokémon that you can't beat! In fact, the fastest way to gain Prestige and xp later is to defend with a Pokémon that you can easily and quickly knock out.
      2. You can also train and practice your battling skills. In a training session, you have two minutes to defeat a defending Pokémon, and a timer is displayed counting it down. In cases where a Gym has more than one Pokémon, that timer resets back to the full two minutes each time you knock a Pokémon out.
        • When you begin a training battle, it seems that a random Pokémon in your possession is selected, although you can tap on the Pokémon to switch it out with another. Your Pokémon CAN get hurt or knocked out, and you will have to use revives or potions to heal them.
        • You can win or lose this battle. In either case, the defending Pokémon returns to full health at the end of a training session, so that it can still guard your gym at full power. Your own Pokémon, however, will retain any damage that it endured.
      3. If you defeat the defending Pokémon, the training session awards the trainer with 50xp per knockout, as well as giving the Gym 50 Prestige Points for each Pokémon defeated. Prestige Points increase the Level of your particular Gym. 500 Prestige Points get you to Level 2, while 1000 Prestige gets you to Level 3, and 2000 gets you to Level 4. A higher Gym Level allows more slots for a larger number of teammates to be able to leave additional defending Pokémon.
  3. GYM IS OWNED BY A RIVAL TEAM
    • If a Gym is already owned by a rival team, you can challenge that Gym using the combat system. You can bring 6 Pokémon into combat against it. You can press a shuffle button to randomly select 6 diverse Pokémon for you, or you can hand-choose them yourself.
    • Although you can bring 6 Pokémon, right now it seems like you only fight with one at a time. If one of your Pokémon faints, your next Pokémon is sent out to continue the battle. It is good strategy to start with your strongest Pokémon. (Considering Combat Points, type effectiveness, etc.)
    • Remember to deal out as much damage as you can, as quickly as you can. That two-minute timer per enemy Pokémon is always ticking! Most battles that have been seen are under a minute, so if you don't fight, you will be toast. But try to balance this with avoiding incoming attacks, yourself. This will save you from wasting resources on healing your Pokémon all the time.
    • When you defeat an enemy Gym, you can greatly reduce their Prestige. When you reduce their Prestige to zero, you dethrone the current Gym Leader, and can claim control of the Gym for yourself.
    • After you successfully defeat a Gym, (if the Gym still maintains some Prestige, and remains under the rival team's control,) the defending enemy Pokémon are restored to full HP, and can be battled again.
Official in-game screenshot from Niantic where Blue and Red Gyms can be seen. The Red Gym is Level 3.

COMBAT

  • Combat in Pokémon GO is not turn-based. Battles are real-time endeavors with a two-minute timer constantly ticking down. (That timer resets every time a new enemy Pokémon is sent out.)
  • You attack the opposing Pokémon in real time using a 'quick attack' or a 'charge attack'. You can interrupt an opponent's charge attack by quick attacking while they charge. You can also defend yourself in real time by jumping/dodging to avoid damage.
  • There are no moves currently in the game that utilize status conditions such as 'paralyzed' or 'poisoned'; battles are just an all-out brawl.
  • You can tap your phone screen to 'quick attack', or hold your finger down on the screen for a more powerful 'charge attack'. Stamina is used for charge attacks, which use 50% of the stamina bar each time. Stamina normally refills at a rate of about 20% a second, but if you are hit by the opposing Pokémon, this also fills up the stamina in little boosts.
  • When you are about to be attacked, red crosshairs appear on your Pokémon, which shrink to signal how soon the attack is coming. You can swipe left or right to dodge. If you continuously swipe fast enough, you can get all the way behind the opposing Pokémon and attack from there. There are area of effect attacks that you cannot dodge, but can instead jump to avoid.
  • Like in the Pokémon games that we are familiar with, if you use a move that is affected by some kind of type advantage, a message that reads "It's not very effective" or "It's super effective" briefly appear above the attacks. These are the only damage-causing possibilities; leaked code from the data-mines reveals that there are probably no 25% or 400% effective type advantages from double-types. There is, of course, also the possibility that there is no damage at all, such as if you attempt to attack a Haunter with a Tackle move.
  • In combat, you will see a screen where the camera is looking down on your Pokémon from behind. Above the Pokémon, there is an HP bar, and a stamina bar. The arena has yellow arrows on each side, indicating slots for additional defending Pokémon. There is a timer that counts down from 120 seconds. There is a button that you can toggle to switch between real-life camera augmented reality and in-game animation. If AR is not enabled, you see yourself battle on top of the elevated virtual platform, and you can see the in-game map based on the real world expanding off into the distance.
A Pokémon Trainer next to an unclaimed Gym. If she places a Pokémon there, she will be the Leader of a Level 1 Gym.

