Pokémon Go | The SECRET to Unlocking Local Community!

These are all great ideas, I just don’t have the time, energy, motivation, or a properly extroverted personality to do this stuff. Takes a special person to really dedicate to a community and get this going.

I made my community by scouting the the area as soon as I got knocked out of a gym. I would go there immediately and watch out for people on their phone and ask them “are you #####???” 😂 Now I have a small but solid community, where we rotate gyms and raid together

Super solid advice and it’s pretty much how my local community group was built. We got a small group but very solid members and its been fun these past few months playing with people in my local players.

Also, if your local area doesn’t have a group or it’s not active, try nearby areas. When searching, I could not find any groups with my town name. I tried using the name of a nearby town, and I found a very active group which I joined, and I love. 😀

Another thing I didn’t know about until recently, if you keep seeing someone taking over gyms or using lure modules, if you type their name in the friends section of campfire, it will let you add them if they have a campfire.

Thanks for the good and helpful tips. Something that I miss is the mention that communities need something to interact with (especially in rural areas very important!): Enough Wayspots or PokéStops and of course enough arenas. 😉

For years, there was onlu one pokestop in my community. Until i said its time for a change, now there is 30+ stops and 7 gyms. Not only that, while out and about i ran into the local community and joined all the groups. Now we raid together, trade together and play together. Its alot of fun

Also make Pokéstops and gyms, more people who drive past will see that and then maybe return some day to play. That’s how I do it.

I made a group me for my local community. It stays closed because I don’t want randos joining it because our community mostly youth and I want to keep them safe, but people in the group can add players in our area, so it stays personal, connected, and informational and we love it

I just joined my local community here in the city! And it is a blast!!! They do help me to find hundos and help me with raids especially last Go Fest

I have multiple friends that I didn’t know until recently played. Unfortunately my local area is not populated with pokestops and gyms but there thankfully is a great downtown area nearby. I recently made it to lvl 37 and made a nice little cluster of pokestops and a gym. I plan on expanding this cluster into a good spot to play but I need to find more nominations for stops which is hard.

Where I live, there is a community. I have the trainer id of every trainer. But we’ve never all met at the same time. I think this is due to varying age groups and the sheer size of the area. It would be a dream if somehow we all met and did a few raids.

Thankfully, my community is pretty good. We’re all respectful enough to make sure every Pokémon was in the gym for at least 8hrs 10mins for 50 coins

Thank you for promoting this. I started playing just over 8 months ago and I just hit level 43 thanks to youtubers like yourself and already doing what you suggested. I live in a pretty rural area. 10 miles of corn fields before you come across one town with 500 residents, 1 gym and 1 stop if they are lucky. I had looked for online communities. The local pages had been long abandoned with only scam bots still posting. Membership numbers representing people no longer active. BUT, being that I’m not shy, Larvitar day happened, so I played at a park in one of the larger towns in the area and I took every opportunity I could to approach players with my pick up line “How’s your shiny luck today?” I don’t care to much about shiny but I knew from youtubers that it’s a huge deal to most. I happened across a great community. Some of the players that are newer (like myself) or rejoining the game have started a discord to support one another, we started “Mega Raid Mondays” so we can get mega energy, we plan out community days together and more. I still approach anyone playing the game so I can tell them about the community too. Recently while waiting for a table at a restaurant, I noticed someone walk in with the game open. Since my game was already opened, I walked up with my phone so they could see and started a conversation. Spreading the word to them about where we meet for raid hours and more. This last community day, I saw them at the park we gather at. I know first hand how bad it is to live in areas where the game is almost none existent. I have pokemon in gyms for weeks/months instead of hours because of no players. I call the gyms around here retirement homes. Lol So rural trainer complaints are valid but it’s not hopeless. We just have to work harder.

Toxic people is something that should be discussed more openly. I travelled about 5 kilomters to the nearest hub in my city, (Newport News VA) and this was on go fest global (aug 26, 27th) but the first group of people i met didnt wanna talk didnt wanna look at me. I asked them if they wanted to take pictures and they said yeah but it never happened so i think its interesting to see other people dealing with cringe customers

Ah yes. A video much needed for me. I came back to the game three weeks ago and have set myself the goal I want to participate in a legendary raid. But my social anxiety hates that idea quite a lot.^^
I think I maybe possibly crossed paths with a player or two already. There was a woman with a baby stroller walking the same three Pokéstop circle that I did one Saturday morning, glued to her phone. And today there was a guy with his phone walking to a train station with a gym where no trains arrive on Sundays. However both times I preferred to change the side of the road and get out of their way as to not be a creep.

Oh, and then there was yesterday. I stood on the sidewalk, battling a nearby gym at an electric power station. Just as I finished I turned around and saw that there was an older man leaning over his garden fence behind me, having stared directly at my screen the entire time with wide open eyes and an expression of pure anger. I… didn’t know what to say and just stood there like a deer in the headlights, as he just turned and huffed off inside his house. I… walked away quite startled and literally 30 seconds later the notification popped up that my Pokémon was already out of the gym. I turned around and the street was completely empty. I… quite possibly made an enemy there…

100% agree PoGo is better with real friends rather than just online. Outside of CD’s, the best way to find local players right now is golden lures (they don’t just work for Gimmighouls, they also lure our players hahaha). I have a few people that I have exchanged numbers with, we organize an evening and drop golden lures at the park. By the end we usually get a few new faces who we then try to get to join the local campfire group or exchange numbers with.

I never had to download campfire. It came in an update with PoGo and i can access it within the game. Very easy to use to find or make raidgroups, even if you sometimes gotta be wary of people who leave raid in last 10 seconds during timer which could ruin a group and waste your pass. Sidenote, when trying to find a group, ive noticed that sometimes it wont show what raidboss you find a group for.

For me, I have people here in my county that play PoGo, but barely see anyone while roaming my city. The only interactions with people who also play PoGo we’re once in 2019 I think, and earliest being during Go Fest of this year. Other than that, not much, though I made a group on Campfire for my region here in Romania, aka Dobrogea, where at the moment nobody joined, but I hope I can get people to join in so we can plan stuff like shadow raids or when we want to trade and such.