Pokemon Go Update – Trades, Competitive Play, Gym Enhancements

Pokemone Go released as a fairly barebones mobile app, but in future updates players can expect the ability to trade Pokemon, competitive play and more ways to interact with PokeStops and gyms. Niantic Labs, the developer behind Pokemon Go has provided a fairly in-depth update on what additions will be coming to the game over the next few months. Some of these additions will come very soon, while others may not come until later this year, but rest assured, the game is constantly evolving.

There’s already been one update to Pokemon Go that addressed some of the server issues and crashing players were experiencing. The general schedule for Niantic is to provide an update for the game every couple of weeks. While that’s not a hard schedule, and some updates will be larger than others, at the very least you can expect the game to be updated one or two times every month.

Trades

The biggest addition coming to Pokemon Go in the near future is the addition of trades. Players have been clamoring for the ability to trade their Pokemon since the game launched, and that request will be fulfilled in the coming weeks. We already know that you need to travel outside of your immediate area to find all of the Pokemon in the game. However, with the ability to trade you can find someone who went out of town and trade with them for some elusive Pokemon that are hard to find in your area.

In addition to trades, Niantic is looking to evolve the competitive side of Pokemon Go. The company wasn’t specific on exactly what we’ll see, but player vs. player battles have been highly requested by the community. We don’t yet know if players will be able to battle head-to-head anywhere at any time, but the developer did mention competition in regard to gyms.

PokeStop and Gym Improvements

Niantic also stated that improvements are coming to gyms and PokeStops, allowing players to interact more as a group. At present you can use a lure at a PokeStop to attract more Pokemon. More abilities of this nature will be coming to gyms and PokeStops in future updates. These abilities will require group efforts, meaning multiple Pokemon Trainers will need to interact with the PokeStops and gyms to activate the new features.

Leaderboards

Global leaderboards are also coming in a future update. This will allow Pokemon Go players to determine who is the better trainer. It’s unclear what stats the leaderboards will track, but given how competitive the three teams are, there’s likely to be some sort of stat tracking for both teams and individual players.

While we wait for more Pokemon Go updates, be sure to check out how to evolve your Eevee and more in our guide hub!