Best Of

Rainbow xm is great. I support it.

New features are exciting but I feel that some attention should be given to existing features as well. Things like kinetic capsules, adventure summary and QOL improvement (lag fix/loading interface) can be improved upon for a better gaming experience.

It's not always the new stuff that keep agents playing. Having a better user experience helps for retention as well.

My personal concern is that it seems that niantic are always coming out with new features while their existing features improvements are just pushed into the backlog and only improved upon at a later date.

Take the current kinetic capsule interface for example: agents will want to choose what items they will want to use for crafting rather than keeping the items in the capsule so as the kinetic capsule will pick up the correct items to use for crafting. And kinetic capsules should not be using a certain level item just to craft items. (Eg. 40 R8 to craft 5 R8?)

It seems that Machina is here to stay. Now the only purpose of it is to appear at random hard-to-reach places, and block some bigger plans, only to drop some poor stuff when destroyed. There is no medal for destroying Machina resonators and portals, only the "Reclaimer Medal" for recapturing them.

Today instead of complaining I would like to suggest a feature to enhance gameplay connected with Machina. I propose "corrupted" or "dark XM" modules. Special variants of regular mods only to be obtainable from destroying the Machina portal.

These mods would work on the principle of something you gain something you lose, and deploy at your own risk. I will propose some ideas, mechanics, and lore.

1: Corrupted Link Amp

Lore:

A special variant of link amp corrupted by the Machina dark XM energy. Allows it to infect more portals.

Stats:

+ Double the maximum number of outgoing links from the portal

_ reduces the maximum linking range by 90%

Description:

Helps to build more micro fields, as the side effect cannot be used for big fields.

2: Inhibitor / Corrupted force AMP

Lore:

By studying the dark XM, researchers make a breakthrough to discover frequency jamming Machina interference into the portal network

Stats:

+Prevents any Machina action in 100m * [portal level] radius, from the portal the mod is deployed

_ Portal decays twice as fast as Machina is trying to overcome it

Description:

Adds a tool to help slow down the Machina ingression into the portal network, without the need to capture and recharge every single portal in the area as that may be not possible. Still, the XM weapon must be used to neutralize the already existing Machina resonator.

3: Corrupted transmuter / ItoEn transmuter null

Lore:

The main reason for Machina's large key possession

Stats:

+ Increase the portal key yield from hacking the portal

_ Decrease the total number of items acquired from hacking

Description: Compenhansion for the removal of Quantum Capsules, allows agents to collect more keys to the portal, but in order to do so agents have to travel to said portal.

4: Corrupted shield

Lore:

The main reason for Machina's strange resonator behavior.

Stats:

+ Decrease decay rate by half

_ Decrease total portal shielding by half

Description:

For those who forgot of portal recharge, however, by deploying this mod, the portal will be as vulnerable to XM weapons as the Machina-owned portal

• Deploying these mods comes with risk as it may increase the chances of Machina corrupting the portal in which said mods were deployed when said portal gets neutralized.
• Instead of normal two, agents can only deploy one Dark XM mod per portal.
• Dark XM / Corrupted objects are very fragile like Machina resonators, they would be very easy to knock out from the portal after being damaged by any XM weapon, and like Machina resonators using Ada/Jarvis would destroy them instead of flipping.

These are just my ideas, perhaps you can think of something even more creative. My goal was to make going for the Machina hunting more worthwhile and integrate it more into the gameplay and the lore.

Based on initial testing it just seems like a way to stack up to 4 hacks into a single overclocked hack. It consumes up to 4 hacks (depending on the remaining hacks you have) on the portal and thus causes an un-modded portal to burn out after one overclocked hack. MH/HS can be used to increase/reset the hack count as usual.

The glyphs are displayed inside a 3D cube and to be frank it is kinda difficult to recognize them even as someone with close to 100 onyx translator badges. The glyph also doesn't seem to be oriented so it is impossible to tell glyphs like "past" and "future" from each other without context. The time limit is also way too short: 17s for a P8 5-glyph sequence, which includes the time trying to comprehend what the heck you are looking at and actually drawing the glyph (and displaying all of the flashy animation).

The good thing is that it reuses the existing sequences so you can ignore the rest if you can infer the pattern from the first few glyphs. During the few dozen hacks I also encountered several issues like the cube disappearing due to bad AR positioning or extra thin glyph lines that make them almost impossible to see.

The hack output seems to be about the same as if you just hack the portal 4 times individually. Overall I think it is barely worth the extra effort unless you can't spend time waiting for cooldown on a portal.

Simply allow us to disable it.

Some of us don't want our scanners spammed up with all that.

Unless there is more gear or such per overclocked glyph, why would agents do it?

Also, the fact it has to be a VPS enabled portal for it to work, is going to be off putting to many agents who don't live near such a portal.

It almost seems like a veiled attempt to get more agents, to scan more portals, in hopes they can have VPS portals near them, so they can do this "new" type of hack/glyph.

I find it sad that machina cannot cross link or take portals under fields anymore.

Felt like a welcome help for the weaker fraction in the area. Now it kinda helps the stronger fraction in the city...

I don't get why they always make the stronger fraction even stronger while trying to punish those fractions with less people in the area.