You’ve got the sweet spot for the issues, well written. Yes, I have echoed all time, I can wait. But please tell us any roadmaps or what the team is focused on.
honestly, who is actually spoofing anything in this dead game? there are barely several thousands agents who are online at any given time and the activity has died down considerably over the years, hell even the item sellers have probably shut most of their stuff down because they really don't have a big enough customer base to justify running the equipment/bots. it's probably more profitable to gather some Pokemon items for resale or whatever that game does.
I have seen one cheater in this game once three or four years ago in taipei, and I have never ever seen one since then.
as far as ingress being dead, in my area used to be something like 10 active agents 3 years ago and now there are zero, and every single new portal that appears in my area is added by a Pokemon user.
There is still a fair **** of activity in some areas. Perth, Western Australia seems more active now than six months ago. We also get semi regular spoofer hits.
I cannot agree more. Sadly this is just another cry for help that will fall on the same deaf ears. The Ingress Team has made a few decent stabs at communication over the past year (IUENG interview, sporadic dev diaries, good communication on bugs/issues just after a feature launches) but each of these good moves are very short lived and followed by an abyss of silence that causes the community to rage more and more each time.
As always, I hope this changes but stepping away from this toxic relationship (read:Ingress) for the last 3 months has done my soul a lot of good. I’d like to return when things shore up but my hope for that time is at an all time low.
Sorry, but Niantic would get far more mileage fixing COMM than the last six months worth of mini games.
Yes Prime uses Unity, but I play games in Unity with real time server and chat updates that work just fine.
It also does not take months and months to hire a CM.
I have no faith a new CM will make any difference unless Niantic change how they approach this game. Krug was hobbled in a way similar to Vanguards.
Niantic need to release the apron strings and make drastic changes to staff and management style. Reduce NDA restrictions and allow more communication. Its a game company, not the NSA.
I think the biggest problem is that nobody in charge of game development appears to actually play the game, for anything more intense than walking around the block to make a field, or to listen to the people who do play.
"Oh look, I'm in this dense area of portals, let me find the one portal that doesn't have one of these red circles around it." ... Said nobody, ever.
Adding unique information to the scanner and Intel map was one of the biggest longest requested (and promised) features, but they managed to make it clumsy, hard to use, and out of line with what players needed.
A single layer with red circles around uncaptured portals and yellow circles around unvisited portals would be so much more helpful. Turn on and off unvisited/uncaptured separately.
And that's just an example. Core gameplay is more important -- and the game is *still* hard to play in sunlight with all the visual clutter on the screen. Oh, it's gotten better, but only after the hard-to-play Prime release drove away a big chunk of the player base. (Yes, people are still salty about that, mostly because we don't see much evidence that the underlying issues have been addressed.)
Thank you for addressing those issues. There are a lot of people did mention the Spoofer problem but I think this problem should be marked as high priority since Ingress is "location based" game and the main objective of the game requires lots of personal efforts. I'll add some layers to such issues. I don't want to mention technical parts like spoofer detection and preventation algorithms in the coding department because I don't have technical info. However, I can share my user experience as a devoted player.
1. The Source of Spoofers
Mainly, spoofers don't come with random motives. They're showing that they know the game, they know the objective by specifically targeting startegic portals, links, fields and even some valuable agents in the targeted community. Targeted people can make some assumptions about the motives and the MAIN source behind them. This kind of knowledge resides in the communities. I don't think that Niantic should punish people based on local arguments, gossips and assumptions but with the clear context those kind of information can be helpful for further investigations. We all know that creating an account levelling it up and spoofing is very easy to do. If it is possible to detect and punish the people behind them by banning their precious main accounts, I believe the number of spoofers will significantly drop. Detecting them from their IPs, device IDs and locations is also a technical issue but it's an another layer to solve those problems.
