Battle Beacons concerns (in particular, alignment reversal)

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Comments

  • I still don't see the downsides you mentioned of requiring the portal to be neutral for deploying a BB. Did you see my post above?

    1. Anything you do to make Beacons more available for people defending OPs also makes them more available for people sabotaging mini-anomalies. Replacing the no-beacon requirement by a neutral-portal requirement would remove the attack vector both for flipping strategic anchors and for blocking mini-anomalies. What's not to like?
    2. Yeah, this one is an unintended side effect, but one we can live with. It's collecting money from people who play for their personal stats rather than their faction. So yeah, why not. It makes it not pay to win but pay to follow some optional side quest.
    3. So what you're saying is that on each BB flip, the ownership of each resonator is set back to the original deployer of that particular resonator, not to the deployer of the BB? That would indeed mitigate the flip-leveling abuse quite a bit. It would also mean that you have found a way to store and retrieve portal configurations prior to the current one, which I'm very happy to hear for other use cases. 😊
  • Neku69Neku69 ✭✭✭✭

    Poor ofer2, he/she has a life apart from this. Try to think about it when you are pinging he/she too much. Also, be considered with them, they spent time and resources developing this and some comments are hateful against them. Please, calm down.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2020

    One alternative is requiring two agents from different faction in order to activate it. Like first agent deploy the beacon as a challenge, and the second accept it, both deploying a "half" of the beacon. If no one accept the challenge, the first beacon will not be removed from the challenger (like pokemon raid pass works now, only being removed after the raid starts). Both actions should be notified at comm (first and second player), because cheaters gonna cheat, and at least with that we can see them.

    I also think this way seems more fair, since at least two players, one from each player will have to buy the beacon. Of course this mean that the price must also be halved, but won't affect final price anyway.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2020

    As stated, spoofers can have more than 1 faction account. Last thing i want is spoofers buying BBs to flip remote portals.

    Two players of same faction can eventually flip up a portal so less concerned about this.

  • 1) Using a beacon isn't always an option. And spoofers may target durable unmanned anchors with these.

    If you can't use a beacon, you also couldn't inoculate it. Flipcards are more effective and faster. This is a non-issue, people need to stop repeating it.

  • It's not a non-issue.

    Flipcards need to be hacked and aren't readily available. They also require the account to be of a certain level wrt the portal level. BBs don't have this restriction. They are available in store and can be used by any level player (eventually) on any level portal. Thus, a L1 account can buy and drop a P8 anchor with a BB.

  • edited October 2020
    • Spoofers aren't going to pay for a slow clunky flipcard while they can bot farm up thousands of instant-use flipcards.
    • Any legitimate player heading to an unmanned, and therefore likely harder access, portal, is going to have flipcards or at worst friends who can send them a load out code. I have a capsule of 50/50 and more in my inventory because there's rarely a use for them.
    • Battle Beacons cannot be used without being level 16 (or badge-locked with 40 mil AP). You don't know what the eventual restriction will be.

    Argue for a level 12 or higher permanent restriction or something. Don't make up non-issues.

  • The current restriction came because we aired our concerns, as initially there was no restriction considered. The point in highlighting these issues now is to ensure that they're taken into account when BBs are made available to a broader range of players.

  • Then maybe, instead of simply saying "It's bad" you need to actually state the suggested fix. All I see here is people complaining that they have the same flaws repeated over and over.

    Spoofers

    • Items are not a limitation for spoofers. Any given hackable item they can have in any amount they want. Therefore Battle Beacon flipping is a costly inferior method.
    • Spoofers can also make an L8 account, scripted, within 2 hours. I've found (and reported) many instances by reading logs in places like Buenos Aires and Lima where there are thousands of easily captured portals.
    • If they can use a BB on an unmanned portal, they can use a Flipcard.
    • If they want to level a portal, they can use two accounts of the same or different factions to do it easily. Or even easier, they could just run up 8 level 8 accounts and make an instant 8 without bothering about all the flipping.

