[Feature request] Require physical visits to portals every XX days; discourage long-lived links

HuntHunt ✭✭
edited August 2020 in App Feedback (Archive)

Have been discussing gameplay with some international agents and specifically around long-lived links from hard to access portals. Ingress has always encouraged exploration and going to new and off-the-beaten-path places but long-lived links actually dampen this.


So some thoughts have been explored...


LONG-LIVED PORTALS

Some long-lived captured portals are rarely visited (normally requiring a mammoth effort by the other fraction to flip the portal). Encouraging players to visit these portals more regularly (e.g. I'm sure there are portals that have been continuously recharged for years at this point) can only be a good thing. It also helps confirm that the portal still exists and is reachable.


Something like requiring a physical visit / portal scan every 90-180 days would help reignite game play and players (of either fraction) to revisit portals.


LONG-LIVED LINKS

There is very little incentive for players to get out and explore once they have some hard to take-down links in place. They can literally stay at home and recharge the base portals. Doesn't really sit well with the principle above.


Our private discussion suggested making the energy cost of keeping these long-lived links alive exponentially more expensive over time. Want to keep it alive for a month... It's cost you a bunch of energy. Want to keep it alive for a year, you'll need every player in your country to be recharging it regularly.


Both of these would increase the motivation to get out explore, throw new links and keep things interesting for all players around the world.


Thoughts from the community very much welcomed!

Comments

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2020

    Destroy the links, not the portal.

  • aaronviannoaaronvianno ✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2020

    Perma-BAFs should definitely be discouraged. They completely k.ill off active players in an area. Some sort of higher decay rate for portals holding too many MUs for too long might be good.

    As far as rarely played at portals go, maybe increase the drop rate of good stuff on portals that have relatively lower activity on them.

  • edited August 2020

    Perma-BAFs should definitely be discouraged. 

    "Niantic hates this one trick to discourage perma-BAFs."

    Aggressive defense.

    If you're being fielded constantly stop asking Niantic to destroy your enemy's achievements.

  • aaronviannoaaronvianno ✭✭✭✭

    Lots of assumptions :) And some weird **** statements.

    You've clearly not seen how the current game mechanics discourage growth & involvement, and have been for years now. Ingress finds it hard to keep players, and it's because so many things keep getting in the way of new players getting into the game. If they're serious about going from 30-40K active agents to at least double that, the game mechanics need to be updated to reflect the same.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2020


    but at the same time new players cannot field under a larger field that covers a big area, this just leads to those players quitting.... is this what niantic wants? they should want more players not make new quit..

    I totally understand the team that does big layers of fields should get credit for that but we need maybe a new game system to field under exisiting field no matter what color it is...

  • DSktrDSktr ✭✭✭✭

    Noone shouldn't be forced to scan portals,minimal reqirements of Prime not include ARCore support and i tgink there are enough Agents without scanning (or enabled scan unofficially at their own risk). Also,we already have decay back to 15%,and i pray gods that it will not raise more never. Also,if that links or fields are annoying for somebody,that Agent should go and cap/flip that PoI (or cut other side of links,or some teamplay,or forget that idea) - not ask Nia :)

    But from the other side BAF is a thing that needs some fixes to give new Agents some more gameplay.

  • Building a game purely to cater to casual players guarantees that the game will die, because casual players don't keep playing. They play for a while then stop.

    Yes, there needs to be better ways to manage some of these things, but stuff like:

    • Linking/fielding under a field.
    • Killing maintained portals after X days
    • Preventing links over Y kms

    etc, will make the people who turn casual players into regular players, quit. And so no-one will be a regular player.

    The concept of 'link decay' based on an increasing chance that a long link will 'fail' each day (e.g. 1% per 50kms, doubling every 3 days) would be something that could work, because links can be replaced from two different points, but requiring people to keep returning to hard to reach portals downvalues the reward of reaching those hard to reach portals in the first place.

    Almost every major continental field op had one portal that was essentially 'inaccessible' except under certain circumstances.

  • I appreciate all the comments from the community and value the additional insights. 💙

  • There is already a mechanic in place for long-lived links and long-standing portals. It's called portal decay. It takes constant attention and resources to maintain links in remote areas. Personally, I love traveling to far off remote locations to capture a portal that is difficult to get to. Its part of the fun and adventure for me. And if it's a pain to get to, why shouldn't I use that to my strategic advantage? The same goes for the portals of my opponents, I must make the determination if it is worth it to me to take down their hard earned links and fields, and come up with ways to prevent them from using it the same way. If these links were to just randomly disappear, what is the point in going to remote an interesting locations ? It would eliminate an entire component of strategy and make the game that much less worth playing.

  • Oh. I love going to explore remote and interesting places.


    I guess I'm annoyed that I've been up some of the same mountains multiple times (4+ hours return drive + 4-6 hour hike) and I would like a little more variation from agents that live next to the mountain and lazily recharge it from their couch!


    I'm not saying capturing those unique portals shouldn't be rewarded (hell, I've done my fair share of adventuring). I guess I'm saying the dynamic can sometimes be too skewed and encouraging more team play wouldn't be a bad thing (e.g. if you want to keep that hard to reach portal which you have hundreds of keys for, you need your team to contribute to recharging it).

  • You're asking Niantic to play on the side of the opposing faction. It should be the other faction's job to take down your links and portals. If you don't have enough opposition where you're playing, recruit more agents for the opposing faction or simply ask people not to charge your own portals and feel free to go visit them again.

    It already feels like Niantic is doing more to ruin any serious team effort than the opposing faction does. Server glitches and outages, inability to play in areas with poor reception, random speed locks, random hanging, random inability to link portals without any blockers -- people have been struggling with this for years now. Literally erasing the hard-earned links and portals from the map is about the only thing they have not yet done to drive everybody out of the game. (But spoofers have, and very successfully.)

  • If those agents that live next to the mountain are on your side, be grateful. If they're on the other side, well someone has to go up the mountain to take it back once you do.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Maybe introduce a multiplier count up number of days the link is alive and making it increase the portal decay, requiring more XM to recharge it. Allow link retrow (no ap or MU), to refresh the multiplier (going there and making the link again, byt spending another key).

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