2. Fast tracking Issues
It is too slow. It is mentioned that Support system is simply trash but when it comes to spoofers it is impractical. Even for the fastest cases the spoofer is done with its job but generally it took days, weeks and even months to punish them. This should be very careful and fast process in order to lower the damage. Also there are very very clear indications that show who's spoofer and who's not. I didn't see any legit account started with fanfielding to boost their level after logging in for the first time. I didn't see any legit account targeted multiple distant portals within the first week of their gameplay. Personally, it took me 6 months to figure this game out even with the help of local players. Why do I have to mention every single indicator in my reports for hoping to get punishment on those accounts. Those indicators should be implemented as game mechanics if it's necessary. For example; day requirements for levelling up, even more clear amd long soft bans for newbie accounts etc.
3. Restoration/Reinstatement Process
Oh boy, this has some completely unnecessary steps. Firstly, why do I have to draw every single links and fields and state every single level of resonators on portals one by one and portal by portal? The restoration people must have this info. Every single thing must be reversed back into its old state before the spoofer. And most importantly, this process shouldn't have to require great amount of time. I mean the map state drastically changes after every spoofer action because it takes more than 2 weeks to restore everything. After the process, the whole picture always has missing pieces because in those 2 weeks there are links or fields created by some other player that prevent some links or fields that are destroyed by spoofers. This particular thing encourages spoofers because they get away with it. It is simple to create a spoofer account but it is mischievous and encouraging to prevent links and fields to be created again by using secondary spoofer account or the main accounts behind them for some cases. Even though those kind of secandary actions are taken by innocent, uninformed people and for some cases by the same team members, 'EVERYTHING' DONE BY THE SPOOFERS SHOULD BE RESTORED AND REVERSED BACK.
These are the main issues I've faced regarding spoofers. I'm not saying all of this must be implemeted but take anything you guys see as helpful.
COMM, Communications with the players, Story or lack of for over a year etc.
Ingress Prime in 2018 is better than it is now, aside from the new features. But the whole scope of the game was better then.
Story, live events, effects (audio and visual) were better.
Story:
Actors aren't free or cheap, we get that. That doesn't justify lack of ongoing story.
Live events :
Classic Anomalies have been on indefinite hold, and are dependent on a story.
Yet more casual hexathlon style can be set up in countries which have covid-19 under control, and because there is no need for a story to go with them, FOMO isn't too much of an issue.
Effects:
A lot of development time went into these features and some of us appreciate the hard work that went into them yet they have languished or been deleted without good reason. Some. Of these effects were designed to be able to have the story played out in different ways.
Oh how we wish that Andrew Krug was still around.
We hope that the new CM starts soon, as in, before the end of the month.
I think we're all hoping for some communication on these topics. As the world has shifted, so has the game, not only in regards to the pandemic, but also in regards to a dwindling userbase. What worked five years ago, may not work today. And some of what was working, is now gone. Ingress wants to become profitable and they need us to succeed. Ignoring agents on their own forums is just a slap in the face. They say they read everything, yet, nothing but silence. My patience has long since worn thin....
+1 on everything but the main problem for me and for the majority of players that i talk to is related to spoofing and/or multi-accounts.
Take out spoofers and multi-accounts and you will see a comeback of old players and retention of players that are in the verge of leaving the game for good.
As an example, in my area we have a very important, very spoofed to, portal and it is currently owned by a spoofer (reported by many) and nothing has been done, las time it was spoofed it took MONTHS for niantic to reverse it. How, why?! When it is clear as day that this was spoofed why niantic taked so damn long to do something about it....faking gps position to me is the single most damaging thing a player can do to ingress and, even though i know it is hard to counter all spoofers, niantic plays dead to a lot a clear situations.
Also Vanguards were contacted, nothing happened (not their fault, i know, but it shows niantic just don't care since they don't listen even to the vanguards).
Wayfarer fake portals are another problem. Too damn many photoshoped "grafitti" and abusive submissions without action taken by niantic. Inside houses pictures reported, fake grafittis reported, all sort of **** reported without actual response of what has been done about it. (and we come back to the communication part pf the post).
It even came out to me receiving a positive response to a fake portal report (...you should see the changes.....) and receiving a second email minutes after stating that the portal should remain in the portal network...
I love the game, the friends i made while playing it and i believe that the player community is the reason ingress isn't dead, but it is getting harder and harder seeing niantic not giving a F***.
