[idea] Game Core Change - Huge fields
k30v1n
✭✭
The Problem
In this discussion I would like to point some problems with a game core feature that is fielding. For me this it is the most fun thing to do, at home you plan some fields then you go outside and do it.
But for some reason that I can totally understand some players that have time and money make HUGE fields. And I can totally understand because this is awesome right? Spread your field all over the state, I would proud myself.
Otherwise, all the people and portals inside those huge fields just feel frustrated, new players just can’t understand, they don’t even know about intel yet to see what’s going on, they just stop playing because “there is nothing to do”.
This is probably the top reason some players stop playing and others don’t even start. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:
To the people inside this huge fields this game is dead. The only thing you can do is upgrade portals, hack, and then wait 1 week to do it again or hope to someone destroy. Fun 😑
My Proposal
It’s obvious how this huge fields impacts the cell’s score. So my point is not to block fields, but they automatically break after a checkpoint or cycle.
The reason could be many:
- The portals inside the huge field is pushing and breaking the field from inside, and after the checkpoint all links break, and it’s keys forgotten.
- The huge field cannot handle controlling too many MU at once, so then it collapses and removes the three portals links but keeping portal ownership.
- The shapers interferes if they notice a huge difference in the battle between factions, so ADA or JARVIS remove the fields before they come
- and so on :)
The point is, the game should incentive tiny fields for the game’s and players’ health, this will make a huge difference on the score for sure, but it’ll be way more fair with those just walking and using public transportation, compared to those with cars that are really willing to go miles away to build a field covering the entire cell for 6 months.
Sorry for the long text, I’m really pissed with it.
Edit 1: better explanation about my suggestion and removing the word “explode” to people don’t understand that the portal ownership was removed.
Comments
Please take a look @NianticBrian @NianticCasey @NianticAbhishek@NianticAustin
Players: who agrees please like this post so then we can make a sort of impact somehow
I don't agree. So do we like this post then?
Why not? Let me understand your side too.
so then it collapses exploding the three portals and
That's the big nono of your suggestion. Removing the links, I'm actually perfectly fine. But not every portal is easily acessible, and having them autoneutralized is a bit harsh, since this will require players going over all the 3 points again.
Leave them online, but without links, this ways the agents can still redo the link right after the CP, needing only to acess 2 of the portals. With synchronized action the agents can do a big field right before the CP, an them redo it the minute after it, leaving the rival team with 5 hours to try breaking it before the next CP.
Yeah! That’s cool, it requires cooperation what is even better. And maybe I wrongly used the world “explode”, if you keep it reading you’ll see:
Keeping the resonators but erasing keys and links
I’ll edit it to clarify. Thanks for adding your thoughts 👍🏼
But then no one would try to destroy (big)fields in theire area anymore. As example, I like operations to stop an enemy fileds by using blocklinks, while an other agent flipped the anchor when the linkteam is still there. All these battles would stop, because everyone would wait, until the field breaks, when the anchors are very inaccessible.
Big fields, and the teamwork they require, are one of the things that makes this game special. Getting dozens or hundreds of people together across a wide geographic area to do something at the same time, where many of the people have to travel great distances, hike mountains, and deal with difficult signal situations adds suspense and strategy to an otherwise very simple game. And on the opposite side, having links up that help prevent the opposition from fielding and can serve as an early warning that something is about to happen also adds to the fun.
I get that being under a permanent field isn't fun, especially during something like the didact challenge, but otherwise it's best to just get involved with your teammates to be a part of operations like these. Having the field automatically destabilize would mean the opposition could just wait for the destabilization, rather than expending the effort to take down the anchor. It would greatly reduced the appetite to be a part of this kind of operation.
One change I could support is having an overhead field give a bonus to same-faction agents under it - extra AP or better hack output or something. Opposite faction agents already have the incentive to go destroy the field, but same faction agents are in a difficult spot.
(Edited because a word that starts with k and ends with ill is censored here)
Oopsy! I actually didn't saw that part and just jumped right to erasing keys 😅
I like to add that this is probably one of the best ideas/solutions about this topic. It wont change much, and will keep people playing regularly. Both the the ones making the field and the one who were actually damaged by being unable to play before. One CP or maybe 24 hours, still a very long time and can ruin a whole free day of someone. And it's gonna stop being a war of who can recharge more Vs who can redo more (going outside to play).
