Perhaps the behavior you're seeing is explained in the original post (emphasis mine, I guess I don't know who, if anyone originally had Scout Controller in your example):
If you’ve already earned 1 Scout Controller Point towards a now Volatile Scout Controller Portal, you can earn 2 additional Scout Controller Points towards that same Portal if you re-claim Scout Controller status. Please note that re-claiming Scout Controller requires you to overtake another Agent’s Scout Controller status on a Portal. If you are currently the Scout Controller on the VSCP, even if it has been more than 30 days since your most recent Portal Scan, scanning the same Portal again extends but does not re-claim Scout Controller status.
Not that I'm a fan of this, mind you. (No one else in my area appears to be scanning portals, so there are a whole slew of portals for which VSCP is and will be meaningless to me…)
Thanks, just to clarify my earlier post. I was and still am the scout controller on that portal with a single point. So I should have earned two additional points, unfortunately none of the numbers went up.
The text linked clearly indicates that you won't get the 2 extra points until you lose Scout Controller (by someone else taking it) and then scan into the lead again.
So no, you shouldn't get those points yet, as implemented.
While I understand that the company needs AR data for their purposes, and I appreciate that they continue working in Ingress, this addition means nothing to me.
My phone is not compatible with the scan function, so I hope they implement something to make those yellow marks disappear from the scanner and the intel map because they are useless for many agents in my same situation.
Ugh, I was excited to see the marks on portals earlier today before I saw the forums. Thought maybe Ingress had decided to make something fun to do in the game. Wrong. Another "feature" that no one asked for.
@NianticBrian Do you want more people to scan stuff? Maybe tie scans to the amount of POI's you can submit in both Ingress & Pogo. That might get you more scans, from the folks that do like to do it.
Me? Nopers, I haven't scanned anything. I don't plan on it. It's not part of playing the actual game (you, know, triangles and socializing with friends) and gives out a poor amount of AP that can easily be earned elsewhere in less time by doing other actions.
We were already screwed over with the Seer badger. Stuck on some color we don't want. We can't add to it anymore. Old submissions that were denied due to the objectives changing for portal submissions, then later changing back to being allowed was a real punch in the face. Now with basically any playground, or any stupid sign just about anywhere is able to be a portal/poi, I guess it's not worth even bothering to enable Seer. I don't even submit portals anymore, as in my area, its a good 6-12 months (or more) to get the portal reviewed and a response back. Majority of the time, poi's that should be valid, are outright rejected as is. There is no recourse other than to go use some of your limited submissions to go submit the portal again (no thx).
Was really hoping the marks on the portal was something to get us to explore our areas more. Maybe extra AP to capture the portal, or something of that nature.
If this "feature" is only for people scanning, can it only be enabled for those agents who have scanning enabled? Or at least let us have a toggle in settings to disable it? It's annoying to me, that I see all these marked portals, but it really doesn't do squat for me.
Can we have some new "features" that directly affect the actual game play itself? Maybe some new mods? Maybe time to actually follow thru and add in some of those common or very rare turrets or force amps that were teased how long ago? How about a mod that will increase the amount of POWER CUBES from a portal? Cuz I'd love one of those. Might even fork over some CMU for those...
Was running around like crazy trying to figure out what was special about these portals that kept popping up as soon as I would hack one. Never occurred to me to scan them.
Have done a few scans, and decided that's a badge I just don't need to get.
We're working on more ways to give Agents additional reasons why they may want to scan a Portal, more than just to improve the Portal Network or for the Scout and Scout Controller medals, but also for in-game benefits in Ingress as well. Being able to show/hide the VSCP markers in a future version is a good feature request, and we'll explore it.
The 3 Points towards the Scout Controller medal for becoming Scout Controller of a VSCP is meant to help make earning the Scout Controller medal easier, something I've heard often from Agents. It's still a difficult medal to earn Onyx for, it still takes considerable effort to unlock, but I feel that it's an appropriate difficulty level compared to other Onyx tiers.
