Variation of “wiping the slate clean”
in General
What if instead of Niantic clearing everything by setting every portal to neutral, they only cleared links?
They could also limit max link length to something like 5 km for a while before having it go back to normal at random intervals or something.
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That's an interesting proposal. What would you want to accomplish by doing this?
This would devalue every Agent who's ever hiked a mountain, flown to a tropical island, chartered a boat to an island off the coast, or hiked for two days down a deserted beach front.
This would solve none of the "Permanent Field" issues that it seems to be trying to address, because people would recapture the troll portals and start over, while the real achievers would feel like their effort was wasted and not repeat it.
The problem is not the portals, it's the ease with which keys can be replicated without needing to revisit the portal.
I’ve seen some older agents mention Niantic floated the idea of “wiping the slate” years ago by neutralizing everything, but it was met with strong opposition because of the amount of effort that goes into capturing certain portals.
I had the thought about just the links being removed instead so all of the captured portals stay but still “wipe the slate” in a way. Limiting link distance and having it gradually go back up to normal at random intervals was an idea on preventing BAFs from being thrown immediately.
Eliminating links would also upset a lot of people.
Some areas are under perma fields. Some are NOT under perma fields due to defensive blocking links.
Limiting keys or increasing decay rate on fields are probably the best solutions I have seen. None are perfect.
All links removed, that means both defensive and offensive. I believe this would allow perma-spoofed areas to have breathing windows.
But this would very much confuse new players... perhaps adding the concept to the tutorial?
The idea of a reset to the playing field was originally floated by Niantic ahead of the launch of Prime. I suspect their underlying motivation was to start with a clean playing field rather than having to port over the entire board state at Prime launch, but the pushback from players was so strongly negative that the idea was quickly abandoned.
As @Perringaiden mentioned above, the people who have climbed mountains, chartered planes to remote islands, hiked strenuous hikes, and otherwise invested a great deal of time and energy in capturing durable portals and making durable links would not be happy about this. It also wouldn't really address the issue that you are going for.
Unlike him, I don't think that the root of the problem is the ease of replicating keys though it's a secondary factor. In most cases you would just get more keys either by taking more people out to the portal initially, by spending more time there farming, or by going back. There are a few cases where that can't happen but for nearly all portals replication just saves time.
I think there are two other issues. The biggest one by a mile is cheaters. I am lucky enough not to suffer from it too badly where I am but I know there are places that are constantly fielded by spoofers. I understand that spoofing can never be completely solved and that it will always be a perpetual cat-and-mouse game between Niantic and the spoofers. It feels like the mice are winning the race these days, and it would be nice to see some more strength on the feline side.
There's a second issue, which is that accessibility of portals changes over time and a portal that was accessible two or five years ago might not be anymore, yet it can still be used as a durable anchor for fields or blockers. (Yes, duplicating keys exacerbates this.) I'm not really sure how to address this issue, though I think it would make the game more dynamic if long-term inaccessible portals went out of play automatically. My first instinct is to set some threshold for an expiration date, like maybe a year. If a portal hasn't been hacked by the expiration period then all of its links fall and it becomes unlinkable until it gets hacked again. While that sounds like a theoretically good solution I suspect it would just lead to spoof hacking to keep things alive. Unlike things that change the state of a portal spoof hacks are completely undetectable by players so there would be no good way for us to know whether a portal was being legitimately or illegitimately kept alive.
Maybe someone smarter than me has ideas?
I'm not really sure how to address this issue, though I think it would make the game more dynamic if long-term inaccessible portals went out of play automatically.
Maybe someone smarter than me has ideas?
If you are required to return to a portal to get more keys, and that portal is now completely inaccessible... that would take it out of play 'automatically'. Asked for and delivered.
I don't understand why this is such a confusing concept.
None of the solutions that anyone can present, from a gameplay standpoint, can beat spoofing. But stopping key duplication in capsules would massively curb the issues with inaccessible portals reused by legitimate players.
1 month of 3 day decay. Let's do it. If there's portals you don't want to fail, then you have to pay attention
Add to that no extra powercube output, just increased resonator output for recapturing lapsed portals.
Either that or keys get a shelf life? has to be floated as ideas.
@Perringaiden I am 100% certain that in some areas removing key duplication would just lead to an increase in backpacking and/or spoof farming. When one of your locals says, "I just found 20 keys to that in a capsule", it's going to be hard to know if they're legit or not. That's true now, of course, but it will become a larger problem if key duplication goes away. I wouldn't mind seeing it slowed down, though.
You can't fix cheating, with gameplay tweaks.
When people stop trying, maybe the game won't be damaged by bad ideas.
Exponential decay on field anchors after X days is best I've seen. With a cooldown, before decay goes back to normal?
1 cycle before decays ramps? Then a cycle worth of cooldown?
You can't fix cheating with gameplay tweaks, and I wasn't suggesting that.
I understand why you think that keys should stop duping, and I don't entirely disagree, but I always examine proposals like this by exploring what the unintended consequences will be. How will players adapt to the change, and what new incentives will be created? In this case it seems pretty obvious to me that the adaptation and new incentives will be to increase cheating by spoofing and/or backpacking. When a change involves taking something away from players then it is even more likely that some will react by taking the low road.
In this case, the proposal is for a gameplay tweak that will **** off players by taking functionality away and will also create a strong incentive for two different forms of cheating. I believe that the proposed tweak would end up being a significant negative for the game as a whole.
We still have heartburn with the Devra virus from 2014
Some of us were not around for that. Forcing 1% players to work very hard might be the sort of heartburn that Ingress needs?
The 3 day decay affected everyone. This was before any power cubes.
Just limit the MU output, to like 100k max. Although its fun to be part of the big BAF events: it will be fun too if its like 10 fold smaller, or just more layer. Not sure if prevents the big perma fields, but we could at least try. Honestly, these crazy mega BAFs have nothing to do with daily business ingress for 99,9% of the users.