The level of gatekeeping with players sometimes fascinates me. It's like people forgot that some of the distance trekked can be from slow drive bys from farming portals years ago.
Nothing is invalidating your experiences here. Simply don't link the feature if you feel like it would invalidate it.
Do note that trekker wasn't a badge from the start.
This is more or less what I was trying to articulate in my post early on in this thread. OG players have like 50 badges newer players will never get. The game needs to evolve to stay alive. You’re gonna be okay if Timmy down the street gets ONE badge a little easier than you did...
As someone who hit 16 before Illuminator, Trekker, Engineer and all the rest of the newer badges, this ^^
Who cares if someone else gets to 16 using Adventure Sync, or their Trekker stat looks higher "than yours would if you'd had AS all along"? More players is good for the game, and alternate paths to incremental advancement is a good way to encourage more players.
Do you people not want your distance walked accurately calculated? I don't want to walk 5km while playing and only have 1km counted because "reasons". The purpose of trekker is to encourage walking, therefore it should be counted accurately. Before active sync, the calculation is haphazard and completely inaccurate as the field tests proved last year.
i hate to walk with kinetic and u lose almost 1km of whatever uwalk... why? so yes i want adventure sync, i use it every week to track my walk distance in pogo... and its always higher then what ingress tracked end of week....
Why not just change the tiers of the badge ? People will lose the onyx for a time but will get it back eventually. So trekker can still be "hard" to grind and our distance accurately tracked. I don't mind losing my recently obtained trekker if I know I'll get it back later.
I have a feeling that they will repurpose Trekker to count Active Sync steps - I do not have Onyx, so sure this will help me in theory, but really I'd rather get the medal legit. Pogo players may remember Ace Trainer, and how it was a true OG medal of which we could be proud for so very long...until they lumped in "team leader" battles as Training, and every new kid got gold. I like getting medals, sure, but always enjoy them solely as a reflection of the effort I put in. Trekker with Active Sync just wouldn't be as impressive.
I've done a small bit of walking in my time. I will likely enable Adventure Sync if we ever get it in Ingress, and I certainly won't begrudge others if they want to do the same. We should be celebrating getting out there and moving, not quibbling over what counts as "real" or "legit" walking.
I believe the absolute only reason we got recursion was that new levels would upset the balance in the player base.
Back in the day, we only had 8 levels, so getting to level 8 had all the perks you would imagine: you have access to the highest level of gear, which makes you a more powerful and impactful player. Low-level players were not very useful until they leveled up to at least Level 6. With the way the AP requirements are setup, a new player can get from 0 to Level 5 in an hour or so, with guidance from expert players. This was nicely balanced.
But players maxed out and were getting bored. Introducing new levels with higher powered gear would make more of the lower levels useless and unable to contribute, maybe even unable to play. So what they did instead with levels 9-16 is give you more XM and a longer recharge range. It makes those players more resilient in attacks and defence, gives you more bragging rights, and because the level requirements also had medals involved, it forced you to be a more complete player (i.e., not just a builder, not just a wrecker).
But people are maxing out and getting bored again. They could have introduced meaningless levels 17-32, where all you get are bragging rights, and they kinda did. That's what recursion is. They promised us that some time in the future there would be some thing we could be only if we recursed. They also promised that Ingress Prime would give us a way to tell in-game which portals we had previously captured and previously visited. They also told us that retiring the Redacted Scanner was going to be necessary to this as the server work needed would break compatibility with Redacted, They also told us that Prime had anti-cheat measures.
trekker is also to reward players for walking which is how this game is designed to be played, those that play alot with car will get less credit on that badge. but spoofers just simulate walking so they get credit either way but i dont think they care...
Do you have a quote from Naintic that supports that? Otherwise, I'll stick with the most obvious explanation that it was added to promote walking. I also don't think Niantic intended the badge to be difficult to level up. But because the way distance was (inaccurately) calculated, it became difficult.
I believe you are equating a side-effect of the badge as the reason it was implemented. It was definitely NOT implemented to root out spoofers. Badges are awarded as achievements for your efforts and actions in game, and nothing else.
