Gyms, Trials, or Something Else

[Bus]

I'm hoping for a return of Gyms as well. Having one type, though, tends to hurt the gym as its easier to take down; plus there's always a pokemon near the town that's super effective against the coming gym. In Kanto, you had a Forest before a Rock Gym; Oddish & Bellsprout before Misty, Growlithe or Vulpix before the Grass gym and etc. There's always something to help people out.

Like was mentioned here already, if we're going to have a themed Gym, I'd prefer a change up to the theme to make things more interesting. I know someone above mentioned having themes around different animals or locations, but they could take a page from Norman's gym in Gen 3 and have gyms based on high Attackers, Lagre HP pools, or just pokemon that have high chances of inducing status effects. There's honestly a ton of different ways to do this.
Gym 1- City Rodents: Pachirisu, New regional Rodent
Gym 2- Cave Dwellers: Drilbur, New Pokemon, Golbat
Gym 3- Forest Predators: Ursaring, New Wolf Pokemon, Beartic
Gym 4- Ancient Pokemon- Meganium, Bastiodon, New Fossil
Gym 5- Status Effects- Amoongus (Effect Spore), Magcargo (Flame Body), Togekiss (Serene Grace)
Gym 6- Walls- Blissey, Wobbuffet, Cofagrigus, Toxapex
Gym 7- Speed Demons- Jolteon, Ninjask, New Pokemon, New Pokemon
Gym 8- Starters- Blastoise, Typhlosion, Sceptile, Infernape, Serperior, Primarina

I know 6 is a lot for a gym; usually its just the Champion alone who has that many, but I thought it'd be kind of cool for a trainer to have a bunch of of the starters fully evolved forms. The rest of the gym I'd imagine would just be 'rare' pokemon; ones that are really hard to find. Nothing really encapsulates the rarity of pokemon better than the starters since they can never be found in the wild.

 

[Xuxuba]

Gyms are overdone and trials are boring. I would like them to come up with something else.

Personally i would like them to have fun puzzles, non monotype opponents that don't always use only 3 pokemon and buildings as pretty as the ones from kalos.

Also, i would like them to come up with an alternative for the totem pokemon, but not for the gym substitute, but rather for the story. Maybe have the evil team controlling pokemon as powerful as the totems.
IMO totem pokemon were the one good thing that came out of the trials.

 

[landipan]

I'd like gyms to come back, but if they come up with a way to make them more fun and challenging, that'd be great! I agree that we need to see an end to the mono-type gyms, sure they're classic but themed gyms would be far more interesting. I think a Dark and Fairy type gym would be fun and would look cool.

 

[Mega Altaria]

I'd like gyms to come back, but if they come up with a way to make them more fun and challenging, that'd be great! I agree that we need to see an end to the mono-type gyms, sure they're classic but themed gyms would be far more interesting. I think a Dark and Fairy type gym would be fun and would look cool.

Perhaps these Gyms can be introduced in around the second half of the game to increase difficulty. I personally want to see a Dragon-Fairy Gym because I like how those two types are meant to contrast each other.

 

[JW1004]

Beside possible dual type gyms, I also would like if they would mix it up and add different strategies like double, triple and rotation battles to one.It would be cool if they have like a fighting-dark-psychic gym with a triple battle. Maybe also have one of the later gyms have Mega evolution and have one with a Z-move etc. to increase difficulty

 

[cmarston1]

I'd be down for it to be a full game based on Pokemon Contests functioning similarly to how they are portrayed in the Anime tbh.

 

[Weavy]

Something else. Bonus points if it's interesting and more engaging.

Gyms are overdone and boring at this point. It's basically do a puzzle, beat trainers along the way, beat the boss, done. I don't see what's so interesting about doing these over and over. I don't understand why so many want Gyms back; I feel like anytime they try something new, someone is going to complain (read: most people).

Trails were refreshing to see, but the task was so short. I will give them credit, I like the idea of Totem Pokémon and would like to see it done better in the future. But I doubt these are coming back; I agree they feel like they belong in Alola.

Maybe it could be like a Battle Frontier, not Battle Frontier type of thing. What I mean by this is that each city has its own set of rules and you beat the challenge to earn whatever the reward is, so for example city A has a mini tournament and city B has Battle Arena style rules. I seriously doubt something like this would happen as it may be a bit complicated, but I just wanted to give an example of something that isn't Gyms or Trails.