I think the plan is to eventually add trading and battles between individuals.
I’m getting frustrated with it too–I think I’m level 14, and most of the Pokemon I find are either Pidgey, Rattata, Ekans, or other super-common ones. There’s a little rush when I find one I don’t have or a rare one, but it’s demoralizing to just keep seeing the same ones over and over.
I did pick a buddy, though, and I’m hoping to be able to evolve my Meowth into a Persian one of these days.
I think it is heavily influenced by where you live. The level of gyms is very different in cities vs rural. I didn’t start fighting in gyms until I hit level 18 or so, but I’m more of a min/max player.
You can somewhat determine what will spawn by which biome (spawn family) you are in. Population density and primarily cell phone data usage from a 2012 sweep is what mostly determines spawn frequency. If you aren’t getting a lot, check out a verizon or ATT store that was there for a few years. Last time I was in one there were 8 spawns in less than 10 minutes.
I think PvP is a long way off, but legendary or gen 2 could come out. I believe the next thing they are working on is balancing gym fights to reduce how lopsided attacking is vs. defending.
So after posting that I was plateauing a bit with it, I caught an 1100 vaporeon on the ride home, and found one of the local gyms under-manned (it’s usually wall to wall with snorlax, don’t really understand the mechanics of these fluctuations yet). Turned it over to claim my first gym, so hopefully on the road to gym bossmanship.
Dont forget to claim your gym defender bonus (10 coins / gym occupied).
[shop -> click button upper right corner]
Yeah. I don’t have the time or too much inclination to grind out levels. I tend to be a bit more casual. So I keep falling further and further behind the top Pokemon. I’m finally reached the point where I can get 1000+ CP pokemon, but now all the gyms are held by 2000+ CP pokemon. When I hit 2000, I expect the gyms will be stacked by 4000+ CP 'mons.
The game is a grind, but I think that’s intentional. By the time you hit lvl 25 you will be able to have a few 2k mons. But after that, the increases are much slower so you’d likely be able to catch up. Consider to get to level 25 requires 710K XP. To get to level 28, it is 1.35M XP, almost double that. And since the amount you are able to power up is controlled by your level, most people will have slowed down their progression.
Plus, there are few mons that will get higher than 3k CP. Dragonite the strongest in the game has a max CP of 3500 at lvl 40. Of course it takes 5M XP to get from 39 to 40. Here is a chart that shows the power/stardust/level curves.
TLDR : people will start to flatten out around level 30.
Don’t forget that the game is absurdly tilted in favor of gym attackers. It will take a long time and a lot of revives and potions to take down a level 10 gym full of Pokemon twice as powerful as what you have, but it is absolutely doable, and you’ll get a ton of XP for it. And the best strategy for training at a friendly gym in order to open up a spot for your Pokemon is to use s somewhat weaker Pokemon to fight the weakest Pokemon in the gym then run away. You get way note prestige for the gym doing that than trying to fight the whole gym.