Monthly Global Field Tests?
Frequency
The 3rd Sunday of every month (to give people who are busy for First Saturdays a chance to participate in something) have a global field test style event.
Registration
There would be no official event registration as players could participate wherever they are in the world, as long as there is enough portals nearby.
Duration
3hrs, probably around lunch time. With a bonus restocking time for 1 hour afterwards (explained below)
Event Details
Requirements for the event would be similar to the recent field test event, but due to a longer event time, requirements for the badge (more details below), would be higher.
- Walk 5 km.
- Deploy 200 resonators (note: upgrades do not count).
- Make 70 successful portal hacks.
- Gain 100 glyph hack points.
- Deploy 24 mods.
- Collect 36 media artifacts, hacked from media portals (random distribution, maybe similar to Pokemon gyms)
Meeting these minimums would grant 1 point towards a new badge.
AP during the 3 hours would be at a 1.5x increase.
Competition
Players would be competing against every other player on their continent to reach the top 10% of a category to become Elite and earn 2 points towards their badge. They would also earn additional AP after the event equivalent to what they earned during the 3 hours to a maximum of 500k AP.
Badge
Participation in the event (getting the minimum as above required) would grant a point towards a new badge, similar tiers as the current IFS badge, but a bit different.
3/9/18/48/72
Players who gain the Elite tier would get 2 points towards the badge instead.
Restocking
For the 1 hour after the event, hack output would be increased by 20% and frackers would last twice as long, a good way to encourage use and then to buy more ;)
Comments
Monthly might be a bit much for an event like that but I like the idea of a regular Hexathlon. Maybe 3-4 times per year.
I'd rather the ability to track stats come to FS instead of creating a separate event for what is / can be essentially the same thing.
I could be wrong but I think the intent is to have separate badges for each new hexathlon and charge for that badge.
They hinted there could be more in future but nothing about charging.
Field Test, was just that. A field test. The Field test before this last one tested Shards and if there is another one I imagine they will either be testing something else or refining what was tested here.
What was tested was an awesome new way to track stats and automate badges that will probably be rolled into anomalies and first Saturdays.