Unfinished features of Ingress
I open this thread to discuss that we somehow have a lot of... unfinished, so to speak, not really meaningful features being added lately to Ingress.
Take portal scanning. It has no use. Remove it and the badges from the game, and the game wouldn't lose anything, because portal scanning is simple labor and the badges are to nudge you to scan. And we can't even see the scan results.
Now take drones. I don't really understand what was the idea behind drones, what Niantic thought would make people like them. Simplifying Sojourner badge and making it worth nothing, because everyone can get it without leaving their coach? I don't appreciate it. One player already told me "I'm proud that I got Sojourner before the drones were added". Not only drones are useless almost totally if you have a couch portal, but it's pretty hard to make them meaningful at all. Because when doing them meaningful, you can't go full ****** into spoofing (somehow altering portal state). There have to be some "exclusive" features, not those which players can do while standing on a portal. So same stuff - remove drones from the game and it wouldn't lose anything (this feature even has no connected badges). I use my drone now just to farm L8 portals when my inventory is not full, otherwise I don't open Dronenet screen. So actually, drones have lowered the need to gather people to make flash farms, because everyone can have their drone on L8 portals and farm them all day everyday by themselves... Thus Niantic has decreased the need of having ties with your community if you want to have high-level stuff. I don't appreciate that too.
Battle beacons. Do you see them used often? I don't. I haven't seen a single one lighting up in our city. I know a couple agents have them but they say they won't be using them soon.
Kapsules. Well, that is a nice addition but.. it is unfinished too. There are still empty slots for components, there are no rare/very rare kapsules, no exclusive stuff that you can get ONLY from kapsules but not from hacks. Basically, Kapsules are a part of old MUFG feature cut out and put into a fancy shell.
A good amount of additions but they just aren't meaningful for the base game and don't increase its depth at all.
Comments
Portal Scanning - Soon™ (We may eventually see something). This has burned me a bit, with how it’s been released, adding a unique scout badge later on and not retroactively adding them in. And now, even adding AP after some people are over a thousand scans. Makes me even more bitter about it and less likely to scan anything.
Drones - Something to make the game more playable during covid. Annoyed there really hasn’t been any events or medals surrounding the drone. Would be nice to know why they haven’t, but doubt we’ll ever get any sort of reason or update.
Battle beacons - not able to purchase them, never seen one in the wild and no one in our servers has talked about them much. Don’t even really know how they work since I don’t really know what an anomaly or anything outside of a FS is... Zero interest.
Kinetic Cap - love it. It’s new, I wouldn’t expect it to be fully polished from Niantic out of the gate. I’m sure we’ll see more stuff Soon™
Portal scanning: As much as I agree, I do enjoy scanning as it gets me out to every single portal which helps with my Pioneer and Explorer badges. There are still plenty of bugs that should be fixed and efficiencies that could be made to streamline the process (especially since this is just free labour with no real purpose).
Drones: I liked the challenge of getting the furthest distance, but nobody will get a higher distance than all the Japanese players lol Other than that, my drone just jumps from portal to portal with no goal in mind anymore other than to increment the unique drone hack count. I know lots of others keep their drone on farms to get the odd bit of gear, so there is some usefulness out of it at least, even if it is minimal. Drones also seemed to be a haphazard idea considering all the other Niantic game received some covid-19 adjustments early on and Ingress got nothing for months.
Battle beacons: I'm yet to try one, but I am keen. So can't really comment on this. However, I do find it hilarious that more people complain about battle beacons than the number that have actually used them (agent-stats says only 6 people!). So really, all the hypothetical abuse scenarios are a non-issue simply because nobody uses battle beacons! I dare say the high cost of entry has made people ignore it, perhaps if it were free those stats would tell a vastly different story.
