If Ingress had daily tasks.
This topic got brought up in conversation on tg and I wanted to bring it here to see what others thought. Now this isn't a real thing (that we know of) coming into ingress at this time but it is in the other Niantic games so I thought why don't we discuss it?
If Ingress had feasible daily tasks, what would you like to see them be besides hacking.
By feasible, I mean ones that can be done that may not require an agent to have an active area. Ones that don't require there to be both teams in the area, and ones that can be done when an area isn't faction overcontrolled.
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Build OR destroy. If there's no grey, __it's time to move agent__ and/or maybe let your faction BAF decay.
jesus-titꮪ markdown here is worse than telegram.
This has been beat to **** a few times on the forums. I’m all for it. I know the OG ingress agents cry anytime something new is added, but the game obviously needs to evolve a little to bring on new agents and retain existing ones. Change can be good. I think it would have been more ideal to add something like daily tasks earlier on in the pandemic, but I understand the realities of adding something like that in last minute.
Might be nice to incentivize scanning even more. Scan 3 uniques portals, get three extra Scout Controller Points. But any of it would help keep people interested in the game and give them something new to do. Obviously it wouldn’t be any required, but even so, I know people will moan about it. People moaned about scanning and somehow they’ve continued to play…
Reposting from my comment on an old thread:
The lure of Ingress has always been the emergent gameplay that comes from both players coming up with unique ideas on how to use the provided system, and the fact that the majority of extended play comes from the opposition removing/blocking what you're doing, or you removing/blocking what they're doing.
However...
We're definitely in a period of significantly diminished player interaction. Both because there are far fewer players overall, and because those players are generally clustered in different areas, leaving large numbers of isolated and non-interacting players in the wilderness.
Additional non-player activities or entities would probably help get us through the lull, even if those elements were later under utilized by the general player base once the numbers pick back up again.
Simple things like
This would generate activity play that helps lead to further activity. It might also mean that players who otherwise weren't active would do something allowing another player to have interactions. And by keying the activities in a cycle, it'd also give people the opportunity to keep the cycle going, between each other.
(Original)
No daily tasks please....
I don't get why people are against the addition of daily tasks. They give people incentive to play more regularly (which in turn gets more people actually -doing- things that affect the game board), they give some minor rewards (and help make up for being stuck in a city where nothing has happened in days), and if you don't want to be bothered doing them, then you can simply... not.
To give you an idea, here's how they work in PoGo:
-At midnight, you get a small objective - catch 5 things, evolve something, make a few accurate throws... you get the idea.
-The reward is usually something like a few balls, a few combat items, or something like that. It's enough to care, but it's nothing major if you're playing at all actively.
-You can hold up to 3, so if you want to do one, but can be bothered to do it the day you get it, you can just leave it and get it in the future.
-Each objective has an X button on it. Any time you get one that you simply don't want to do, at all, you simply discard it and move on.
The result? More people are doing daily logins now, and more people are actually attacking gyms and leveling - it's noticably increased player activity, which is nice in PoGo, but critical in Ingress for the game to even function since it's far more PvP-oriented.
"things that affect the game board" is exactly right here. PoGo rarely EVER cares about the gameboard. Almost everything in PoGo is intensely local. There is no intel, and little need for intel, Ingress is about community and connections OVER DISTANCE because links exist and cannot cross. Things suddenly matter. Sturdy things matter. Anything that changes the tactical playfield should be absolutely the goal, and so IF there are daily tasks they should incentivize that. Ultimately that means changing the links, but to make accessible for people that just want to play on foot (or with whatever other restrictions) I said build (to make link targets) or destroy (which would **** links if they exist).
Thank you for linking to another post, I do want to support anyone's posts before mine!
I was thinking a bit on what you had said elsewhere about ingress being a game about community and how that could work with daily tasks too. While I started the conversation to be more on what people could do without others I do also feel there could be tasks done with team play in thought too if daily tasks become an option.
Things like upgrade a teammates Resonator, add a mod to faction portal, recharge teammates portal, etc. Granted that may need more programming though if it becomes teammate specific but if they wanted to keep it simple it could be a simple upgrade Resonator.
The tasks could be assigned by Jarvis or ADA and acquired by hacking portals. There could be a badge for finishing tasks or even a task streak.
The tasks could be as mundane as hacking a portal, creating a link or field, capturing a set amount of mu. They could so be tasks like scan a specific portalls, submit a photo.
What's the goal? If the goal is changing the playfield (IMO it should be) then hacking doesn't, nor does scanning or photos).
The tasks can be assigned by both ADA and Jarvis and completing a series of them can reward either a Refractor or Virus depending which series you competed
I feel like there's a fundamental conflict between Ingress and daily tasks.
PoGo/HPWU are almost exclusively about personal stats and accomplishments. There's essentially nothing that you can do (other than taking over gyms and planting greenhouses) that affects the playfield in any way. They are all about individual accomplishments, what you can catch, what you can collect. Ingress is fundamentally about impacting the playfield-- the whole point of the game is to capture and control territory. Sure, there are personal stats and badges but for the most part they are about territory control or things you do to facilitate controlling territory. (Yes, I know not all are, but most are.)