But, it certainly does raise suspicion if you encounter accounts that have visited hundreds or thousands of portals with less than 10km walked.
Actually, the health metric was created in October 2013. For more than a year, they were tracking our steps without giving us a badge, because early on, people thought L16 and Black badges were important and not worth being handed easily.
Trekker was added in 2015 because people claimed it was too hard to get to Level 16 using only Guardian, Recharger, and two of the long haul stats badges. Literally the badge was created to make 16 easier, so using Adventure Sync only furthers that agenda.
It was true back then because a lot of people saw the issue when going for Innovator (Year 2 badge). You either had to approach badges in groups of two: linking and fielding or capturing portals along with unique portals.
I was glad when they added Spec Ops, Trekker, and Engineer as a result of the Year 2 badge.
I was annoyed that I was forced to 16 by Innovator. I'd have preferred to have finished the climb properly, but I was 15 with 43 million AP and 10k hacks left for Plat Hacker when they announced the badge would cause levelling, two weeks before it was awarded.
For the other badges that came later, I don't begrudge anyone their own method to 16. And if Active Sync encourages someone to get more energetic, that's one of the goals of Niantic overall, so be it.
Trekker should be retired. You can imagine what will happen when you take a look at PoGo. You can easily gain thousands of kilometers by cheating adventure sync, for example through cheating apps or phone swings.
I've played with Prime and Redacted for the same amount of time roughly, and 2000/2400km were done on Redacted. Prime is too heavy to keep in foreground all the time on iOS, and prior to the recent fix was dreadful with tracking.
Comments
The level of gatekeeping with players sometimes fascinates me. It's like people forgot that some of the distance trekked can be from slow drive bys from farming portals years ago.
Nothing is invalidating your experiences here. Simply don't link the feature if you feel like it would invalidate it.
Do note that trekker wasn't a badge from the start.
This is more or less what I was trying to articulate in my post early on in this thread. OG players have like 50 badges newer players will never get. The game needs to evolve to stay alive. You’re gonna be okay if Timmy down the street gets ONE badge a little easier than you did...
Do note that trekker wasn't a badge from the start.
Though unlike Engineer, it was a stat that was tracked from about October 2013. So we had KMs long before the badge.
As someone who hit 16 before Illuminator, Trekker, Engineer and all the rest of the newer badges, this ^^
Who cares if someone else gets to 16 using Adventure Sync, or their Trekker stat looks higher "than yours would if you'd had AS all along"? More players is good for the game, and alternate paths to incremental advancement is a good way to encourage more players.
Do you people not want your distance walked accurately calculated? I don't want to walk 5km while playing and only have 1km counted because "reasons". The purpose of trekker is to encourage walking, therefore it should be counted accurately. Before active sync, the calculation is haphazard and completely inaccurate as the field tests proved last year.
i hate to walk with kinetic and u lose almost 1km of whatever uwalk... why? so yes i want adventure sync, i use it every week to track my walk distance in pogo... and its always higher then what ingress tracked end of week....
Why not just change the tiers of the badge ? People will lose the onyx for a time but will get it back eventually. So trekker can still be "hard" to grind and our distance accurately tracked. I don't mind losing my recently obtained trekker if I know I'll get it back later.
I think we can get new medal how many Kinetic Capsule we complete when health in stats have it now.
No.
I have a feeling that they will repurpose Trekker to count Active Sync steps - I do not have Onyx, so sure this will help me in theory, but really I'd rather get the medal legit. Pogo players may remember Ace Trainer, and how it was a true OG medal of which we could be proud for so very long...until they lumped in "team leader" battles as Training, and every new kid got gold. I like getting medals, sure, but always enjoy them solely as a reflection of the effort I put in. Trekker with Active Sync just wouldn't be as impressive.
I think that ☝️ comment says it all.
I've done a small bit of walking in my time. I will likely enable Adventure Sync if we ever get it in Ingress, and I certainly won't begrudge others if they want to do the same. We should be celebrating getting out there and moving, not quibbling over what counts as "real" or "legit" walking.
