TLDR: A LOT of new players download the game out of boredom at home and solely play from their couch. It takes them several weeks to months to engage enough with the game to actually go out and hunt. The greatest part of them only stays active long enough if the game is playable from their homes. The coming reduction of the interaction range will actively kill the game for most of the new players.

A short bit of background on why I am so sure in what I am saying: Last summer, I moved to a new village which only had two gyms. Those were right next to each other and in the absolute center of town. The gyms did not change colors more often than once a week, despite the warm weather we had. There were less than 5 players that sometimes engaged with them. Since then, I created about 25 new gyms and a bit less than 100 Pokestops around. A lot of people picked up the game by now, and today we are at 30-40 active players who play in those gyms. The original two gyms change colors every few hours now.

This development let me observe a few fundamental things about this game: Every single new^* player who now actively plays in our village was stationary at first. Every single new^* player who now actively plays in our village started with a Pokestop or a gym at home. Stationary means that they only were active on one single gym or on one single Pokestop (throwing the lures you get when you level up). None of them put defenders in free slots of other gyms at first. None of them threw lures elsewhere at first and none of them was seen playing by others. It took them at least three weeks to go out and actively take part in the game. For most of them, over a month. Once they started placing defenders in gyms, most of them kept playing until today. For instance, I watch a relatively new gym at the moment (3 months old, at the tallest residental building of town), with 5 new low-level players who are fighting over it all day long. The first two of them started to take over gyms other than their couch gym just last week. At levels 25 and 29. It took them one and a half months of nearly daily playing to engage enough with this game that they actually went out and started playing Pokemon GO as it was intended.

Out of the 11 local players we now have contact to, 8 started within the last year. All 8 of them on a Pokestop or a gym. The remeining three of them already had accounts that they picked up again.

With the planned reduction of the interaction area to 1/4 of its current size, even more new trainers than currently will download the game and just start on nothing. They will catch their hourly spawnpoint if they're lucky and delete the game one or two weeks later. Most of them will not go out of their way to get somewhere playable. With the current interaction radius, 4 times as many new players find a game to relieve their boredom which they can hook onto. I strongly believe that, after more than five years, the main source of new players are just bored people who download this app because their app store suggested it. Niantic's intended reduction of the interaction radius effectively stops new trainers from becoming attached to their game.

*^{This holds for completely new players, not for old players who pick up the game again.}

I'd like to hear other opinions on this. Are there trainers with similar experiences? Are there differences to cities or suburbs? Also please tell me if there are better ways to format posts on reddit lol