I feel like PoGo/HPWU get a benefit from daily tasks because they create an accomplishment that people can play for. Ingress has that built-in accomplishment-- I smashed this much, I built this thing, I got enough gear to smash/build. At the end of the day I can see my Ingress accomplishments on the map. What do I have in PoGo? Uhh, I captured and recycled six montsterinos and leveled one up. That doesn't really feel like a tangible achievement-- it doesn't have the same satisfaction of pointing at the portals that you changed the control of.
I feel like daily tasks already exist for Ingress in the form of sojourner and hackstreak.
For those who dont like the idea of daily task, there is a simple solution: don't do them. Just ignore it and never open the menu, and your game will remain as it always were. The tasks aren't mandatory in any game they exist.
It's important to consider everyone's thoughts with things like this! I rather like the well thought out responses on this thread whether they'd like a feature like this or not. Its all hypothetical either way but it is important to see how everyone feels on it especially when it comes to a game they love.
But there is some agents that act like that feature would be the devil incarneted, when it's actually really harmless.
Conversation seems to be coalescing back to slipsec's law (more before me I'm sure, rename at will.) slipsec's law states that changes that affect mechanics and strategy of the game should first and foremost think about one singular thing: Does this encourage coordination, cooperation, and thus: community?
Community was an accident, but it was required in the really ancient times of Ingress:
These things sucked for gameplay. They were the opposite of quality of life for gameplay. But you talked to people. Community happened.
Most recently we have drones. The complete opposite of community. It's pandemic, I get it. I appreciate it. But they're so very individually focused and they do very little for community. Sure you still have to build that portal/farm/cluster I guess, but the other 1/2 of pandemic rules are that L7 portals are everywhere. Some (any) form of real coordination requirement (yes virtual is fine) would have kept us together better.
So Please. Please, Please, Please. Consider first: the community. QoL improvements are awesome! I can't give up that crack! But if there are mechanics changes to the game (via items or otherwise) for gods sake, please think about how they will encourage community and coordination (and again: yes, it can be virtual).
</rant>
Daily tasks generate activity from people who might otherwise not bother. And by tying it into a cycle it highlights that without the other team activity is less possible. You can't destroy if the other team doesn't build, but if they've got a task to build the day before you have a task to destroy, it serves everyone.
When you log in to do your daily task (and **** the rocket balloon hovering over you), odds are pretty good you do a quick spin of the map to see if there's a gym nearby that you can attack (or add a defender to), and also pull up the nearby raids list, which increases the chances of a public raid actually happening. I have definitely hit both gyms and raids I otherwise would not have if I hadn't logged in for dailies. Yes, it's true that probably 95% of PoGo's gameplay occurs within a 10 km radius of where you live, but the same principle still applies to Ingress.
If people were doing a "hey, I'll do a quick daily" login on Ingress, they'd also notice things like "oh, my whole city's under an enemy field" or "oh, someone blew up everything on the nearest road, it's all white portals", and that increases the chances that they decide to do something about it.
Dailies encourage activity - what each game needs activity FOR is different, but incentivizing daily logins results in more logins, which means more of everything happens. It's that simple.
...did it seriously just censor the word "wh.ack"?
This begs the question, though: Who are all these people that are not playing Ingress now but would be playing if only there were an in-game daily task system? Folks can talk about the mechanics of daily logins and game loops and all that, but that's predicated on there being people for whom a daily task system is the one feature that they're missing.
For example, I have a couple of friends that play Pokémon Go. They already have a daily task system that gets them moving and out of the house. Adding a similar system to Ingress isn't a compelling reason for them to pick up Ingress.
For myself, in good times, Ingress is that thing I do on my walk to and from work five days a week, and it's a reason to get out of the house the other two days of the week. I already find motivation in **** out the existing stats and medals, and in wanting to leave my mark on my tiny corner of the game board. (And I dare say that those are the motivations of a fair number of current, active players.)
I think the problem is not necessarily that new players won't start Ingress, but that the motivation to keep going is missing. I myself only play very sporadically right now, but if there was a quest system, I'm pretty sure I'd pick up the scanner more and see what I could do.
