I don't know if it's been pointed out yet but "just use a heatsink" relies on there being open mod slots. At least where I am it's pretty common for all of the mod slots to be full.
LOLs, I have used countless flip cards to put on VRHS and multi hacks, precisely to farm keys, flip them back an hour later, then make lots and lots of layers
Stating that having a 90-minute cooldown preference automatically stereotype agents out there as being lazy is not right. Being able to farm keys or gears at a faster pace allows lone wolves out there to move faster and complete their own missions within a timeline. The lone wolves out there are doing the attacking and fielding by themselves, and not relying on bots while checking the current fielding state, and unblocking the potential links. Call it multi-tasking and art of war strategy in real-time, and not looking for a dinner date or a penpal like you, 5-minute cooldown Cassanova. The next time you start commenting about agents being lazy, try to walk in their shoes. This is why newbies lose their interest and motivation in the game in the first place. It's because veteran players like you stereotype new players and end up eating them. #RespectNewbies
I'm with @DrHydrosaur here. Thinking it should be 300 seconds isn't a case for 300 seconds.
I also don't see how flipping a portal, knocking mods off, then flipping it back an hour later is a net win.
Mostly, though, I don't understand how standing around waiting for five minutes improves gameplay in any way. Using gear is the most fun thing. Farming it can be fun or it can be toil. Waiting for long periods of time? That contributes nothing to gameplay or fun.
Nonsense. Past two years were not unbalanced because of reduced countdown. You’ve listed no reasons, other than “it wrecked that other game” which has nothing to do with ingress.
As an advocate for a 90s cooldown time, when would I agree it becomes too fast?
For me, it’s the point where the difference between a RHS and VRHS is less than about 10 s. That works out to a 50 s base cooldown (35 with CHS, 25 with RHS, 15 VRHS).
Another way to look at it is what base cooldown allows you to hack a L8 portal without pause with a single RHS? That’s also about 50 s (assuming about a 25 s cycle to do a non-complex 5-glyph).
Based on that, I could agree that anything less than 60 s base cooldown is too fast.
Which to me makes 90-120 s a good balance. Not so slow it drags the game down, but not so fast VRHS are the same as RHS.
I don't know if you meant for that to be funny or not, but I sure laughed out loud. Also, I find it hilarious how you say Pokémon Go players are like "gimme gimme, I want it all NOW!" when that's exactly what a good chunk of Ingress players do when they see events that don't reward medals.
90 second cooldown has nothing to do with players being lazy. 90 second cooldown has everything to do with players not getting bored with the endless waiting around to hack a key or multiple. I really wish at times like these Niantic would release global statistics at the end of the year for all the various categories there are just so everyone can have a better comparison on how many more players microfield now vs when the cooldown was still 5 minutes. Your argument that heatsinks are useless now makes me wonder if you really even microfield.
FYI: Your post got downvoted because your "argument" on why 5 minute cooldown is better than 90 second was... well, there wasn't really one, and it was more like "because I said so".
It makes me wonder if Grogyan even experienced farming at least 20 keys from one anchor with a temperature of nearly 100 F for about 10-15 minutes or being bitten by bugs in another situation? It could have been worse without the heat sinks and the 90 seconds cooldown in between hacks.
Even with 90 second cooldown, I find myself groaning while waiting to farm keys if the portal doesn't have a heat sink 😂 5 minutes? Just sho0t me. Been there, done that, don't wanna go back.
Ok, now you're just pushing it, pokemon go players wanted to keep a qol change do thats bad? So anyone wanting to keep a qol change is also bad?
What balance dies standing around for 5 minutes add? It means less playing time, less interacting with the game board etc. As I've been saying, there are waaaaay more pros for 90 seconds than "cons" and you keep ignoring those pros
because when you work, it's so nice to waste half of your game time on waiting 5 min to glyph.
90 sec just let us have more time to field.
currently with vrhs and vrmh you can farm 20+ keys in 5min and spend the rest of your time actually fielding instead of just sitting and getting bored.
Or only unemployed agents should be able to field a lot ?
When the players demanded for remote raids to be permanent.
Or how about when players demanded the range to be increased to 80m.
The Pokémon GO game balance, has been so wrecked, it is irrevocably damaged.