Other solutions I thougth were:
1. giving AP boost for actions under the field of your faction. This way people of your faction will still enjoy the field somehow.
2. new weapon to attack field from under it, like throwing a torpedo and it going to the closest portal of the field (preferably the one with less links). This will still require strategic, synchronization and going to the right spot (since it will start by destroying the first layer).
@k30v1n:
Otherwise, all the people and portals inside those huge fields just feel frustrated, new players just can’t understand, they don’t even know about intel yet to see what’s going on, they just stop playing because “there is nothing to do”.
…
The point is, the game should incentive tiny fields for the game’s and players’ health….
First, there are ways the game could help new players who start out under fields, including introducing intel as a means of finding an area where they can play and Faction COMM as a means of maybe getting that overhead field taken down.
Second, Ingress’s AP mechanic, and almost every stat and medal already favors micro-fielding (tiny fields). And micro-fielding poses its own problem for new players:
Both of those issues can be addressed with some teamwork, which again, brings us back to the idea that the game could introduce Faction COMM to new players. It worked well for me and friend when we first started: teammates helped clear the green around me so that I could level up, and afterwards, I took it easy with my obsessive micro-fielding so that my friend could level up.
A one million field (usually layered, so many more) it's a game changing in the score. People will still try to break it.
But yes, maybe one CP is really fast. It could be at least at the beggining of every cycle, or a timer of 1 week after (a decaying system like resonators, but not rechargeable. One week is enought to control the cell and prevent everlasting fields.
I could totally get behind a cycle reset, where fields over a certain size, or a certain geographic area get destabilized. But not at checkpoints. Alternatively, larger fields could decay significantly faster, perhaps accelerating over time.
I want people to get credit for putting up large fields, but too many agents use it as a way to suppress other players activity, and it sucks. A balance could be struck.
I always hated that u cant field inside a field... i bet many players quit because of that, totally understand that... they should redo all field thing... there are cities where players throw out huge fields no matter how many times u take it down, if some only play for MU points then new players cant do anything inside... only cap or atack... how fun :s
I think a better option would be for players that don't like being under large fields should go out and destroy the anchor portals to being them down themselves.
I like this idea, but how would you define the size of a field to be destabilized? Would it cause agents to go a few steps further to make layers just smaller than the size that would be destabilized and just layer them more heavily?
Just thoughts.
It's gonna be a hard no for me. Throwing massive fields is the ultimate challenge in this game, that doesn't exist in any other game i've ever seen. In order to do that, you have to mobilize 100+ people to act like one in synchronized fashion. Those operations where the most fun i had in any game ever. It's super hard to do multi-state, multi-country or multi-continent field and there is no need to make is less rewarding.
You make friends with total strangers in all corners of the world while trying to pull something like this off, or on the flip side, trying to stop another faction from making something like this. Having "exploding" ruins the fun.
Now if you're under the field you have few options: go **** it yourself OR go find people that are near the anchors, make friends and convince them to **** the anchor. While they doing that, find lanes that block the field and throw your links in synchronized fashion, you know like the rest of us. Use team work to do that.
Changing a one unique and fantastic game mechanic that no other game has, because "i can't play today" would be the biggest mistake NIA could do. Go out there, find teammates and take those fields down if you don't like.
At first blush, I kind of like the idea that portals anchoring “large” fields (in terms of geographic area, in terms of MU, maybe both) should decay more quickly over time. The effect could scale smoothly, so that there aren’t magical thresholds that people can take advantage of.
In the day or two after such fields go up, the current decay mechanic can remain unchanged. Let the fielders bask in their glory, and let the opposite faction use teamwork to take the fields down.
After a week, it’s perhaps time to remember that Ingress is a game that’s meant to get you out and about. If the fielders want their “large” fields to stay up, maybe they should have to spend “heroic” amounts of XM maintaining them.
You know what also requires cooperation?
