It's an awful lot quicker to rack up the numbers on Pioneer or Explorer because it so so much quicker to hack to capture a portal. If you were in a portal dense uncaptured area you could probably fully deploy on ten portals in the time it takes to do one scan.
I don't get why a unique variant would have higher targets than its non-unique counterpart. That doesn't even account for the fact that it could take multiple scans to get a controller point (and there is a scan cap). SC targets should be between 0.5 and 0.15 the number for Scout badge.
The problem is. The scout badge seemed like a good idea until Niantic figured out that a person could potentially scan their couch portal 6,000 times and get an onix badge for their efforts. (and I'm sure there are people who are doing this) This new badge will ensure that agents are scanning many portals, not just a select few near their homes. If you're going to have people do the work for you, you gotta make sure they're scanning more than a select few portals.
15k equal 3 years of non-stop scanning. This considering that nobody get in your way and that you have access to this amount of portals. I know players with 5 years, with gold MD and some anomalies that didn't achieve 15k of explorer yet, and are barely above 10k.
If those number keep at this way, there probably gonna be a few crazy agents who will try to be ther first to get it, but i supose that most people won't even try it. My friends said that they're gonna speed up the bronze and give up. Others will not even try it.
If those numbers were lower, like 1k for black, I believe that a lot more pleople would do it and even double it for the recursion wings. 5000 for black is already challenging enought, which will became 10k for the 2x/phoenix, but 15k is unrealistic.
Agreed. I am aiming to be the first one to get Onyx Scout (currently at 1790/6000). I started doing scans on the 24th of March 2020 (the day the feature was released worldwide) and should have my Onyx Scout by the 21st of January 2021. I have been doing scans every 13 days. This is only possible because the data gathered while portal scanning towards the Scout goes on for (future) AR feature(s) research. This is why Niantic recommends doing multiple scans on the same portal under different conditions (lighting/time of the day), so they can best realize different scenarios. This is however not going to be possible with Scout Controller medal because most agents are going to aim at unlocking the medal (100 unique scans) and then forget about it. I mean why should I go out of my way doing something so tedious and time and data consuming when I may never even get the final reward? I unlocked my Bronze Scout Controller medal by scanning 100 unique portals yesterday. I used up about 2 GB of data just uploading my 100 unique scans right away because I feared losing more than the 1 scan I already did when I was bulk uploading on WiFi. I can afford to lose so much data on portal scanning because I have a lot of data on my phone (thanks to my service provider giving me 5 GB free data over the next 2 years on top of my existing 6 GB plan) but this is not going to be possible for everyone. For now I am just going to focus on my Scout until it hits Onyx and then maybe think about Scout Controller provided the requirements are revised. What I have a hard time understanding is why does Niantic come up with unattainable tier requirements? Do they not have some kind of a database which allows them to see which Onyx badges are the least attainable by agents globally? While Onyx Pioneer and Onyx Explorer may be some of the badges are certainly amongst the least popular badges, did they forget that no one was actually able to get their Onyx Seer due to it's insane requirement?
There is at least one Onyx Seer. Scout Controller is probably more absurd than Seer was.
Pioneer is not what you want to be scaling the badges against, and one scan is already substantially more work (and boring waiting time) than capturing a portal.
15000 looks very ridiculous to me, even 7500 is still insanely high, considering getting a unique scout controller can take more time than a unique capture.
Agreed, and the problem with scout controller badge tiers being so high is that players are just going to upload 5 second scans of the sidewalk at every portal they get near, since they aren't going to bother finding the object each time. Or, they'll upload 5 second scans through their car window as they drive by.
I think the other big problem with all of this is that we still don’t have a way to track uniques for any of the medals.
also, going through last night to get this medal, I had so many weird errors. I was getting alerts that my portals were being attacked, but I couldn’t tap on the portal icons in alerts, notifications were a weird garble of letters.
I did get the bronze last night. I’ll probably scan here and there, but I’m definitely not going to be “working on it” or anything
Onyx for "Scout controller" should be less than for simple "Scout",not more. Or give us ability to remove that achievement out.
I've scanned 63 portals and gave up(again) because it takes time,it is really boring and takes a lot of storage... and also U need some space without other human beings near POI to record correctly and not violate others privacy. Three of them marked as " controller". And if it was scanned by smb U need to scan that twice(thrice...etc).
Well actually this is a good idea to make removal requests almost 100% succesful by providing scan of non-existing graffity or building or smth. But i know how nia fights with spoofing and multiaccs so i dont believe that will work.
As I did my walk through town last night **** (g.rinding) the bronze tier of this new badge, I couldn't help but laugh to myself on the number of portals I've had requested to be moved (some of the art in our city moves or is sold and a few have moved due to areas with higher vandalism) and now, I'm scanning either a completely different piece of art or just a blank spot where one used to reside. I'm curious how this might play out when the portal is re-located correctly and now scans are reset or messed up.
We actually have one piece of art that has two portals and the current portal is off by about 45ft. Efforts to have is moved haven't panned out.