The same thing is happening here, players are demanding to have 90 seconds cool down, but do not respect the game balance. Or respecting the Ingress developers, and not providing ANY suggestions for a rebalance.
How many times are you all going to realize you're saying the same thing over and over again with neither side changing their stance? What are you gaining from doing this?
Or: Is there a way to turn off notifications for a particular thread so I stop getting this garbage pushed to me?
I am gaining players to have a hard look at the game balance of a MMOPRTS game.
Personally played lots of other strategy games, and understanding the nuances why devs have things they way they do.
Same thing here, the Ingress development team put a lot of time and effort into balancing the game. Which has to have trade-offs, it is the nature of Strategy Games. Players have to respect the developers and understand why they did what they did.
@Grogyan I've been saying for years that the five-minute cooldown is too long. Using gear is interesting, exciting, and creative. Farming gear is, for the most part, just drudgery that needs to be done in order to use gear. Time is the most valuable resource in the game, and a 300-second cooldown shifts the balance of the game too much toward the drudgery of farming gear and away from the fun parts of using that gear.
I think a 90-second cooldown improves the balance of the game. One of the reasons that I would like the shorter cooldown to be permanent is exactly that I respect the balance of the game. My suggestion for a rebalance is that it's already been achieved. Reasonable minds can differ, of course, on what the right balance is but the overwhelming consensus here is that shorter cooldowns contribute to a more balanced game.
I understand the drudgery aspect of the game, why it is there, it isn't nice.
Sometimes it feels like the cool down should be shorter. However it shouldn't be. Even if the cool down were hypothetically at 4 minutes, it changes the entire game balance. At 5 minutes it is just right.
90 seconds, lovely to have for events, as a thing to help with boredom during covid-19 lockdowns. In some places of the world they have gone back into lockdown again.
However I still feel that the cooldowns should return to 5 minutes without mods.
If you are one of the lucky few to have a couch portal, it is pretty easy to flip it, to remove shields and defensive items, to put on hack mods. I've been there, and it is fine like that.
You're begging the question: What exactly is not balanced with a 90 second cooldown?
Heat sinks serve the same purpose for me as they did with a 300 second cooldown: Commons reset burn out, and Rares and Very Rares significantly reduce the amount of time I have to wait. And waiting around is generally not enjoyable for me unless I'm at a portal with a beautiful vista.
Everyone benefits from hacking gear with less waiting.
Given that destroyers can curb stomp an area in far less time than it takes to build it up, the builders are a little closer to being on equal footing the less they have to wait around hacking keys.
Where people are using them, is for rapid Hacking.
Therefore, heatsinks, XMPs and Resonators to be rebalanced to mitigate for a 90 second cool down.
At the very least heatsinks would need to be reworked, and I ask you to suggest to the devs a reasonable rework of them to enable the game balance to a better place.
So far, only myself has suggested this,
Removing the cool down between Hacks, retain the removal of the 5 hours between the max Hacks per 5 hours.
Change the the heatsinks to enable quick Hacking more than once
Commons - additional 1, for a total of 2 per 5 hours
Rare - additional, say 4, for a total of 7 per 5 hours
Very Rare - additional, say 8, for a total of 9 per 5 hours
@Grogyan the 90 second cooldown has made the game faster, not easier.
Nothing has changed to the balance. An XMP does the same damage as it did before.
And if you are worried the 90 seconds made for easier destroys (due to more XMPs), it also made it easier for deploys (more resonators), balancing it out again.
IF (and this is a big IF as I don't see it necessary) they want/need to change heatsinks, I would prefer them to change the burnout timer instead of anything else.
@Grogyan If people with couch portals are the 1%ers of Ingress then I'm the 0.001%. (-:
Couches are the place where the hack timer is the least relevant-- even if you drop a VRMH on hacking once every five minutes burnout takes 75 minutes plus the overhead of hacking, let's call it 90 minutes total, of the four hour burnout timer. Adding a heat sink might might be a convenience but when you're at home you can just hack, set a timer, do something else. (And, honestly, I don't farm my couches nearly as often as my local opponents think. I can go for days at a time where I do little more than score the daily hack from them.)
I'm all for respectful debate on the topic and I'm always open to hearing different perspectives but your argument seems to boil down to "I think the hack timer should go back to five minutes." I haven't really heard you make a positive argument in favor of longer hack timers. What do you think slowing down gear acquisition adds to the game? What do you gain by shifting the balance of the game more toward drudgery and less toward interesting play?
