I love Mission Days. I love going to a place with hundreds of other Ingress players, some of whom I'm meeting for the first time, some of whom I am seeing for the dozenth time. I love knowing that a dedicated team of local agents put a significant amount of thought into what parts of their city merit highlighting. I love the fact that I can be in a chat from agents all around the world who happened to be in the same place at the same time and bond over the shared experience months or years later.
I am also very excited for this new "Second Sunday" Mission Day concept, as an encouragement for more agents to get out and do missions locally. I want more events in general, and I want them to be approachable to agents who don't have the ability or budget to travel far away.
I don't especially care if agents now have an easier time at achieving the Mission Day badge than agents of the past did -- everything gets easier over time. But I am concerned that, if the new events are rolled into the existing badge, the old style of events will disappear entirely. Perhaps that is ok - especially if we get other opportunities for these larger regional events with a return of Hexathlons or a return to 2014-era quantities of anomaly sites with lighter weight anomaly setups. But I want a future in which there are major focal points of Ingress activity that draw agents from hundreds of miles apart to a central site for a great day.
What constitutes as an easier time? The number of missions? The required number has always been based on the location and the preparation from POCs. I've been to ones that required 6 and few that required 12.
"Easier time" meaning whatever it is that people mean here. It's not something that I care about at all. I assume the reference is to the lack of required travel. It's impossible to know anything else about how these new events may differ from previous Mission Days, but the strict count of missions is definitely not the metric I'd use. I've done 18 missions without leaving a single park bench, and I've done single missions that require hours of effort. Typically, Mission Day Missions tend to be pretty short individually, but they tend to be somewhat spread out so that agents see different parts of the host city. In most cases I've been able to complete the required 6 missions in 1-2 hours, or all 18 in 4-6 hours. But there are exceptions in both directions.
I would like to see special "Second Sunday" missions/banners pop up in certain areas, like the ones for IFS before it went virtual. I'm guessing that will be up to players, hopefully NIA will give same priority to those in the approval process.
Why not make a new medal? I believe that such monthly events will be temporary until all borders are opened, so their importance is much less than the real MDs that are bound to return after a pandemic. And, if anything, don't misunderstand, I fully support such a temporary event format
I certainly remember that Europe and America were spoilt with MDs in their day, but we had no more than 3-4 events a year for all the countries in the former USSR, so each MD was as well organised as a primary anomaly and there could be more than a thousand participants at each.
Now I hope you understand why we don't think monthly MDs should count towards the same medal.
There have been Mission Days as completely separate events. Why does it matter if it's not with an anomaly?! I am also certain Europe has had separate MDs and NL-1331 events in the past when US did not.
The only people here watering down the quality of Mission Days are the ones gatekeeping it. Even before any announcements are made!
I mean the level of organisation of the individual MD. We had our last anomaly on 25 June 2016, so all the other Mission Days were separate from the anomalies, but maintained the same level of organisation.
Again, if Niantic is still thinking about whether to give +1 to the old medal or make a new medal, and read this thread on the forum, I'd like them to realise that at least two people here would like the second option. That's all there is to it.
There are parts of the world that are recovering from the pandemic. Areas with high vaccination rates. Stadiums of people enjoying sports, venues filled with people watching live music.
A mostly outdoor event with likely less than a hundred people, c’mon, let it go… If you’re nervous or scared, stay home. I got my vaccination, I’m ready to start enjoying life again. We can’t keep denying people enjoyment because a small percentage can’t go outside or a country on the other side of the world is still on lockdown. These events will be here when you’re ready to return, until then, YOU are responsible to take any risks you see fit.
We need more details from Niantic about these events, but so far, it sounds to me like Mission Days will be able to be done solo without being around other people.
NL-1331 looks like it will continue being an event that involves people gathering. Niantic will need to be mindful of where they are hosting these events. But right now Oakland, CA looks like one of the safest places you can probably host an event.
I also said there are parts of the world that are relatively safe and are ready to start living semi-normal lives. Does that mean we stuff 100 agents into a tiny room and do battle beacons? No. Does it mean an event can happen that is considered safe according to government mandates, sure. I’m ready for that, I’m willing to accept the risk. I’m vaccinated, I’m younger, I’m pretty healthy. I’m not waiting another year for every single agent to give a green light to do these sorts of things. I’m sorry you’re living somewhere where things aren’t looking as well as other places. These events will be ready as soon as your country is. Until then, places that are in better positions and ALREADY doing events with thousands of people, should absolutely start hosting events in a safe manner, following government mandated guidelines.
My risk isn’t your risk. Just because an event is happening doesn’t mean you have to attend. Please do not let yourself lose sleep if events are happening elsewhere in the world without you.
Im looking forward to hearing more information on this concept.