Actually destroying the fields and making sure they stay down
I’m sure it’s frustrating to live under a permanent field. There is still plenty to do - capture, scrub the area of the opposing color, nominate new portals, farm keys/gear for a future op, or get together with your team and just drink beer for a couple of hours, get to know your community! Is someone willing to drive you to an anchor so you can drop it yourself? If not, make lemonade out of lemons. It will come down soon enough.
Ok... I see a lot of people here just thinking I am not willing to go to that anchor, that its because 8 hour far from here, no one plays there. A lot of people agree that staying under a huge field is not fun at all, and as a new player sometimes you don’t even know what’s going on.
You guys are harassing my suggestion saying I’m not connected to my community, the fact is that I am, and it’s a few people, it’s not a big group as you may have and had spoken as 100+.
I though on this suggestion not to break the game but improve it instead. Having this huge fields simply blocks this new players on small communities that you may don’t understand, and also, helps players ecosystem.
I believe the ones more disconnected with their local cummunities are the ones throwing and maintainging needless BAFs with no consideration with the players inside. The current scoresystem is obviously broken.
Creating BAFs is fun. Creating them in a way they stay more than a day or two is even more fun. Having those fields actually stay more than a week or two is not so fun for people inside them. But honestly I don't know what can be done about that.
Let people throw links inside a field? This will ruin core mechanics of how multilayer fields, homogeneous fields and field arts work. That's a no-no. There were also cases when people created BAFs for the whole reason to clean up everything inside it to build a field art after the fields go down.
Creating some specific game rules to make BAFs harder? That's a no. I want to cover my city while opposing the other faction rather than the game itself. Punishing those who organize and make immense efforts to move keys, create plans, and actually cover just seems plain wrong; they should be rewarded instead.
Give players of the same faction some kind of bonuses when under fields? Sounds good but will punish those of the opposite faction even more.
i dont really like the idea that they get simply implode when a circle/checkpoint ends
i mean where is the line, what size of field should implode do they need to have x portals under it, a certain amount of xm in portals or simply every field over x mu?
people create the bafs to show off there teamwork so it should be some team efford to keep the baf running. so i would like to proposal a simpler solution in my opinion. larger fields require more energy so they decay faster simply make it so that at some point 1 person isnt enough to keep the baf up
THANKS, I think that too
I kinda like the idea with discharge. The discharge rate can increase over time too, but instead of dicharging more energy each day, it could discharge more often, for example first in 24 hrs, then in 23.5 and so on, asymptotically getting closer to zero seconds. You need to be very careful about the rate though.
That measures would require the game designers to think of. I personally think about X MU. X portals are not accurate for areas that we don’t have a high portal dense areas.
And also agree with you that thise kind of BAF should require a huge amount of people to make it and maintain, and don’t allow just one person.
That together with progressive difficult to maintain, if this field is up to one week should be barely impossible to maintain.
Yeah this also sounds reasonable enough, within a week it should be nearly impossible to maintain such field up.
Actually, the solution is simple. Redo the decay formula to take into account the amount of MU that the portals and fields are supporting and accelerate the decay to accommodate for the increase in demand. As a side note, any fields over a certain amount of MU should not be able to be recharged, to ensure that game play will be viable after the fields decay away.
This allows them to remain up after a few check points, but decay faster so that the agents stuck under the field can get back to playing sooner.
The idea of higher decay rate the larger the field(mu and/or area) or the more fields it anchors is interesting. But at the same time it still will kinda discourage the other team from putting the effort into killing it sooner...🤔
Maybe if it stays up for longer than a cycle something has to be done? This will also allow players in one-sided areas to be able to play a bit more.
Yes, still opposite team should not wait an eternity and not do anything themselves. Because I think many people will lose the point of covering if the game will be helping the side of losers.
If you wish to make the change for anchors to discharge even slightly faster with time than they are now, you have to somehow encourage those people who cover to offset this change, so they won't lose their motivation in turn, knowing that the game is against them. AP boost for friendly faction players? The more big layers, the bigger is boost? Suboptimal because you can't link/field under fields and that's the main source of AP...othervise sounds legit. Will result in quick entire city takedowns though :D Just my thoughts...