Do you think longer hack timers are good or bad for player onboarding and retention?
I see no need to suggest a rework for heat sinks because I find them just as useful and valuable now as I did with a 300 second cooldown. They are by no means redundant to me.
If you want to talk about how XMPs do the "right" amount of damage and resonators have the "right" amount of health for a 300 second cooldown but not a 90 second cooldown, maybe you can walk us all through the math and elaborate on what's so "right."
Shortening the cooldown affects the availability of all gear equally. There's no change in the relative numbers of XMPs and resonators floating around out there. They haven't become stronger or weaker in relation to each other.
Maybe you disagree with the pace of the game at 90 seconds, but it hasn't become "easier." The core challenge of the game comes from making a link between two portals, which depends on a several things being true simultaneously: namely, the state of the two portals being aligned to your faction, there being no blocking links in between those two portals, and there being no field covering the portal being linked from. This mechanic has not changed with the cooldown. Clearing a lane for a long link takes as much effort and planning as it did before (player numbers not withstanding).
Comments
I don't know if it's been pointed out yet but "just use a heatsink" relies on there being open mod slots. At least where I am it's pretty common for all of the mod slots to be full.
Because Ingress is a strategy game.
We have flip cards to deal with that.
Imo, that's a waste of a flip card, just to try and get a heat sink on. Flip card are waaaaaay more valuable than a heat sink
Ingress is not pokemon go, please stop treating it like it should be.
Pokémon GO players are like, gimmie gimmie, I want it all NOW!
It wrecked that game.
5 minute cool downs is where it should be, less with heatsinks, even better with multi Hacks. It's a great synergy.
Perfectly balanced play.
Keeping it at 90 seconds shows how many lazy people there are.
Watch this get downvoted, which proves this point
LOLs, I have used countless flip cards to put on VRHS and multi hacks, precisely to farm keys, flip them back an hour later, then make lots and lots of layers
You're still not explaining how a 5 min cooldown is better than 90 secs. I could slightly reword the argument above as:
“90 s cool downs is where it should be, less with heatsinks, even better with multi Hacks. It's a great synergy.
Perfectly balanced play.”
How exactly is 90 s unbalanced vs 300 s?
The 90 s argument is simple, less standing around doing nothing in game.
Stating that having a 90-minute cooldown preference automatically stereotype agents out there as being lazy is not right. Being able to farm keys or gears at a faster pace allows lone wolves out there to move faster and complete their own missions within a timeline. The lone wolves out there are doing the attacking and fielding by themselves, and not relying on bots while checking the current fielding state, and unblocking the potential links. Call it multi-tasking and art of war strategy in real-time, and not looking for a dinner date or a penpal like you, 5-minute cooldown Cassanova. The next time you start commenting about agents being lazy, try to walk in their shoes. This is why newbies lose their interest and motivation in the game in the first place. It's because veteran players like you stereotype new players and end up eating them. #RespectNewbies
I'm with @DrHydrosaur here. Thinking it should be 300 seconds isn't a case for 300 seconds.
I also don't see how flipping a portal, knocking mods off, then flipping it back an hour later is a net win.
Mostly, though, I don't understand how standing around waiting for five minutes improves gameplay in any way. Using gear is the most fun thing. Farming it can be fun or it can be toil. Waiting for long periods of time? That contributes nothing to gameplay or fun.
Nonsense. Past two years were not unbalanced because of reduced countdown. You’ve listed no reasons, other than “it wrecked that other game” which has nothing to do with ingress.
Super cold out so I keep coming back here …
As an advocate for a 90s cooldown time, when would I agree it becomes too fast?
For me, it’s the point where the difference between a RHS and VRHS is less than about 10 s. That works out to a 50 s base cooldown (35 with CHS, 25 with RHS, 15 VRHS).
Another way to look at it is what base cooldown allows you to hack a L8 portal without pause with a single RHS? That’s also about 50 s (assuming about a 25 s cycle to do a non-complex 5-glyph).
Based on that, I could agree that anything less than 60 s base cooldown is too fast.
Which to me makes 90-120 s a good balance. Not so slow it drags the game down, but not so fast VRHS are the same as RHS.
You realize Pokemon Go has the spinning for Pokestops and gyms at 5 minutes, right?
