Did Niantic forget what "Anomaly" means? Spoiler: NOT BATTLE BEACONS
Anomaly is about running as hell, is about people on bicycles that search a way to be there faster than professional runners. Anomaly is strategy about an important portal to set players that cannot move a lot due to physical barriers.
Anomaly is having dozens of players at home telling you where move and follow them with no exitation.
Anomaly is be with friends and make a team, becoming in a second friend of whoever has the same faction shirt because the portal is more important.
Anomaly is a lot of things, that ask organisation and strategy.
Anomaly is also trust on your team leader who has more experience than you and will do the best for the team, and the meanwhile will listen to you for any problem.
(c) @GigaThunder
ANOMALY
IS NOT
THE DAMM
BATTLE BEACONS
Comments
💯 agree about that.
At first when I saw it, I laughed because it was at the point so embarrassing that it's not just sad, it's funny.
A little time later this is not funny anymore. People waited for a REAL Anomaly for 3 years. Now Niantic calls these battle beacon embarrassments "anomalies". Are we going to see an Anomaly from Ingress 1.0 anytime in the future at this point? This was my most cherished expectation and news about Superposition devastated it.
I don't understand why I should keep following news about Ingress at this point.
The old anomaly format sucked in a lot of ways. It was pretty much a nose count unless the turn out was pretty even. I liked to say that Niantic could score most anomalies by requiring everyone to show up for the photo at the beginning and counting noses. If one side outnumbered the other by 10% or more then they could just aware the anomaly to them and people could go have fun for a few hours rather than fighting a battle that had already been decided.
I'm not arguing that battle beacons are better, just that the old anomalies weren't a utopian ideal.
Please let Munich be Munich. Let the battle be on site. Make it special. Agents will travel. If the medal can be obtained from home, that is what will happen and the value of an anomaly medal will be close to zero.
I booked for Munich. Do not make me cancel it. Please provide a experience where we can talk about, even years later.
They weren't perfect, but miles better then BBs.
@Hosette not true, there was Nuremberg and a yes I expect a little more than a BattleBeacon as I want to meet friends from abroad. So at least an Anomaly badge, better an Anomaly that will not have Battle Beacon and Portal Scans, but action ;)
@WeeFreeFang What is not true, my statement about nose counts? I believe it is true that nearly every anomaly where the difference in turnout was greater than 10% was won by the faction with larger numbers.
What is the practical difference between battle beacons on portals and cluster ornaments on portals?
I think the biggest problem with the battle beacons is the category multipliers that incentivize the outnumbered team to not fight and walk away. Nerf the category multipliers and there will be more of a battle.
OTOH, one positive thing I'll say about battle beacons is having the countdown clock visual is a potential QOL improvement for ground teams. I've seen many people at anomalies waste gear not knowing that the measurement period was over.
@kiloecholima Your point about category multipliers is well-taken.
On the other hand, perhaps it's a good thing? I've been on a lot of anomaly teams where we fought tooth and nail for a portal that we had a 0% chance of ever getting down because of the combination of being outnumbered and remote rechargers. Being completely ineffective is the #1 most seriously un-fun part of anomaly play for me. Wouldn't it be a more interesting competition all-around if the outnumbered team had an incentive to go do something different rather than continuing to bang their heads against a brick wall of a portal?
Team leads should see the situation are redirect efforts/call for backup.
If there is no backup available in the given timeframe, then yeah walk away.
Go try another volatile / shard / linkstar or whatever. If it's a critical one, then maybe you get lucky, reinforcements arrive or whatever.
Lag can be a massive issue with this. Sometimes you just don't know if you are winning or losing due to all the delayed actions.
Side note: Battle Beacons as a mechanism for showing which portals are in the playbox and outside the playbox, at an old school anomaly, is a great improvement. Especially for the scoring window part.
But that requires every portal within the playbox to get a battle beacon instead of spreading them out over every 5th portal across a far larger area.