I didn't say the features I listed were themselves negatives. The negative is to be found in what's been lacking.
congregating isn't exactly a good look compared to enhancing individual play
Which is exactly why I mentioned, in the comment that I linked to: "Active coordination" is not synonymous with "large groups of agents gathering in one place." Think of how agents spread out for a fielding op. Think of the Tessellation, especially as it evolved in the face of the pandemic.
The pandemic is no excuse for focusing on individual gameplay to the exclusion of all else.
I would suggest that if you read any of the posts over the last year and a half about anything involving community play, a large segment of the player base does think the Pandemic is a good reason not to do anything that encourages large group play.
I didn't say the features I listed were themselves negatives. The negative is to be found in what's been lacking.
Maybe not bringing negative unrelated aspects into a thread about what is actually a very positive feature is a good idea if you want to keep the community focused on positives then?
I agree that having community enhancements would be nice, but there's only so much they can do right now. We've made other threads about rebuilding the community, and this is a great new feature with basically no downsides and likely only small development because it's brought across from PoGo. Events and meetups are the levers that Niantic can pull for building communities. For the most part, communities are something players manage and build though.
I asked one question, which only Niantic can answer authoritatively. If you think it's not a productive topic for this thread, you're welcome to let it fade away, as is the fate of most comments that see no replies.
Is Hackstreak a bad feature? No. But I, personally, am thoroughly underwhelmed by it, in no small part due to the fact that it follows in a long line of features focused on individual gameplay. Everyone else is welcome to feel differently, and many people obviously do.
Niantic can't win only if the criteria is making all people happy all the time. There will always be an unhappy person, and if Niantic hasn't yet made their peace with that, well, I think that's on them.
I’m okay with this feature and many of the features added in the past six months.
But I think there has been little change in Niantics ability to communicate with its agents. Adding a tab for news isn’t communication. We’re wanting actual back and forth, insight, opinions, updates.
When forum threads with over a hundred comments go by without a single comment from a Nintic employee, that’s an issue.
I’ll save my normal ranting on this issue for the appropriate threads, but I couldn’t not say something regarding that.
@svborn the bonus multiplier is only applied on the first hack of the day, for each day. Day 7 does not give you 3X bonus multiplier on every hack on Day 7, only the first hack of the day.
Thank you @NianticBrian and Team! I always love new badges and we appreciate the work the team does to bring us new features.
I am entirely looking forward to the new challenge.
It is uniquely different from Sojourner and it is far more forgiving if you mess up. I completely agree that if Drone hacking is going to stick around after the pandemic and work for Sojourner, then Epoch further becomes a different challenge by not incorporating Drones. I like it.
Sojourner is called the “Slave Badge” for a reason. I despise it, it’s the only badge (excluding guardian) that’s for cumulative time that your progress resets.
I wanted my wings, but lost my streak on 625 days after just having a complete “wipeout day” with my mental health, which was even more annoying that we had the drone, so I clearly wasn’t well enough to just boot up my phone and do a tap hack, and poof my streak was gone, and it was 2 years off from getting wings.
This system seems much fairer, even though at a minimum, it’s 420 days for Onyx and 840 days for wings, it’s no where near as “fragile” as Sojourner and the odd day where you forget or don’t hack, the worst it will set you back by is 6 days.
Also handy that it’s by calendar day, rather than having to work out when your personal Sojo window is.
Thanks for the new feature and badge @NianticOfficial , kudos to the artist.
This stat is a really great way to serve as a proxy for player activity and to show long-term retention of playerbase, even as COVID-19 (and potentially other events) might affect a metric like Sojourner, and shows those who are still interacting in person with POIs.
My gameplay won't change, but I'm really glad that this metric exists, and I'm glad to be able to grind another badge. Any development is heartening.
Where should I look to see my current streak? On poGO it's on the today feed, but where's it on ingress?
May I suggest it to be on the badge itself?
This I great addition. A new badge is always welcome, event though this seems like "easy sojourner" it is a new challenge. I was already 2x sojourner and done for good on it, but now this one might just get me to surpass my current streak. Also, this just make me hope and think it's close to "tasks" finally coming to ingress too.
