Well written piece ! I agree . I am mostly a casual player in terms of resources I am able and willing to put into the game . And I feel that PoGo is trying to accommodate casual players . And also NEW players . And I understand it from the business point of view , they have to attract new clients and have to lower the barrier for entrance . And a new player joining the game for example month ago would be intimidated by lvl 10 towers with 2500 CP pokemon . As a casual player though I feel they sort of did too much in terms of gyms . I mean beyond necessary . Some casuals are in dominant teams and would like to prestige a bit . I would like to put a couple of pokemon in gyms , I have some nice Snorlax and Lapras for that , but for the life of me I can not prestige a gym even one level up just by sheer amount of time it requires . Well it is also a serious issue of freezing hands in 7 C , but that ' s regional . So now I almost never put pokemon in gyms and as I almost completed my dex I don ' t buy incubators . No income from me . I do not really understand why would not they make prestiging and attacking gyms equal . Identical experience . May be there are some implications , underlaying causes for that , I do not get it I never played original pokemon games , just watched anime , so some details I might not aware of .