Likewise, apologies if the post came off as snarky and elitist. It's just frustrating to watch people not only come to defend these changes but seemingly imply people aren't experiencing issues just because they haven't. These issues are real and frustrating, and the last thing anyone should be doing is downplaying them. There needs to be noise made so Niantic actually balances things out for those of us in the 20's (and everyone will be in their 20's sooner rather than later, it's not exactly hard). Otherwise, I might as well drop this game now if stops are dropping less items of use, it takes more items in general to simply catch Pokemon, as a result making it far, far harder to hit the 150,000+ points per level to continue leveling. This isn't balanced and Niantic needs to really know this.
They were profitable before these artificial difficulty spikes (hell, I've dropped $40 bucks alone on a damn mobile game, something I *never* thought I'd do.) so I don't see why they've made it harder for committed players to make basic progress.
Hell, they've even taken away the extra exp for throwing good Pokeballs. A lucky egg with this extra exp in a good lure spot could very much double the amount gained with enough nice/great/excellent throws, and they even took away the only semblance of reward based on skill.
They need to know they've made the experience for a lot of us worse, not better. To downplay it helps no one.
