Over the past few months, we have been collecting mostly 100 Pokécoins per day. We have been doing this by going hiking up into the Cougar mountain. Most of the gyms we have taken over have lasted at least a week, some even two months… until recently…
We leave the house at 10:00 am on Thanksgiving morning. We drive to the mountain to get ready to hike. “I’d like to get 10 gyms today,” I say. It is a cold, rainy day. We arrive at the base of the mountain. We bring umbrellas and hiking boots and start walking. We’ve been visiting the mountain quite frequently, so we basically know the entire area. After trudging through the wet, muddy dirt, we arrive at our first gym at around 11:00 am. It is apparently a level 5 blue gym. We quickly take it out (since we’re three people) and then assign our Pokémon to the gym. All of us are above level 25 and we all place relatively high CP Pokémon above 2,000. It is around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so I place my phone in my pocket and walk to the next gym. The rain starts pouring harder as I open my umbrella. After 10 minutes, we arrive at the next gym. We repeated the same process, defeating the level three blue gym and replacing it with the three of us. It rained really hard and my shoes became very muddy. After taking all 6 gyms on this side of the mountain, we head back to the car. The entire process of taking over these six gyms takes us around one and a half hours. Each gym is roughly 10-15 minutes walking distance apart. After returning to the car, we head back home. On the way home, I notice four really easy-to-take-down blue gyms. We take all of them over before arriving home at around 2:20 pm. Since it’s getting close to winter solstice, it gets pitch black around 5:00 pm.
I couldn’t collect my Pokécoins until 7:30 pm that night. As we were about to eat our Thanksgiving dinner, I collect my coins. My dad couldn’t collect his until 8:00. After dinner, at 8, he collects his 100 Pokécoins and catches a ditto outside our house. I wanted a ditto, too, so I open up my game and catch the ditto. At 8:05, my dad notices that we have lost all 6 mountain gyms. “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???????????????” I exclaim. I check out my gyms. I have only four, which were the ones nearby our house. Parks close at dusk, which means whoever took our gyms out has GPS spoofed. Also, we lost all six of our gyms within a five minute period. Might I remind you that all six of the gyms there are at least five minutes walking distance apart from each other. I’m sad.
On Black Friday afternoon, we meet up with some friends. We ask them to come along, and they agree. “Yay!” I yell. At 4:30, this time, we arrive at the base of the mountain. There are five of us, now, so we take all the blue gyms there over easily very easily. Surprisingly, most of them were level three, one of them was level five, and another was level four. It wasn’t raining hard today, only a light sprinkle. We took over two of the gyms there and we noticed at around 5:00 it was really dark. At about 5:10, it was just about pitch black. Our friends brought flashlights, though, so we were OK. All the trails were super muddy, still, as we wandered around in the dark. We finally took over all the gyms at around 6:00 pm. We were all exhausted, cold, and thirsty. It was worth it though, since we got 60 Pokécoins each. When we arrived back at the parking lot, we were the last ones out. Later that night, at home, we collect 100 Pokécoins since we took over some gyms on the way home. At around 8:00 pm, this time, I monitor my guys carefully. I lost my first gym at 8:02, then another at 8:03, then another at 8:04, then another at 8:06, and so forth. We lost all of them by 8:10. I become really disappointed, since we basically wasted 1.5 hours just to have a cheater take them over without even putting in the energy to walk there. All of the gyms we claimed were level 5, and I even took the time to level one of them up one extra level to level 6. I sigh. We lost a lot of time and effort to someone probably sitting in their nice warm home, or a bot, since, I think it’s timed.
This has been happening ever since a week ago, at the exact same time every day, probably by the same person, too. It’s extremely likely that it is a cheater because each gym is 10-15 minutes walking distance away, each of our gyms were level 5, and we lose all the gyms within a 5-10 minute period. Ever since then, I’ve been unmotivated to go to the mountain anymore, since I know that we’re going to lose the gym at 8:00 pm that night, wasting 1.5 hours of effort.