    Spoofers are essentially unlimited items, unlimited accounts. Battle Beacons as a 'real world cost' item, hold no benefits for them unless its an inoculated portal that the player failed to also beacon, which is a failure on the player's part. Spoofer use is a storm in a teacup, but if you really want to protect it, set a L10 or L12 limitation on the use.

    Players

    In terms of flipping a portal by legitimate players, the simpler fix would be to have the portal revert to its original state regardless of what was put on it during the battle. Using it as an alternate offensive flipcard is basically a failure of the original player to 'fully' inoculate it by putting a BLM beacon on it.

    Battle Beacons, IMO, are a relatively low value item to the player base, but their flaws are completely unrelated to spoofers and only very slight when it comes to players.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2020

    We have stated the problems, demonstrated the concerns, and offered suggestions as solutions. Just not on this forum ;)

  • Well, whoop dee .... ing doo. How much good has it done?

  • We have an AP restriction currently, don't we? And one of the playtests required deploying on neutral portals. I'd say it's had some effect.

  • edited October 2020

    And yet you're still here repeating your issues. (And over inflating them)

  • Ok, seeing as you won't be privy to what was discussed by us, I'm just gonna leave it here before I say something I shouldn't.

  • ofer2ofer2 ✭✭✭✭✭

    1 - Kind of. If you deploy a beacon, players who want to battle can go to another portal. You cant protect all the portals in the area from a BB without knowing a priori that the battle was going to happen. Another idea I had in my head was that with beacons we can create a special beacon that you can deploy which you can deploy a BB on top of. This way you can setup an area beforehand whereas you can never really do that with a neutral portal.

    3 - Yeah, reverts to the original deployer of that particular reso.

    Yeah, we've also thought about this. As I've said many times, we want to test out a minimal version of Battle Beacons to see how they do. If people dont like them at all, theres no reason to invest more time in this when we can instead invest in improving the client or other things which people do like. If something as fully involved as this is whats necessary for people to engage with it, we may do it, but we want to make sure that it is first.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    As we played with the Battle Beacon at First Saturday, I couldn't but realise that for any event, Hexatlon, Anomaly, Drone/Shard game, the Battle Beacon should be disabled in the area the event is in. In that I mean that you shouldn't be able to place a Battle Beacon.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    As stated by perrigaiden, spoofers will cheat if they want, they're already have unlimited resources. The problem with BB is the easy access for real player using it to troll. My suggestion guarantee the need of two honest players, from both faction wanting to play the BB game, so they're basically forced to choose a portal with no impact in the score.

    Others possibles solutions would be restrictions to use BB only onn portals without links or only in neutrals one (best solution imo).

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    If the BB remains exclusive to lv16 and recursed players, I don't see any issues with it. A player like certainly behave a few flipcards on his inventory already, so them already can destroy any portal he wants. If them decide to travel like 200km just to waste money fliping a portal with a BB, it's theyr own choice. They could easily just attack it with xmp, or ask a flipcard donation from his teammates. If it's not possible to do that, the last resources woulsld be spent more money and do it with a BB.

    The problem of course, os that this limit is certainly a temporary thing while the feature is under tests yet. It is probably gonna be lowered eventually, down to something around 10 at least, or all the way down to everyone. This is a point where all concerns stated in this discussion became reals issues.

    Another concerns people are making that I don't mind is the creation of personal farms. Ofer2 already said this won't happen, but even if it does, if someone decide to use a BB to create a farm, I think it's a valid solution for those in rural area or are isolated. Rival faction can just go and destroy it. Cheaters already do farms with their secondary accounts anyway, so this will allow honest one to do it for a price.



    The use of regulars beacon to protect a portal from BB is really something counterproductive. It would require 6 visits a day on the portal you want protected, and BAFs and most of strategic portals for any reason are on remote locations. This is a solution probably made thinking to generate revenue, but I doubt it's gonna work. It's also, a big problem since one player can just troll everyone in a party by deploying a lot of beacons on the best portals of the location, forcing the party to choose a worse location. So I believe that BB should be able to be deploy over regular beacon. This way the party can even signalize the target portals before the event start.

  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    Why not, instead of band-aiding this issue with free beacons, make it so that a battle beacon cannot be used on an inoculated portal?

