It may be OK in a warm climate but try hanging around in a Canadian or Northern European latitude in the Winter with freezing wet hands waiting for a portal cooldown ... agony and torture!
The folks in NIA San Francisco need to take the highway further north into Canada and try playing the game in the REAL COLD !!!
All of the timers in the game are arbitrary, we know this, but having now experienced the 90-second base cooldown and how it prompted more play over the past couple years, reverting to five minutes is a considerable step backwards.
While faster hack times for portals controlled by the agent's faction is clever, I think it's the result of cognitive dissonance than an actual review. It means they understand five minutes is too long, and they want to do "something" about that, but the frustration is they already did the something. And it worked! The 90-second cooldown encouraged more agents to use more portals, and allows for clever things like stealth-hacking portals for field operations without looking like one is loitering at a random location.
Leave it alone.
If that's still not good enough, try giving the 90-second cooldown to all Recursed agents. It gives that considerable effort another worthwhile perk.
Lets hope Niantic sees whats been written here and have a change of mind. I dont any player wants the change of cooldown to revert.
I wont stop playing, I wont cancel my core, but the game will be less fun and will for sure have a much lower tempo. The exprerience, of beeing drawn into the game, to shut out all other impressions and only to focus on the target or goal ahead.. thats a big part for me when playing ingress, and that will be broken up. (And nooooo I am sure to keep a close eye to my enviroment and to look out for danger)
Global battle beacon "anomalys"... THATS the worst decision over the last two years.
Not this expected change. Its even better than just back to 300 sec overall. HS now finally have a reason to exist again. Just use an RHS and there is your all wished 90sec CD. "Problem" solved.
Its just 4min difference to wait for an full burnout, if you want to play more and get more keys to be able to create more fields, thats really no big deal.
I'm going to say the negative backlash is expected given how everyone is used to the current CD for the hacks during the pandemic. It has came to a point we are too used to this CD that it sounds like we forgot how it was like to play in the past with 5 mins CD.
Nevertheless, this change is inevitable to revert back to original system. Given how heat sink are basically just used for reset hacks, the effects of the item is render useless from it's original intentions. With the 90s CD, Agents don't see a point to put a heatsink during farms to speed up hacks and will rather put a multi-hack instead to fully maximize the farming session within a group (unless you want to reset for yourself in the farm session).
However, we are not reverting fully back to the original CD with having faction aligned portals having reduced CD (3 mins per hack when you aligned to your own faction) . Base on this, it seems that Niantic is encouraging agents to capture/align portals to their faction so as to benefit in capturing/aligning.
I assume in the future we will get to see 90s CD returning on special occasions as a perk but regardless, we will need to accept this game change for balancing the game.
I have been using my vrhs and rhs during the pandemic. Heatsink doesnt only reverts burnout and lower the cooldown. It has other desirable effects also. And 90 second is still to loong, my sofas has double heatsinks, vr and r, to have a good speed but to an effordabel cost. I could easy go for antoher heatsink, but it will cost more than it will be doing something good since it doesnt stack.
This is a stupid decision made by people who have no clue what's going on in the field. They honestly don't even care about the community's and the agents. Maybe it's time to stop.
Theres been several threads about it reverting with the vast majority saying they did t want it reverted, they ig owed all of them. Doubt it will change now unless somethi g gets seriously done (massive drop in players, massive drop in subscriptions, passive aggressive things done in game to show dislike of this) but even then, I wouldn't hold my breath
I used heat sinks all the time, it saved time even still, I loved bei g able to throw vrhs and vrmh on a portal and hacking like mad for under 15 minutes
Other effects than BO reset and lower CD? what should that be? +1 on your engineer badge and some AP? Because probably the half or even more of all deploeyd heatsinks are only deployed for these reasons since 2 years now.
You have to wait at home on your 2 home portals for some more seconds? What a first world problem... You should see this as an big privilege and dont complain about not beeing able to hack them instantly after each other to get your BO faster done...
The heatsink also increase the probability to gain more items per itemroll. And that is probably why I use it so often on the field, to increase the amount of keys. Its s big different between 1 and 3 items on the roll. I do get cooldown between hacks even thou I use double heatsink. But I prefer 20 seconds, instead of 40?
The folks in NIA San Francisco need to take the highway further north into Canada and try playing the game in the REAL COLD !!!
lmao nobody at Niantic office has played ingress for years now or else they wouldn't have made all the awful UX decisions in the prime client.
And i see the forum still quotes bright white and has no option to go back to normal white color scheme and how long we've been asking for this? ah but let's implement dumpster fire instead, that literally nobody asked for.
