The only explanation I can think of with COMM is they want to also incorporate new alerts to it such as drones and news messages
Or maybe we're seeing this has been a hard thing to add to Unity and that's why you don't see anything similar in their other games? Like other people have stated, a refresh button would do the trick. It's not practical but so isn't an empty COMM.
At least it would ok to say "fixing COMM became a bigger problem than initially anticipated" - something similar to @ofer2 stated about the intel when it was getting upgraded. Did Niantic not see how that communication lowered doubt because it was someone specialized in that area to explain what is happening and what they're working on.
I hate that questions have to go through the "chain of command" for not just asking but also the answer. Cut that out. It's unnecessary. We want to hear the passion of the team. Go had updates where you shared was in charge of the "Go Beyond" updates. You guys also explained interns worked on the kinetic cap. We love to hear that insight. It shouldn't be this secret or something that should wait until after it's implemented.
Not much happen when appmakers are to bad to make Ingress Prime app. Hope Niantic soon can hire new appmakers are very good to make Ingress app good fast.
I can give you a little bit of insight about COMM. COMM was one of the earlier bits of the rewrite that was written and as we've been addressing bugs, we've added layers and layers of fixes onto it. Especially when it came to scrolling, it was a mess. It was below the level of quality that we want to have in the project and consistently had more and more bugs. Therefore, we came to the same conclusion as you: it was time to rewrite COMM. Feature rewrites are not simple though. A new version isnt just better. New software is always more buggy than software which has been out there and already had a lot of its bugs fixed. Therefore, when it came time to get our new version out there, we deployed it alongside the old version so that if there were some terrible bug, we could switch back. The problem here is that the new system had different bugs than the old one. So if we were to switch back to the old one, the bugs in the old one would come back. Unfortunately, we had to do this which led to a lot of confusion I think. That being said, we're currently on the new version, and the current bug (the feed not refreshing automatically) is new and we are actively working on fixing it. Hopefully, with all that being said, once we fix these last couple of issues, the new COMM should be everything that you all could want from COMM (with *crosses fingers* much much fewer issues moving forward).
Any sort of rough eta you can give us? Thinking maybe an update away or maybe a couple updates out? This isn't me holding you/the team to a date or build number. It's asking for a "rough" timeline...
Thank you so much for the update. Crossing my fingers as well that everything works out with the fixes and we have working COMMs again. Also, Niantic needs to clone about 10 of you as far as communication goes. Always appreciate your insights and authenticity. :)
Communication is the key here...being left in the dark is not fun. But will Niantic ever fix their communications issues? It's been 8+ years, honestly I don't see it happening. They haven't learned yet. And that's beyond sad.
a good list of complaints. i'd like to dogpile on by mentioning a whole HOST of usability problems that came along with Prime that the community has literally been complaining about for years... low contrast overall, text readability, short toast messages, ignored taps, etc....
@1valdis I believe Niantic employees are under NDA and if they aren't official spokespeople they have very limited ability to talk about internal company information. I know several people who do or did work there, and while they'll sometimes speak in generalities ("We know about that and we're working on it", etc.) and occasionally answer a few general questions they are all very reluctant to share specific information.
There's no excuse for Niantic's spokespeople not being open about acknowledging their issues and sharing a path forward.
Like how ofer was here for ‘some’ explanations. Remember, fellow agents, we are still way behind. If this amount of likes, insightful and comments leads to just one answer about comms, I’ll think better about this.
I don't actually think that they have anyone that is an actual spokesperson for Ingress other than Brian.
From my viewpoint it still seems odd that a Product Manager is on the forums doing support.
Is there even an actual moderation team for the forums? A Community Liaison? Kind of surprised that Vanguards or even Xma's didn't get some sort of moderator status. But then again looking at some of the Xma's I'm glad they don't have any moderator status/access.
Ingress is 8+ years old and they still have a massive communication problem. It's more than frustrating to the users. We keep hearing about how they are going to get better at it. But sadly it never changes.
I often wonder if their internal communication is as bad as their external communications?
In general I think niantic are bad when it comes to dealing with and listening to their fanbase. Having played pogo for years and now ingress for a year and a bit, it's really shocking how little they seem to want to listen, only doing so when they absolutely have to and even then it's almost like a huff that they do it.