I am assume it will be similar to First Saturday in that an ENL and a RES agent will need to coordinate the logistics locally - set the location, and maybe set up the missions, and then people register their interest and do the missions on the day.
Without commenting one way or the other about whether or not there should be a different badge - when the virtual FS began, the existing FS badge received the increments.
No new badge was involved.
So, simply going on past form, I would speculate that the same would happen with the MD badge.
FS was a local event before pandemia, the virtual format didn't make much difference.
On the orger hand, MD was always about traveling just like the anomaly. And keeping same badge for old new type of MD seems much more wrong and unreasoned
I am on the fence about this. On the one hand, I'm happy to increment my Mission Day badge a few times. But if "Second Sunday Mission Days" are to be a regular thing, then I really do think this cheapens the Mission Day badge. I don't care if this is "Gate keeping", the point of a game is that it is to have challenging elements to it and for Ingress in particular the fact that some travel is necessary for many of the badges is part of the fun.
In any case, it wouldn't be hard for them to find artwork for a new badge for Second Sunday Mission Days, since they could use the badge they got rid of.
i am hoping not like an fs where everyone need to get together. solo would be better as people have other things going on in their lives. 2 weekends in a row for xfac would be more difficult as well as it would most likely be the same faction organizers. plus time availability of a sunday (or most any days) are different for everyone. i am an early bird, where as some of my team mates are night owls while others fall in the middle.
Boohoo, agents have always been unable to attend certain events, be it too far, no cash, clash with real life events.
Build bridge, get over it.
What I really want to know is why Niantic marketing didn't post to forum as well as web site. If you need assistance with event notification and organising, I'm free to offer advice/help out.
Some agents will earn their onyx FS badges by the end of the year. Niantic probably wants to start another monthly event to keep people returning, so I'm guessing it will be an all new badge.
I feel about the same. If Mission Day is now "just go do any random banner by yourself" it erodes the quality of the event. I hope there will be more to it than that.
I was planning to ramp up my bannering now since BG went live. As it is, I have to travel 30 mins to an hour to do any banners because I've done all my local ones. If I have to "reserve" existing banners for future Mission Days, it will actually slow me down from doing banners because I have to make sure I don't run out or else I'll have to travel even further. I remember @phthoruth saying recently he completed all the banners in his region, I suspect many agents would have this issue. And it's not as easy as "go make new missions to do" when you are up against your cap in the mission authoring tool and you have to decide which of your proud works you have to pull down to make space.
Hopefully communities will step up and have their own "unofficial" central meeting spots and missions if NIA is just gonna say "go do random missions by yourself."
While I agree that the old format was an enticement to travel and see different places I think that can still be done with this new format. Nothing is stopping you from going to Paris, Lisbon, or Tokyo to do a banner mission there.
However, travelling to do a mission day isn't always in everyone's budget. This democratizes the game a little bit and there's nothing wrong with that in my book.
What I hope happens is that this incentivizes local communities to advertise their cool banners to players that may be interested in travelling.
The point of previous Mission Days wasn't just to travel though. It was to travel and explore a new area *with a bunch of other Ingress agents*. If this speculated distributed format becomes the norm, then there won't be any meetups or socializing or anything. The social aspect of the game is what keeps it going, and killing off one of the last remaining avenues for that would be a tragedy.
There are places where you can get Onyx SpecOps without leaving your hometown.
There are people who have published and unpublished hundreds of missions in their own neighborhood. (Me? I don't think I'm up to hundreds, but yeah I've had to unpublish some of my babies to make room...)
While doing missions drives a lot of exploration, it's not even slightly required.
My vote is that a new type of event should be a new badge, hopefully in the long term we will be able to have both.
As for Covid concerns, most people in most places in the world can safely go for a walk downtown with members of their own household. These Second Sundays seem explicitly designed to not require players to gather in any one place.
Niantic could quash a lot of speculation about how these events will work by telling us more, but nah. Sure would be nice to know how to plan for this event.
Hey, @NianticBrian , if these Second Sunday mission days are going to focus on user-created missions, that will incentivize a lot of new players to start submitting missions.
You could make this a much more positive experience for these new content creators by:
Updating the published mission guidelines and the guidelines the mission reviewers use so that they match.
Updating the rejection workflow so that rejected missions are given better feedback about which published rule(s) they broke.
Updating the internal tools to minimize the chance that submitted missions are left in review limbo for months or years.
Updating approval policies so that tiny changes to a published mission, such as correcting a spelling error in a title or passphrase answer, are approved or rejected based on the delta instead of going through another full subjective review.
They need release all details not just a few days before it starts, some users need to plan if they need go outside their local area to do banners, i hope before end of this month they give us full details .
