Lord, how tired I am of people who do not keep up with the times. Now the average player is tempted by various frills offered by the gaming industry. A stupid game in which you have to grind numbers in your profile cannot interest any of the new players. The competitive part of our game has been dead for a long time due to cheaters, bots protecting portals, and the lack of a plot. But no, there is still more than one old player who will make a 100500 version of how to press the hack button or how the 4 types of shields differ.
Ingress is poor. Any donation dump will surpass him both in terms of the level of involvement of new players and the variety of content.
And instead of making ingress in a way that both old and new players would like, both the gaming community and the developers continue to play the old, worn-out phonograph record.
I think you can start the tutorial again at any level, right? It's under settings, section 'Agent Primer'.
However, just read some of the topics regarding the tutorial, you'll find it's still bugged. And like the video mentions, to retain players, the first experience should be good. So once a player opens up ingress and starts the tutorial, only to not get beyond deploying a resonator, they will never ever continue to play...
how long since prime came out? We've been having issues with the tutorial from the start. SMH.
Yeah, and I haven't even done the tutorial in Prime, but at least I could finish the tutorial and choose my faction in REDACTED. As far as I know, that was bugged for a long time during the beginning. And there are still issues at the moment.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you want a predatory micro-transaction game that will last 2 years then all that money you put in disappears as the game ends, there are plenty of other options.
If "Keeping up with the times" means being scammed by games designed to take your money and nothing else, then yeah count me out.
The best way to hook new players is to get the topic trending on unrelated social networking sites and mass media.
Niantic's advertisements on the web, in mass media, and on the streets are not very effective in attracting new players.
Recruiting friends of existing players is effective to a certain extent, but only a limited number of people can hook a large number of players.
A typical example of this is the buzz around the launch of Pokémon GO.
It has just been six years since the launch.
At the time of the launch, Pokémon appeared in the real world and there was a big fuss about it, and it was covered on social networking sites and TV, etc. I'm sure you all remember the large influx of players.
Naturally, there were many players who quit within a few months, but the huge influx of players meant that many people stayed.
In addition, there were several big waves of Ingress in Japan, which I would like to introduce.
In fact, all of them Niantic had nothing to do with.
We just ran the game.
The biggest wave was due to the GigaCF set up by ENL at the Darsana Tokyo Anomaly on December 13, 2014.
It became a trending topic when a tweet from an Anomaly participant was triggered and retweeted involving the general public who had nothing to do with the event.
Later, people who learned about Ingress through this story installed the game in droves, and many players remained.
They are commonly known as "Darsana children.
And I am one of them.
Also, and this is very interesting as a contrast, there was a similar wave at the launch of Pokémon GO.
At that time, there were numerous installations of Pokémon Trainers because someone mentioned that there were Pokémon in places where XM was floating around as a Pokémon Radar.
However, since the information was mostly false, very few players installed at this time remain.
On the contrary, there are more players left who started Ingress reluctantly around 2018 to increase their Pokéstops.
Unfortunately, however, many players are not following the rules of the game because they brought the wrong common sense of Pokémon GO.
The next wave was a popular radio DJ who introduced Ingress on his show.
Since he explained Ingress in an interesting way, many interested listeners installed the game, which has continued to this day.
Another similar wave was when a Japanese national TV station introduced Ingress in a news program.
It probably introduced some anomaly that took place in the United States.
It was reported that viewers who saw the news program installed the game.
So if Niantic wants to hook a lot of players, it is to market itself where it has influence.
Ingress is just getting started with voice AR.
And a new wave of AR glasses is just around the corner.
This might be a good time to have a TV show introduce it as the next generation of technology.
Hooking new players requires positive hooks, but it also requires eliminating issues that will turn players off. If new players are frustrated and annoyed by something like... oh, I dunno, I'll use recurring lag as a hypothetical... then they will probably just give up quickly.
I'd say the problem here is people acting like a PVP game and a sticker collecting game are the same thing. PoGo's gameplay is almost nothing like Ingress, except for a couple of copied concepts like spinning a pokestop for gear.
PVP should develop, and not be in one format for more than 5 years. It's boring. It's boring when the same dish is served every day for lunch. This kind of gameplay sucks.
- Barrymore, what do we have for breakfast today?
- Oatmeal, sir.
- What??? Again???
Now it's not pvp. The player base has shrunk, there is no one to play with in most small towns.
@NianticThia and Brian are well aware that Ingress is severely lacking in reason for PvP/FvF.
We have all drafted options, but none of those have been implemented.
I still believe that @NianticBrian has something planned for Ingress towards the end of the US summer season.