This feature also helps us crowdsource Portal Scans of specific Portals that we're working to scan first. Every Portal should be able to be scanned, but by defining a priority set, I'm interested in seeing if more Agents will scan the same Portals than we saw previously.
Portal Scanning is important to us because we're working to build an AR map of the world — to take our flat, 2D information about the Portal Network and to add 3D information about the Portals and their surroundings. I appreciate your feedback and suggestions, we're going to try new things and experiment, and we'll continue to iterate.
Does anybody know what phones are compatible with scanning portals? Wife and I would love to do scout controller but our phones are not compatible. Thank you
Not help mutch. Better @NianticBrian view how it looks in prime from all portal scanning agents do. I think more agents like to do portal scanning when they see how it looks on 3D maps. Niantic must have lots of data now and can start beta for some locations on new 3D map and how Niantic work with the data from portal scanning.
You must view all agents how it looks with 3D information or 3D map. If loots of agents like it they do lots of portal scanning. If we can get items please make it in steps. Scanning 500 or 1000 times agents earn 1 fracker for free. 1500 times we earn free CMU and APEX. Common items not help mutch when we can hack powercubes and more.
@NianticBrian some feedback on communication: I see the news now mentions the VSCP's, however communities (here, Telegram, Discord, etc.) are being inundated with questions from players asking what the yellow squares are on portals. The news doesn't explain what the ornaments are for, it simply mentions that VSCP's are now a thing. I would suggest modifying the news pop-up to firstly explain what those squares are and then go into talking about Scout Controller. This would greatly help the flow of communication and stop the massive amount of questions.
I won't ask for the data because maybe you can't share it, but I think you are probably aware of the number of agents that have compatible devices and actively scan Wayspots. As I don't know the numbers, I can only assume that Niantic has their reasons to have decided to invest time and money in these scan things in Ingress, perhaps thinking about a future revenue (be it from Ingress or other games using this AR data).
But as these scan additions only affect a certain number of agents (maybe some of them with compatible devices but not interested in scanning), the ones not interested or unable to scan feel that our suggestions or expectations about improving the actual gameplay (or bug fixing) are being ignored or postponed in favour of a thing that seems useless (at least for the time being), and that's where I think part of the backlash in this thread and many other ones comes from.
Thank you anyway for your aditional explanation. I really hope we can use them soon to correct misplaced portals and I really hope Ingress continues available when the time to see actual improvement in the game thanks to the scannings comes.
Can you tell us how the this 3D information about the portals will be shown in Ingress, if Ingress backend/servers still isn't on the RWP? Are you going to build out this feature for the current backend/servers or only when Ingress (or if ) gets the RWP backend/servers? Or do you even have a plan on how this is going to roll out to Ingress yet? I'm sure that it's already figured out for games such as Pogo, or Harry Potter, Catan or whatever else is in the works at Niantic.
Could you divulge what the scanning data is actually being used for? Dangling the badge point/carrot-and-stick in front of my face was enough to get me to unlock the bronze badges, and I couldn't find any cares left to give for it, after that. Some concrete way that it's going to improve Ingress would be helpful in determining if I want to stop for that long at each portal and look like even more of a weirdo with my phone.
This is what will scare away the spoofers and cheaters for sure. Good work @NianticBrian on developing yet another useless feature nobody wants and has nothing to do with ingress gameplay in general 😆
This is what you get with niantic support thats actually egocentric alcoholic Guinea pigs condoning cheating and harassment.
Press F in comments to pay respect to Ingress slowly turning into a zombie.
Thanks for editing my post, That's real freedom of speech @NianticKK 😂
First, Niantic releases portal scans. They're buggy, time-consuming, and people don't really want to do them, but those who do submit scan after scan of the same portals over & over again, because Scout wasn't a well thought-out badge.
So then, in response to that, rather than fix the requirements for Scout, you put in the Scout Controller badge, which has absolutely insane requirements, doesn't address the criticisms from Scout, and actually makes things worse by ensuring that it is a badge which can only be obtained by one agent per portal at a given time, aka the antithesis of teamwork.