The comms issue is now an utter joke. I've stated elsewhere on here that my C.O.R.E subscription will be cancelled - that is if no communication on an ultimate resolution, or fix is forthcoming by early next month.
It is now becoming a case of 'how long is a piece of string', as to when comms will be fixed - if at all.
Quite frankly this is not on. Escpecially considering that a good few of us are now paying a monthly fee towards this game.
I'd like to add sorting a list alphabetically (yeah, the keys in the inventory) seems rather hard. ****. Hire an intern to write a unit test for that so that it never gets broken again after fixing it.
I agree with this open letter and I still wait for the fix of the 5th anniversary Niantic gift that blocked agents to buy the 5 key lockers on the store.
The design of visited portals is a massive head-scratcher for me. It's like someone saw the incessant requests for that information and implemented it without ever stopping to ask, "How will our customers use this information?"
They've had feedback about the current implementation for a while. It's a real head-scratcher to me that they haven't inverted it so that it works for the primary use case.
It's like if a thirst person ask for water at a restaurant and receive (after 45 minutes) a glass of dirty water, and when ther person complain that was expecting for clean water to drink, the waiter reply "you didn't mention that, how I was suposed to know that? Enjoy your water, sir"
Comments
+1 Comm the laaste day's. The last days in the comm you can not see anything.
Well written, agrees completely with @InvestigateXM
You’ve got the sweet spot for the issues, well written. Yes, I have echoed all time, I can wait. But please tell us any roadmaps or what the team is focused on.
+1
honestly, who is actually spoofing anything in this dead game? there are barely several thousands agents who are online at any given time and the activity has died down considerably over the years, hell even the item sellers have probably shut most of their stuff down because they really don't have a big enough customer base to justify running the equipment/bots. it's probably more profitable to gather some Pokemon items for resale or whatever that game does.
I have seen one cheater in this game once three or four years ago in taipei, and I have never ever seen one since then.
as far as ingress being dead, in my area used to be something like 10 active agents 3 years ago and now there are zero, and every single new portal that appears in my area is added by a Pokemon user.
There is still a fair **** of activity in some areas. Perth, Western Australia seems more active now than six months ago. We also get semi regular spoofer hits.
I cannot agree more. Sadly this is just another cry for help that will fall on the same deaf ears. The Ingress Team has made a few decent stabs at communication over the past year (IUENG interview, sporadic dev diaries, good communication on bugs/issues just after a feature launches) but each of these good moves are very short lived and followed by an abyss of silence that causes the community to rage more and more each time.
As always, I hope this changes but stepping away from this toxic relationship (read:Ingress) for the last 3 months has done my soul a lot of good. I’d like to return when things shore up but my hope for that time is at an all time low.
Sorry, but Niantic would get far more mileage fixing COMM than the last six months worth of mini games.
Yes Prime uses Unity, but I play games in Unity with real time server and chat updates that work just fine.
It also does not take months and months to hire a CM.
I have no faith a new CM will make any difference unless Niantic change how they approach this game. Krug was hobbled in a way similar to Vanguards.
Niantic need to release the apron strings and make drastic changes to staff and management style. Reduce NDA restrictions and allow more communication. Its a game company, not the NSA.
I think the biggest problem is that nobody in charge of game development appears to actually play the game, for anything more intense than walking around the block to make a field, or to listen to the people who do play.
"Oh look, I'm in this dense area of portals, let me find the one portal that doesn't have one of these red circles around it." ... Said nobody, ever.
Adding unique information to the scanner and Intel map was one of the biggest longest requested (and promised) features, but they managed to make it clumsy, hard to use, and out of line with what players needed.
A single layer with red circles around uncaptured portals and yellow circles around unvisited portals would be so much more helpful. Turn on and off unvisited/uncaptured separately.
And that's just an example. Core gameplay is more important -- and the game is *still* hard to play in sunlight with all the visual clutter on the screen. Oh, it's gotten better, but only after the hard-to-play Prime release drove away a big chunk of the player base. (Yes, people are still salty about that, mostly because we don't see much evidence that the underlying issues have been addressed.)
