Observations on Prime 2.29.2 after the Aurora Glyph Challenge
aka. What I did at the weekend.
I've been trying to use Prime as my main scanner for a while now so decided to give Prime a good go during the Aurora Glyph Challenge (got gold). My observations and suggestions are as follows (phone is an S10+, dynamic lighting was on and set to max, FWIW) ...
The portal picture "flare" gets old very fast in portal dense areas. It's certainly a cool effect, but it really does need to be optional as it doesn't half get in the way of play when you're trying to play fast.
Resonators are far, far too difficult to see. Yes, they're visible, but when you're trying to work out which of the five portals in range your wife's just upgraded from L1 to L2 then it's just downright hard on the eyes. IMHO, what's needed here from a user perspective is a "chunkiness" slider that allows users to increase the size and brightness of the resos themselves, and also the width and brightness of the coloured line to the portal centre.
Neutral (and smaller claimed) portals are still way too small. Okay, so I actually rather like them being a bit smaller in dense areas, but in areas one's not familiar with it's all too easy to miss neutral portals. As per above, a "chunkiness" slider would solve this.
Glyphing is much improved in the latest version in terms of smoothness. However, whilst very pretty to look at, the blue sparky effect is absolutely eye-melting to look at compared to the nice, gentle, red-heavy colours in Redacted.
Hack output display is still very clunky. The pause between basic and bonus results, combined with the lack of a pause between bonus and the next basic results makes the whole thing feel really disjointed. Personally, I'd like to see all the output from a hack displayed as a single result popup/toast/thingy, so an option for this would be lovely - after 172,286 glyph points in the last few years I can safely say I've never cared whether that level 5 reso was basic or bonus. Furthermore, the parade of animated hacked items should ideally be optional - it looks very cool in Prime but feels invasive compared to Redacted.
The pulse, whilst toned down (reducing the field refraction effect was a lovely move, thank you!), is still a good solid poke in the retina in low light conditions thanks to the wave of white on the floor. Again, as per the other suggestions, simply making it optional would solve that one.
To sum up the visual aspects of the main Prime display at the moment ... I've had a good many all day play sessions with Redacted over the last few years and have never suffered eye strain or headaches. Use of Prime during the challenge left me with both after a few hours play, and both subsided after going back to Redacted for a while. The main display elements are simply too small and murky at the moment, and therefore require users to scrutinise the screen harder and for longer than was the case in Redacted. Furthermore, the colours used for glyphing are just way, way too hard on the eyes.
On the plus side, the UI's gradually getting slicker and more pleasing, and it's crashing less than it was.
Whilst not strictly related to the glyph challenge, I've had to knock out a few local city fields this week, which involved driving to rural anchors for which I needed Google Maps to navigate (so Prime was in the background). The hopelessly irritating speed lock that one experiences on making Prime active is in dire need of a reasonableness check. In areas with very poor data connectivity (the kind where you're waving the phone around, hoping for enough signal to get a flip off), the absolute last thing a player needs is to have to restart Prime in order to act, and all the current setup does is encourage drivers who're going to need the scanner rapidly at the destination to keep fiddling with their phones whilst driving in order to keep them awake and keep Prime on top for as long as possible. Whilst I fully appreciate and support the need for a speed lock to prevent play when moving above a low speed, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to penalise players for simply failing to keep Prime on top - it is not a "fun mini-game".
TL;DR It's getting there, but some configuration options are needed in order to make it more usable. Ingress is made wonderful by some simple but clever game mechanics combined with a really fun community side. Flashy effects are great for new players, but are just draining and tiresome when you're trying to accomplish objectives under real world conditions ... so make the display configurable and get the best of both worlds. Please. Oh go on.
Comments
Good resume, agree in a lot of points.