I believe the absolute only reason we got recursion was that new levels would upset the balance in the player base.
Back in the day, we only had 8 levels, so getting to level 8 had all the perks you would imagine: you have access to the highest level of gear, which makes you a more powerful and impactful player. Low-level players were not very useful until they leveled up to at least Level 6. With the way the AP requirements are setup, a new player can get from 0 to Level 5 in an hour or so, with guidance from expert players. This was nicely balanced.
But players maxed out and were getting bored. Introducing new levels with higher powered gear would make more of the lower levels useless and unable to contribute, maybe even unable to play. So what they did instead with levels 9-16 is give you more XM and a longer recharge range. It makes those players more resilient in attacks and defence, gives you more bragging rights, and because the level requirements also had medals involved, it forced you to be a more complete player (i.e., not just a builder, not just a wrecker).
But people are maxing out and getting bored again. They could have introduced meaningless levels 17-32, where all you get are bragging rights, and they kinda did. That's what recursion is. They promised us that some time in the future there would be some thing we could be only if we recursed. They also promised that Ingress Prime would give us a way to tell in-game which portals we had previously captured and previously visited. They also told us that retiring the Redacted Scanner was going to be necessary to this as the server work needed would break compatibility with Redacted, They also told us that Prime had anti-cheat measures.
They told us a lot of things, didn't they.
The only 'real' perks of getting to 16 are:
And Recursion provides no benefits except for the cosmetic display.
New levels would have had little to no real difference compared to recursion.
Oooooh you soooooo wrong!
The trekker badge was not implemented to encourage walking, it was implemented to find out spoofers. The phone needs to "feel" your footsteps. 😊
trekker is also to reward players for walking which is how this game is designed to be played, those that play alot with car will get less credit on that badge. but spoofers just simulate walking so they get credit either way but i dont think they care...
Do you have a quote from Naintic that supports that? Otherwise, I'll stick with the most obvious explanation that it was added to promote walking. I also don't think Niantic intended the badge to be difficult to level up. But because the way distance was (inaccurately) calculated, it became difficult.
I believe you are equating a side-effect of the badge as the reason it was implemented. It was definitely NOT implemented to root out spoofers. Badges are awarded as achievements for your efforts and actions in game, and nothing else.
But, it certainly does raise suspicion if you encounter accounts that have visited hundreds or thousands of portals with less than 10km walked.
but trekker badge is not difficult. one of the simplest. simpler only recharger and translator
Actually, the health metric was created in October 2013. For more than a year, they were tracking our steps without giving us a badge, because early on, people thought L16 and Black badges were important and not worth being handed easily.
Trekker was added in 2015 because people claimed it was too hard to get to Level 16 using only Guardian, Recharger, and two of the long haul stats badges. Literally the badge was created to make 16 easier, so using Adventure Sync only furthers that agenda.
It was true back then because a lot of people saw the issue when going for Innovator (Year 2 badge). You either had to approach badges in groups of two: linking and fielding or capturing portals along with unique portals.
I was glad when they added Spec Ops, Trekker, and Engineer as a result of the Year 2 badge.
I was annoyed that I was forced to 16 by Innovator. I'd have preferred to have finished the climb properly, but I was 15 with 43 million AP and 10k hacks left for Plat Hacker when they announced the badge would cause levelling, two weeks before it was awarded.
For the other badges that came later, I don't begrudge anyone their own method to 16. And if Active Sync encourages someone to get more energetic, that's one of the goals of Niantic overall, so be it.
Trekker should be retired. You can imagine what will happen when you take a look at PoGo. You can easily gain thousands of kilometers by cheating adventure sync, for example through cheating apps or phone swings.
Why not just retire the whole game because there are people who cheat?
Edit: this is regarding the post above mine
I've played with Prime and Redacted for the same amount of time roughly, and 2000/2400km were done on Redacted. Prime is too heavy to keep in foreground all the time on iOS, and prior to the recent fix was dreadful with tracking.
Double post