People still don't want to do these stupid badges, so now, in order to try to get people to do it, you randomly select portals to be volatile, and highlight them on scanner and intel map, complete with animation, and no way to turn it off. And finally, you place those volatiles on portals that are in restricted access areas or places that are shut down for Covid, like malls, zoos, and even the freaking White House.
Niantic...WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! JFC, this is unbelievable.
The core problems with the badges are still there. They are time-consuming, battery-consuming, bandwidth-consuming, and have literally zero benefit to the agent doing it besides the badge. Portal scans feel like work, and then you wonder why no one is doing them and put a bunch of horrendous ornamentation in place all over the entire map just to remind people, "Hey! This badge we want you do to but you all hate still exists!"
Meanwhile, features we've been asking for for years, like the ability to see our pioneer/explorer status on a given portal, get punted into the future with no timetable.
Give us a way to turn these off. This is unacceptable.
Hmm. I know that pokemon players are making vows and sharing chain to NOT scans the pokestop/gym because they are afraid the wayspots got removed.
In pokemon go theres is field researchs that are scanning the gyms, with rewards for the players. I think this would be a good way (if tasks/research be implemented in ingress someday).
It wouldn't be so bad if these were only part of a very short-term event (like one or two days max). But to keep it this way for the foreseeable future, we need to be able to turn it off in intel as it's way too distracting and blinding lol
Comments
Perhaps the behavior you're seeing is explained in the original post (emphasis mine, I guess I don't know who, if anyone originally had Scout Controller in your example):
If you’ve already earned 1 Scout Controller Point towards a now Volatile Scout Controller Portal, you can earn 2 additional Scout Controller Points towards that same Portal if you re-claim Scout Controller status. Please note that re-claiming Scout Controller requires you to overtake another Agent’s Scout Controller status on a Portal. If you are currently the Scout Controller on the VSCP, even if it has been more than 30 days since your most recent Portal Scan, scanning the same Portal again extends but does not re-claim Scout Controller status.
Not that I'm a fan of this, mind you. (No one else in my area appears to be scanning portals, so there are a whole slew of portals for which VSCP is and will be meaningless to me…)
Thanks, just to clarify my earlier post. I was and still am the scout controller on that portal with a single point. So I should have earned two additional points, unfortunately none of the numbers went up.
The text linked clearly indicates that you won't get the 2 extra points until you lose Scout Controller (by someone else taking it) and then scan into the lead again.
So no, you shouldn't get those points yet, as implemented.
Ah, thank you. Well that sucks even more if you've already scanned every portal in 10km of your home lol
Ingress isn't here for your enjoyment. Sheesh! 🤣
While I understand that the company needs AR data for their purposes, and I appreciate that they continue working in Ingress, this addition means nothing to me.
My phone is not compatible with the scan function, so I hope they implement something to make those yellow marks disappear from the scanner and the intel map because they are useless for many agents in my same situation.
Ugh, I was excited to see the marks on portals earlier today before I saw the forums. Thought maybe Ingress had decided to make something fun to do in the game. Wrong. Another "feature" that no one asked for.
@NianticBrian Do you want more people to scan stuff? Maybe tie scans to the amount of POI's you can submit in both Ingress & Pogo. That might get you more scans, from the folks that do like to do it.
Me? Nopers, I haven't scanned anything. I don't plan on it. It's not part of playing the actual game (you, know, triangles and socializing with friends) and gives out a poor amount of AP that can easily be earned elsewhere in less time by doing other actions.
We were already screwed over with the Seer badger. Stuck on some color we don't want. We can't add to it anymore. Old submissions that were denied due to the objectives changing for portal submissions, then later changing back to being allowed was a real punch in the face. Now with basically any playground, or any stupid sign just about anywhere is able to be a portal/poi, I guess it's not worth even bothering to enable Seer. I don't even submit portals anymore, as in my area, its a good 6-12 months (or more) to get the portal reviewed and a response back. Majority of the time, poi's that should be valid, are outright rejected as is. There is no recourse other than to go use some of your limited submissions to go submit the portal again (no thx).
