Do you think the company will hear us at least once next year?
Many of us have written here about the problems of the game, but the developers remained deaf to our requests. Even the community manager was unable or unwilling to help.
How many times have we asked for important things? Make the map more contrasting, remove lags, add a keylocker for media files, or fix translation errors.
I even offered my help as a native Russian speaker and an experienced copywriter, to correct all mistakes and help with the correct translation.
But what have we heard in response throughout this year? Nothing!
The game cannot be played due to lags, nooo - we will make you rare beacons. We don't give a damn about your requests. We ask you to introduce items into the game as part of the plot, and we ask you to continue the plot. What is the answer ??? Receive and sign, the new technology is from nowhere and how it got to us.
For more than a year, there is no plot and development, the enlightenment faction does not know what to fight for. Shapers are no longer in the plot, but they are in the scanner, and according to Blue Head, they represent danger. How many times have you been asked to remove these inconsistencies? Brian, community manager, and you are a respected moderator who reads these lines. Why do you remain silent and ignore the requirements of your customers, and in return do what you were not asked to do at all?
You added a social dimension to the game instead of fixing existing bugs. As one familiar player said, instead of a cat, a cockroach should have been drawn on the annual badge. Because this whole year has been a lot of bugs and almost nothing new. Bugs from comms, bugs with charging portals, bugs with displaying objects ... And many bugs have not been fixed until now.
Because of the crooked Russian, and not only Russian translation, the game is sometimes just unpleasant to play. You were asked to make a menu for choosing the language of the game. This is a matter of half an hour of your programmer's work. But this is not the case. And this further reduces the loyalty of many players to your company.
Therefore, I will ask, will anyone hear us next year? Will we finally have a bug-free scanner with a clear, eye-pleasing contrast map, аnd the plot is like in the good old days.?
Comments
I'm pretty vocal in the forums about my frustrations surrounding this game and the people running the show. So I understand where you're coming from. I do think they're lurking here, reading reviews and I do think they have a general pulse of how people feel about the game and certain aspects of the gameplay. They do want to see the game succeed and they probably do want to keep their jobs. I also just don't think anything will change about their ability to communicate with us. I was optimistic when they said they'd be hiring a community manager. It's pretty obvious she hasn't been given the authority or tools to be anything other than a messenger. It's tough for me to say she's doing a poor job because I imagine her hands are tied in what she can actually share.
Niantics communication is clumsy and very corporate feeling. It sucks because I see other app developers and companies who have taken a more hands on and perhaps, modern approach to communication and it's fun, exciting and it's engaging. The Niantic style seems to be **** feed information, play the hype game randomly and otherwise, provide their customers and workers (that's what we are in my opinion) with updates and a game that mostly works. I imagine some people have continued to play without issue and others have already left. I'm somewhere in the middle. I've cancelled CORE and have switched to PoGo. I'm not optimistic about anything changing with Niantic. My guess is it's more of a culture thing within the company. It starts from the top or dang near it.
I think Ingress faces three big issues currently. A game that has some pretty serious latency issues. For the casual gamer who just stumbles around a park making random fields, this is a non-issue. For the serious agent who is actively trying to build fields, defend them or destroy them, this is a serious issue. The entire game is built around fields. Right now, it just isn't working correctly. It might for a minute and then it doesn't for 30 seconds. A lot can happen in 30 seconds. It's frustrating to all heII that Niantic has been pretty quiet about this. I imagine they've done something on the backend that may not be completely reversible and are now trying to modify their code to work within the new limitations.
Second. It's been 9 years. The game has barely evolved. It's still a game about making triangles. Standing fields covering large cities isn't going to keep players engaged. It's time for some new mechanics and ways to "win" and enjoy the game. The Matroyshka event was a good beta test. I don't know if people largely enjoyed it or disliked it. I was good with it. To me, the game isn't really evolving at the pace it should. Declining agent activity is pretty obvious to me.
The other big issue is still communication. The lack of it here and their inability to effectively work with other departments within Niantic. Having to monitor several platforms (forums, reddit, twitter, telegram) and several different forums (within Niantic) for information is cumbersome and silly. If a community manager from wayfarer is posting updates about Ingress, why isn't our community manager sharing them here? To me, I would assume those two people aren't communicating with each other so they can effectively communicate with us. It's obvious to me agents want interaction. I've seen videos on youtube and older websites, things seemed much different 5 years ago. It seemed like Niantic was much more engaged with the community. Doesn't take a scientist to see at least come correlation there. Engage with your peeople, they engage in return.....
