Pokemon Go players divided on best time to battle Gyms

One player’s frustrating gym experience has the Pokemon Go community divided on whether there are unspoken rules of etiquette surrounding the game mechanic.

Pokemon Go‘s Gyms are again dividing the community, with players split on when it’s okay to knock other trainers’ Pokemon out and when doing so would be considered rude.

The renewed debate started with a post on the PokemonGo subreddit titled “people like this suck, dead honest” along with a screenshot of the poster’s Rhydon having been knocked out after gaining just one coin.

Gyms have long been a source of frustration among Pokemon Go players, as they are the only way to get PokeCoins without spending real money. You can get up to 50 Coins each day by having Pokemon in Gyms, and because of that, the community has developed some unofficial etiquette rules on when it’s okay to knock another Pokemon out.

The poster’s situation has plenty of other players commiserating, with many sharing stories of their Pokemon being kicked out of particularly popular Gyms by “Selfish and shortsighted” players.

Of course, since these are unofficial fan-made “rules,” not all Pokemon Go players adhere to (or are even aware of) them. Some questioned the purpose of such an approach, with one commenter saying “remember when people used to fight for gyms for fun rather than min-maxing rewards?”

Another had harsher words for those like the poster, saying “somehow folks in this game feel there is some code of conduct that results in them deserving 50 coins for putting a Pokemon in a gym.”

While there’s clearly no consensus on proper Pokemon Go gym conduct (or if such a thing actually does or should exist), players seem to agree on one thing: having gyms as the sole method for obtaining free PokeCoins is the root of the problem.

As one player defending gym etiquette explained, “keeping gyms being the only way to get coins in game isn’t my ideal. If we’re gonna play that ‘game’, we may as well be efficient about it.”