It will be interesting to see which way this will fit your argument.
I don't know if you meant for that to be funny or not, but I sure laughed out loud. Also, I find it hilarious how you say Pokémon Go players are like "gimme gimme, I want it all NOW!" when that's exactly what a good chunk of Ingress players do when they see events that don't reward medals.
90 second cooldown has nothing to do with players being lazy. 90 second cooldown has everything to do with players not getting bored with the endless waiting around to hack a key or multiple. I really wish at times like these Niantic would release global statistics at the end of the year for all the various categories there are just so everyone can have a better comparison on how many more players microfield now vs when the cooldown was still 5 minutes. Your argument that heatsinks are useless now makes me wonder if you really even microfield.
FYI: Your post got downvoted because your "argument" on why 5 minute cooldown is better than 90 second was... well, there wasn't really one, and it was more like "because I said so".
It makes me wonder if Grogyan even experienced farming at least 20 keys from one anchor with a temperature of nearly 100 F for about 10-15 minutes or being bitten by bugs in another situation? It could have been worse without the heat sinks and the 90 seconds cooldown in between hacks.
Even with 90 second cooldown, I find myself groaning while waiting to farm keys if the portal doesn't have a heat sink 😂 5 minutes? Just sho0t me. Been there, done that, don't wanna go back.
Ok, now you're just pushing it, pokemon go players wanted to keep a qol change do thats bad? So anyone wanting to keep a qol change is also bad?
What balance dies standing around for 5 minutes add? It means less playing time, less interacting with the game board etc. As I've been saying, there are waaaaay more pros for 90 seconds than "cons" and you keep ignoring those pros
because when you work, it's so nice to waste half of your game time on waiting 5 min to glyph.
90 sec just let us have more time to field.
currently with vrhs and vrmh you can farm 20+ keys in 5min and spend the rest of your time actually fielding instead of just sitting and getting bored.
Or only unemployed agents should be able to field a lot ?
Have a full time time as well, the 5 min cool down was never an issue in the previous 7 years.
When the players demanded for remote raids to be permanent.
Or how about when players demanded the range to be increased to 80m.
The Pokémon GO game balance, has been so wrecked, it is irrevocably damaged.
The same thing is happening here, players are demanding to have 90 seconds cool down, but do not respect the game balance. Or respecting the Ingress developers, and not providing ANY suggestions for a rebalance.
This is disgusting and disrespectful.
Been there multiple times, never had an issue, even when being bitten by mosquitoes, it's all part of the adventure. 😉
How many times are you all going to realize you're saying the same thing over and over again with neither side changing their stance? What are you gaining from doing this?
Or: Is there a way to turn off notifications for a particular thread so I stop getting this garbage pushed to me?
I am gaining players to have a hard look at the game balance of a MMOPRTS game.
Personally played lots of other strategy games, and understanding the nuances why devs have things they way they do.
Same thing here, the Ingress development team put a lot of time and effort into balancing the game. Which has to have trade-offs, it is the nature of Strategy Games. Players have to respect the developers and understand why they did what they did.
@Grogyan I've been saying for years that the five-minute cooldown is too long. Using gear is interesting, exciting, and creative. Farming gear is, for the most part, just drudgery that needs to be done in order to use gear. Time is the most valuable resource in the game, and a 300-second cooldown shifts the balance of the game too much toward the drudgery of farming gear and away from the fun parts of using that gear.
I think a 90-second cooldown improves the balance of the game. One of the reasons that I would like the shorter cooldown to be permanent is exactly that I respect the balance of the game. My suggestion for a rebalance is that it's already been achieved. Reasonable minds can differ, of course, on what the right balance is but the overwhelming consensus here is that shorter cooldowns contribute to a more balanced game.
@Hosette respectfully disagree.
I understand the drudgery aspect of the game, why it is there, it isn't nice.
Sometimes it feels like the cool down should be shorter. However it shouldn't be. Even if the cool down were hypothetically at 4 minutes, it changes the entire game balance. At 5 minutes it is just right.
90 seconds, lovely to have for events, as a thing to help with boredom during covid-19 lockdowns. In some places of the world they have gone back into lockdown again.
However I still feel that the cooldowns should return to 5 minutes without mods.