Was really hoping the marks on the portal was something to get us to explore our areas more. Maybe extra AP to capture the portal, or something of that nature.
If this "feature" is only for people scanning, can it only be enabled for those agents who have scanning enabled? Or at least let us have a toggle in settings to disable it? It's annoying to me, that I see all these marked portals, but it really doesn't do squat for me.
Can we have some new "features" that directly affect the actual game play itself? Maybe some new mods? Maybe time to actually follow thru and add in some of those common or very rare turrets or force amps that were teased how long ago? How about a mod that will increase the amount of POWER CUBES from a portal? Cuz I'd love one of those. Might even fork over some CMU for those...
Was running around like crazy trying to figure out what was special about these portals that kept popping up as soon as I would hack one. Never occurred to me to scan them.
Have done a few scans, and decided that's a badge I just don't need to get.
We're working on more ways to give Agents additional reasons why they may want to scan a Portal, more than just to improve the Portal Network or for the Scout and Scout Controller medals, but also for in-game benefits in Ingress as well. Being able to show/hide the VSCP markers in a future version is a good feature request, and we'll explore it.
The 3 Points towards the Scout Controller medal for becoming Scout Controller of a VSCP is meant to help make earning the Scout Controller medal easier, something I've heard often from Agents. It's still a difficult medal to earn Onyx for, it still takes considerable effort to unlock, but I feel that it's an appropriate difficulty level compared to other Onyx tiers.
This feature also helps us crowdsource Portal Scans of specific Portals that we're working to scan first. Every Portal should be able to be scanned, but by defining a priority set, I'm interested in seeing if more Agents will scan the same Portals than we saw previously.
Portal Scanning is important to us because we're working to build an AR map of the world — to take our flat, 2D information about the Portal Network and to add 3D information about the Portals and their surroundings. I appreciate your feedback and suggestions, we're going to try new things and experiment, and we'll continue to iterate.
Does anybody know what phones are compatible with scanning portals? Wife and I would love to do scout controller but our phones are not compatible. Thank you
Not help mutch. Better @NianticBrian view how it looks in prime from all portal scanning agents do. I think more agents like to do portal scanning when they see how it looks on 3D maps. Niantic must have lots of data now and can start beta for some locations on new 3D map and how Niantic work with the data from portal scanning.
Thank you, you have shown them you can complain about something without losing your temper. More comments like this, please.
In this page you can see how scanning works, in "here" hypertext there is a list of devices which support portal scanning https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/ingress/?s=portal-network&f=portal-scanning&p=web
You must view all agents how it looks with 3D information or 3D map. If loots of agents like it they do lots of portal scanning. If we can get items please make it in steps. Scanning 500 or 1000 times agents earn 1 fracker for free. 1500 times we earn free CMU and APEX. Common items not help mutch when we can hack powercubes and more.
@NianticBrian some feedback on communication: I see the news now mentions the VSCP's, however communities (here, Telegram, Discord, etc.) are being inundated with questions from players asking what the yellow squares are on portals. The news doesn't explain what the ornaments are for, it simply mentions that VSCP's are now a thing. I would suggest modifying the news pop-up to firstly explain what those squares are and then go into talking about Scout Controller. This would greatly help the flow of communication and stop the massive amount of questions.
Check the list here: https://developers.google.com/ar/discover/supported-devices
I won't ask for the data because maybe you can't share it, but I think you are probably aware of the number of agents that have compatible devices and actively scan Wayspots. As I don't know the numbers, I can only assume that Niantic has their reasons to have decided to invest time and money in these scan things in Ingress, perhaps thinking about a future revenue (be it from Ingress or other games using this AR data).
