An appeal to solidarity
The news yesterday from Niantic about the cooldown time is so unbelievably frustrating in its counterproductiveness. I'm disappointed that such a critical element of the game (being able to hack) is being altered for the worse.
Say what you will otherwise about the loss of the apex (I know many people seem to just want them to rot in their inventory, I don't know why they don't just run them and not gain any AP if it's such a problem), but the fact is that more gear that I can simply hack on my own (in fact, rather easily) is quite pointless. 20 R8s? 20 X8s? That's three or four glyph hacks. I don't want ETO+ or ETO- (already recycle them all). CORE is valuable for the increased inventory space and for gaining premium items. I already recycle in excess of 400 items daily so I don't want more hackable stuff.
The changes made to the game during the past three years have been some of the best in the game's history. Some of them avowed to be permanent and others temporary:
1) fielding under other fields
2) kinetic capsules
3) drones
4) increased R7 deployment
5) increased reward to recharge
6) reduced cooldown
7) battle beacons
8) apex
9) more quarterly events
10) new medals
The reality is that not everyone likes every change to the game. That's fair - and I don't want to have us fighting because different people pick 7 or 8 items from that list that are dissimilar. I don't expect everyone to be on the same page, but when Niantic demonstrates such blatant disregard it is imperative that we act together rather than just propose ridiculous solutions like fill your inventory with 1500 heatsinks. Even if you think these changes don't impact you, they do. I was very angry when the R7 reduction came and it has wildly altered my ability to manage my inventory, negatively changing my gameplay. The impacts of this cooldown will be - and I cannot stress enough - far reaching.
I am rather committed at this point to ending my CORE subscription over this, and many I've talked to have expressed something similar. Let's put aside the trivialities and faction conflict and demand that Niantic take a reasonable approach. Solidarity. I would like to propose the idea of having a particular date to cancel CORE subscriptions as a way of sending a strong signal to Niantic. I would recommend a date far enough away that we can gain some critical mass but soon enough to demonstrate that it's related to these outrageous and self-immolating changes.
Comments
Better get a date picked out soon, people are already dropping their subscriptions. I had planned to drop mine today or this weekend, partially in response to this, but also, just the lack of communication over the past couple of years, the lag that makes recharging impossible at times and the list goes on. I'll move to a more casual game play style moving forward, if playing anymore at all. I let my sojourner die yesterday at 726 days, which stung for a second, but also, was pretty freeing.
edit: of course mine renewed over night, d'oh. I'll cancel any day y'all decide to go with as long as it's before the 23rd of October
I've done mime already, but why not just pick October 1st
Every single change people have said the world will end, the sky will fall, Ingress will die.
There is nobody left that I know personally that still has core. The one person that kept it and is actively developing for iitc is considering dropping it, that for me says a lot.
All this buzz al of a sudden, yet they can’t or won’t fix the ever growing list of issues that is destroying this game along with their illogical and counter intuitive choices.
I’m with you, already dropped core and will not be considering it until they start fixing this game instead of breaking it even more.
I can't really see dropping CORE working as a protest movement. To be honest I doubt you can get enough traction on that for Niantic to even notice. If they do notice they probably won't be in the loop enough to understand why it happened.
I honestly don't think there's enough CORE memberships currently that dropping them would be a noticeable bump.
4 disagrees, yet not a single person has come forward with evidence to counter what I said, curious.