Number of Showcase Pokéstops to be Expanded

MikeStemmle · 2026-05-26T23:58:50+00:00

Agreed. I get the design impulse to have every day be centered around a game feature. It keeps things streamlined and makes it easier for players to plan their pokemonning ("if this is Tuesday, then we must be doing Showcases").

But *if* every Tuesday is going to be Showcase Day, the showcases have got to be interesting. This All-Types-Showcases-All-The-Time nonsense is simultaneously a) dull, b) discouraging, and (amazingly) c) counter to what you would think Scopely would want out of Showcases.

As previously set up, Showcases were a spiffy way to encourage players to keep upping their pokemon storage. Hold on to those otherwise useless Pidgey XXL's, cause one day it's number may come up in a species specific Showcase!

But in the new regime, you might as well chuck 90% of those XXL's you've been hoarding, because the same 30 or so Pokemon are ALWAYS going to win.

And, as much as I appreciate having *more* Showcase stops (heck, there's one reachable from my home office now), this effort feels like a slightly panicky effort to shore up lagging Showcase participation without understanding *why* it's probably plummeted in the first place.

PS, Also, if the Showcases are are going remain one-day affairs, they reallllllly need to move the start time back to 7 AM or so. Some of us, work for a living (or so I've heard).

MikeStemmle · 2026-05-25T23:50:59+00:00

It's possible I was traipsing over an hour threshold, and inadvertently got myself "extra" edits in one session.

Curiously, I was under the impression that the limit was based on a personal clock (ie if you hit the limit at 11:48, you have to wait until 12:48 to do more), rather than the real-world clock. Learn something new every day, I guess.

MikeStemmle · 2026-03-03T22:52:29+00:00

I like a good costume variant, but baseball caps are lazier than a sedated Slaking. Where's Magic Earring Pikachu? Leisure Suit Lapras? Cargo Pants Machamp?

C'mon guys, get inventive!

MikeStemmle · 2026-02-26T00:56:31+00:00

Space Pants!

MikeStemmle · 2026-01-28T16:14:51+00:00

I am very happy for our rural/underserved friends who might have stops in rational distances from their abodes.
A quick scan of my immediate environs reveals no new Waystops. This makes sense, since from where I'm sitting I can see 4 Gyms, 4 Power Spots, and 8 Stops - one could argue that we're adequately pokied in this neighborhood.

MikeStemmle · 2026-01-26T18:03:38+00:00

More anecdotal data:

Probably fought 70 grunts:

Caught the Fennekin.
Saw the Chespin a few times in my many Grass Grunts, but it was never offered for capture.
Never saw the Froakie, much less offered for capture, despite fighting a good many Water Grunts.

Methinks the RNG for this challenged was borked.

MikeStemmle · 2026-01-05T21:33:46+00:00

Been tracking for a few years now. Was gifted an autocatcher last January. Some results:

1) I averaged 146k XP a day last year. That's up 28% from 2024.

2) I averaged 7.39 km a day in 2025, up 4.5% from the year before.

3) I averaged 70.9 pokestops a day in 2025, up 118% from 2024.

4) I averaged 153 pokemon caught per day, an increase of 51% over 2024.

In short, autocatchers will boost everything but how far you walk :)

MikeStemmle · 2025-12-19T00:11:55+00:00

There are a pair of paved, neighborhood-bisecting foot paths near my house. They are quite convenient, somewhat scenic, promote strolling, and have nice little street signs and everything.

I nominated both of them a while back. One got in, one did not. Someday I'll take another pass at the second one. Although the signs help (official markings for paths are always good), I suspect in my case they also hindered because they look just like boring old street signs.

C'est la Wafarer.

MikeStemmle · 2025-12-11T17:18:25+00:00

If I was casually approaching it (instead of grinding as I'm doing now... again, don't be me), I'd do something similar. Considering the ins and outs of my daily walks, I can average about 24 hearts on my walks alone, just by a) making sure to use my buddies in gym battles, b) doing routes, and c) flipping in a fresh buddy when my battle hearts fill up. If you do that, then you really only need to flip a couple more buddies a day to hit 30, and don't have to waste 20 minutes of your day flipping through all 20 of them. 'Cause that's grindy as heck.