Comments
I love Mission Days. I love going to a place with hundreds of other Ingress players, some of whom I'm meeting for the first time, some of whom I am seeing for the dozenth time. I love knowing that a dedicated team of local agents put a significant amount of thought into what parts of their city merit highlighting. I love the fact that I can be in a chat from agents all around the world who happened to be in the same place at the same time and bond over the shared experience months or years later.
I am also very excited for this new "Second Sunday" Mission Day concept, as an encouragement for more agents to get out and do missions locally. I want more events in general, and I want them to be approachable to agents who don't have the ability or budget to travel far away.
I don't especially care if agents now have an easier time at achieving the Mission Day badge than agents of the past did -- everything gets easier over time. But I am concerned that, if the new events are rolled into the existing badge, the old style of events will disappear entirely. Perhaps that is ok - especially if we get other opportunities for these larger regional events with a return of Hexathlons or a return to 2014-era quantities of anomaly sites with lighter weight anomaly setups. But I want a future in which there are major focal points of Ingress activity that draw agents from hundreds of miles apart to a central site for a great day.
What constitutes as an easier time? The number of missions? The required number has always been based on the location and the preparation from POCs. I've been to ones that required 6 and few that required 12.
"Easier time" meaning whatever it is that people mean here. It's not something that I care about at all. I assume the reference is to the lack of required travel. It's impossible to know anything else about how these new events may differ from previous Mission Days, but the strict count of missions is definitely not the metric I'd use. I've done 18 missions without leaving a single park bench, and I've done single missions that require hours of effort. Typically, Mission Day Missions tend to be pretty short individually, but they tend to be somewhat spread out so that agents see different parts of the host city. In most cases I've been able to complete the required 6 missions in 1-2 hours, or all 18 in 4-6 hours. But there are exceptions in both directions.
I would like to see special "Second Sunday" missions/banners pop up in certain areas, like the ones for IFS before it went virtual. I'm guessing that will be up to players, hopefully NIA will give same priority to those in the approval process.
Why not make a new medal? I believe that such monthly events will be temporary until all borders are opened, so their importance is much less than the real MDs that are bound to return after a pandemic. And, if anything, don't misunderstand, I fully support such a temporary event format
I certainly remember that Europe and America were spoilt with MDs in their day, but we had no more than 3-4 events a year for all the countries in the former USSR, so each MD was as well organised as a primary anomaly and there could be more than a thousand participants at each.
Now I hope you understand why we don't think monthly MDs should count towards the same medal.
There have been Mission Days as completely separate events. Why does it matter if it's not with an anomaly?! I am also certain Europe has had separate MDs and NL-1331 events in the past when US did not.
The only people here watering down the quality of Mission Days are the ones gatekeeping it. Even before any announcements are made!
I mean the level of organisation of the individual MD. We had our last anomaly on 25 June 2016, so all the other Mission Days were separate from the anomalies, but maintained the same level of organisation.
Again, if Niantic is still thinking about whether to give +1 to the old medal or make a new medal, and read this thread on the forum, I'd like them to realise that at least two people here would like the second option. That's all there is to it.
It literally says "Meet You At Our Live Events" in the title and "NL-1331 Meetups" in the post.
There are parts of the world that are recovering from the pandemic. Areas with high vaccination rates. Stadiums of people enjoying sports, venues filled with people watching live music.
A mostly outdoor event with likely less than a hundred people, c’mon, let it go… If you’re nervous or scared, stay home. I got my vaccination, I’m ready to start enjoying life again. We can’t keep denying people enjoyment because a small percentage can’t go outside or a country on the other side of the world is still on lockdown. These events will be here when you’re ready to return, until then, YOU are responsible to take any risks you see fit.
We need more details from Niantic about these events, but so far, it sounds to me like Mission Days will be able to be done solo without being around other people.
NL-1331 looks like it will continue being an event that involves people gathering. Niantic will need to be mindful of where they are hosting these events. But right now Oakland, CA looks like one of the safest places you can probably host an event.
I also said there are parts of the world that are relatively safe and are ready to start living semi-normal lives. Does that mean we stuff 100 agents into a tiny room and do battle beacons? No. Does it mean an event can happen that is considered safe according to government mandates, sure. I’m ready for that, I’m willing to accept the risk. I’m vaccinated, I’m younger, I’m pretty healthy. I’m not waiting another year for every single agent to give a green light to do these sorts of things. I’m sorry you’re living somewhere where things aren’t looking as well as other places. These events will be ready as soon as your country is. Until then, places that are in better positions and ALREADY doing events with thousands of people, should absolutely start hosting events in a safe manner, following government mandated guidelines.
My risk isn’t your risk. Just because an event is happening doesn’t mean you have to attend. Please do not let yourself lose sleep if events are happening elsewhere in the world without you.
PS the area I play in is at 70% vaccination rate, I get how I might feel differently about this vs other people in areas. https://durkan.seattle.gov/2021/06/seattle-becomes-first-major-american-city-to-fully-vaccinate-70-percent-of-residents-12-and-older
Im looking forward to hearing more information on this concept.