I really don't understand anyones complaints to daily tasks. I also don't understand people sayi g if there are tasks they need to
Help out community
Don't help put community
Effect the game board
Don't effect the game board
Etc. If daily tasks come in, there's no reason to do them if you don't like them. You could even set it so you choose the tasks you want to do daily (resulting in a weekly reward) if it comes down to it. There's so many styles of play as well that trying to claim daily tasks need to.suit one style of play is just wrong. So to me, daily tasks should vary massively to suit anyones play style and the toughness of said task can mean the reward joins to it. For example
Easy tasks
Hack a portal
Deploy a Resonator
Get a glyph correct in a sequence
Walk 1 km
Capture a neutral portal
Have drone travel 1km
These would give a couple of leveled items or maybe some common mods
Then slightly east tasks
Fully deploy a portal (no level requirement)
Destroy a Resonator (ive put this up a bit as some people might not be able to manage this I'd they are in an empty area)
Create a link
Correctly complete a 3 or higher glyph sequence
Create a filed worth 10 mu (this could go into any easy level, im just giving examples)
Drone hack 5 different portals in day
Hack 10 portals
Deploy a mod (again, could be in any level of easy)
These would give a few more levelled items and defo a common mod
Medium tasks
Fully Deploy 5 portals equal to level 5
Create a field worth 1000 mu
Create a link over 5km long (this could then be used as a baseline depending g where it is or could block someone else, this introducing properly to the gameboard)
Correctly complete 3 glyph hack sequences of 3 or higher
Destroy and capture an opposing portal
Destroy an enemy link
Have drone travel 20km I'm a day
Walk 5km
Find and hack a unique portal (put this as medium as some players will have hundreds they haven't done, others might struggle to find any)
Deploy 2 mods
These will give more levelled items (at this stage I'm thinking 5 but it would be busters or resos, nit ultra strikes) and this is where it might reward rare mods
Hardish
Fully deploy to create a level 6 portal
Upgrade a portal to level 7
Destroy an opposing field
Link 10 km
Destroy 5 opposing links
Destroy 10 opposing portals
Create fields worth 10k, this can be one off field or create several fields
Drone hack 10 times in a day (These will move down to easier levels when the 15 minute wait for drones are in effect)
These will be 10 levelled items and rare mods, maybe giving more than 1 rare mod
Finally the hard things, but I should add, These are all relative, some people might find these easy, other people might never manage the middle level stuff
Fully deploy 10 portals to level 6
Upgrade a portal to level 8 (or have a portal you are in be upgraded to level 8)
Destroy 5 enemy fields (worth x amount of mu)
Complete a kinetic capsule recipe (this can be moved down medium when these are half distance)
Create fields worth 50k mu (same as before)
Correctly complete 5 glyph sequences of 4 or more
Correctly complete a 5 glyph sequence
Destroy 20 opposing portals
Complete 5 glyph drone hacks
These would reward 15 levelled items and maybe 1 vr mod
I'm sure there are other things that could be added, I didnt even bother with recharging or scout, was just giving examples, some of which interact with the game board, others that don't, so they could be selected or picked up and deleted when appropriate
As to how to get them, again, could be selected daily, or maybe could be every 3 hours ada or jarvis could offer one. Or even just go the pogo route (which I don't see an issue with, if it works in one gnae, why not add it to another) of getting while hacking, but maybe make it select portals rather than every portal.
Can also have either weekly tasks or a reward every week for doing a daily task, these would reward vr mods and possibly a virus, but it would scale based on how difficult your tasks were during the week or how difficult the weekly task is
New Item: Quest Capsules
8 sided Capsule that can only be opened once all 8 sides are unlocked by completing a specific task.
Dunno if you're being serious or not, but thst could be quite cool lol
I can see how daily tasks could be this feature... many players just sign in to hack for sojourner / epoch and then not much motivation for anything else.. if u had daily tasks that gives out small awards perhaps could help little with motivation.
There's already a daily task now. "Hack Streak"
Not really. That's just hacking.
I can see the daily tasks being a thing to encourage engagement. However, it should also try to be a thing that's not a way to acquire details on portals that have low details - we have the scanner tool for that as it purposely focuses on them.
The tasks can be very basic - venture out to a portal within 2 km of the nearby area. Deploy. Anything that involves photos or scans will just result in bad quality submissions as it's forced. Again, the focus should be something not hard.
But what would be inside this Capsule?
Small amount of CXM?
PoGo has that as well - your first catch gives +1500 exp and +1500 stardust (used to level pokemon), and your first stop spin of the day rolls twice, while filling the bar gives 5x the bonus with the spin also guaranteeing you'll get one of the special evolution items (which are rarer than pink Ingress items otherwise). Ingress has only a single of these, and the 7 day bonus is much smaller - 3x roll rather than 5x, and I don't think it guarantees a pink item.
The daily task is more of a mini-quest - usually do something x times for y specific reward. For obvious reasons, they're generally done together, along with the Team Rocket balloon (normally you have to go find them, but one attacks by balloon every 6 hours).
So the PoGo quick login is:
-Catch something for the daily/weekly bonus
-Spin something for the extra items
-Defeat the balloon
-Send/receive gifts
-Grab the daily package (gives a few items, nothing amazing)
The Ingress daily login is currently:
-Your first direct hack counts twice, or three times if 7 days in a row.
...and that's it.
I highly doubt many players care about hackstread unless they're specifically after the Epoch badge.
Personally I'm not a fan of daily tasks. I play all Niantic games and it becomes a chore having to do the same mundane tasks every day. Yes it keeps me opening the games just to get the small reward, but does it raise my engagement or interest, or does it enhance the gameplay? No.
Ingress is awesome as it is, there is so much to do and so much to explore. Daily tasks would just bring down the quality of the enjoyment for me. If you're bored with the game now, doing menial tasks every day won't be the magical solution for that lol
Niantic are likely to introduce daily tasks into Ingress and no doubt people will either love it or hate it. I would also assume they will eventually do a badge for it too (much like PoGo). Just wait and see what happens I guess.
Baby Jarvis and Baby ADA