Unpopular but necessary

I've recently checked. It is now impossible to stand in the town centre in Nottingham (my home city) and not be in range of a portal - except one spot in a carpark.

Portals used to be cool things to find. There used to be a little challenge, you had to walk to find them. Now, you literally can't not be in range of one in many cities.

While I recognise that there are absolutely many many places where low portal density makes it hard to play, there are now too many places where it's just plain boring to play. There's no challenge any more.

I would like to propose an immediate ban on all new portal submissions where there are more than 4 portals in a level 16 S2 cell.

For those not familiar with S2 cells, that means an area roughly 100 metres by 150 metres (it varies).

Over time, I would further propose once a month, to remove the least upvoted portal in each S2:16 cell, down to a minimum of 4 per cell. Or maybe just wipe them out in some story based cataclysm. I honestly don't care, but, the game is just not working for MANY people, the way it is.

As a point of note, this suggestion will utterly trash my local farm. This will directly hurt my kit supply, but I still think it would make the game better. I'm not saying this for my benefit, I'm saying this for what I feel is the game's benefit.

Comments

  • AkceptorUAAkceptorUA ✭✭✭✭


    Let's say you have extremely low quality portal somewhere.

    And people build really cool new church or memorial or stuff nearby.

    So you propose not to allow submit this cool thing and leave with that **** instead?

  • LlamazapLlamazap ✭✭✭

    The best solution is to design missions around the important waypoints.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    There are many portal clusters in the world which are legitimate, but cannot be added due to Niantic's proximity rule.


    Instead, they have left it open for abuse with Wayfarer open to Pogo, now they are trying to find a fix. Not sure one can be found honestly. Other than to Ban pogo players from Wayfarer.

    Which is unfair, because most do use it the way it is suppose to be.


    And we all want more PoIs, and there are loads of quality PoIs which are just waiting to be added, but Niantic must balance that with people who seek to exploit it.

  • 1valdis1valdis ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2020

    I partly agree. Portals used to be landmarks. Places which you, as a tourist, would be interested to see. Now their only worth is in a word "portal". Just a spot to play with.

    I recall myself looking some nearby towns through Intel to directly find cool places. Now with stuff like playgrounds and post offices every second portal in small towns is either playground or post office.

    I'd like to see significance of portals returned to them. Places of power, worship, artifacts of human mind and creation. Not just wayspots to play on.

    Post edited by 1valdis on
  • ArtilectZedArtilectZed ✭✭✭✭✭

    I've been trying to get back into reviewing, but the number of submissions I see that have a description along the lines of "It would be nice to have a pokestop here so you don't have to stop spinning while walking down the street", attached to submissions like "A rock" or "flower pot" makes it extremely boring to review. 1-star after 1-star after 1-star review is easy Recon badge points, but it also makes it feel like a job.

    I wish the games had separate POI databases, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.

  • KarM3LKarM3L ✭✭✭✭

    Yip, so much rubbish being added,,

    Not sure what the solution is,

    Maybe manual review of scanned POIs and those around them or something..

    But blanket blocking of portals based on proximity isn't the answer, 20m is far enough when it isn't being exploited

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    Step 1: CLEAR RULES.

    Step 2: Identify bad actors and punish accordingly.

    Step 3: Separated POI maps.

    Step 4: Identify bad actors and punish accordingly.

    Step 5: Update POI maps so they show in Ingress only portals requested from Ingress and vice versa.

    Step 6: Identify bad actors and punish accordingly.

    Step 7: Bring back OPR tool for Ingress subs and leave Wayfarer for Pokemon subs.

    Step 8: Identify bad actors and punish accordingly.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    And how are you going to identify bad actors?


    Even with ML, that will be tough to identify, as there is such a large group actively exploiting it

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2020

    Well, first you can spot them by filtering portal reported by more than X agents. Then check portal setup, Decide, according to data avaliable, who is wrong, then mark those who are wrong. If someone gets too many flags, then that is a bad actor case to review.

    The moment bad actors start to get punished, they will decrease in numbers and with a bit of time it will become stable.

    Upon decrease, you can start applying other filters, like for example, you can run DB scans and check agents with a too high portals submitted rejection rate and check either if they are doing it wrong or if they are getting valid portals rejected by bad actors.

    The numbers are there, only the right questions need to be asked. This requires workforce from Niantic's side and some development time.

    This can also be automatized, at least the flagging part, once the patterns have been identified, but needs to start with human review.

    But this would only be possible with separated POI maps since this solution is intended for Ingress. Pokemon trainers are careless about POIs, that's just us.

  • EvilSuperHerosEvilSuperHeros ✭✭✭✭✭

    Internal reporting and some actual oversight of the poi's being added and moved around is needed.

    Not sure if they actually do such a thing. But based on the amount of **** portals that keep going live despite being against their own "rules", it doesn't appear so.

  • KhatreKhatre ✭✭✭✭✭

    i really don't understand why many portals can be a problem or boring (when legit).

    that's just more ways to field / block the other faction.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    Well, is not that hard to get: the more portals clustered, the easier the game becomes and soon it gets boring.

    Hard games are never boring because of the challenge. No challenge, no fun.

    I'm ok with adding portals, but clustering them is what makes it too easy.

    About POI concept, respecting it also keeps the challenge up, you just need to lower the sandard if there are few POIs within a significant area.

  • GodZillaz88GodZillaz88 ✭✭✭
    edited June 2020

    I actually wish we could downvote low quality ingame portals

    Same way I can submit a picture (I changed nearly 200 in my local town, most were awful obv pics out window of moving car)

    But there are some areas I curse I cant submit what I think are really cool portals because they are blocked by existing trash portals


    Another idea I was thinking was cause portals to decay that never get used

    We all know that 1 oddball portal that was probably manually moved to somewhere for spoofing (eg I have 1 locally that is in the centre of an island in international waters, unless the other country has access I know my country has no access; plus it is beside a HUGE waterfall so even boating to it is a huge safety risk)

  • CesparCespar ✭✭✭

    I don't think we should be restricting creation of new portals at all. Its down to reviewers to ensure quality portals reach the network. Niantic hopefully handles the agents who submit low quality portals repetitively.

    I do think that something needs to be done to prevent abuse of portals being moved to benefit Pogo. Perhaps once a portal is created the algorithm used for poi in pogo is locked to that and moving the portal will never change gym/stops in pogo? That could help change movement abuse (at least lower it - there will always be agents trying to move home portals and hard to access anchors)

  • ZeroHecksGivenZeroHecksGiven ✭✭✭✭✭

    Legit POI generation is far too important to Niantic to restrict.

  • KarM3LKarM3L ✭✭✭✭

    if only removal of illegitimate portals was just as important

  • KarM3LKarM3L ✭✭✭✭

    relying on reviewers does work,, if it did this thread wouldnt exist,,,

Sign In or Register to comment.