I've also noticed, that portals which are misplaced more than 40m (and for which we may be waiting for edits to process through OPR) are not scannable, because the app thinks we are too far away to contribute.
I have not tried this for a while and did it for the bronze Scout badge
I did about 25 scans which were about 30 frames on 1 portal.
You can do this by stopping the scan early
Those 25 scans took me about 10 min to do
When I did the upload from home on cable internet wifi, it took about 20 min to upload (it's annoying because my internet completely shuts down when uploading)
Shortly after, the portal scans stat stop incrementing and I wasn't sure if I triggered some type of spam mechanism
With the Scout and Scout controller tier being this high, this is acceptable?
As for me I'm trying to do something helpful but it's almost impossible to have 15,000 of distinct high-quality scans. So probably some of them will be not so good...
What are you thinking of doing with those who do abusive scans? Who is at home and picks up the portal and submits black scans? It is because if we look at things well, it is a cheat that some are doing, just as they should carry a warning or at least a straike.
Portal scanning is using your phone to take a video of a portal. Generally you walk in a circle around a portal. You can find this in the same place you might go to make a title edit or to add a photo. Give it a try.
Scout Controller is what happens if you make the most portals scans in a 30 day period on any given portal.
As far as I understand it, no, unique is unique. I'm assuming the 30 day reset is to make all portals somewhat accessible. I know if I saw a portal with 50 scans on it, I wouldn't want to scan it 51 times to get a unique on it. I would rather wait a couple of weeks until it's been reset.
My emphasis was on the number. By the very nature of it being unique, that already aligns with the goals of getting a variety of portals scanned and non-spammable. That is why other unique badges use lower stats than their non-unique counterparts.
It is hard to believe they set the scout numbers expecting people to spam a single portal 6k times and not more in line with a good-faith approach.
Their choice of controller tiers is arguably much more of an increase effort than good-faith "scout" progression. I was already scanning a variety of uniques with minimal duplication because I want to actually be helpful and that would be stupidly boring.
Comments
Probably not even platinum and maybe not even gold too!
Scan the empty space where the building used to be.
It's an awful lot quicker to rack up the numbers on Pioneer or Explorer because it so so much quicker to hack to capture a portal. If you were in a portal dense uncaptured area you could probably fully deploy on ten portals in the time it takes to do one scan.
So... they won't change it...
I don't get why a unique variant would have higher targets than its non-unique counterpart. That doesn't even account for the fact that it could take multiple scans to get a controller point (and there is a scan cap). SC targets should be between 0.5 and 0.15 the number for Scout badge.
Hacker 2k 10k 30k 100k 200k
Explorer 100 1k 2k 10k 30k
Liberator 100 1k 5k 15k 40k
Pioneer 20 200 1k 5k 20k
Scout 50 250 1k 3k 6k
Scout Controller 100 500 1k 5k 15k
The problem is. The scout badge seemed like a good idea until Niantic figured out that a person could potentially scan their couch portal 6,000 times and get an onix badge for their efforts. (and I'm sure there are people who are doing this) This new badge will ensure that agents are scanning many portals, not just a select few near their homes. If you're going to have people do the work for you, you gotta make sure they're scanning more than a select few portals.
15k equal 3 years of non-stop scanning. This considering that nobody get in your way and that you have access to this amount of portals. I know players with 5 years, with gold MD and some anomalies that didn't achieve 15k of explorer yet, and are barely above 10k.
If those number keep at this way, there probably gonna be a few crazy agents who will try to be ther first to get it, but i supose that most people won't even try it. My friends said that they're gonna speed up the bronze and give up. Others will not even try it.
If those numbers were lower, like 1k for black, I believe that a lot more pleople would do it and even double it for the recursion wings. 5000 for black is already challenging enought, which will became 10k for the 2x/phoenix, but 15k is unrealistic.
Yeah. I've been playing since 2014 and still have less than 13000 unique portal visits, but my aim is definitely for phoenix badges.
Agreed. I am aiming to be the first one to get Onyx Scout (currently at 1790/6000). I started doing scans on the 24th of March 2020 (the day the feature was released worldwide) and should have my Onyx Scout by the 21st of January 2021. I have been doing scans every 13 days. This is only possible because the data gathered while portal scanning towards the Scout goes on for (future) AR feature(s) research. This is why Niantic recommends doing multiple scans on the same portal under different conditions (lighting/time of the day), so they can best realize different scenarios. This is however not going to be possible with Scout Controller medal because most agents are going to aim at unlocking the medal (100 unique scans) and then forget about it. I mean why should I go out of my way doing something so tedious and time and data consuming when I may never even get the final reward? I unlocked my Bronze Scout Controller medal by scanning 100 unique portals yesterday. I used up about 2 GB of data just uploading my 100 unique scans right away because I feared losing more than the 1 scan I already did when I was bulk uploading on WiFi. I can afford to lose so much data on portal scanning because I have a lot of data on my phone (thanks to my service provider giving me 5 GB free data over the next 2 years on top of my existing 6 GB plan) but this is not going to be possible for everyone. For now I am just going to focus on my Scout until it hits Onyx and then maybe think about Scout Controller provided the requirements are revised. What I have a hard time understanding is why does Niantic come up with unattainable tier requirements? Do they not have some kind of a database which allows them to see which Onyx badges are the least attainable by agents globally? While Onyx Pioneer and Onyx Explorer may be some of the badges are certainly amongst the least popular badges, did they forget that no one was actually able to get their Onyx Seer due to it's insane requirement?