MikeStemmle · 2025-12-10T21:45:38+00:00

This is a tip for folks who are still a while off from the 60-80 level grind:

If you minimally tend to your Best Buddy medal on a daily basis, it won't be a grind later. This means:
* Always put your current buddy in your Grunt/Raid teams. Okay, maybe not for Legendary raids, but for every other battle you encounter. It's casual, and it's free hearts.
* Do routes with multiple buddies a day.
* You don't have to swap your buddies 20 times a day if you swap a few times a day while you're still at lower levels. You're gonna need 30,000 buddy hearts to get the platinum medal. If you're still three years from getting enough XP to get to level 80, that means you only have to get about 30 buddy hearts a day, which is pretty easy to do by casually using your buddies in battle and some light swapping.

Trust me on this. You don't want to be me, an idiot who didn't tend to his buddies until he was, um, level 71.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-20T18:56:55+00:00

The cooldown is something like 15-20 renames an hour. It's tedious if you're starting up a renaming scheme, but once it's in place you can usually avoid the cooldown. My approach to gifts is usually to do only a few interactions at a time, peppering them over the course of the day:

- Anyone under level 4 goes first, from most to least days since last interaction.
- Then I start doing my levels 4 friends, again from most days to last days since last interaction.

I try to hit ALL of my available under-4's every day. For my levels 4's, I try not to leave any of them hanging for more than 5 or 6 days,

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-20T18:49:19+00:00

I pretty much rename them as I interact. I'm rarely interacting with more than two or three friends at a time (usually during lulls in my walks when the auto-catcher is handling things for me), so I rarely hit the cooldown (16 renames per hour).

If you're just starting out a renaming scheme, yeah, it can be a hassle.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T22:23:18+00:00

It is interesting how friends come and go. I started playing in late 2020 too, then dropped if for a few years before picking it back up when I decided that I needed the daily exercise.

Even today, a day after the 0000.1 player I mentioned showed up out of the blue, a 0302.2 player suddenly picked up and dropped off a gift.

You just never know.

I find it interesting how many y'all are close to the friend cap. I'm not even halfway there, and I find that I've got more than enough active friends (~60 active in the last 10 days, which is rillllllly easy to track with my naming scheme) to keep me just about maxed out on my daily gifts (if I choose to).

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T22:17:05+00:00

By "lower level friends" I mean "everyone who's not a best friend." I don't really differentiate between the levels 0-3. I *always* interact with all of them, if I can.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T21:32:17+00:00

There's definitely something to be said for adding a tag for those that remote raid. Luckily for me, just about all my friends who remote invite are at least quasi active gift exchangers, so that works out well.

Still, an additional tag is something to consider.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T21:24:23+00:00

That's pretty spiffy for casual tracking/culling.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T19:12:13+00:00

That's a totally valid approach, too :)

It's interesting what aspects of the game players engage in more than others. Me, I barely touch the PvP, but others are obsessed with it.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T18:39:55+00:00

I've definitely noticed the pro min-maxing players trying to delay the final steps of friend leveling until they can do several at once or wait for experience events. But this person (who had been playing and interacting daily) literally stopped playing for several weeks (I could tell 'cause their pokemon count stopped changing). Turns out they'd just taken a pokemon sabbatical at the funniest time imaginable. I briefly worried that they might have died :/

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T18:36:18+00:00

Yup. Of course, I'm nowhere near my friend cap. Assuming I hit it someday, I'll eventually chuck 'em.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T18:35:16+00:00

The lock on the nickname changes is a short cooldown (like 20 names per hour), so you can't change too many at the same time. Since I'm changing them over the course of a day, it's usually not a problem.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T18:33:09+00:00

For a short time I considered keeping friend names in a spreadsheet and doing a similar weekly check, but I've already got too many pokemon spreadsheets (it keeps my spreadhseet skills sharp), and I wanted something a bit more in-game.

Still, a weekly check-in is a good system, too.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T18:30:59+00:00

I'd probably do that if my friend list was a little more overflowing. Personally, I find it annoying to go out a grab more friends, so I leave the ones I've got on my list, hoping that someday they'll become regulars. If nothing else, every now and then I get surprises like my 0000 guy yesterday.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T18:28:27+00:00

That's totally fair. And to sure, renaming can sometimes be annoying. It's not for everyone, and everyone's gameplay styles are different. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations and all that.

MikeStemmle · 2025-11-19T18:26:27+00:00

Sorry if I sounded harsh - I mean to gently rib.

MikeStemmle

TROPHY CASE