I wish I could tap the alert to go straight to the Kinetic Capsule screen
ArtilectZed
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in General
Either go to the capsule in inventory, or (more ideally) straight to the program selection screen.
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Either go to the capsule in inventory, or (more ideally) straight to the program selection screen.
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I do agree, this would be a good quality of life upgrade if you could just go to the capsule from the notification.
At least it's not like eggs in Pokémon Go where it forces you to stop what you're doing to watch an animation that is unskippable. Imagine if it did that during a critical op!
I complete only one kinetic capsule per day, so the extra effort really does not bother me.
AGREE 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
I agree.
There are many things that I love about Ingress and Niantic. One of the things that always bothers me is that Niantic isn't very good about thinking through what users want to accomplish and how to make life easier for them. This is one example... when I see that notification then of course the next thing I want to do is harvest the capsule, and maybe start a new program. The raison d'être for that message is to alert you that it's time to harvest the capsule. If you're thinking about workflow when you design the software then taking the user to the capsule when the message is tapped is the most natural thing in the world.
Another example is the visited/captured layer. I LOVE LOVE LOVE having this information, don't get me wrong. Why do I love it? It helps me find portals that I haven't visited/captured (OK, I guess scout controlled too but that's 100% of them for me) so that I can target them and get the unique. With the current design it's harder than it needs to be because I have to hunt for the rare un-highlighted portal in a sea of highlights. Invert it and suddenly the things I'm interested in have glowing rings and finding them is soooo much easier. Taking that one tiny little step of asking, "How will players use this information?": would have resulted in a more user-friendly design.
Agreed
It would certainly be convenient if the kinetic capsule worked like this.
But it's not something which comes up that frequently and (as far as I am aware) the notification doesn't go away unless you act on it.
So it's not especially inconvenient and not likely to get lost.
I suspect Niantic will have other priorities, but if it gets changed it would be nice.
Thank you for the feedback! I've made a note...
(Yeah, I would't want an alert interrupting an op like the incubator animation either... 😬)
The Kinetic Cap wasn't well implemented, and let me tell you why:
1) The notification shows up in your alerts list, and gets lost quickly when under attack.
2) The center red-dot notification is the same as a drone ready notification.
3) The capsule doesn't automatically reward you with item, you have to manually retrieve it, which takes more time from the agent for no good reason.
4) You then have to manually load in the next item you want; in the meantime you may have lost valuable meters by walking with a full capsule and not seeing the alert.
5) The stat isn't real-time and tends to accumulate in "spurts", so when we have special events where the distance is shortened, you lose a substantial amount of distance in your caps as it reaches full. Example, you're stuck on 1.9 km out of 2 km, and then you gain 0.5 km and it jumps to 2km and completes your capsule. The remaining 0.4 km doesn't get auto-added to your next capsule, it vanishes.
The way this should have been implemented is simple: a kinetic bank. The game keeps a running tally of your walking, and you can redeem your accumulated walking by taking 8 km (or whatever distance) out of your kinetic bank, and applying it along with the necessary companion items, to craft new items. Walk all week long without thinking of it, and then exchange your 30 or 40 km accumulated for a few different items all at once.
It's easier to use, it's more rewarding for the agent ("Ooh, I can get <item type> right now when I need them!" as opposed to starting a craft and then wishing you had picked a different item type), you don't lose KM from not redeeming your capsule, you don't need to worry about a daily limit, you get to remove all notification confusion...win win win win win.
I think the daily limit was added to prevent bots/cheaters from "walking" their accounts 24/7 to generate items. The "bank" will also invalidate the Kinetic Capsule events where program distances are reduced for the duration of the event and program completions are counted towards a badge.
While I understand the argument about using a bank during the event, right now I am not impressed by the idea that I will either
And then we have the situation where the phone screen needs to be on with Ingress active to register distance at all. (You can get away with switching out briefly or turning the screen off for a minute or 2, but need to keep going back in to the game frequently). I know Niantic improved the way distance was recorded when the Kinetic capsules were introduced, but I thought this was a temporary stopgap measure, not one we would be relying on with a time limited badge earning event. Really we need (working) Adventure Sync so that people who are under lockdown can register exercise in their homes.
Just like taking away VR replication from MFUGs was done to prevent bots from getting gear for selling. Legit players are forced to deal with a far-from-ideal implementation because Niantic cannot control their ecosystem.
You could still do walking events, or have a secondary "bank" just for the event. There are ways around that which would work better and not cut off distance for agents.