Glad to see even more improvements coming to ingress. Thank you Niantic and Ingress team for continuing to improve the game for us and introducing new features!
also.... can we have the details for the event starting Friday? Looking forward to how the bonuses we earned in the last event will be ‘beneficial’ in the weeklong event!
Except all those features aren't exclusive and not even a pioneer thing from pokemon. They're all well stablished features, that make no harm and are great addition.
You won't see a counter for Epoch on the All Time stats, until you get a point in it. That's how these things usually go, and why most people don't have stats for Intel Ops, OPR Live or Seer.
Wouldn't it make sense to have the 7th circle connect back to the first one? The badge is for completing cycles. Maybe have the first circle as a filled-in circle to show the difference?
That's exactly the point - you do not have to start another cycle right after getting 7th day of the streak. That's why points 7 and 0 are disconnected:
Hey i started today's hackstreak by drone hacking a portal but it didn't count towards the epoch streak? And later when I hacked a portal normally it did count. Do drone hacks not count for epoch?
Just to clarify a question or suggestion earlier in the thread, we are not going to retire the Sojourner Medal or make any changes to Sojourner at this time. Sojourner still works the way it did yesterday: an in-person Portal hack or Drone hack in consecutive, rolling 24-hour periods.
Comments
I didn't say the features I listed were themselves negatives. The negative is to be found in what's been lacking.
congregating isn't exactly a good look compared to enhancing individual play
Which is exactly why I mentioned, in the comment that I linked to: "Active coordination" is not synonymous with "large groups of agents gathering in one place." Think of how agents spread out for a fielding op. Think of the Tessellation, especially as it evolved in the face of the pandemic.
The pandemic is no excuse for focusing on individual gameplay to the exclusion of all else.
I would suggest that if you read any of the posts over the last year and a half about anything involving community play, a large segment of the player base does think the Pandemic is a good reason not to do anything that encourages large group play.
Niantic just can't win...
I didn't say the features I listed were themselves negatives. The negative is to be found in what's been lacking.
Maybe not bringing negative unrelated aspects into a thread about what is actually a very positive feature is a good idea if you want to keep the community focused on positives then?
I agree that having community enhancements would be nice, but there's only so much they can do right now. We've made other threads about rebuilding the community, and this is a great new feature with basically no downsides and likely only small development because it's brought across from PoGo. Events and meetups are the levers that Niantic can pull for building communities. For the most part, communities are something players manage and build though.
I asked one question, which only Niantic can answer authoritatively. If you think it's not a productive topic for this thread, you're welcome to let it fade away, as is the fate of most comments that see no replies.
Is Hackstreak a bad feature? No. But I, personally, am thoroughly underwhelmed by it, in no small part due to the fact that it follows in a long line of features focused on individual gameplay. Everyone else is welcome to feel differently, and many people obviously do.
Niantic can't win only if the criteria is making all people happy all the time. There will always be an unhappy person, and if Niantic hasn't yet made their peace with that, well, I think that's on them.
I’m okay with this feature and many of the features added in the past six months.
But I think there has been little change in Niantics ability to communicate with its agents. Adding a tab for news isn’t communication. We’re wanting actual back and forth, insight, opinions, updates.
When forum threads with over a hundred comments go by without a single comment from a Nintic employee, that’s an issue.
I’ll save my normal ranting on this issue for the appropriate threads, but I couldn’t not say something regarding that.
@svborn the bonus multiplier is only applied on the first hack of the day, for each day. Day 7 does not give you 3X bonus multiplier on every hack on Day 7, only the first hack of the day.
Well, it was a nice 3+ year run of not having to care about hacking streaks after losing sojourner.
If they do retire it, hopefully they allow active streaks to continue until they end.
There is no reason for Sojourner to retire.
Both Sojourner and HackStreak should compliment each other.
Thank you @NianticBrian and Team! I always love new badges and we appreciate the work the team does to bring us new features.
I am entirely looking forward to the new challenge.
It is uniquely different from Sojourner and it is far more forgiving if you mess up. I completely agree that if Drone hacking is going to stick around after the pandemic and work for Sojourner, then Epoch further becomes a different challenge by not incorporating Drones. I like it.
