Best Of
Re: Portal nomination and approval
@Bstrngr8 You're sort of right, but there's both a solid rationale and some issues around that.
Niantic needs their games to be playable in all sorts of locations. For years there were complaints that Niantic games were unplayable in smaller towns, suburbs, and rural areas because there weren't enough wayspots. Niantic revamped the Wayfarer rules to make games more playable around the world, and that means that some things that wouldn't have been eligible before are now. I see both sides of it but I come down on the side of inclusivity... and I say that as someone who lives in an area that's dense enough that she has three couch portals.
The issues are players not respecting the Wayfarer rules in multiple ways. The first is deliberate abuse. One example is a large botnet that was active in the Netherlands that would approve everything. Once these things get into the games it's often difficult to convince Niantic to remove them.
There are also tons of fakes, and it's pretty easy to submit fakes that are convincing enough to be accepted. Sometimes it's stuff where the location can't be confirmed, and photos from other wayspots get reused. If the "Squirrels and Robins Nature Sign" is submitted in a park under some tree cover there's a pretty good chance it will get accepted. I've reviewed a ridiculous number of Photoshop fakes, many of which were caught by my well-trained eye but some have been done so well that they got past me for a while. I've spent a lot of time researching and documenting fakes and have gotten hundreds of them removed... but that's just a drop in the bucket.
Another problem is Bad-Wayspot Contagion. People often based their assessment of what's acceptable on what they see in their game(s) rather than reading and understanding the eligibility criteria. This leads to people submitting a bunch of stuff that isn't really eligible and other people approving it because they've seen similar stuff in their games. I've seen places where "fountains" are everywhere, but those fountains are actually aerators in the middle of ponds and thus don't have safe pedestrian access.
Re: Research Bounties activated
Bounties don't need to be easy or convenient. Where's the challenge in that?
Re: nobody asked for bounties
I've suggested AI tasks multiple times and there is even a thread around here where someone literally uses the word bounties when asking for them.
Portal nomination and approval
Hello,
Over the past 7 years portal acceptance criteria has dropped tremendously. It used to be that average business locations were not "historic or culturally important " and therefore were normally rejected. A swing set in a park would not be approved. Areas that are not normally accessible to everyone (certain businesses and military bases) were also rejected.
Now, portals just like these are everywhere. It has cheapened the game. I've tried to remove some of these, but that process has been hindered by softening the rules and processes, and by eliminating the older standards from the nomination site.
The game needs to move back from pandemic standards and trust seasoned agents again. Hopefully this gets read by the appropriate individuals to make this happen.
Have a great day!
Re: Bounty Suggestions NOT ABOUT MISSIONS
Missions were fun when you'd go to a new town and there would be 1-5 missions that would basically take you to all of the portals in that town. IE you'd get all of the uniques fairly easily. Now its about murals and the fastest 6 hacks for each part. My first probably 100+ missions were singles for different areas. They were fun. Most murals are just hammering them out as fast as possible. And if you get lucky, you traveled to do some fun mural, and it ended up being a horribly designed one, that makes you frequently backtrack and other cruddy things. Or those other murals where stuff is inaccessible but you didn't know it before you started.
What would be really nice at some point, if there were a public API we had access to, to view missions. Heck, make it a paid API. People would pay for it. Would be nice to be able to view my missions through a web browser instead of painfully waiting for the scroll via the profile page.
Re: Bounty Suggestions NOT ABOUT MISSIONS
Missions when they first came out were indeed, individual things.
But that was boring!
Veterans of Ingress found a loophole by making banners, which then made Missions fun to do.
Mission Day Missions will always be individual missions and not requiring anyone to do the them all, by design, as it is a casual event
Re: Research Bounties activated
Since niantic has nerfed and disincentivized fielding, they might as well make Cell scores all about bounties now.
Re: Bounty Suggestions NOT ABOUT MISSIONS
The root cause of that boredom is probably because the theme of that Ingress mission is boring.
A good-themed mission gives us good insights even if it is only one Ingress mission.
I think that's what Ingress missions should be about, and Ingress is about gaining new insights into the real world by visiting portals.
Re: The single mission bounty is not a very good task.
There's "acquire a kinetic capsule program" which I think is their fix for any walking tasks. It's always been something miscalculated on Niantic's end.
Re: The single mission bounty is not a very good task.
There's also a make-a-field task which is challenging for people who live in an area that's so dominated by one faction that the playfield is static.
To me it seems perfectly OK to have tasks that some people can't or aren't willing to complete. We functioned just fine without them for ages, and they're not mandatory now.