Speaking of bots, I’ve seen a couple.
BotNumber6 is just one of the few bots that I’ve seen. When I came across this guy in the gym, his name changes to something else, which means he changed his name recently, and the game hasn’t realized it. I’ve also seen BotNumber3 in another gym going under a different name, but I can’t remember what it was.
I’ve reported BotNumber6, because really, who has a name BotNumber6 besides a bot, and guess what? He still appears in the gym. Either Niantic has ignored my request or BotNumber6 has found a way around the ban, since I still see BotNumber6 to this day.
Another example of one of the many cheaters I have faced is DanShady.
As we took over the level 4 blue gym, all three of us placed our guys in. We all started leveling up the gym because I suggested that a level 4 gym was harder to take down than a level three gym. I defeated the Vaporeon I put within 30 seconds, and guess what happened next when I was about to start fighting the next guy my dad put? I get “ERROR” and get kicked out. The gym magically turned blue and DanShady magically appears in the gym. “WHAT?” I ask. My dad and brother gets the same error message and see DanShady in the gym. “DanShady, if you’re here where are you?” I ask. There is no one here, since it was raining and all the trails were muddy. I get mad because I wasted two potions: a super and a normal potion. I also get mad because I knew this guy was cheating. He wasn’t here and took over ALL THREE OF US and PUT HIS GUY IN within 30 seconds. It’s sad to see something you put a lot of effort into just disappear to someone who didn’t even put in a lot of effort. I haven’t seen this guy anymore since the event, so he probably moved on to stealing gyms not in the mountain. We take over the gym from this one guy and put our three guys in again. He didn’t bother us again after that.
Today was the worst day ever. Today, we went to the other side of Cougar Mountain, since obviously, there are too many bots. These gyms are even farther away from each other: at least 20 minutes of walking between each gym. We took over four blue gyms, three of them level 5, and one level 10. It was also raining today. We arrived at 1:00 pm and left at 5:30 pm. As we arrived, I told my dad, “I hope these gyms last long.” I also say later, “Why couldn’t it be like before, when there weren’t any cheaters. Then our gyms would last at least a week…” We trudge through the mud and walk through a bunch of deep puddles. We walked a very long way to the first gym, which was 20 minutes away from the parking lot. It was a level 10 blue gym. It took us around 40 minutes to fully take it down. The three of us placed our guys in the gym. We walked another 15 minutes to the next gym, which was level 5. We took it down easily and placed our guys in. We kept walking on the muddy paths and the steep hills and finally arrived, 15 minutes later, to the next gym. We finished collecting four gyms, which took a long time, since they were high level. After placing our guys in the last gym, the rain got really heavy. During the whole trip, it was raining moderately, but now, it got really heavy. We were so exhausted walking up. I was so tired because we were walking upwards and it was freezing cold and it was raining and it was about a 50 minute walk back to the car. It started to get dark as we reached the car.
On the way back home, we notice some gyms by Costco that seem very easy to take. We take them both and as we took the second one, I notice that I need to revive four guys. “Oh no, dad! We lost the gyms again!” After the first gym, I didn’t see anyone in my revives list. After the second one, though, there were four Pokémon in my revives list. I become really sad. We wasted about 3.5 hours at the mountain walking. The two Costco gyms are about a 30 second walk from each other and they were pretty low blue gyms. We lost all the gyms on this side of the mountain at 6 within a 10 minute period. That’s another 3 hours of my life wasted.
The game’s cheaters have been really unmotivating me, since I don’t GPS spoof or use bots to take over the gyms. It’s really sad knowing that cheaters can easily take out a gym that I have spent a lot of time walking to and wasting a bunch of potions on. I wish Niantic would do something about this, like maybe banning people that take over 6 gyms that are 5-10 minutes walking distance from each other within 5-10 minutes.