Story side of things is still largely missing, not helped with a Pandemic in the middle of having hard financial problems. I did present a solution to this, without costly live actors, only need a couple, and we did have one that lasted years when all other actors were let go.
I mean /cringe could introduce a Battle Beacon S20 (or lerger) cell board rewarding players on a faction more gear from portals in the small zone.
But not even that, the current Septicycle is great, but no reward for winning, which isn't great and becomes dull for most players.
There are a myriad of options to make Ingress better, but all those need a lot of $$$ to implement in a timely manner.
If you care about Ingress like I do, don't just sign up for CORE, but also to give them more money in other ways, swag packs or even just more CXM
If you care about Ingress like I do, don't just sign up for CORE, but also to give them more money in other ways, swag packs or even just more CXM
Hell no, they have to earn that money, right now doing that is telling them "hey, you're doing great with the game, here's some money, keep doing that" when clearly many of us are not happy with how things are going.
I think something like Quests is a way to hook new players. I know OG elitists are highly against it because it smells of PoGo. But it’s a common theme in many mobile games these days that keeps players engaged. I think the drone might have partially been an idea for engagement, but with no notification, it’s easy to forget. I also stopped using it as much once they could be booted home (I leave it at farms and hack once or twice a day whereas I used to actually explore with it).
Anyways, some sort of quest system would be great. Not only does it teach new agents how to play the game, but it’s a simple way to create active agents trying to complete quests for medals or gear. Keeping your sojourner streak alive isn’t “active.”
I also think staying hung up on stuff that worked 8+ years ago isn’t the way to keep things going forever. Mobile gaming and gaming in general was wildly different 8 years ago. I get some folks just can’t seem to give up the past, but if you don’t stay relevant, people will move on and newer agents will play for a day and go, this is kinda boring, now what…
I play a few location based games (yes including Pokémon GO) and there’s quests in those.
With Witcher: Monster Slayer, there’s weekly timed tasks & a few daily tasks to earn coins and items. With Jurassic World Alive, there’s monthly tasks even.
On Pokémon GO, there’s often tasks tied to events, which give rewards. There was a very short one this weekend, and I was close to finishing it, but didn’t have enough non-blue gyms to visit to do it. So it encouraged me to go back out and seek some further away gyms with a walk. What’s that phrase? “Time to move agent.” which it did make me do. I did play some Ingress on the way there and back but it wasn’t my main motivation for that.
If Ingress tied tasks to events, or had a few daily tasks, that would be great in getting players to go out. I don’t know if it would reward CMU, but maybe you get a boost to any hacks for 15 minutes or so by completing the weekly/special tasks?
I do not say both games are the same. I just said its the modernized version of it. Both games are based on the same tech and and pogo is just way better using this then ingress to keep people entertained.
To get Ingress back they need to make it better then pogo plus beat the pokemon bonus.
I highly doubt that will happen and thats why this game just sits in the shadows...
Additional i doubt its very hooking for new players to start the game in an completly empty space ( gets boring ) or the opposite a location where they get nuked from the map asap they show up. I guess its a lot of fun not beeing able to build anything because other do their best to prevent that with high level gear or getting strange chat messages making fun of them while the mobile is vibrating wild because someone is intentionally pinging you.
Some people i encountered are very hostile and i totally can understand why new players dont want to have their mobile ringing 24h because of that.
Never had such issues with pogo btw.
Today, with all these games on the market its very hard to hook players, if the first step into the game is bad, you will lose this person 99% to another game.
Both games are based on the same tech and and pogo is just way better using this then ingress to keep people entertained.
They're based on the same technology, but the concepts are vastly different, to the point that claiming it's the "modernised version" is the problem. Modernising a game means that it's the more advanced version of that concept. It's not. It's not the modernised version, they're built off completely differen concepts.
Otherwise FIFA 20 is the "modernised version" of Command and Conquer (1995). They're built of the same technology but vastly different concepts.
Comparing them as "Here's the modern version of that" is the fault. They are not the same game concept, they're not aimed at the same people, and the only similarity is the tech base, because Niantic builds platforms. Treating them as versions of the same thing is part of why we're in this situation, because that's the wrong way to do it.
Seems like we have different opinions about how equal these games are however that does not change the point that product b is way better delivering the platform to the masses and product a needs to adapt or vanishes.
Well yeah. PoGo is making money. So it gets development resources to keep that money going.
Ingress won't be able to make money without changing, but doesn't get more development resources without making money. It's been 10 years. Niantic isn't going to throw more money at it without quantiative evidence that it will see a return. However, monetizing Ingress like PoGo will also generate a massive backlash from the players and probably result in more people quitting than the game can sustain.
