First Saturday Battle Beacons

GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

First Saturday June 2021

Had in 3 locations around the world where First Saturday was a hybrid cross faction event


Auckland, New Zealand

11 players showed up, and was a bleak day, and had 107 players total worldwide joining us on site, or remotely.

Format was

First hour, Missions

Second Hour, Battle Beacons

4 clusters of 4 portals were lit up with Beacons at 15 minute intervals.


Approx 19 hours later

UCLA and Sunnyvale sites had hundreds join from all over.

Not sure of numbers on site.

From preliminary views, it appears their format was 2 hours of Battle Beacons, and no Missions.

8 clusters of 4 portals

With each cluster lit up every 15 minutes.


If you attended on site for any of these sites, it would be great if you could post your feedback here on how you felt this hybrid style of First Saturday was good or not.


In Auckland, New Zealand, I knew ahead of time that many didn't generally like being forced to do Battle Beacons, hence @itamernz and I, chose to do keep our Missions style of First Saturday, and try out Battle Beacons for the second half.

Comments

  • Shooters42Shooters42 ✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Hello, I looked at the intel, and from an external point of view, it is a good thing. It can give rise to new activity at events. I liked @NianticBrian 's scoreboards


    Thanks @010000110110101 for invit :)

    Post edited by Shooters42 on
  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think turning IFS into a competitive anomaly prep event will be a turnoff for people who enjoy the social events where you can let your guard down a bit and not worry about who's winning or losing. I hope if you are going to fundamentally change IFS into a competitive event that you'll also be having more NL-1331 and Mission Day events for the social element.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @kiloecholima The flip side is that you might draw people like me who are turned off by the IFS focus on personal stats and implicit win-trading. Admittedly, I'm almost certainly a minority in that respect but the personal stats aspects of IFS has made them uninteresting to me.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    There's always been a competition with IFS regardless if it's with faction or with other faction people. I see this just adding to it and hopefully part of the automation includes check-in. That saves a lot of trouble for everyone.

  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    Guess it depends on the group. In my experience, it's just been a stat competition amongst individual agents, which you can break down by faction but it's not really a coordinated effort of one faction to beat the other faction (I dunno, maybe there are some groups that are like this, but hasn't been my experience).

    I'm fine with IFS becoming more competitive so long as we get other social events like MD and NL-1331.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    when things get better i think mission days should be held at same day when FS stop be virtual ,and u can also throw in battle beacons same day if u wanna compete u can chose, if u want on that day only do some banners and get the mission day badge that can also work.

  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'd want to do both. Maybe have Mission Day on Sunday after IFS. That was pretty common on anomaly weekends.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yes it could be a program schedule, first half of day mission day and encourage exploration, and later some competitive events and more social gathering for those that like doing that.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    One of the annoyances of Battle Beacons, is the reward output at the conclusion of them.


    So many just walk away from the Battle Beacon reward hack because the output is very lack lustre.

    * If only the reward hack from Battle Beacons would award, for example, 20 {agent_level} xmps, 20 R1s and 4 rare shields. This might be better to encourage uptake on Battle Beacons usage.


    *I too felt that the pace of Battle Beacons was too high.

    * Allowing a break of 5 to 10 minutes between the next cluster of Battle Beacons going up would be lovely, as I felt quite burned out after just 1 hour.

  • Can totally take or leave Battle Beacons. They just don’t do it for me and are certainly not what I attend cross faction First Saturday events for in person.

    I appreciate some people do enjoy them in small doses so may like the idea of BB being included as a permanent part of FS. Hopefully not until FS events are back to normal with attendance required in person once again with regular bonuses and restock portals reinstated.

    What I experienced on ground on Saturday was a fracturing of our usual group of agents, so I just hope that it would not spoil the previous FS unity we used to enjoy in person before remote became a necessary evil. The combined options get too much now and people tune out into their own play mode.

    It is hard enough to get people out and about attending in person when there are no drawcard events, so I believe it is more important to bring back regular Mission Days and Hexathalons for good competitive play.

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