If you are one of the lucky few to have a couch portal, it is pretty easy to flip it, to remove shields and defensive items, to put on hack mods. I've been there, and it is fine like that.
You're begging the question: What exactly is not balanced with a 90 second cooldown?
Heat sinks serve the same purpose for me as they did with a 300 second cooldown: Commons reset burn out, and Rares and Very Rares significantly reduce the amount of time I have to wait. And waiting around is generally not enjoyable for me unless I'm at a portal with a beautiful vista.
Everyone benefits from hacking gear with less waiting.
Given that destroyers can curb stomp an area in far less time than it takes to build it up, the builders are a little closer to being on equal footing the less they have to wait around hacking keys.
@Toxoplasmolly makes it is too easy.
Which is counterintuitive
Makes Heatsinks as they are redundant.
Makes XMPs too powerful
Makes Resonators too weak
Where people are using them, is for rapid Hacking.
Therefore, heatsinks, XMPs and Resonators to be rebalanced to mitigate for a 90 second cool down.
At the very least heatsinks would need to be reworked, and I ask you to suggest to the devs a reasonable rework of them to enable the game balance to a better place.
So far, only myself has suggested this,
Removing the cool down between Hacks, retain the removal of the 5 hours between the max Hacks per 5 hours.
Change the the heatsinks to enable quick Hacking more than once
Commons - additional 1, for a total of 2 per 5 hours
Rare - additional, say 4, for a total of 7 per 5 hours
Very Rare - additional, say 8, for a total of 9 per 5 hours
@Grogyan the 90 second cooldown has made the game faster, not easier.
Nothing has changed to the balance. An XMP does the same damage as it did before.
And if you are worried the 90 seconds made for easier destroys (due to more XMPs), it also made it easier for deploys (more resonators), balancing it out again.
IF (and this is a big IF as I don't see it necessary) they want/need to change heatsinks, I would prefer them to change the burnout timer instead of anything else.
@Grogyan If people with couch portals are the 1%ers of Ingress then I'm the 0.001%. (-:
Couches are the place where the hack timer is the least relevant-- even if you drop a VRMH on hacking once every five minutes burnout takes 75 minutes plus the overhead of hacking, let's call it 90 minutes total, of the four hour burnout timer. Adding a heat sink might might be a convenience but when you're at home you can just hack, set a timer, do something else. (And, honestly, I don't farm my couches nearly as often as my local opponents think. I can go for days at a time where I do little more than score the daily hack from them.)
I'm all for respectful debate on the topic and I'm always open to hearing different perspectives but your argument seems to boil down to "I think the hack timer should go back to five minutes." I haven't really heard you make a positive argument in favor of longer hack timers. What do you think slowing down gear acquisition adds to the game? What do you gain by shifting the balance of the game more toward drudgery and less toward interesting play?
Do you think longer hack timers are good or bad for player onboarding and retention?
@Hosette I don't have a couch portal.
I've made several positive arguments towards 5 minutes
Effort for reward is higher
Respect the need for heatsinks to manage time.
Creates more value for heatsinks
XMPs deal the right amount of damage for the time to get them
L6 to L8 Resonators have the right amount of health for the time to get them
90s
Effort for reward is lower
Heatsinks essentially redundant, ie less value
XMPs become too powerful
L6 to L8 Resonators become weaker
90s too fast, 300s too slow
180s shpuld be perfect
Oh btw @Grogyan this isnt Catan where you can whinge to an extreme.....
I see no need to suggest a rework for heat sinks because I find them just as useful and valuable now as I did with a 300 second cooldown. They are by no means redundant to me.
If you want to talk about how XMPs do the "right" amount of damage and resonators have the "right" amount of health for a 300 second cooldown but not a 90 second cooldown, maybe you can walk us all through the math and elaborate on what's so "right."
Shortening the cooldown affects the availability of all gear equally. There's no change in the relative numbers of XMPs and resonators floating around out there. They haven't become stronger or weaker in relation to each other.
Maybe you disagree with the pace of the game at 90 seconds, but it hasn't become "easier." The core challenge of the game comes from making a link between two portals, which depends on a several things being true simultaneously: namely, the state of the two portals being aligned to your faction, there being no blocking links in between those two portals, and there being no field covering the portal being linked from. This mechanic has not changed with the cooldown. Clearing a lane for a long link takes as much effort and planning as it did before (player numbers not withstanding).