They're stuck in the Catch 22, because the player base rejects anything that costs money, and yet wants money spent on the game to get improvements. Part of the problem is their fault, not providing options that the playerbase will pay for, and part of the problem is our fault, for the kneejerk "NO PAY TO WIN" mentality that rejects anything except unprofitable single purchase Avatars and medals in the store.
Niantic needs to bite the bullet and put R8s and Kinetic Capsules in the store as a starting point.
weekly objectives or some bounty boards could also be a small motivation keep players once they reach lvl 8, most stop half way to lvl6 maybe wonder why...
also yeah if money is the issue why not give more kinetics the code for that should be not a problem
And Ingress is often described as "The most expensive free game ever", because of all the costs we put into things like satellite modems and travel.
But I agree that "pay for power" is a bad paradigm to introduce in such a way that not paying makes you significantly disadvantaged. The payments should be to allow you to ease the pain points, not skip the gameplay.
@Perringaiden And yet we have Apex boosts that are designed to let people skip half the gameplay to level up.
(And there's a PRIME DAY sale on them. Oh the irony. I bust my posterior at work all day for PD and then Niantic puts the one item I would never buy on sale.)
Levels are not power, beyond 8. That's one of the worst misconceptions. A level 8 player and a level 16 player differ in power only on the amount of XM before they have to use a power cube. Apex are not "pay for power" because AP is not power.
Selling X8s, or paying for the ability to deploy multiple R8s, or paying for a wider access distance, would be examples of paying for power. Debateably, CORE is pay for power, but inventory is a contributing factor to power, not power itself.
Comments
I haven't done the new tutorial for Ingress, so you'll need new players to have done that tutorial to comment here how good/bad it was
Lord, how tired I am of people who do not keep up with the times. Now the average player is tempted by various frills offered by the gaming industry. A stupid game in which you have to grind numbers in your profile cannot interest any of the new players. The competitive part of our game has been dead for a long time due to cheaters, bots protecting portals, and the lack of a plot. But no, there is still more than one old player who will make a 100500 version of how to press the hack button or how the 4 types of shields differ.
Ingress is poor. Any donation dump will surpass him both in terms of the level of involvement of new players and the variety of content.
And instead of making ingress in a way that both old and new players would like, both the gaming community and the developers continue to play the old, worn-out phonograph record.
I think you can start the tutorial again at any level, right? It's under settings, section 'Agent Primer'.
However, just read some of the topics regarding the tutorial, you'll find it's still bugged. And like the video mentions, to retain players, the first experience should be good. So once a player opens up ingress and starts the tutorial, only to not get beyond deploying a resonator, they will never ever continue to play...
how long since prime came out? We've been having issues with the tutorial from the start. SMH.
I mean the tutorial in redacted was far from perfect as well.
Yeah, and I haven't even done the tutorial in Prime, but at least I could finish the tutorial and choose my faction in REDACTED. As far as I know, that was bugged for a long time during the beginning. And there are still issues at the moment.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you want a predatory micro-transaction game that will last 2 years then all that money you put in disappears as the game ends, there are plenty of other options.
If "Keeping up with the times" means being scammed by games designed to take your money and nothing else, then yeah count me out.
The best way to hook new players is to get the topic trending on unrelated social networking sites and mass media.
Niantic's advertisements on the web, in mass media, and on the streets are not very effective in attracting new players.
Recruiting friends of existing players is effective to a certain extent, but only a limited number of people can hook a large number of players.
A typical example of this is the buzz around the launch of Pokémon GO.
It has just been six years since the launch.
At the time of the launch, Pokémon appeared in the real world and there was a big fuss about it, and it was covered on social networking sites and TV, etc. I'm sure you all remember the large influx of players.
Naturally, there were many players who quit within a few months, but the huge influx of players meant that many people stayed.
In addition, there were several big waves of Ingress in Japan, which I would like to introduce.
In fact, all of them Niantic had nothing to do with.
We just ran the game.
The biggest wave was due to the GigaCF set up by ENL at the Darsana Tokyo Anomaly on December 13, 2014.
It became a trending topic when a tweet from an Anomaly participant was triggered and retweeted involving the general public who had nothing to do with the event.
Later, people who learned about Ingress through this story installed the game in droves, and many players remained.
They are commonly known as "Darsana children.
And I am one of them.
Also, and this is very interesting as a contrast, there was a similar wave at the launch of Pokémon GO.
At that time, there were numerous installations of Pokémon Trainers because someone mentioned that there were Pokémon in places where XM was floating around as a Pokémon Radar.
