That was the general premise, but they definitely could have gone about it a different way. They cut everyone off, raised the price of passes, and keep adding more pay to play quests.

In my larger small town, even after this renewed push and the addition of campfire, there are still not enough people to successfully capture multiples of the most valuable pokemon.

Capturing the best pokemone requires at least 5 medium to high level players. Anytime we go into "town" to play, we just sit there staring at the screen waiting for even one more player to join in at any of handful of surrounding gyms. Very rarely (we could count on 1 hand) we happen across a group of people playing. By the time we get to the location they are supposed to be at, the group is long gone. I cant even imagine what disabled would have to go through to find other people. On top of this, it's regularly over 100 degrees outside.

After the change, a whole bunch of new features that reward playing in person were added. They should have led with these features, gauged community engagement, and then consider moving away from remote participation. Instead, they went straight for all the ways they could alienate a large portion of their player base, while digging deep into the wallets of the ones who stayed.