ITEMS

  • Like I mentioned above, if your Pokémon gets injured or knocked out in battle, you must use items to heal them. There are no Pokémon Centers in this game! In this game, we are not some ten year old who is destined to become the Champion. We are the Bug Catchers, the Hikers. We are the gritty adventurers, out on the fringes of the wilderness, with only the items in our backpacks to keep us going. We will usually have the types of Pokémon that are found in the areas around where we live. But we will have a lot of them. This game has shown us that we will be catching a LOT of Pokémon. So to prevent us from being able to attack and defend all of the gyms with hordes of faceless Pidgey, rather than choosing which Pokémon are important to us to train, they force us to be very careful in deciding which Pokémon to heal and continue to build up.
  • Items are found at PokéStops, as we explore the real world around us. PokéStops have a little minigame that involves spinning an image of the real-world location that we are at, and popping the bubbles that come out. Successfully doing so rewards us with the items that we will need to continue our adventure. The in-game descriptions for some items that pertain to combat are listed below:
    • Max Revive - A medicine that can revive fainted Pokémon. It also fully restores a fainted Pokémon's maximum HP.
    • Potion - A spray-type medicine for treating wounds. It can be used to restore 25% of the HP of an injured Pokémon.
    • Super Potion - A spray-type medicine for treating wounds. It can be used to restore 50% of the HP of an injured Pokémon.
    • Hyper Potion - A spray-type medicine for treating wounds. It can be used to restore 75% of the HP of an injured Pokémon.
In-game model for a Level 6 Pokémon Gym

OPINION

  • Early reports describe this combat system as fast paced and exciting, while the animation is apparently well done, and the overall visual appearance is very colorful and attractive.
  • I personally feel that this style of combat is much more realistic and intense than tapping some text and standing back as your little monsters take turns attacking each other. This feels so much more real to me, being immersed in this experience of actually trying to launch a fire blast at another Pokémon in real time, and dodging to get out of the way of their slash.
  • There is now an enormous skill aspect, rather than only strategy. (However, the usage of strategy is still maintained through type effectiveness, the order of Pokémon, and a user's personal aggressive/defensive fighting styles.)
  • My favorite part is how you can become an expert with the usage of specific Pokémon, where your Geodude is actually more skillfully used in your hands through practice than the same Geodude would be if traded to someone else. But a new owner of a Geodude could still, through time, learn to understand Geodude's attacking style, and grow to use him just as skillfully.

Overall, I feel more excited about this game than ever. When it comes out, the real world around us will literally be transformed in our minds. When we are driving around town, we won't just have a humdrum commute from work. That museum that you just drove past is an infamous Gym that you have challenged in the past, but were unable to defeat. You will reflect on your experiences there, and as you drive by the duck pond, you will remember the first Magikarp that you caught there, and how you later worked so hard to evolve it into a Gyarados, and you returned to that same pond where you first met, to do so. This is one of those games that will actually change the way that we perceive the world around us, and fill us with a sense of enchantment. Pokémon will finally exist in the real world.

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1 comment:

  1. DerrikApril 14, 2016 at 10:39 PM

    Dude... This sounds amazing. I can't wait to get started.

    ReplyDelete

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