However, since the information was mostly false, very few players installed at this time remain.
On the contrary, there are more players left who started Ingress reluctantly around 2018 to increase their Pokéstops.
Unfortunately, however, many players are not following the rules of the game because they brought the wrong common sense of Pokémon GO.
The next wave was a popular radio DJ who introduced Ingress on his show.
Since he explained Ingress in an interesting way, many interested listeners installed the game, which has continued to this day.
Another similar wave was when a Japanese national TV station introduced Ingress in a news program.
It probably introduced some anomaly that took place in the United States.
It was reported that viewers who saw the news program installed the game.
So if Niantic wants to hook a lot of players, it is to market itself where it has influence.
Ingress is just getting started with voice AR.
And a new wave of AR glasses is just around the corner.
This might be a good time to have a TV show introduce it as the next generation of technology.
With the recent layoff of the Niantic staff, good luck.
You cant modernize Ingress because Pokemon Go is already the modernized version of ingress. I think this is the big problem here.
What? It’s a completely different game? Only similarity is the poi database…
Hooking new players requires positive hooks, but it also requires eliminating issues that will turn players off. If new players are frustrated and annoyed by something like... oh, I dunno, I'll use recurring lag as a hypothetical... then they will probably just give up quickly.
I think this is the big problem here.
I'd say the problem here is people acting like a PVP game and a sticker collecting game are the same thing. PoGo's gameplay is almost nothing like Ingress, except for a couple of copied concepts like spinning a pokestop for gear.
PVP should develop, and not be in one format for more than 5 years. It's boring. It's boring when the same dish is served every day for lunch. This kind of gameplay sucks.
- Barrymore, what do we have for breakfast today?
- Oatmeal, sir.
- What??? Again???
Now it's not pvp. The player base has shrunk, there is no one to play with in most small towns.
@NianticThia and Brian are well aware that Ingress is severely lacking in reason for PvP/FvF.
We have all drafted options, but none of those have been implemented.
I still believe that @NianticBrian has something planned for Ingress towards the end of the US summer season.
Story side of things is still largely missing, not helped with a Pandemic in the middle of having hard financial problems. I did present a solution to this, without costly live actors, only need a couple, and we did have one that lasted years when all other actors were let go.
I mean /cringe could introduce a Battle Beacon S20 (or lerger) cell board rewarding players on a faction more gear from portals in the small zone.
But not even that, the current Septicycle is great, but no reward for winning, which isn't great and becomes dull for most players.
There are a myriad of options to make Ingress better, but all those need a lot of $$$ to implement in a timely manner.
If you care about Ingress like I do, don't just sign up for CORE, but also to give them more money in other ways, swag packs or even just more CXM
Wouldn't even recommend it to my family or friends.
If you care about Ingress like I do, don't just sign up for CORE, but also to give them more money in other ways, swag packs or even just more CXMHell no, they have to earn that money, right now doing that is telling them "hey, you're doing great with the game, here's some money, keep doing that" when clearly many of us are not happy with how things are going.
I think something like Quests is a way to hook new players. I know OG elitists are highly against it because it smells of PoGo. But it’s a common theme in many mobile games these days that keeps players engaged. I think the drone might have partially been an idea for engagement, but with no notification, it’s easy to forget. I also stopped using it as much once they could be booted home (I leave it at farms and hack once or twice a day whereas I used to actually explore with it).
Anyways, some sort of quest system would be great. Not only does it teach new agents how to play the game, but it’s a simple way to create active agents trying to complete quests for medals or gear. Keeping your sojourner streak alive isn’t “active.”
I also think staying hung up on stuff that worked 8+ years ago isn’t the way to keep things going forever. Mobile gaming and gaming in general was wildly different 8 years ago. I get some folks just can’t seem to give up the past, but if you don’t stay relevant, people will move on and newer agents will play for a day and go, this is kinda boring, now what…
I agree with @ZeroHecksGiven about the quests.
I play a few location based games (yes including Pokémon GO) and there’s quests in those.
With Witcher: Monster Slayer, there’s weekly timed tasks & a few daily tasks to earn coins and items. With Jurassic World Alive, there’s monthly tasks even.
On Pokémon GO, there’s often tasks tied to events, which give rewards. There was a very short one this weekend, and I was close to finishing it, but didn’t have enough non-blue gyms to visit to do it. So it encouraged me to go back out and seek some further away gyms with a walk. What’s that phrase? “Time to move agent.” which it did make me do. I did play some Ingress on the way there and back but it wasn’t my main motivation for that.
