Covid-19 challenge

Niantic could support global social distancing efforts through several measures:

1) Create a Covid-19 challenge. The idea would be to NOT hack portals for a continuous 24 hour period. Bronze for 7 days, Silver for 14 days, Gold for 21 days. Reward players for staying home and not playing. You could have each level unlock generous Xmas tier passcodes to give further incentives to lay low.

2) Credit Sojourner badges by default during the next several weeks. Players should not be penalized for staying at home and not playing over the next few weeks.

3) Suspend the group photo requirement for the April First Saturday. Keep the First Saturday, but don't have players crowd together for the necessary group photo. It's a pandemic, what better time to bend the otherwise sensible rules?

Comments

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    so what is your solution then ? looking at the virus and infected countries it will take a long time before things are normal again..... niantic must ask what they want us to do, encourage us to go out and play as normal, or stay home and give us free cubes or something ?? i doubt FS and those kind of events will be held now...

  • JiefSourdJiefSourd ✭✭✭

    And agents with home portal ?

  • People with home portals can hack if they like - they just won't get the badge. I am not advocating suspending the game for the duration or anything radical.

    Niantic, at least in their marketing, uses these games to support healthy lifestyles by gamifying getting out of the house and exploring the world. Normally, this is great.

    Currently, that is the exact opposite of what every public health authority wants us to do. They want us all sitting our **** at home and minimizing our social contacts. The challenge I propose incentivizes and rewards players for doing the "right" thing during a pandemic. It's bad gameplay. It's probably bad for the game as well, since some players on the margins will never come back. Still, it would be an appropriate way for Niantic to respond during a pandemic. Especially with most other recreational and sports activities canceled during the next few weeks.

    One other addition: slow the rate of portal decay enough so a portal that is fully charged at the beginning of the challenge would still be standing at the end of the challenge. Standing fields could stay up without the need for regular recharging.

  • I was about to request they do something about the Sojourner badge during the COVID crisis

    My country is now under community quarantine and I have elderly people in the house.

    Crossing fingers

  • Brilliant. @brianrose take notice.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2020
  • Honestly, #1 would create issues too because people would actively try to avoid a "silly" badge, like they do with other challenges. So they'd be going out to hack.

    If you want to stop people playing, disable the game. No recharge needed, bring it back up at a later stage, completely as is.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    1. Nope. They already supporting by canceling social events. Silly disease badge that I win by loosing everything else? They just gave the platform/gameboard, what players will do with it it's not their fault.

    2. I'm against it being automated. They could change to add a recharge as a valid method to counting it up too (not change, just add a new method to it for a while). Or allow to "buy a hack" at the store.

    3. Everything is already cancelled. That's the best they can do: nothing.

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