But as these scan additions only affect a certain number of agents (maybe some of them with compatible devices but not interested in scanning), the ones not interested or unable to scan feel that our suggestions or expectations about improving the actual gameplay (or bug fixing) are being ignored or postponed in favour of a thing that seems useless (at least for the time being), and that's where I think part of the backlash in this thread and many other ones comes from.
Thank you anyway for your aditional explanation. I really hope we can use them soon to correct misplaced portals and I really hope Ingress continues available when the time to see actual improvement in the game thanks to the scannings comes.
Is there any criteria on those first selected volatile? It seems kinda random.
Can you tell us how the this 3D information about the portals will be shown in Ingress, if Ingress backend/servers still isn't on the RWP? Are you going to build out this feature for the current backend/servers or only when Ingress (or if ) gets the RWP backend/servers? Or do you even have a plan on how this is going to roll out to Ingress yet? I'm sure that it's already figured out for games such as Pogo, or Harry Potter, Catan or whatever else is in the works at Niantic.
Gotta hand it to you, Niantic - your creativity really knows no bounds when it comes to inventing new ways to drive away your player base.
Could you divulge what the scanning data is actually being used for? Dangling the badge point/carrot-and-stick in front of my face was enough to get me to unlock the bronze badges, and I couldn't find any cares left to give for it, after that. Some concrete way that it's going to improve Ingress would be helpful in determining if I want to stop for that long at each portal and look like even more of a weirdo with my phone.
It seems to be randomly chosen one portal in every Z14 cell. That portal must also be visible in Pokemon.
This is what will scare away the spoofers and cheaters for sure. Good work @NianticBrian on developing yet another useless feature nobody wants and has nothing to do with ingress gameplay in general 😆
This is what you get with niantic support thats actually egocentric alcoholic Guinea pigs condoning cheating and harassment.
Press F in comments to pay respect to Ingress slowly turning into a zombie.
Thanks for editing my post, That's real freedom of speech @NianticKK 😂
Toxic.
So let me get this straight...
First, Niantic releases portal scans. They're buggy, time-consuming, and people don't really want to do them, but those who do submit scan after scan of the same portals over & over again, because Scout wasn't a well thought-out badge.
So then, in response to that, rather than fix the requirements for Scout, you put in the Scout Controller badge, which has absolutely insane requirements, doesn't address the criticisms from Scout, and actually makes things worse by ensuring that it is a badge which can only be obtained by one agent per portal at a given time, aka the antithesis of teamwork.
People still don't want to do these stupid badges, so now, in order to try to get people to do it, you randomly select portals to be volatile, and highlight them on scanner and intel map, complete with animation, and no way to turn it off. And finally, you place those volatiles on portals that are in restricted access areas or places that are shut down for Covid, like malls, zoos, and even the freaking White House.
Niantic... WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! JFC, this is unbelievable.
The core problems with the badges are still there. They are time-consuming, battery-consuming, bandwidth-consuming, and have literally zero benefit to the agent doing it besides the badge. Portal scans feel like work, and then you wonder why no one is doing them and put a bunch of horrendous ornamentation in place all over the entire map just to remind people, "Hey! This badge we want you do to but you all hate still exists!"
Meanwhile, features we've been asking for for years, like the ability to see our pioneer/explorer status on a given portal, get punted into the future with no timetable.
Give us a way to turn these off. This is unacceptable.
Hmm. I know that pokemon players are making vows and sharing chain to NOT scans the pokestop/gym because they are afraid the wayspots got removed.
In pokemon go theres is field researchs that are scanning the gyms, with rewards for the players. I think this would be a good way (if tasks/research be implemented in ingress someday).
Nah bro, truth.
Niantic simply doesn't give a ****
Yeah and @NianticBrian we all seen how well reporting inaccessible portal has worked for the past 8 years.... NOT!!!
Boston with a Z14 S2 grid.
Wow, that is overkill!
It wouldn't be so bad if these were only part of a very short-term event (like one or two days max). But to keep it this way for the foreseeable future, we need to be able to turn it off in intel as it's way too distracting and blinding lol
Totally agree. Its made the intel map a mess