Hello coaches! Sometime yesterday (October 29), a fairly massive Wayspot sync occurred, and PokéStops and Gyms started showing up in Pokémon GO.
The new timing is interesting because it seems ignore previously understood rules which defined whether a Wayspot would appear in the game or not.
Conversations about these new stops have emerged on Reddit, in the SilphRoad subreddit and the Walker Subreddit. You can read all about the intricacies of S2 cells and the rules about Pokéstops and gym creation in our article here. [1].
Cells S2 and Pokémon GO
Let’s do a quick reminder about the rules of the system:
- Niantic uses S2 cells (a different kind of area-based geographic coordinate system) to decide whether a Waystop will turn into a PokéStop, Gym, or nothing. S2 cells come in different sizes, but for Pokémon GO, size 14 (S14) and size 17 (S17) are the ones that matter.
- Only 1 Wayspot in an S17 cell will become a PokéStop, usually the first one that was sent.
- If there are more than 1 PokéStop in a S14 cell, one of them will become a Gym. 2 PokéStops lead to 1 gym, 6 lead to the second gym, and so on …
As you can see from the table below, there are specific rules that determine how many Wayspots in the game lead to the creation of gyms.
| PokeStops (PoI) | Gyms |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0 |
| 2-5 | 1 |
| 6-19 | 2 |
| 20-34 | 3 |
This new timing seems to ignore the rules around the PokéStop generation, and several new PokéStops have mysteriously appeared in the game.
This has led to the emergence of new gyms, as the new stops have pushed PokéStops in cells S14 past the thresholds.
Not only that, but there are gyms that appear seemingly randomly. They are popping up not just because of the number of stops in a cell S14 hitting the required thresholds, but for reasons we don’t know about.
One report indicated that a gym appeared in cell S14 with only 10 Wayspots, which was previously thought to be impossible.
Niantic is silent and speculation is the name of the game.
Reddit User Sea_Possibility2310 approached Niantic And it appears that whoever they spoke to was unable to comment on the new stops and gyms, indicating that the homologation system is automated with no manual intervention.
It’s unclear if this change is intentional on Niantic’s part or if something went wrong on their part.
It is speculated that this has something to do with the US release of Niantic’s new game Pikmin Bloom could have something to do with it, however there is no concrete evidence other than timing.
It could also have something to do with Niantic investigating the desynchronization between their games and the Wayspot editions.
These are just speculation at this point, and until Niantic makes an announcement or the newly created Pokéstops and Gyms are gone, we won’t know for sure.
Have you seen new stalls or gyms appear around you? Do you think this is intentional or an accident? Let us know in the comments below.
[1] One difference from that article is that Niantic has moved their Wayspot database to a system they call Lightship.
The Huge Wayspot Synchronization post in Pokémon GO, accidental or intentional? appeared first on the Pokémon GO Hub.