I'm on a near 2million capital city, with barely 10 different logs daily here.
I bet you there's more Pokemon players active here in one day than ingress players in the whole world.
I really want to be able to change language on prime....
And no I do not want to change my phones language.....
Thank you for addressing those issues. There are a lot of people did mention the Spoofer problem but I think this problem should be marked as high priority since Ingress is "location based" game and the main objective of the game requires lots of personal efforts. I'll add some layers to such issues. I don't want to mention technical parts like spoofer detection and preventation algorithms in the coding department because I don't have technical info. However, I can share my user experience as a devoted player.
1. The Source of Spoofers
Mainly, spoofers don't come with random motives. They're showing that they know the game, they know the objective by specifically targeting startegic portals, links, fields and even some valuable agents in the targeted community. Targeted people can make some assumptions about the motives and the MAIN source behind them. This kind of knowledge resides in the communities. I don't think that Niantic should punish people based on local arguments, gossips and assumptions but with the clear context those kind of information can be helpful for further investigations. We all know that creating an account levelling it up and spoofing is very easy to do. If it is possible to detect and punish the people behind them by banning their precious main accounts, I believe the number of spoofers will significantly drop. Detecting them from their IPs, device IDs and locations is also a technical issue but it's an another layer to solve those problems.
2. Fast tracking Issues
It is too slow. It is mentioned that Support system is simply trash but when it comes to spoofers it is impractical. Even for the fastest cases the spoofer is done with its job but generally it took days, weeks and even months to punish them. This should be very careful and fast process in order to lower the damage. Also there are very very clear indications that show who's spoofer and who's not. I didn't see any legit account started with fanfielding to boost their level after logging in for the first time. I didn't see any legit account targeted multiple distant portals within the first week of their gameplay. Personally, it took me 6 months to figure this game out even with the help of local players. Why do I have to mention every single indicator in my reports for hoping to get punishment on those accounts. Those indicators should be implemented as game mechanics if it's necessary. For example; day requirements for levelling up, even more clear amd long soft bans for newbie accounts etc.
3. Restoration/Reinstatement Process
Oh boy, this has some completely unnecessary steps. Firstly, why do I have to draw every single links and fields and state every single level of resonators on portals one by one and portal by portal? The restoration people must have this info. Every single thing must be reversed back into its old state before the spoofer. And most importantly, this process shouldn't have to require great amount of time. I mean the map state drastically changes after every spoofer action because it takes more than 2 weeks to restore everything. After the process, the whole picture always has missing pieces because in those 2 weeks there are links or fields created by some other player that prevent some links or fields that are destroyed by spoofers. This particular thing encourages spoofers because they get away with it. It is simple to create a spoofer account but it is mischievous and encouraging to prevent links and fields to be created again by using secondary spoofer account or the main accounts behind them for some cases. Even though those kind of secandary actions are taken by innocent, uninformed people and for some cases by the same team members, 'EVERYTHING' DONE BY THE SPOOFERS SHOULD BE RESTORED AND REVERSED BACK.
These are the main issues I've faced regarding spoofers. I'm not saying all of this must be implemeted but take anything you guys see as helpful.
Agree with the OP
It is a long read and covers the main issues
COMM, Communications with the players, Story or lack of for over a year etc.
Ingress Prime in 2018 is better than it is now, aside from the new features. But the whole scope of the game was better then.
Story, live events, effects (audio and visual) were better.
Story:
Actors aren't free or cheap, we get that. That doesn't justify lack of ongoing story.
Live events :
Classic Anomalies have been on indefinite hold, and are dependent on a story.
Yet more casual hexathlon style can be set up in countries which have covid-19 under control, and because there is no need for a story to go with them, FOMO isn't too much of an issue.
Effects:
A lot of development time went into these features and some of us appreciate the hard work that went into them yet they have languished or been deleted without good reason. Some. Of these effects were designed to be able to have the story played out in different ways.
Oh how we wish that Andrew Krug was still around.
We hope that the new CM starts soon, as in, before the end of the month.
Have some patience. You really think they are not working on these things?
