Niantic adds medal bonuses to motivate you to catch more Pokemon (Update: easier Gym training too)

Update, October 7: Niantic revealed another significant change coming to Pokemon Go in a future update. Training with Pokemon at Gyms will be easier, as trainers will be able to bring up to six Pokemon to train against the defending Gym Pokemon, instead of just one. More than that, players will be able to temporary reduce the levels of the defending Pokemon, so their Pokemon stand a better fighting chance. This change only affects friendly Gyms, so it won’t change Gym capturing.

Original post, October 6: Those who wish to become Pokemon Masters might find it a little easier to do so, thanks to an upcoming update from Niantic Labs.

The new Pokemon Go update will reward players with a bonus for repeatedly capturing Pokemon of the same type. Currently, players get medals for catching multiple similar Pokemon, but those medals don’t bring much benefits other than points.

The medal bonus will help players capture rare Pokemon of that medal type. So if you catch a lot of Fire-type Pokemon, your chances of catching a Charmander, Vulpix or Ponyta will grow.

So what happens if a Pokemon belongs to multiple types? Niantic said the bonus would be the average of the bonuses for each type:

So, if a Pokemon is both Normal and Flying, the bonus would be the average of the player’s Normal-type and Flying-type bonuses.

The new feature could be Niantic’s way of regaining some of the momentum it enjoyed during the height of Pokemon Go’s crazy debut. In late August, player engagement for the game began to dwindle.

Niantic didn’t specify when players can expect to get their hands on the new feature, but  said the update is “coming soon.” We’ll let you know once the feature goes live.

What do you think of the upcoming update? Share your thoughts in the comments!