I love Ingress. I love how it takes me places I haven't been before (missions, events), shows me things I wouldn't have seen before (uniques, drone), and helps me see things around me in new ways (challenges, nominating, scanning). I love planning and executing layering fields. I laugh like a maniac when I **** at a cluster of portals, and see percentages cascading out.
I believe Ingress has evolved in awesome ways in 9 years - and they came up with creative ways to play thru the pandemic (drone, epoch, sojourner). I also believe that Ingress is not selling my every little move. That's a rare treasure nowadays.
Sometimes Niantic does survey (some of) us, to see where we'd like to see development. Sometimes they go for low-hanging fruit (sounds like the Rare Battle Beacon was already coded for an Anomaly, so minimum work to make it into an item.)
Yes, Ingress has issues I'd like addressed. LOTS. We don't know what's their budget - or how COVID has affected them. I hope everyone is OK. But odds are: they've had lockdowns, quarantines, and some have lost loved ones. Everyone is disrupted, globally.
I love when people here offer to help. Like Greenvam offering to help with translations.
It seems the lag is proving hard to figure out. Maybe we could help. Like, Niantic might ask in this forum: every time you get it, write down the time and what you were doing. Do we all lag at once? Is it mostly when you recharge? Add the 8th reso? Burster a place with more than 4 portals? Maybe it's always after you've had the app open x minutes? Distance from a cell tower? When a Niantic batch job runs? Do challenges affect it? First Saturday - increased recharging? Second Sunday - increased missioning?
>Maybe we could help. Like, Niantic might ask in this forum: every time you get it, write down the time and what you were doing.
You mean like this?
Yes, I think Niantic will hear us at least once next year.
While I understand the frustration that a lot of people feel, and I include myself in that category, I also have to acknowledge that sometimes Niantic does both hear and react to what we say. They're far from perfect, but they're also not entirely deaf to customers' concerns.
where did the producent go, seems M.I.A ?
Many reviews I just read are not real.
Niantic has included several requested game enhancements on the forum and they are working to fix the lag issues, which I don't think are trivial. For example, layer for visited portals, adventure sync to count better distance walked, etc.. dont forget about that.
We have also been surveyed and we have this forum that is attended, although many people want responses to each post and receive a lot of information very often.
Modifying the application is not that simple, in general no application that is a bit complex.
They are working, changing application very often and we must be patient, contribute with our experience and enjoy the good that this free game has, instead of constantly talking about bugs. All application has bugs, are you writing to Microsoft too?.
The mechanics of the game have to improve to face situations that are desperate and I have lived, such as spoofing or permanent bafs. It has many changes ahead to become a great game and have many users, and sure they are facing. Niantic chat is an example, better or not is a try to improve and we hace to put in value.
We asked for,
Adventure Sync - we got it
Identify on the map and intel of what are unique - we got it
Wanting to craft Very Rare items - we got it
A way to make player made events more exciting - we got rare Battle Beacons.
We asked for the comm to be fixed - it's mostly fixed now
We asked for MORE COMMUNICATION - @NianticThia came on board to help with this, and she is doing pretty well.
Lag (which isn't lag from latency) is still to be fixed.
There are other issues and features we have asked for that we will probably get next year.
Looking back on 2021, the stuff we had been asking for, we have gotten.
But Ingress is still lagging behind the competition for how today's players want to play, not like us oldies who have been playing since the game came out 9 years ago.
If you have ideas for what you want, please post them into the forum as a, [Feature Request ] thread. The devs do not say much, but they do read the forums regularly
"Niantic this, Niantic that, we don't get what we want yada, yada, yada."
Just quit playing, grandpa. Do some gardening or whatever, find a new hobby. I am tired of your spiteful threads.
We’re sharing our thoughts here. If you wanna slam someone else, go start your own thread elsewhere. If you don’t see the problems we’re seeing, good for you, you’re free to play the game however you’d like…
I think another factor with an aging game is that the population aged as well. The bulk of players joined when they were maybe in mid to late 20s and Ingress was the new/cool thing. It was right when Google+ was released too. They got a huge shot in the arm from the tech community building excitement.
Those players have aged nine years.... Priorities change, people grew up and out. On both sides in my area there's very much the "old guard" of players who have control of the communities and they're well past established, matured, and stagnating. People talk a lot but don't do a lot anymore. As previously mentioned, it's just a few lazy large fields that persist because the effort vs. enjoyment payoff for people has played out. I'll call it an equilibrium, but using that word would make some think it's 50/50 even... No, it's more like a lot of areas where it's 90/10 or 100/0. It has slowly pushed players out.
My expectations for 2022:
1) We get a single anomaly worldwide, it will decide the fate of the storyline once and for all. Global (botting) challenges will make the story go a certain way again because they won't have learned from Osiris.