There is at least one Onyx Seer. Scout Controller is probably more absurd than Seer was.
Pioneer is not what you want to be scaling the badges against, and one scan is already substantially more work (and boring waiting time) than capturing a portal.
15000 looks very ridiculous to me, even 7500 is still insanely high, considering getting a unique scout controller can take more time than a unique capture.
Agreed, and the problem with scout controller badge tiers being so high is that players are just going to upload 5 second scans of the sidewalk at every portal they get near, since they aren't going to bother finding the object each time. Or, they'll upload 5 second scans through their car window as they drive by.
I think the other big problem with all of this is that we still don’t have a way to track uniques for any of the medals.
also, going through last night to get this medal, I had so many weird errors. I was getting alerts that my portals were being attacked, but I couldn’t tap on the portal icons in alerts, notifications were a weird garble of letters.
I did get the bronze last night. I’ll probably scan here and there, but I’m definitely not going to be “working on it” or anything
You are right. I just looked it up. Never thought I would actually see an Onyx Seer badge. I am blown away!
https://i.imgur.com/pd9BiWu.png
Onyx for "Scout controller" should be less than for simple "Scout",not more. Or give us ability to remove that achievement out.
I've scanned 63 portals and gave up(again) because it takes time,it is really boring and takes a lot of storage... and also U need some space without other human beings near POI to record correctly and not violate others privacy. Three of them marked as " controller". And if it was scanned by smb U need to scan that twice(thrice...etc).
Well actually this is a good idea to make removal requests almost 100% succesful by providing scan of non-existing graffity or building or smth. But i know how nia fights with spoofing and multiaccs so i dont believe that will work.
A bad scan can be easily faked too though.
As I did my walk through town last night **** (g.rinding) the bronze tier of this new badge, I couldn't help but laugh to myself on the number of portals I've had requested to be moved (some of the art in our city moves or is sold and a few have moved due to areas with higher vandalism) and now, I'm scanning either a completely different piece of art or just a blank spot where one used to reside. I'm curious how this might play out when the portal is re-located correctly and now scans are reset or messed up.
We actually have one piece of art that has two portals and the current portal is off by about 45ft. Efforts to have is moved haven't panned out.
I definitely think this will lead to lower quality scans. It's easier to scan and process 2-3 five-second scans than one nice long full-time scan.
I've also noticed, that portals which are misplaced more than 40m (and for which we may be waiting for edits to process through OPR) are not scannable, because the app thinks we are too far away to contribute.
The worst thing here is that so high numbers of scans required will make people uploading 5 seconds scans. And this is not very good for the result.
Th next step would be a badge for scan length :)
With people taking 30-second videos of their feet ;) or videos of portals while sitting on a bench and not even moving...
I have not tried this for a while and did it for the bronze Scout badge
I did about 25 scans which were about 30 frames on 1 portal.
You can do this by stopping the scan early
Those 25 scans took me about 10 min to do
When I did the upload from home on cable internet wifi, it took about 20 min to upload (it's annoying because my internet completely shuts down when uploading)
Shortly after, the portal scans stat stop incrementing and I wasn't sure if I triggered some type of spam mechanism
With the Scout and Scout controller tier being this high, this is acceptable?
Yep, depends on people...
As for me I'm trying to do something helpful but it's almost impossible to have 15,000 of distinct high-quality scans. So probably some of them will be not so good...
I just wanted to ask somting.
What are you thinking of doing with those who do abusive scans? Who is at home and picks up the portal and submits black scans? It is because if we look at things well, it is a cheat that some are doing, just as they should carry a warning or at least a straike.
Just a question.
What is a scout Controller and how do you do a portal scan?
Portal scanning is using your phone to take a video of a portal. Generally you walk in a circle around a portal. You can find this in the same place you might go to make a title edit or to add a photo. Give it a try.
Scout Controller is what happens if you make the most portals scans in a 30 day period on any given portal.
can u scan the same portals each month and next as unique ?
As far as I understand it, no, unique is unique. I'm assuming the 30 day reset is to make all portals somewhat accessible. I know if I saw a portal with 50 scans on it, I wouldn't want to scan it 51 times to get a unique on it. I would rather wait a couple of weeks until it's been reset.
My emphasis was on the number. By the very nature of it being unique, that already aligns with the goals of getting a variety of portals scanned and non-spammable. That is why other unique badges use lower stats than their non-unique counterparts.
It is hard to believe they set the scout numbers expecting people to spam a single portal 6k times and not more in line with a good-faith approach.
Their choice of controller tiers is arguably much more of an increase effort than good-faith "scout" progression. I was already scanning a variety of uniques with minimal duplication because I want to actually be helpful and that would be stupidly boring.