Well put, I love ingress and hope that they can resolve the major issues that they face (and we suffer) soonTM
Regarding COMM, just roll back to the jump to the top version...that's preferential to the current Sh1t show!!!
I think we're all hoping for some communication on these topics. As the world has shifted, so has the game, not only in regards to the pandemic, but also in regards to a dwindling userbase. What worked five years ago, may not work today. And some of what was working, is now gone. Ingress wants to become profitable and they need us to succeed. Ignoring agents on their own forums is just a slap in the face. They say they read everything, yet, nothing but silence. My patience has long since worn thin....
I canceled my CORE subscription for iOS cause 500 extra item space wasn't worth the headache of trying to get Niantic to fix it.
I love the playerbase and community for Ingress. But most of that is outside of Niantic's community management.
+1 on everything but the main problem for me and for the majority of players that i talk to is related to spoofing and/or multi-accounts.
Take out spoofers and multi-accounts and you will see a comeback of old players and retention of players that are in the verge of leaving the game for good.
As an example, in my area we have a very important, very spoofed to, portal and it is currently owned by a spoofer (reported by many) and nothing has been done, las time it was spoofed it took MONTHS for niantic to reverse it. How, why?! When it is clear as day that this was spoofed why niantic taked so damn long to do something about it....faking gps position to me is the single most damaging thing a player can do to ingress and, even though i know it is hard to counter all spoofers, niantic plays dead to a lot a clear situations.
Also Vanguards were contacted, nothing happened (not their fault, i know, but it shows niantic just don't care since they don't listen even to the vanguards).
Wayfarer fake portals are another problem. Too damn many photoshoped "grafitti" and abusive submissions without action taken by niantic. Inside houses pictures reported, fake grafittis reported, all sort of **** reported without actual response of what has been done about it. (and we come back to the communication part pf the post).
It even came out to me receiving a positive response to a fake portal report (...you should see the changes.....) and receiving a second email minutes after stating that the portal should remain in the portal network...
I love the game, the friends i made while playing it and i believe that the player community is the reason ingress isn't dead, but it is getting harder and harder seeing niantic not giving a F***.
+1 to the opening post.
The comms issue is now an utter joke. I've stated elsewhere on here that my C.O.R.E subscription will be cancelled - that is if no communication on an ultimate resolution, or fix is forthcoming by early next month.
It is now becoming a case of 'how long is a piece of string', as to when comms will be fixed - if at all.
Quite frankly this is not on. Escpecially considering that a good few of us are now paying a monthly fee towards this game.
Ingress just got updated to Unity LTS, y'all need to chill out; they have their hands full fixing difficult to resolve bugs.
Some bugs are over a year old now, how long chill ?
Lol
Very well said.
I'd like to add sorting a list alphabetically (yeah, the keys in the inventory) seems rather hard. ****. Hire an intern to write a unit test for that so that it never gets broken again after fixing it.
I agree with this open letter and I still wait for the fix of the 5th anniversary Niantic gift that blocked agents to buy the 5 key lockers on the store.
That one's not happening chief. They've already said only agents who had all five before claiming the free one will ever have six
Definitely well written, and hopefully if Niantic do read they can look resolving these issues as these are definitely just the tip of the iceberg...
definitely love the game, but the issues and the lack of communication and support Niantic show to resolve ingress issues is definitely a problem.
The design of visited portals is a massive head-scratcher for me. It's like someone saw the incessant requests for that information and implemented it without ever stopping to ask, "How will our customers use this information?"
They've had feedback about the current implementation for a while. It's a real head-scratcher to me that they haven't inverted it so that it works for the primary use case.
It's like if a thirst person ask for water at a restaurant and receive (after 45 minutes) a glass of dirty water, and when ther person complain that was expecting for clean water to drink, the waiter reply "you didn't mention that, how I was suposed to know that? Enjoy your water, sir"
Again - silence from Niantic - they should be all over this post.
My theory is that XMA's were introduced to allow them to outsource forum interaction.
I agree, even though they have nothing to offer either because of NDAs, etc, etc.
Something needs to give. Start working with us Niantic!!! Working with us on your releases benefits everyone.