A question about the future of the game. Brian please give an answer!
I periodically cross paths with Pokemon Go players. They have a lot to play with! they have new events and new items and new monsters come out with constant regularity. And they don't have as many errors as ingress. I can see how other games from nia are developing. Еach has something new despite the quarantine. And we have emptiness, some bug fixes every two or even more weeks. No need to hide behind quarantine.
From a cyberpunk battle of secret agents for domination over the world, from a game with a strong storyline, the game has turned into a dull and depressing sight. In many regions, the game is no longer being played, because there is nothing fundamentally new!
Here is the correct approach to the development of which one of the mobile strategies has. There are clear terms, and there is a specific well-known path along which the development of the game will go. Why is our game different? Brian tell us about your company's plans for the future of the game?
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In Pokemon, you can always do something. There are no perma filed in blocking play for weeks.
-We need something to play inside the fields
-Or shorter field durations
Now you don't even have to keep the game installed when you can watch once a week from the intel map whenever you can play
I started playing PoGo about 5 years ago, and picked up Ingress about a month after, mainly from hearing others discussing how the two games compared, and wanting to try the other one out. I've played both on and off since (leaving Ingress for much longer periods of time since so little changes, but still coming back as I love the whole "directly fight for control of your city" thing it's centered around), but as a player of both, here's what I've seen in 5 years.
PoGo has gained:
A raid system, later upgraded to allow remote raiding where friends can invite you from wherever
A total rework of the gym system, designed to be more dynamic, and with levelable badges for each gym
A rework of the entire stop/gym network, including making sure smaller cities and towns had something to fight over
A quest system, with several long-term lines and a bunch of event-driven ones, with new ones of both added regularly, along with new objectives to keep them fresh
Mini-quests you can pull off of every stop, re-rolled daily, so there's always -something- to put in your quest log
Trainer battles, which in turn led to a whole thing of fighting Team Rocket, and a PvP league, with ranked play and various alternate rules modes that cycle through
A friend system, with rewards for playing together, and the ability to trade
Greatly improved battery usage from when it launched
A bunch of new items
A bunch of challenge levels that are mostly bragging rights for those sitting at the old level cap... but with quests and such for each, and another way to further level pokemon a bit if you're at the old cap or higher
Hundreds of pokemon (of course)
Mega forms
A bunch of search tools and the ability to set tags so navigating a large pokemon storage isn't a royal pain
The monthly community day, where you can pretty much count on running into a bunch of other players in your area
...that's just the major stuff, and I probably forgot a couple of things. There's been a ton of more minor features added over the years.
Ingress has gained:
Aegis and ITO +/-
The drone
Recursion, which looks like it was supposed to tie into some kind of skill point system or something, but doesn't actually do anything, or add anything beyond player icon wings and the "onyxed multiple times over" thing on profiles
Greatly worsened battery usage via PRIME, so it now drains your battery faster than even PoGo at launch
A few new badges
...and that's pretty much it.
PoGo, of course, has a much larger playerbase than Ingress, so of course it's going to get more updates and more cool stuff, that's expected.... but there's a "within reason" on that. Ingress has barely been touched in the 5 years I've been playing.
I think they’ve started on Ingress again, as we do now get the little mini events like “Hack The Planet” and “Mod Weekend” which are similar to the smaller Pokémon GO events they do.
There are things that could be added, like a daily quest system, and other similar Pokémon GO things but at the same time the games are different and have different user needs/wants and different ideas about how the game should be.
A roadmap or even a Special Events calendar like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite gets every month would certainly help out with what’s ahead. We all know there’s the usual anniversary event, but sometimes there’s not a lot of notice about events and it would be nice to plan.
I think we need more alternatives to do, instead of just butchering up one of the key features of the game.
I'm not against matryoskas style being permanent, but it should be highly costfull for the player, like a paid premium item like apex, or a VR mod that will allow one portal to do links.
What’s that you want portal scanning?
Hey, get off his back, we just got a roadmap 3 or 4 years ago.
I don't get it why the inability to field under fields should be a core feature of the game. It has done more harm than good. I don't care if friend or foe field under my fields. And if I want, I have ways to stop them.
@NianticBrian do you hear us???
lol
I want to say, I don't think I need a roadmap like that one you posted. Would that be great, sure. But the Ingress team has made it clear that a timeline like the above isn't something that works for them. Changes happen, bugs happen, etc. I'm okay with that. I just don't get the veil of secrecy in literally every single thing they're working on. I get maybe keeping some things under wraps, but keeping it a secret because it might be delayed is a joke. Which has turned into a lack of communication from the team.
Brian has said they're still not entirely sure what scanned portals will look like in the future, but he's glad people are scanning and putting in the work until it is figured out. So, in the meantime, why not work with us on portal scanning? Why not respond to threads, ask for input and respond to ideas. These forums are like talking to a brick wall and no one seems to care. Turn your community into bitter agents, yeah, not a problem. I'm definitely at a point of walking from this game entirely. Spending more of my time, energy and money on a game that, at times, feels like it could collapse and vanish at any time is disheartening to say the least. Seeing threads that are pages long with not a single peep from Niantic is disheartening. What a joke...
As someone who has worked with very buggy games (as a player, not as a dev), I can understand where y’all are coming from. Ive seen parity reports regarding a lack of subtitles be closed because the disparity was introduced before a certain date. From what I am seeing, our grievances fall into three main categories: Bugs, Design and accessibility issues, and lack of features. Personally, I think that the first two should be tackled before the third, and Niantic taking community input could help with that.
I agree that it is disheartening to not hear back from them, and I would like to suspect that they’re working really hard on what is being brought to light. But without communication from @NianticBrian and the other devs, I have no way to confirm or deny that. So if you could give us something, even if it’s just a status update on an accessibility setting, I’m sure it would be much appreciated.
And where is our coommunity manager? anyone reads this forum at all ???
@NianticBrian @NianticThia
more would perhaps bother scan if we knew if ingress will even benefit from all scans somehow, surely they must know ? or is it for future games this scan data they want....
mistake post cant delete
Why is ingress not developed like pokemon?
Money. Profit.
PoGo has a strong franchise with gaming history behind it which brings in gamers who dump in tons of cash.
Niantic told Ingress it is now a separate business unit which must survive on its own.
So far, my instinct is that Ingress is barely treading water. Maybe a slim profit with subscriptions, but they keep taking iOS users' money and not giving them benefits, then support is useless unless you reach out on the forums.
I agree with the assessments of others mentioning fielding being blocked. Major issue which matryoshka took a step in the right direction to fix. We're down to players who like covering other players as a lazy strategy to lock them out of gameplay. New players leave due to the imbalances which exist, making them unable to play normally. The game rewards large lazy fields with quantum capsules spitting out keys, not building up multiple portals.
Financial reality is ingress isn't going to get the resources that pogo gets. But there are issues that could be addressed in ingress that could increase player base without a huge spend.
Largest problem in my opinion is lack of challenges and goals for L16s. They either fade away to other games or find themselves playing the area control game with permafields, which as others stated isn't good for cultivating new low level players.
The only measured score is MU. So they're following game mechanics. Revamp scoring, add more team measurables, and a new combined calculation of those measures to determine cycle victory. Maybe a reward or at least more visibility for team that wins cycle in each region. Make the xm be the color of the winning team for next cycle.
The other thing that would bring back even more former players is new levels. This might require totally restructuring the levels instead of simply adding say 8 more. So effort level is likely higher, but leveling up is the one thing in every game that every player loves to do.
Mistake post I hate Samsung!