Kinetic Capsule: Agreed. I don't mind them though, it's a free VR item for walking. Just run it and claim it when ready. It's a nice little passive addition. I would like to see the ability to craft common mods though, got to work on that Engineer badge! lol
Did you miss Apex Boost? I like them and use them pretty much every time I recharge or farm, can't do much else during severe covid lockdown lol
Hopefully Niantic can publish a roadmap for 2021 and let us know what the plan is, because at the moment it doesn't seem like anything is really going anywhere and as you highlighted this year's additions have been mostly underwhelming
Oh, exactly, Apex! I saw they plan to do 1.5x and 1.25x versions of them, but it didn't go anywhere as you can see. So +1 to unfinished features. Are lower versions even needed though?...
I use drones most even if its just a few hacks daily i think its a nice addition to the game. Only shame we dont have a badge for it or maybe a small event now that eos is canceled? the kinetic is also not bad but i have mostly just used it to craft sbuls since linkamps are worthless for me able to craft a sbul is not bad, the other vr stuff i find are too expensive, why waste 3 rare shields for 1 vr ? i rather have more rare then a few vr but thats me...
portal scanning i have unlocked the first scout badge but aint gonna waste time no more in that seems it doesnt give ingress anything or will it ever ? scanning a portal 15 seconds isnt what i call fun.
battle beacons i have yet to see anyone light up in my region its really a dead horse nobody even talks about it so yeah i think they are not really good and cost 5000cmu is just too much , at this time gather people close at a portal, perhaps next year when things look a bit better..
I still don't get it why Portal Scan has 2 badge associated with it whereas Portal discovery and drone doesn't. They should bring a badge alternative to Seer.
And for someone who still think the Seer alternative could bring back garbage nomination, think about the Scout and the amount of garbage scans feed into Niantic's database every second.
...and the badges are exactly why portal scanning results in yuge amount of garbage scans. I know Agents who scan asphalt floor when passing by a portal, or views outside the window when riding public transport, just to get that unique scout controller.
The difference is the playerbase has nothing to do with the consequences of such scans. That's only for Niantic to figure out what to do with those. While for portal nominations, we have to review and, if garbage nominations aren't filtered out (which happens even without a badge tbh), we have to live with the portals coming out of such garbage nominations. And that is why there should be no incentive for portal nominations. Those who do want to create worthy portals, don't need an incentive. I have 131 nominations accepted and I don't need a badge for that. It feels just great seeing MY portals on the map and in the scanner.
I agree that unique portals drone visited should be a badge. Though we have so many badges now that it's about time to increase level up requirements.
Meanwhile, spoofing and multiaccounting gets normalized. Does Niantic ever intend to solve any of those?
Pandemic should have been the perfect time to spot and erradiacte these activities. Just another missed oportunity.
+1 obvious spoof in closed park at night still active even when reported
If you don't like it, don't use it.
I'm surprised you only focused on recent items when you can see a lot more of unfinished material in the app.
Recursion. I thought the end of Nemesis was going to hint at why it's there. We're now at 2 years with no mention of its functionality except for a means to prestige.
Icons in the Avatar section. They haven't been touched since the profiles were added in September 2013. I would have loved this to have the new avatars with the archetypes. Or even the newer glyphs. Or even Nemesis on there.
Avatars. I'm more surprised they made avatars for 4 of the archetypes but have no plans to do the other 9? That is the very definition of unfinished.
On God, I just forgot this big one. The whole onboarding process for new players. I'm still waiting to see how that is being incorporated into any sense of the lore. I thought that was actually going to be explained at the end of Nemesis but wow. ADA is explained in the anime but Jarvis...that's still on hold it seems.