2) Higher and higher CMU cost for badges, with more and more released. It will follow the same kind of track as Pokemon Go events. Players will get burnt out.
3) The profit/loss statement will come in near the end of the year. Niantic will keep the game on life support to reach the year 10 anniversary. They'll have a HUGE cash grab in the store for it.
4) Year 10 anniversary will occur, within 3 months of it, Niantic will announce the shutdown of Ingress. It will be abrupt and there will be no grand sendoff because they don't want to spend money on a closing event or staffing. All your badges/stats/etc. will be gone forever.
My main issue is the poor communication from Niantic.
Players are pretty fed up with it.
I tend to agree with the year 10 shutdown comment.
The glory days of Ingress are gone and IMHO will never come back. We had vibrant communities, almost 24/7 intel watching, people willing to devote huge amounts of resources, both development and operation dependent.
Most old guard have long retired. The remaining old guard jealousy guard critical control lines and maintain dominance, whether it be blue or green over an area AND over tools, communities etc.
We see a few new players start. The biggest of them seem irrelevant, and not deemed worthy of concern. I've hardly ever seen a new player enthuse a faction to upset the local apple cart. If they start heading that way, they get crushed.
Biggest change happens when old player moves or visits another cell.
Cheating puts a lot of ppl off, old and new.
I think it is, more or less, status quo now.
Actually at the point I would prefer Niantic shut the game down.
I blame a lot of this on Prime and Niantic. Prime because the launch was just awful and barely worked. Niantic for years of silence, bad management of cheats and endless screwups.
(Many many players have quit over cheating and abuse).
Yes we had some nice new features. Enough to rekindle the game, no.
PS. I count myself as an old guard. I would quit and let the new players have at it, but none seem keen on maintaining key portals, paying web hosting costs, long distance travel or learning battle techniques etc.
what if they will make one grand anomaly and the game dies after? even a few years ago there was a drastic decrease in anomaly sites and standalaone missiondays, and unless they decide to reboot the whole lore/story and give us new lvls or new items perhaps? ingame mission objectives from ada/jarvis.... sadly it seems the game doesnt grow much really its hard getting new players hooked many feel the game is too confusing and not easy enough as pogo idk really what niantic has in plans for next year and forward...... i mean last time we got new lvls was in 2014... thats a longtime since something new was added to the coreplay..
Topic creator's question depends if they will create a positive topic in the next year.
If that was the case then Ingress would have died 2 years ago.
I do not agree that after year 10, Ingress will be gone. As it is still beta testing platform for new features which they can add to their other games and apps.
Ingress does need new story and lore. It has needed this for the last 2 years. Whether or not you personally followed it.
It was what gave Ingress a lot of life, regular story via YouTube, social media and live events
Niantic knows how many people are actually playing the game. That's more important than how many people post in a discussion group that they believe no one is playing.
Surely we and Niantic know - not to make long-term predictions based on the past two years' pandemic behavior.
We do get new players who stay. A couple months ago we met with a pair who started playing because they came across the Ingress anime series. They are L14 now.
I would argue Ingress did die 2 years ago but hey :)
Last two new recruits I actually got to check out Ingress both got hit with the latency issue. I'm sure one deleted the app already and went back to pogo. The other? Not sure yet. Hoping to run into that coworker next week and see if I can get her to try it some more.
I'm personally beyond frustrated with the lag issue. The lack of communication from Brian about it has made it seem like it's not something that's an important issue on their side of things.
I recently changed my review in the playstore to 2 stars. It will remain 2 stars until the lag issue is resolved. When it happens it will go up to 4 stars unless they manage to break the game worse when fixing the lag issue.
I used to think about where I was going to play Ingress at on the weekends or on time off work. Now it's barely a thought and wonder if it's worth it or if I'm just going to get frustrated by the lag.
I did tag @ace in comms about the lag during the Y9 double AP event. He actually responded which surprised me! He didn't seem to know about the issue. I'm sure he's aware of it now. I wonder if he can see any difference in activity of agents or the amount of agents who recently dumped their CORE subscriptions due to the issue. I still have mine but likely not for much longer. Only reason I have it is because I get 500 extra slots for keys which I don't use because I get frustrated with the lag when I'm trying to play.
But hey you're still here :)
Yes. Just. The main reason being the social aspect and orga side of things.
Whatever. If they don't listen then we don't play. Fair trade.
I hope they listen to people saying that changing the hack timer back is a bad idea, in fact t, I personally hope they listen to people saying to leave the gane as is just now (as in, not reverting the pandemic bonuses back) and instead improve upon them. But then, niantic hates listening to the people who play their games unless it's a massive twitter movement with youtubers backing it