How to help "NIA" help us
I'd really like a "don't bite the hand that feeds" thread. A way to let Niantic know their flagship creation isn't Poke-a-Mongo or whatever unoriginal capital they can gain from branding other people's ideas. Ingress is why we're here, and these guys who made it don't have to work for free. A few suggestions:
1: Patience.
2: What is now called "swag" (what used to be called clothes) is probably their biggest fail yet. I'd compare this to the "band rule" of rock 'n' roll. If you play two shows and no one is wearing a shirt at the second one, quit and learn accounting.
3: Skins. Vanity is a best seller (look at literal pictures of butts if you don't understand vanity and instagram). Someone here mentioned a [REDACTED] skin for bittervets. New players will have no idea what the hell that even means very shortly, however vanity thingos have always sold well in multiplayer interworld thingywotsits.
4: All we need is just a little patience.
5: I've run out of patience with whiny "agents" who don't understand Ingress is free to play and just want hand-out for whatever subjective gripe they have with "Osiris" or whatever the hell is going on. Niantic has only continued this game because WE love it. Let's help them help us, and suggest rational ways for the devs to afford their bills.
6: Ingress' Community turn:
Comments
6: The obvious one which has been missing from the start - an API. You want the community to continue to build, use, and promote, let them access the data they generate without needing a GDPR request.
Don't want to put all my uniques on the Intel map? Fine, then let me have the data and plot them so I can plan my travels
Take a leaf from Amazon's book - if the community is doing something with your service that is loved and well received, then either buy it out or make your own in house and improve.
If not a full API, then at least consider opening up authentication to developers. Tools like anomaly and local community registration could benefit greatly from being able to verify a user's agent name and faction, rather than relying on presence of a community profile.
@Korzhak Funny you make that quote but Niantic has bought 4 companies that help with VR technology on phones. An API is out there but it's only in action during Camp Navarro related events. Sigh.
@GridEXE How do I mark this as 'unhelpful by Niantic'? 😁