PS I don't want new Machina badges because I hope Machina is just a temporary experiment, and once it goes away there doesn't need to be a load of locked badges that no one can progress. Also there's not much Machina round here because we actually look after our portals. :-P
That's pretty much what I was going to say when I got the time to write a longer reply.
I will add that people who think of medals as rewards for statistics are missing a subtle but fundamental point: Medals (especially ones added after the original set) aren't incentives to just run up statistics, they're incentives to use different features of Ingress, because Niantic wants users to try every feature. Creating redundant medals for one feature doesn't really gain much for Niantic.
That touches on the other problem with Machina medals: They risk creating a perverse incentive to play less Ingress.
We all know Machina only captures unclaimed portals. Agents chasing a Machina medal would stop capturing portals, and might end up playing less Ingress overall. Niantic definitely doesn't want that.
A Machina medal might be OK as a 10-day event (because we've had events with perverse incentives before, and Ingress survived), but a long-term Machina medal would be a problem.
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PS I don't want new Machina badges because I hope Machina is just a temporary experiment, and once it goes away there doesn't need to be a load of locked badges that no one can progress. Also there's not much Machina round here because we actually look after our portals. :-P
That's pretty much what I was going to say when I got the time to write a longer reply.
I will add that people who think of medals as rewards for statistics are missing a subtle but fundamental point: Medals (especially ones added after the original set) aren't incentives to just run up statistics, they're incentives to use different features of Ingress, because Niantic wants users to try every feature. Creating redundant medals for one feature doesn't really gain much for Niantic.
That touches on the other problem with Machina medals: They risk creating a perverse incentive to play less Ingress.
We all know Machina only captures unclaimed portals. Agents chasing a Machina medal would stop capturing portals, and might end up playing less Ingress overall. Niantic definitely doesn't want that.
A Machina medal might be OK as a 10-day event (because we've had events with perverse incentives before, and Ingress survived), but a long-term Machina medal would be a problem.
"Forum threads closed by NianticVK because niantic didn't want to deal with it"
New badges must cover old stats. Just saying