[Feature Request] Idea to help #SustainableWithNiantic
One of the comments an Agent had about the current event was the Niantic's games are not really environmentally friendly. Cargressing likely has a horrible footprint for the game and PoGo raids are often car oriented even worse.
Idea: Sustainability Boost
What about if you've been walking for 30 minutes, for the next 30 minutes, all AP gains have a +0.2x bonus. As long as you keep walking, that bonus keeps extending in time (not strength) so as to encourage more people to play on foot, and then you get 30 minutes of time after you stop walking to keep the boost going.
I'd also extend this to bicycles, but I'm not sure whether that would cause too much 'Crawling Car' syndrome depending on how easily they can differentiate cars vs bicycles.
This could also be something that PoGo implements since we know use the same methodology for calculating walked distance (and they can do a lot of the development).
Just a small encouragement for people to play on foot and not burn fossil fuels for a game.
Comments
Well, for the record I can't remember the last time drove to a PoGo raid since they introduced the remote raid pass. I just finished a raid train without leaving my office.
That doesn't quite have any corollary in Ingress though.
True. Though is that a permanent feature even past the pandemic?
Oh man I hope so. I really don't want to go back to having to travel to each gym. And I like being able to raid with my friends from outside the US. Now what I need is to lift the distance limit on trading and some sort of in game messaging feature like the chat in Ingress so I can trade with them as well. But I'm afraid I'm dragging us down a rabbit hole that has little to nothing to do with your main point.
One thing they would need to fix to get this to work is how the game seems to track distance. From what I can tell you have to do something in the game for it to notice you're walking. Walking through XM seems to be enough if your agent picks it up. But I've done hikes in remote areas where there isn't XM laying around and a mile later check the app and apparently I haven't moved (at least as far as distance travelled is concerned). I've started following recommendations of other players to do something like drop and item and pick it up regularly so the app notices I'm moving.
On the other hand, if there's a significant reward for movement unrelated to actually doing something in the app may just end up increasing the demand for stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/Orzero-Accessories-Compatible-Cellphone-Installation/dp/B07V445JX3
The point to point movement thing changed after they added Kinetic capsules. It's still losing about 12.5% on average, but it's far better than the "direct line from portal to portal" that it was.
What the?
Though right now, this doesn't work for Ingress anyway, because this is a trick for Adventure Sync that Ingress doesn't have.
It was during the recent Optima Kinetic event that I noticed I wasn't getting credit for hiking in remote areas, although it could have just been a delay in the display of distance covered so far for the kinetic capsule.
Did you have the client open and in the foreground while hiking?
I'd also extend this to bicycles, but I'm not sure whether that would cause too much 'Crawling Car' syndrome depending on how easily they can differentiate cars vs bicycles.
I had a fitness tracker that managed to distinguish between driving and cycling quite well without needing location data (no GPS integration), but I suspect it had an essential dependence on being able to measure my heart rate constantly.
Yeah given the reliance on Adventure Sync, I don't know how accurate they could be.
Please don't forget the manual scooter-gressing as well. What about walking in a beautiful park designated as a historical site?
"non-motorised travel assists" 😁
There are some trails/places that prohibit motorized vehicles such as electric scooters and electric bikes. One has to resort to the college person's type of scooter especially when completing missions in universities. It allows us to blend in with the college crowd as well. 😉