Whats weird to me, the cool down increases the split between fractions - especially when one fraction is on the downside, because of less people. Not that hacking enemy portals gives less items, now it even takes longer then hacking your own.
Usually one team side easily wins (res or enl) while the one the weaker one goes at disadvantage. Usually these difference in holding cities comes from the amount of players one fraction has. Imagine living in a city where one fraction can easily build level 8 portals while you cant even bring a single field to last a weak due to heavy attack - not for a while, but for 4-5 years+. This just feels like a kick in the knee and cities where one fraction is holding the upper hand.
I would suggest to decrease hack time on enemy portals while leaving the hack time of those in your home territory at the full time, if the times have to be reverted at all, which doesn't feel good at all.
It was the best change to the game. We don't have any Pokemons to catch around the portal while waiting 5 minutes for its cooldown. We just have time to get bored and find other games.
What's the point of making us spend more time farming for the same results.
Worst decision ever. Might be the one that finally makes me leave the game
Currently I am struggling to find the time to play, besides finding the time I value my time and do not wish to waste time at portals waiting for some timer to run down while doing so.
I however have just cancelled my core subscription that has been active since the day core came out and changed my 5* review to a 1* review in the play store. I doubt my single act will have any impact nor any employee of Niantic is impressed by this, still did it because that is all I can do to voice my opinion in a way that will impact any statistic that does matter to Niantic.
I doubt any discussion in this forum will change anything. Niantic is so used to an upset player base with Ingress that their only response will be to just sit the storm out and wait for it to pass.
Please don't do it @Niantic_NS1 you will lose even more players, the CD was always way too long, nobody wants to go back to waiting 20 mins to burn a portal, the game is slow as it is don't make it too slow to play
Comments
The change in the portal cooldown is crazy.
It may be OK in a warm climate but try hanging around in a Canadian or Northern European latitude in the Winter with freezing wet hands waiting for a portal cooldown ... agony and torture!
The folks in NIA San Francisco need to take the highway further north into Canada and try playing the game in the REAL COLD !!!
Better idea would be for everyone who doesn't agree to cancel subscription, money talks with niantic, and lack of money really talks
All of the timers in the game are arbitrary, we know this, but having now experienced the 90-second base cooldown and how it prompted more play over the past couple years, reverting to five minutes is a considerable step backwards.
While faster hack times for portals controlled by the agent's faction is clever, I think it's the result of cognitive dissonance than an actual review. It means they understand five minutes is too long, and they want to do "something" about that, but the frustration is they already did the something. And it worked! The 90-second cooldown encouraged more agents to use more portals, and allows for clever things like stealth-hacking portals for field operations without looking like one is loitering at a random location.
Leave it alone.
If that's still not good enough, try giving the 90-second cooldown to all Recursed agents. It gives that considerable effort another worthwhile perk.
Worst decision right after requiring 3 players to build p7, while a pandemic is still there, player numbers constantly declining...
People actively using multiple accounts being still happy 😊
But we have 'challenges' that take less than two hours of normal gameplay. Lmao
It's time to move! (or not)
At least allied portals hack faster. I've waited this change.
Lets hope Niantic sees whats been written here and have a change of mind. I dont any player wants the change of cooldown to revert.
I wont stop playing, I wont cancel my core, but the game will be less fun and will for sure have a much lower tempo. The exprerience, of beeing drawn into the game, to shut out all other impressions and only to focus on the target or goal ahead.. thats a big part for me when playing ingress, and that will be broken up. (And nooooo I am sure to keep a close eye to my enviroment and to look out for danger)
Global battle beacon "anomalys"... THATS the worst decision over the last two years.
Not this expected change. Its even better than just back to 300 sec overall. HS now finally have a reason to exist again. Just use an RHS and there is your all wished 90sec CD. "Problem" solved.
Its just 4min difference to wait for an full burnout, if you want to play more and get more keys to be able to create more fields, thats really no big deal.
I'm going to say the negative backlash is expected given how everyone is used to the current CD for the hacks during the pandemic. It has came to a point we are too used to this CD that it sounds like we forgot how it was like to play in the past with 5 mins CD.
Nevertheless, this change is inevitable to revert back to original system. Given how heat sink are basically just used for reset hacks, the effects of the item is render useless from it's original intentions. With the 90s CD, Agents don't see a point to put a heatsink during farms to speed up hacks and will rather put a multi-hack instead to fully maximize the farming session within a group (unless you want to reset for yourself in the farm session).
However, we are not reverting fully back to the original CD with having faction aligned portals having reduced CD (3 mins per hack when you aligned to your own faction) . Base on this, it seems that Niantic is encouraging agents to capture/align portals to their faction so as to benefit in capturing/aligning.
