Thoughts on the scheduled **** of [Redacted]
Sigh.
As a developer, I can understand Niantic's wish to retire the old app, but seriously, Prime is just not there yet and I suspect it will never be as snappy or as quick as [Redacted]. Prime's designers made the choice of choosing a display-engine that is just too heavy for the long and intense play that Ingress encourages.
I've given Prime a good try, and while it appears to get better as I make use of it, it's all an illusion. Whenever I switched back to [Redacted], I'm always amazed at how fast and battery-light it is in comparison.
Ingress' core issue is that the main play screen has a 3D look and feel that is just too computationally intensive. This single issue drains the battery intensively. The latest version has managed to reduce the drain somewhat, but the underlying display-engine just needs too much power. The dark screen attempts to reduce the battery-usage, but this is thwarted by the unnecessary animations. Load times, crashes, are all indications of a resource hungry app.
Niantic's attempt to draw in new users with a flashy looking UI has done a disservice to the old-timers. I suspect that players leaving far outnumber new players staying. Any thread about Prime is always overshadowed with negative comments. There are champions for Prime, but they are a bare minority.
I want to be proved wrong, but I've almost given up hope waiting.
Comments
It's not Niantic's wish to retire Redacted. They have no choice. The reasons why have already been discussed at length. The drop dead date of September 30 was not their decision.
Sadly Prime hasn’t considered accessibility still. So for those of us with disabilities it’s impossible to use.
so for instance - the constant screen flashing causes visual stress and anxiety, for me - but apparently it’s pretty navigation.
I’ll be done when redacted is turned of as I’m hot having my health impacted by a game app. Sad as the game helped me when I was very ill before. I guess time to move on after many years
sure they have. just because a software like robovm is not supported any more doesn't mean that a program stops working. it only means that it won't get updates, is not maintained, maybe is a security risk if a bug remains unpatched. but it still works. they could easily publish it as 3rd party app without using the playstore.
I think you need to remember that there is a complaining bias about Prime. Of course thread about Prime is full of complaints - the people who don't complaint do not post, after all.
I'm not a developer, but do you think that there is another engine future proof enough that Ingress can hop on other than the current Prime? Also note that Niantic runs three AR games, which means similar engines among the three would be better as it means easier way to import features between the games.
Fair points all around, but if Niantic wishes to take advantage of their new databases then they are forced to retire Redacted. Could they spend time and resources getting Redacted to be compatible with the database architecture they have chosen? Sure, but that would require converting pre-existing code which takes alot of time and could introduce bugs into Redacted that were not there before, or they could use a stand in system that utilizes software that converts old queries into the new standard, but this introduces latency issues as well as more points of failure in the database as a whole.
Their move to a new database makes sense for long term operations and scalability across all their applications and services. The biggest issue though of course is their choice of graphics engine and UI, which they have already invested what I would assume to be alot of time and money in.
I believe though they can optimize the engine overtime to load faster and utilize less battery life, especially given the facts you point out on their other games being more graphically involved yet less resource heavy on devices.
I am patiently waiting, in the meantime, I will just carry an extended battery back around with me as I always have long before Ingress was a thing.
And what about iOS?
But as long as you keep redacted you can't upgrade the game with new gameplay.
Or new gameplay only for prime users, that would be weird.
As we've already established, they are going to do a schwaperoony on the back end to some new platform. No idea what kind of magic this entails exactly is but it's likely going to break Redacted support in a fairly hard way.
So why would they do this?
You can run from it. Destiny still arrives all the same.
Press F to pay respects
Beacons at noon UTC ;) 2019-9-30 #farewellredacted
Redacted uses iOS and Android API's that are no longer supported, and will get the app pulled from both systems app stores.
You know something agents I thing you’ve missed the point - this isn’t about not liking Prime it’s about it being impossible for those with disabilities to use.
Sadly that’s app dev, ignore those and we will go - sadly the game is dying anyway, so what does it matter. They have what they needed for Pokemon Go and Wizards so damn us and our disabilities.
Thats okay, we get that- we don't matter, that’s a commercial decision but sadly so many of ingress founders will have to walk away and that’s a terrible thing.
After 2 years i think Ingress Prime is good. When more in foture buy premium phones prime works good. I only read agents write about slow start dont have premium device. I feel Prime is ok on my S10+ not good but after 2 years i think most of the bugs are fixed. We must accept if we will have faster start up we need premium device.
It’s not about the phone (iPhone X) it’s about how it’s inaccessible for people with disabilities - it’s quite simple...
While I feel sorry for you and other people with disabilities, the only thing I can say is have patience. Disability friendly features traditionally is not very high in priority (I may be wrong), particularly when parity isn't yet achieved.
I'd say wait around 6 months after parity is met while keep insisting that Prime isn't disability friendly. Provide information on which part of Prime is as well, so the developers have a clear idea on which part to change. You should not expect them to change Prime to be disability friendly when you don't even tell them which part to change.
I don't have any similar health issues to those but Prime triggers migraines for me. Its been over 15 years since I last encountered anything that triggers this. Early Prime open beta was not doing this but all the effects were bugged and not rendering either.
Sorry - so I’m to wait 6 months of not playing and wait for the game to be fixed - nah, I’ll be done as I’ll find something else to do and while I’m sad, it shows the contempt the deva have had for their early users
They have had long enough, if they can’t be bothered that’s fine. I’ve emails, chased and finally given up.
Prime is pretty cool
Better initial load times and parity is all I want, really. Maybe 14 more submissions when redacted is gone, that's what I'll miss the most lol