I’m really happy with this.
Sojourner is called the “Slave Badge” for a reason. I despise it, it’s the only badge (excluding guardian) that’s for cumulative time that your progress resets.
I wanted my wings, but lost my streak on 625 days after just having a complete “wipeout day” with my mental health, which was even more annoying that we had the drone, so I clearly wasn’t well enough to just boot up my phone and do a tap hack, and poof my streak was gone, and it was 2 years off from getting wings.
This system seems much fairer, even though at a minimum, it’s 420 days for Onyx and 840 days for wings, it’s no where near as “fragile” as Sojourner and the odd day where you forget or don’t hack, the worst it will set you back by is 6 days.
Also handy that it’s by calendar day, rather than having to work out when your personal Sojo window is.
Thanks for the new feature and badge @NianticOfficial , kudos to the artist.
This stat is a really great way to serve as a proxy for player activity and to show long-term retention of playerbase, even as COVID-19 (and potentially other events) might affect a metric like Sojourner, and shows those who are still interacting in person with POIs.
My gameplay won't change, but I'm really glad that this metric exists, and I'm glad to be able to grind another badge. Any development is heartening.
Where should I look to see my current streak? On poGO it's on the today feed, but where's it on ingress?
May I suggest it to be on the badge itself?
This I great addition. A new badge is always welcome, event though this seems like "easy sojourner" it is a new challenge. I was already 2x sojourner and done for good on it, but now this one might just get me to surpass my current streak. Also, this just make me hope and think it's close to "tasks" finally coming to ingress too.
And drone badges!
Glad to see even more improvements coming to ingress. Thank you Niantic and Ingress team for continuing to improve the game for us and introducing new features!
also.... can we have the details for the event starting Friday? Looking forward to how the bonuses we earned in the last event will be ‘beneficial’ in the weeklong event!
hacksteak will be a sojouner supporter, so vice versa sojourner will also support hackstreak. it will be a nice reminder and a new spirit.
Except all those features aren't exclusive and not even a pioneer thing from pokemon. They're all well stablished features, that make no harm and are great addition.
Agreed. Many of these are core "no brainer" features for any game centered around exploring, exercise, and ongoing events.
While I won't be near any Portals for a few days, I'm excited to try it out and see what others think of it.
Now tab is the only place I see it currently.
You won't see a counter for Epoch on the All Time stats, until you get a point in it. That's how these things usually go, and why most people don't have stats for Intel Ops, OPR Live or Seer.
The design of the badge is a bit weird.
Wouldn't it make sense to have the 7th circle connect back to the first one? The badge is for completing cycles. Maybe have the first circle as a filled-in circle to show the difference?
But they're connected. You're just looking it the wrong way. And is not cycles, it's streaks, that once you got the 7th you get the prize and reset.
Thanks, didn't see that one.
I personally love the asymmetric (or, as some might say, "unsatisfying") part of the badge.
It reminds me that perfection is not the goal of Ingress.
That's exactly the point - you do not have to start another cycle right after getting 7th day of the streak. That's why points 7 and 0 are disconnected:
Hey i started today's hackstreak by drone hacking a portal but it didn't count towards the epoch streak? And later when I hacked a portal normally it did count. Do drone hacks not count for epoch?
But day 7 and 0 are the same. Day 8 is another first (that's how it is on poGO).
You can have a break between cycles)
Honestly, I'm not sure if point 0 is really needed, picture looks more symmetrical without that extra point. But either way, like the design!
I love how everyone's upset about the dots, and I'm just here like... what's with the BORDER????
Also, now that I look at it, the reflective effect is usually reserved for Platinum and Onyx, but is applied to all levels here.
"Hacking via Dronenet will not count towards the Hackstreak" as stated in the announcement.
30 months to get that wings on this badge. Not bad nor good.
Just to clarify a question or suggestion earlier in the thread, we are not going to retire the Sojourner Medal or make any changes to Sojourner at this time. Sojourner still works the way it did yesterday: an in-person Portal hack or Drone hack in consecutive, rolling 24-hour periods.