I assume in the future we will get to see 90s CD returning on special occasions as a perk but regardless, we will need to accept this game change for balancing the game.
I have been using my vrhs and rhs during the pandemic. Heatsink doesnt only reverts burnout and lower the cooldown. It has other desirable effects also. And 90 second is still to loong, my sofas has double heatsinks, vr and r, to have a good speed but to an effordabel cost. I could easy go for antoher heatsink, but it will cost more than it will be doing something good since it doesnt stack.
This is a stupid decision made by people who have no clue what's going on in the field. They honestly don't even care about the community's and the agents. Maybe it's time to stop.
Theres been several threads about it reverting with the vast majority saying they did t want it reverted, they ig owed all of them. Doubt it will change now unless somethi g gets seriously done (massive drop in players, massive drop in subscriptions, passive aggressive things done in game to show dislike of this) but even then, I wouldn't hold my breath
I used heat sinks all the time, it saved time even still, I loved bei g able to throw vrhs and vrmh on a portal and hacking like mad for under 15 minutes
Has Niantic has just managed to upset both sides of the cool down argument with this change. That's really some impressive skills.
I would love the cool down to stay as it speeds the game up instead of standing around waiting all the time.
cool down to 5 minutes, worst decision ever….
no time to wait 5 minutes, really!
I disagree with the increase of wait time on friendly portals.
New tiered medal incoming: Observer (total time earned without moving).
Other effects than BO reset and lower CD? what should that be? +1 on your engineer badge and some AP? Because probably the half or even more of all deploeyd heatsinks are only deployed for these reasons since 2 years now.
You have to wait at home on your 2 home portals for some more seconds? What a first world problem... You should see this as an big privilege and dont complain about not beeing able to hack them instantly after each other to get your BO faster done...
Why change it? I want play, i don't want do nothing waiting to play 😒
The heatsink also increase the probability to gain more items per itemroll. And that is probably why I use it so often on the field, to increase the amount of keys. Its s big different between 1 and 3 items on the roll. I do get cooldown between hacks even thou I use double heatsink. But I prefer 20 seconds, instead of 40?
heatsink never gave more items
The folks in NIA San Francisco need to take the highway further north into Canada and try playing the game in the REAL COLD !!!
lmao nobody at Niantic office has played ingress for years now or else they wouldn't have made all the awful UX decisions in the prime client.
And i see the forum still quotes bright white and has no option to go back to normal white color scheme and how long we've been asking for this? ah but let's implement dumpster fire instead, that literally nobody asked for.
Whats weird to me, the cool down increases the split between fractions - especially when one fraction is on the downside, because of less people. Not that hacking enemy portals gives less items, now it even takes longer then hacking your own.
Usually one team side easily wins (res or enl) while the one the weaker one goes at disadvantage. Usually these difference in holding cities comes from the amount of players one fraction has. Imagine living in a city where one fraction can easily build level 8 portals while you cant even bring a single field to last a weak due to heavy attack - not for a while, but for 4-5 years+. This just feels like a kick in the knee and cities where one fraction is holding the upper hand.
I would suggest to decrease hack time on enemy portals while leaving the hack time of those in your home territory at the full time, if the times have to be reverted at all, which doesn't feel good at all.
There is a solution:
Put up a VR heat sink Solution: (54s/90s)
This is not exactly reverting the portal cool down to what it was its.
It is a different set of conditions based on what faction you belong to and what faction a portal is aligned with.
Why not make the cooldown time universal?
Can't see how this will encourage new players in an area dominated by the opposite faction.
problem is they waited too long revert these changes we all saw it coming sadly.
Keep 90 seconds cooldown!
It was the best change to the game. We don't have any Pokemons to catch around the portal while waiting 5 minutes for its cooldown. We just have time to get bored and find other games.
What's the point of making us spend more time farming for the same results.
Worst decision ever. Might be the one that finally makes me leave the game
please, dont do that.. that is very bad and would definitely decrease joy from being in the game
Currently I am struggling to find the time to play, besides finding the time I value my time and do not wish to waste time at portals waiting for some timer to run down while doing so.
I however have just cancelled my core subscription that has been active since the day core came out and changed my 5* review to a 1* review in the play store. I doubt my single act will have any impact nor any employee of Niantic is impressed by this, still did it because that is all I can do to voice my opinion in a way that will impact any statistic that does matter to Niantic.
I doubt any discussion in this forum will change anything. Niantic is so used to an upset player base with Ingress that their only response will be to just sit the storm out and wait for it to pass.
Booooo! 👎
Please don't do it @Niantic_NS1 you will lose even more players, the CD was always way too long, nobody wants to go back to waiting 20 mins to burn a portal, the game is slow as it is don't make it too slow to play