If Ingress tied tasks to events, or had a few daily tasks, that would be great in getting players to go out. I don’t know if it would reward CMU, but maybe you get a boost to any hacks for 15 minutes or so by completing the weekly/special tasks?
I do not say both games are the same. I just said its the modernized version of it. Both games are based on the same tech and and pogo is just way better using this then ingress to keep people entertained.
To get Ingress back they need to make it better then pogo plus beat the pokemon bonus.
I highly doubt that will happen and thats why this game just sits in the shadows...
Additional i doubt its very hooking for new players to start the game in an completly empty space ( gets boring ) or the opposite a location where they get nuked from the map asap they show up. I guess its a lot of fun not beeing able to build anything because other do their best to prevent that with high level gear or getting strange chat messages making fun of them while the mobile is vibrating wild because someone is intentionally pinging you.
Some people i encountered are very hostile and i totally can understand why new players dont want to have their mobile ringing 24h because of that.
Never had such issues with pogo btw.
Today, with all these games on the market its very hard to hook players, if the first step into the game is bad, you will lose this person 99% to another game.
Both games are based on the same tech and and pogo is just way better using this then ingress to keep people entertained.
They're based on the same technology, but the concepts are vastly different, to the point that claiming it's the "modernised version" is the problem. Modernising a game means that it's the more advanced version of that concept. It's not. It's not the modernised version, they're built off completely differen concepts.
Otherwise FIFA 20 is the "modernised version" of Command and Conquer (1995). They're built of the same technology but vastly different concepts.
Comparing them as "Here's the modern version of that" is the fault. They are not the same game concept, they're not aimed at the same people, and the only similarity is the tech base, because Niantic builds platforms. Treating them as versions of the same thing is part of why we're in this situation, because that's the wrong way to do it.
Seems like we have different opinions about how equal these games are however that does not change the point that product b is way better delivering the platform to the masses and product a needs to adapt or vanishes.
Well yeah. PoGo is making money. So it gets development resources to keep that money going.
Ingress won't be able to make money without changing, but doesn't get more development resources without making money. It's been 10 years. Niantic isn't going to throw more money at it without quantiative evidence that it will see a return. However, monetizing Ingress like PoGo will also generate a massive backlash from the players and probably result in more people quitting than the game can sustain.
They're stuck in the Catch 22, because the player base rejects anything that costs money, and yet wants money spent on the game to get improvements. Part of the problem is their fault, not providing options that the playerbase will pay for, and part of the problem is our fault, for the kneejerk "NO PAY TO WIN" mentality that rejects anything except unprofitable single purchase Avatars and medals in the store.
Niantic needs to bite the bullet and put R8s and Kinetic Capsules in the store as a starting point.
weekly objectives or some bounty boards could also be a small motivation keep players once they reach lvl 8, most stop half way to lvl6 maybe wonder why...
also yeah if money is the issue why not give more kinetics the code for that should be not a problem
When I think about it, "no pay to win" is a rather odd thing to insist on.
Ingress was "pay to win" long before there was an in-app store: I paid with my time.
Is it actually any more frustrating to go up against someone who can spend 10x the time on the game as you versus someone who can spend 10x the cash?
And Ingress is often described as "The most expensive free game ever", because of all the costs we put into things like satellite modems and travel.
But I agree that "pay for power" is a bad paradigm to introduce in such a way that not paying makes you significantly disadvantaged. The payments should be to allow you to ease the pain points, not skip the gameplay.
@Perringaiden And yet we have Apex boosts that are designed to let people skip half the gameplay to level up.
(And there's a PRIME DAY sale on them. Oh the irony. I bust my posterior at work all day for PD and then Niantic puts the one item I would never buy on sale.)
Levels are not power, beyond 8. That's one of the worst misconceptions. A level 8 player and a level 16 player differ in power only on the amount of XM before they have to use a power cube. Apex are not "pay for power" because AP is not power.
Selling X8s, or paying for the ability to deploy multiple R8s, or paying for a wider access distance, would be examples of paying for power. Debateably, CORE is pay for power, but inventory is a contributing factor to power, not power itself.
Many agents are willing to pay a fee, at least if it is a great new addition.
However, if you offer a pay-to-win proposition, as you do, many agents will not like it.
For example, Niantic once added a new feature to their scanner that shows UPC/UPV/Scout/Drone status.
This was free. Most players liked this new feature.
But at the same time, many said that Niantic was not doing a good business by not making this feature a subscription.
In fact, I too thought it would have been better to pay for it. And I thought it was worth the $5 or so.
And with new and expanded features like this, many agents will accept the fact that there is a fee.
Worst pay 2 win in my opinion is the +500 storage in the monthly sub