Request: Second Sunday tiered badge
Second Sunday is cool. It's not Mission Day. It deserves its own tiered badge.
It may be a long time before most people feel comfortable travelling to a Mission Day again, it will be nice to have something people can work on around local restrictions, especially as people start polishing off Onyx First Saturday badges.
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I dont know about that onyx first Saturday badge, but i do agree, second sunday is not mission day. (Luckily i felt comfortable enough to finally experience a real mission day. So, yeah, not the same. )
Another badge would be nice. Classic like artwork maybe?
I'm five away from the onyx MD badge, and honestly don't want to see the MD badge get abandoned again. I'm worried that's what would happen if we have a new shiny object to chase.
For as long as Second Sunday counts toward the Mission Day badge, I plan to follow the August format and do official MD missions. In my case, having moved to a new area last year, I'm planning to go to all unique sites. This is just my own metagame, but also a possible solution for fellow purists who want to meet higher demands to earn the badge. It doesn't bother me if others take an easier route to do 6 missions.
What a cool idea. It adds another community day to the month, encouraging travel and discovering new places (Covid Permitting).
I also agree to those saying that Second Sunday’s aren’t Mission Days. I’ve never done an MD, but the second SS was hyped up to be like an MD, but fell quite flat.
This could be a fun new thing to add to Ingress.
Mission Day, as it used to be, is just not tenable. It needed xfac cooperation (so, only areas with both factions, and neither faction has been creepy). Agents needed to meet with city council, chamber of commerce, visitors center. For each mission designed - professional-quality pictures had to be taken, edited with the MD logo, then approved by Niantic AND the establishments shown in the pictures. Groups from both faction had to man tables to sign in and sign out.
I know of three places that almost had Mission Days, but they didn't happen. Because of xfac friction, or because only four people were putting time into it, and it was just too much to do, when you also have a life.
Niantic had released new guidelines for Mission Days, just before the pandemic shut everything down.
I think they're doing GREAT, adapting to the times.
Eventually they'll add back anomalies, which take a lot more manpower than Mission Days did. Let the volunteers work on anomalies, and figure out ways to automate Mission Days.
I hear the comments about no xfac presence not helping get mission days through, but at the last change xfac cooperation was not required.
I like the cadence of alternating between official MD missions and any missions every other month. It encourages exploration (which should or should not be happening right now depending where in the world you are) while still remaining attainable locally. This seems like it would ring especially true once the MD applications are re-opened.
I'm not sure how I feel about Second Sunday getting its own badge. While I LOVE the badge chase, the timed nature of a badge like IFS didn't feel great. I would like a new badge to go with Second Sunday, but I have no idea what a good alternative to 1 tick/month could look like.
Totally agree. Second sunday is not Mission day and should have a separate badge.
+💯
I'm surprised you guys are pushing for more Niantic-led events when time and time again, they don't want to mitigate the effort.
Any effort of Mission Days in the past was made possible by the community through people of contact (POCs). The community is no surprise dwindling regardless of the pandemic so even if Niantic advertised interest of any MDs, it's going to have to be done similar to getting interest for FS meetups. At least from personal experience, that's what I saw with Mission Days at hexalthon sites before the pandemic.
I'm all for separating Second Sunday achievements from official Mission Days and its badge. Give it its own badge and allow ticking up for any 6 unique missions completed. At worst, allow redos of previously completed missions.
But don't tick up the MD badge unless it's an official MD event.
I think, second Sunday is Niantics way of telling us, mission days are nolonger important... and will just become another monthly badge ticking exercise.....
Maybe the solution to getting more agents completing missions, is require more ONYX to level ;)
I’ve never done a mission day and am okay with these second sundays being a different medal. I get how one would feel with the effort and money put into a medal, only to have it watered down to a 10 minute walk in the park. (That’s how long the six missions took me on the last second Sunday)
I used to look at some of these medals and think, damn, that agent has put in some work. I definitely will look at this medal differently. It’s obvious I’ll take some disagrees on this as it doesn’t seem to be the popular opinion, but figured I’d share it anyways!
Regardless, I’m glad there is something to get me moving on a Sunday when I’m either working at a football game or at home watching a football game! Thanks 🤙🏼
There's nothing stop local groups from holding their own Mission Days on Second Sundays for their area. XFAC cooperation and all. If Niantic held Mission Days as they normally did, they run the risk of agents traveling hundreds of miles and possibly spreading COVID variants far beyond where they are localized. The alternative is just not having Mission Days, which is no fun either, especially for agents who are taking safe precautions such as masks and vaccinations.
If they spun it off into another medal, it just become redundant to the current Mission Day and SpecOps medals, especially when it becomes safe to travel far distances again. This is a good compromise to keep the game active/fun and help keep agents safe and healthy. And I'd put the health, safety, and fun of the community over gatekeeping a medal.
I don’t see any reason there couldn’t be a covid specific mission day medal. Not like there isn’t 20 other medals people can never get anyways.
I do agree that “forcing” people to gather just isn’t smart right now. Because I know the temptation is just too high not to, lol
Totally agree. Imagine a time when we have both Mission Day and Second Sunday events happening at the same time. "This is redundant having two events doing 6 missions" will be the new line.
