After not playing the game since December, I decided to try Go out again since the Gen 3 ghosts arrived(And since I went from a 64gb phone to a 128, meaning Go wasn't bumped anymore for storage priority).
So this was my first experience with gyms since the update which I believe happened in the summer. Man was this a much needed redo of the system. I mean I'm still not a huge fan over the battle mechanics(and a dozen other things in this game), but they at least were able to say "yeah, the old system really didn't work".
I'm a delivery driver, and while my town has plenty of stops and gyms, the real gold mine is the local College near me that I deliver pizza to. Having to drive super slow(due to NY state police being all around campus) let me rack up a ton of candies on the Gravler I've had as my buddy, which should be able to evolve to Golem in a day or two. But the campus has over a dozen gyms, and two dozen pokestops all within about a mile radius. So after dropping off a delivery, I'll pull over at one of the gyms taken that have a spot open, pop in a Pokemon, and go on with my work.
I worked from Sunday until 1 am monday and was able to collect coins from 5 Pokemon I had in gyms there. Pretty much it works out fantastic because while I'm popping in a Pokemon at a gym and leaving to go home(about 3 miles away from the school), there are plenty of people playing there until 5 am. So far in the 4 days I've been playing, I've been able to hit the 50 coin a day max. It's a vast improvement over the old system of needing to spent dozens of items just to beat one gym, get in it, and likely lose my place in it by the time I get Pokemon in other gyms. With the old method, it usually wasn't beneficial in the long run since the amount of items it would take to POSSIBLY get into enough gyms to collect, would be offset by the costs of potions and revives I would need to buy.
I do wish they'd add more content in the game aside from gyms and catching. If they could do like a "Pokemon Amie" in Go, that would be great. If you could use the AR feature to take your existing Pokemon and "let them out" of their Pokeball and interact with them. Would make it actually feel like "Pokemon in real life" instead of the digital equivalent to a book full of dead butterflies.
I'd advise saving up as many coins as possible for the full Hoenn launch (which will probably be in January). They gave a 50% discount on Pokemon storage increases when Johto launched but the sale only lasted a week.