Is it really that bad for Pogo? I don't keep up with pogo, it really lost it's appeal to me rather quickly. Boring game, doing boring stuff. Full of multi accounting and spoofing that has spilled over into Ingress in general.
Then again, there are how many active people playing pogo compared to Ingress? But it sounds like they aren't doing well either way. How many more games on the current horizon in beta or soon to be released (Pikimin, Catan, & Transformers) ? Wonder if the HP support is also bad?
I'm sorry that you weren't able to experience ingress in the "golden (early) years". It really used to be a fun game, vibrant community, and tons of content/news from niantic.
The ingress team really wants your 5* reviews, your $4.99 per month and you to keep scanning portals. Yet, not willing to meet us halfway with some communication.
Some things never change apparently….
edit: I guess the only voice I have at this point is this.
For every bug niantic fixes, they add about 3 more. They push the great battle league constantly, locking poekmon behind it, but the battles are so laggy/broken that you're lucky of you can do 3 battles in a row without it lagging out. Sometimes you can click on a pokemon and just have a white screen.
Thats just the bugs, when it comes to listening to players, community day is a good example, at the start of the year people were constantly complaining that there wasn't any new shiny pokemon being released, niantic said "we've heard you trainers" then proceeded to put a comm day of a pokemon that had been shiny for 2 years and was extremely common, and they also removed the "we've heard you trainers" from the blog and deleted the tweet about the pokemon after an hour because of the hate, just to put another tweet back up
Comments
The only explanation I can think of with COMM is they want to also incorporate new alerts to it such as drones and news messages
Or maybe we're seeing this has been a hard thing to add to Unity and that's why you don't see anything similar in their other games? Like other people have stated, a refresh button would do the trick. It's not practical but so isn't an empty COMM.
At least it would ok to say "fixing COMM became a bigger problem than initially anticipated" - something similar to @ofer2 stated about the intel when it was getting upgraded. Did Niantic not see how that communication lowered doubt because it was someone specialized in that area to explain what is happening and what they're working on.
I hate that questions have to go through the "chain of command" for not just asking but also the answer. Cut that out. It's unnecessary. We want to hear the passion of the team. Go had updates where you shared was in charge of the "Go Beyond" updates. You guys also explained interns worked on the kinetic cap. We love to hear that insight. It shouldn't be this secret or something that should wait until after it's implemented.
Not much happen when appmakers are to bad to make Ingress Prime app. Hope Niantic soon can hire new appmakers are very good to make Ingress app good fast.
@NianticBrian
I can give you a little bit of insight about COMM. COMM was one of the earlier bits of the rewrite that was written and as we've been addressing bugs, we've added layers and layers of fixes onto it. Especially when it came to scrolling, it was a mess. It was below the level of quality that we want to have in the project and consistently had more and more bugs. Therefore, we came to the same conclusion as you: it was time to rewrite COMM. Feature rewrites are not simple though. A new version isnt just better. New software is always more buggy than software which has been out there and already had a lot of its bugs fixed. Therefore, when it came time to get our new version out there, we deployed it alongside the old version so that if there were some terrible bug, we could switch back. The problem here is that the new system had different bugs than the old one. So if we were to switch back to the old one, the bugs in the old one would come back. Unfortunately, we had to do this which led to a lot of confusion I think. That being said, we're currently on the new version, and the current bug (the feed not refreshing automatically) is new and we are actively working on fixing it. Hopefully, with all that being said, once we fix these last couple of issues, the new COMM should be everything that you all could want from COMM (with *crosses fingers* much much fewer issues moving forward).
Any sort of rough eta you can give us? Thinking maybe an update away or maybe a couple updates out? This isn't me holding you/the team to a date or build number. It's asking for a "rough" timeline...
PS thank you for the update :)
Thank you very much for your insight, truly. It is very appreciated to get some insight into the behind the scenes.
I hate to gush, but I love your answers/comments. So very much appreciated.
Just thank you for the communication
Your comment is welcome. Thanks
We continue in the fight 💪
We're working on it right now, so prob not the next version, but hopefully in not too long after.
really great if u can finally fix broken comm.. goodluck!