Portal Scanning has massive legal implications, and Niantic are complacent in implicating players to scan illegal wayspots. Sydney Tower. Niantic must still provide a legal statement on how photogrammetric data is to be used. It isn't an option to hide this, but a legal requirement in most countries
Drones need to stay
Lots of potential, main push was to get it out ASAP to help those chasing Sojourner. It does diminish its' achievement. It's ok and you still have to remember to hack twice a day
Battle Beacons
Still not sure why these are even in the game
Kinetic Capsules
Lots of potential, still new
New features added faster than they can be iterated upon to give meaningful gameplay, which was evident in the cancelled EOS event
Reading through this, and being a relatively new player, I can see that
1. Portal scanning seems a waste of time and effort, theres nothing really rewarding for it, a lot of phones can't do it due to needing arcore (I think). Really, this was added so niantic had people doing work for them as a "game mechanic". Its the same with pogo
2. The drone is a good idea imo, for one, it does help with sojourner (especially for those agents who don't have couch portals, how I envy your couch portals) and 2 it helps players who don't have and can't access farms locally put their drone i to one and get stuff. That being said, it does seem unfinished (the mark 1 probably helps that case). There should be a medal for distance travelled and a medal for unique portals visited
3. Battle beacons are the biggest waste of time ive seen, uve only ever seen one used and that was because 4 agents wanted to see what it would do. No one wants to buy it, no one is interested in doing them, honestly this concept just didn't work
4. Kinetic capsules. This is a good idea but needs fleshed ojt a bit more, should add unique items to the recipes (which I assume they will) but also needs to allow people to change the items i the capsules, for example, id rather use l6 resos, as I have loads of these, rather than l4 resos which are a bit rarer for me to get, but rather than letting me chose the l6, I either put in l4 or need to put my l5 and l4 resos into a capsule to force it to use l6.
I can also add
1. Winning cycles seems nothing more than bragging rights. My team in my area dont even bother with it, they would rather field locally or farm ap. Means that the other team get free reign to win each time. An idea I saw floating round is that winning teams could be rewarded with like an ap boost for the next cycle, whilst the loosing team can get extra mu (and maybe ap) when fielding so that there's incentives to win
2. This is more to help out new players. But when under a field, they should allow fielding but have it that they get maybe 1/3rd of the mu and ap. Or maybe even no mu but get the ap
3. A badge for destroying enemy fields, maybe 1/3rd the mu the fields were worth, its an important part of the game, taking g down fields, so it seems weird theres no medal for it and no reward for it other than ap
I agree with almost everything except fielding when under a field. This would tremendously simplify multilayer fielding as well as such techniques as homogeneous fields for example; also it would make people more tolerant to permafields (why take them down if I can link and field under them anyways?). Thanks for your opinion. It's interesting to see how yours differs (but just a little) from mine, while you're a novice and I'm here for 4.5y.
The Only reason I said about fielding under fields is more to help.lower level ayers or to allow places consta try under permanent bafs to still play. Obviously no links crossing, but still it feels like should still allow lower level players or players who can't get to the anchors or spine to be allowed to play. I know in my area from older players that the opposing faction would routinely climb mountains to get portals up there, so that during winter they could perma baf making the game unplayable if you were underneath (unless putting resos in portals was the main enjoyment you have)
I'd love Battle Beacons if the portal in question wasn't locked or unlocked to a particular faction or color. If we could deploy a beacon and have the portal color flip between red and yellow, for example, so that I could battle against my teammates. Dibs on yellow! Or use an overlying token, like a top hat or a shoe or a racecar....well, those choices are taken already. :)
At the end of battle, that portal could revert to its prior ownership, and the beacon would display as red or yellow depending on the winner's choice of color for play, maybe with the winner's faction logo embedded inside.
This would eliminate many of the abuse-prone elements of the beacon, as well as opening up use to even the most vehement anti-xfac player base.
Battle beacons are used plenty in my market. Just being able to force high volume players to have to come out to reset a field is a godsend.
Drones when you drop it somewhere where there is higher level stuff and you can't run over to it yourself is immensely helpful.
Have to disagree with one facet of assessment.
What it means as story.... another facet altogether. I view story at the individual and pack/troop level. Each box is it's own micro story missing the macro story that anomalies (2022?) provide.
I would write micro or macro story given the opportunity.