I do not see a future where Mission Days and Second Sundays coexist separately. One would be made redundant. If the Mission Day badge ended up retired, I guess that would be fine for those in the "I got mine" crowd with onyx, but not so much for those of us who were cruising along with platinum until Mission Days abruptly stopped happening. I'd rather see Second Sundays as a bridge until we can have official Mission Days.
Easy... rename/replace the current medal...
If Niantic retires the Mission Day badge in favor of a Second Sunday badge, they will be sending a message that an onyx Mission Day badge is only for people who were geographically lucky or could afford to put their money in a paper shredder in 2018.
How is that different from pre-second Sunday.... ?
Instead they are telling those people that there efforts to travel were wasted...
I flew from Seattle to New York for a Mission Day that year. I don't regret it. I'm glad I went, and it doesn't feel wasted. I don't feel Second Sunday diminishes it one bit.
Edit: additionally, I also flew from Seattle to Salt Lake City for an anomaly/Mission Day that year. I attended every Mission Day within 500 miles of my home. I went to San Francisco and Sacramento (about 800 miles from home) for Mission Days. Perhaps if I had just spent a few thousand dollars more on plane tickets, I could have gotten onyx.
Or triple onyx - not my profile
If Niantic could get lots of cities to create Mission Day missions, then 2nd Sunday could be a hybrid of past and present - only allowing official MD missions to count, but there are tons of them, so you don't have to get on a airplane if you don't want to (or can't afford).
If you were doing MD missions in a city, you would VERY likely come across fellow agents doing the same.
Once you've done all 18 near you, you could check the map and fly somewhere interesting. Maybe organize something, and get a block of hotel rooms - independent of Niantic. OR, if there are none year you, you could create some.
A way to get a lot of MD missions up quickly, is to contact agents who started the paperwork to host a MD years ago, but it fell thru because of xfac issues, or the sheer volume of work required. Maybe their missions and badges can be salvaged.
That's what anomalies basically became before recharging events. I mean Mission Days were also a luxury of attending any anomaly before it became a separate entity.
EDIT: Limiting the Second Sunday to NIA missions reinforces the luxury.
Who was asking to retire the Mission Day badge?
I'm just going to repeat what I said (in 2 posts) in the previous thread on this topic, because nothing has really changed. (Also, shame on OP for creating a new thread on the topic. That seems like a cheap attempt to distance the proposal from previous criticisms.)
1) Please don't make this a permanent event. Nobody needs a monthly road trip event -- because that's what this will be for all those agents who don't have an old Mission Day set nearby. They'll have all the work of a road trip (time and expenses) but less of the fun (because it won't be as social). Hardcore guys like me don't care if there are other players there, but the everyday players go to group events for the group.
2) Please ignore everybody who whinges about "dilution" and/or requests a new medal for this. I don't need another event medal that needs 20 or 36 events to get to Onyx. Leave me some time for my other hobbies, please. (If it was a one-shot challenge medal that didn't require NIA missions -- like the one you announced last year and cancelled -- a new medal would be tolerable.)
3) Question for everybody asking for a new Second Sunday medal: Don't you realize Niantic would make it a medal that takes 3 years to get to Onyx? Some of you small-town players could end up doing the same six missions once a month for 3 years. Does that really sound fun to you?
Miami in Mar 2020 was my 16th MD event and I had already made reservations for DC's MD when covid put a halt to everything. I think the Second Sunday events are stop gap measures until regular MDs can resume so would not particularly lend itself to a separate tier medal (although that could change at some point). Since the Second Sunday MD format was first announced, I've created specific 6-tile banners to complete each month. So far I've completed banners in Nashville, Montgomery AL, and Destin FL. Personally, I'm not a fan of the requirement that only official Nia. missions count. That being said, I'm fortunate in that I'm within a few hours drive of several cities where MDs were previously held and there are at least 6 missions in each I have not previously completed.
No one. But I think it's very likely pushing for a Second Sunday badge could have the unintended consequence of retiring the Mission Day badge (not necessarily by way of official declaration by Niantic, but in that MD quietly goes away and never returns as we all chase a new Second Sunday shiny). We saw the frequency of MDs decline when the IFS shiny came out. I would certainly expect that trend to continue if there were a Second Sunday badge, particularly with how much overlap in similarity it has with MD.
The January 2020 Mission Day creation guidelines require fewer cumbersome volunteer hours than the original rules. (1) Having an "approved partner" (city council, tourism board, etc) is optional; (2) xfac is optional; and (3) manning a check-in and check-out table is no longer required.
Maybe Mission Day purists think the MD medal was already "ruined" by these rule changes. But it HAD to get easier to host - we'd pretty much run thru all cities willing/able to put in the time to host one with the old rules. Meanwhile, SO many cities started to put together a Mission Day, but it fell apart from XFAC friction, or the few people working on it were not able to give it all their time.
The new (Jan 2020) rules are still pretty darn cumbersome. https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/ingress/?s=ingress-events&f=guidelines-for-hosting-an-official-mission-day-in-your-city&l=zh&p=web I encourage anyone who doesn't like the "any 6" Mission Day format: build official Mission Day banners for a city without any! Then maybe Niantic will go back to that format.