Thank you so much for the update. Crossing my fingers as well that everything works out with the fixes and we have working COMMs again. Also, Niantic needs to clone about 10 of you as far as communication goes. Always appreciate your insights and authenticity. :)
Thank you.💪💪💙
thank you very much. very appreciated feedback 💚
Sólo diré que si hablamos del COMM esperamos ansiosos que funcione. Vamos que se puede!!!
Pero si hablamos del chat, por favor quitenlo
Thank you very much, keep up the hard and good work! you're duys are doing good job!
Communication is the key here...being left in the dark is not fun. But will Niantic ever fix their communications issues? It's been 8+ years, honestly I don't see it happening. They haven't learned yet. And that's beyond sad.
And what exactly is wrong with it? It works fine for me.
while your assessment of ease of spoofing is spot on, your understanding of how GPS works is clearly lacking.
Hey, how's the dev diary on Portal History going? I'm still waiting :)
How come it takes so much for people from Niantic to start speaking?..
Thank you very much, your insights are very appreciated and I wish there were much more of them.
a good list of complaints. i'd like to dogpile on by mentioning a whole HOST of usability problems that came along with Prime that the community has literally been complaining about for years... low contrast overall, text readability, short toast messages, ignored taps, etc....
Simply, awesome to hear.
@1valdis I believe Niantic employees are under NDA and if they aren't official spokespeople they have very limited ability to talk about internal company information. I know several people who do or did work there, and while they'll sometimes speak in generalities ("We know about that and we're working on it", etc.) and occasionally answer a few general questions they are all very reluctant to share specific information.
There's no excuse for Niantic's spokespeople not being open about acknowledging their issues and sharing a path forward.
Like how ofer was here for ‘some’ explanations. Remember, fellow agents, we are still way behind. If this amount of likes, insightful and comments leads to just one answer about comms, I’ll think better about this.
I don't actually think that they have anyone that is an actual spokesperson for Ingress other than Brian.
From my viewpoint it still seems odd that a Product Manager is on the forums doing support.
Is there even an actual moderation team for the forums? A Community Liaison? Kind of surprised that Vanguards or even Xma's didn't get some sort of moderator status. But then again looking at some of the Xma's I'm glad they don't have any moderator status/access.
Ingress is 8+ years old and they still have a massive communication problem. It's more than frustrating to the users. We keep hearing about how they are going to get better at it. But sadly it never changes.
I often wonder if their internal communication is as bad as their external communications?
In general I think niantic are bad when it comes to dealing with and listening to their fanbase. Having played pogo for years and now ingress for a year and a bit, it's really shocking how little they seem to want to listen, only doing so when they absolutely have to and even then it's almost like a huff that they do it.
There is a moderation person, they’ve been deleting comments left and right. Had a comment deleted yesterday that referenced this thread actually.
Is it really that bad for Pogo? I don't keep up with pogo, it really lost it's appeal to me rather quickly. Boring game, doing boring stuff. Full of multi accounting and spoofing that has spilled over into Ingress in general.
Then again, there are how many active people playing pogo compared to Ingress? But it sounds like they aren't doing well either way. How many more games on the current horizon in beta or soon to be released (Pikimin, Catan, & Transformers) ? Wonder if the HP support is also bad?
I'm sorry that you weren't able to experience ingress in the "golden (early) years". It really used to be a fun game, vibrant community, and tons of content/news from niantic.
Ingress these days is... not that.
And still no real response to the initial post….
The ingress team really wants your 5* reviews, your $4.99 per month and you to keep scanning portals. Yet, not willing to meet us halfway with some communication.
Some things never change apparently….
edit: I guess the only voice I have at this point is this.
For every bug niantic fixes, they add about 3 more. They push the great battle league constantly, locking poekmon behind it, but the battles are so laggy/broken that you're lucky of you can do 3 battles in a row without it lagging out. Sometimes you can click on a pokemon and just have a white screen.
Thats just the bugs, when it comes to listening to players, community day is a good example, at the start of the year people were constantly complaining that there wasn't any new shiny pokemon being released, niantic said "we've heard you trainers" then proceeded to put a comm day of a pokemon that had been shiny for 2 years and was extremely common, and they also removed the "we've heard you trainers" from the blog and deleted the tweet about the pokemon after an hour because of the hate, just to put another tweet back up