  • Everybody knowing a priori that the battle was going to happen is how I imagine the intended use case. Just like Anomalies or IFS wouldn’t make much sense if people don’t know about them. I would also imagine that people would like to start the battle on an even playing field, so rather on a neutral portal than on a pre-flipped P8 with 4 aegis. The BB’s flipping feature would reduce that initial advantage, but not remove it.

    That special beacon you mention sounds like a nice addition for reserving portals for a battle. But it is again an incomplete workaround for problems that could just as well be solved at the root. With the neutral requirement, you could indeed not reserve portals in the same way, but you also wouldn’t need to. An XF group of agents agreeing on neutralizing a portal can do that whenever they want.

    That all said, the current BB mechanics were likely the easiest to implement. Inoculation by another beacon you get for free, while removing that and adding a neutral requirement has to be coded. So it makes sense to start like this and see what happens. What we’re doing here is just pointing out scenarios that could happen, and impact both beacon battles and other gameplay. It’s good to know that you’re here and take all that input into account in the further development.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    How about puting a previous timer so the battle takes place later? This way, agents would have the chance to come by, using it to destroy anchors would be less effective and no Win-Trade situation would be required.

    Also, does anyone know what happens if a BB is used on neutral portal and it remains neutral? Which faction does it turn when previous state is "neutral"?

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2020

    Again, with neutral portals being the requirement, even XF coop isnt good enough, you need EVERYONE. 1 bad actor on either side can make an event unplayable, that is the really bad case in my mind.

    I don't see that as a problem at all. A XF event would essentially be a group of people battling over some portals, right? If there one or more "bad actors" against it, what will happen? A battle over some portals. Even if it develop in a full XF team against the main XF team that want to play BB, it will still happen sort of an event, with them battling over the portals.

    Also, you're not considering that only one agent in your example would be just a little annoyance, easily fixed with some xmp. The number of people willing to play BB event will certainly be bigger. And of course, of that situation happen, will just be a warm up pre-BB.

    That's why I think the neutral solution will be the better one, since it will probably not require any other future fixes to prevent abuse. No one will use BB as a weapon to destroy a Baf, farm, block, etc, since it will require the portal to be neutralized first by other means. I think this is the main concern people have: BB being a paid flipcard, and that will be a pay-to-win thing.

    Post edited by Hydracyan on
  • ofer2ofer2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2020

    I think where you and I are missing each other is that I'm looking at expanded uses cases of Battle Beacon, not just one portal. Imagine that we want to deploy a battle beacon on 5 portals, not 1. Having to maintain them all at neutral is muuuuch harder. Its literally the dream of a farmer to have so many neutral portals they can just constantly spam deploy to. I'm also thinking about the Battle Beacon Bomb which would deploy a battle beacon to all portals within some distance. If we want to expand battle beacons to capture other anomaly mechanics like the link game, multiple simultaneous deploy becomes necessary.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    I got you point! And you're right, you must find a balance. I'm actually not so worried about people using the BB with other intentions besides the the XF competition. They're paying for it after all. And I think is better for everyone if they buy it (an undropable item) rather than seek for a black market source of ada/Jarvis.

    But as you said, the team need to wait and see if it's worth to make changes on the code or not. I just think that the ideas of offering free beacons (or buying them) to use as defense, is the wrong approach, at least in long term, or permanent. Requiring 2 sides to activate the beacon seems a better way, in the future, first faction drop the beacon invite, and rival faction agent accept it, only them the BB became activated, and the show begins.

    But the BB is available for a long time already, and I didn't see any complaining about bad behavior about its use, just theoretical concerns. If it is continue with the lv16 limits to buy it, I doubt it will ever be any huge problem with it.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thats not actually true. Pro spoofers yes, they have unlimited resources for all intents and purposes. However casual spoofers dont have this. Not all spoofers do it all the time or have unlimited resources, in fact those ones tend to do the most damage as its usually spitefull or to stop local ops.

  • GreenVamGreenVam ✭✭✭✭✭


    Tell me why haven't you implemented the Pokémon Go raid mechanic with these beacons?

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