Niantic again talks about wanting to improve gyms in Pokemon GO
A big priority Niantic has for Pokemon GO is to improve the gym system. Studio CEO John Hanke recently spoke about the need to improve the gameplay, and that’s something senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura discussed with Polygon as well.
Nomura told the site:
“The gym portion [of Pokémon Go] needs a lot more work, and we are trying to improve it and make a bigger change to how the system works. Overall, I think we need a little bit more time to think through how we do it.”
“We needed to define [gyms] in a way that works in a mobile game. For example, we didn’t have … there’s no non-playable characters. That’s not how the game works. We’re an MMO, and we expect people to play with other people.”
“We expected more people to play that portion, and a lot of that is game balancing and just mechanics-wise, there’s some part of that that needs refinement.”
Niantic hasn’t shared a timetable as to when we can expect a new approach to gyms in Pokemon GO. The company does have a few updates planned for 2017 though, so it’s possible that there could be something by the end of the year.