I am assume it will be similar to First Saturday in that an ENL and a RES agent will need to coordinate the logistics locally - set the location, and maybe set up the missions, and then people register their interest and do the missions on the day.
Without commenting one way or the other about whether or not there should be a different badge - when the virtual FS began, the existing FS badge received the increments.
No new badge was involved.
So, simply going on past form, I would speculate that the same would happen with the MD badge.
FS was a local event before pandemia, the virtual format didn't make much difference.
On the orger hand, MD was always about traveling just like the anomaly. And keeping same badge for old new type of MD seems much more wrong and unreasoned
I am on the fence about this. On the one hand, I'm happy to increment my Mission Day badge a few times. But if "Second Sunday Mission Days" are to be a regular thing, then I really do think this cheapens the Mission Day badge. I don't care if this is "Gate keeping", the point of a game is that it is to have challenging elements to it and for Ingress in particular the fact that some travel is necessary for many of the badges is part of the fun.
In any case, it wouldn't be hard for them to find artwork for a new badge for Second Sunday Mission Days, since they could use the badge they got rid of.
i am hoping not like an fs where everyone need to get together. solo would be better as people have other things going on in their lives. 2 weekends in a row for xfac would be more difficult as well as it would most likely be the same faction organizers. plus time availability of a sunday (or most any days) are different for everyone. i am an early bird, where as some of my team mates are night owls while others fall in the middle.
Boohoo, agents have always been unable to attend certain events, be it too far, no cash, clash with real life events.
Build bridge, get over it.
What I really want to know is why Niantic marketing didn't post to forum as well as web site. If you need assistance with event notification and organising, I'm free to offer advice/help out.
Now thinking about it, it looks like something they might want to at least test out given they provided three dates.
Some agents will earn their onyx FS badges by the end of the year. Niantic probably wants to start another monthly event to keep people returning, so I'm guessing it will be an all new badge.
I feel about the same. If Mission Day is now "just go do any random banner by yourself" it erodes the quality of the event. I hope there will be more to it than that.
I was planning to ramp up my bannering now since BG went live. As it is, I have to travel 30 mins to an hour to do any banners because I've done all my local ones. If I have to "reserve" existing banners for future Mission Days, it will actually slow me down from doing banners because I have to make sure I don't run out or else I'll have to travel even further. I remember @phthoruth saying recently he completed all the banners in his region, I suspect many agents would have this issue. And it's not as easy as "go make new missions to do" when you are up against your cap in the mission authoring tool and you have to decide which of your proud works you have to pull down to make space.
Hopefully communities will step up and have their own "unofficial" central meeting spots and missions if NIA is just gonna say "go do random missions by yourself."
We are waiting for more informations but not the 10 July an event like MD irl ask an organisation. Maybe Niantic can clarify the initial post.
Hurry up and tell us where the events are so we can make plans!
While I agree that the old format was an enticement to travel and see different places I think that can still be done with this new format. Nothing is stopping you from going to Paris, Lisbon, or Tokyo to do a banner mission there.
However, travelling to do a mission day isn't always in everyone's budget. This democratizes the game a little bit and there's nothing wrong with that in my book.
What I hope happens is that this incentivizes local communities to advertise their cool banners to players that may be interested in travelling.
Well - if we actually knew something about some "new format" I might agree with you.
Or not.
The point of previous Mission Days wasn't just to travel though. It was to travel and explore a new area *with a bunch of other Ingress agents*. If this speculated distributed format becomes the norm, then there won't be any meetups or socializing or anything. The social aspect of the game is what keeps it going, and killing off one of the last remaining avenues for that would be a tragedy.
There are places where you can get Onyx SpecOps without leaving your hometown.
There are people who have published and unpublished hundreds of missions in their own neighborhood. (Me? I don't think I'm up to hundreds, but yeah I've had to unpublish some of my babies to make room...)
While doing missions drives a lot of exploration, it's not even slightly required.
My vote is that a new type of event should be a new badge, hopefully in the long term we will be able to have both.
As for Covid concerns, most people in most places in the world can safely go for a walk downtown with members of their own household. These Second Sundays seem explicitly designed to not require players to gather in any one place.
Niantic could quash a lot of speculation about how these events will work by telling us more, but nah. Sure would be nice to know how to plan for this event.
Hey, @NianticBrian , if these Second Sunday mission days are going to focus on user-created missions, that will incentivize a lot of new players to start submitting missions.
You could make this a much more positive experience for these new content creators by:
They need release all details not just a few days before it starts, some users need to plan if they need go outside their local area to do banners, i hope before end of this month they give us full details .
Nothing is stopping you? There's a pandemic going on!!!!
It is literally illegal for me to go to any of those countries.