Field Decay based on Epoch activity

dstrykerdstryker ✭✭
edited March 2022 in General

Additional suggestion related to previous discussions of permafields and being stuck under a BAF.

I would like to suggest that players who throw fields be required to maintain an Epoch streak while the field is up or else the field degrades exponentially after a week.

I often see permafields in my area thrown by players who only play when their fields are taken down. Weeks go by without them appearing on the regional leaderboard. Yet it is the active or new players who are prevented from fielding and gameplay because of these blanket fields.

I am not against BAFs or permafields, especially since they are exciting and require an immense amount of planning to pull off. I am just suggesting that those who throw ANY field and want to maintain it should be required to be actively playing. An active player could be defined by a current Epoch streak.

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Comments

  • I'd prefer to see a guaranteed decay. Make it an increasing chance of decay for any given link. For example:

    +5% chance to decay every day after the first.

    After 20 days the link will fall, guaranteed, and need to be replaced.

  • Honestly, I would say that 20 days is probably too long IMHO. Tying "field maintenance" to some other factor beyond "it will decay on its own after a certain period if left alone" would spur more activity amongst the player base.

    Say as Dstryker suggested, you tie it to an Epoch streak. If an epoch streak isn't maintained, up the decay to something crazy like 40% per day. And it doesn't have to be epoch streak even. I think another potentially viable (and probably easier to code) would be to tie the decay rate to the time that the field has been up. Keep lone portals at current decay status, any portal with links or fields will start decaying exponentially after a certain period. The rate of decay can also be tied to how much is off the portal in question- however I feel like this would be much harder to implement.

    Regardless, speeding up decay, in any way, would lead to more player activity.

  • Unfortunately, that would hurt players who work on their "max time link maintained" and/or "max time field held" stats.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    Dynamic decay would be best. Each 5hour it stays up the more it costs to recharge to the point where you give up.

  • Even if you don't see any activity from these agents they might do their daily hack to maintain the epoch streak - they might even have a home portal to do so.

    I'm all in favour of permafields, even from portals that are accessible only to a few select players. The only problem with permafields is that you cannot link under them, which is why matryoshka must become permanent.

  • I enjoyed Matryoshka immensely.

    I think doing 1 daily hack (even if it is from a couch portal) to maintain an epoch streak fulfills the bare requirements of being an "active" player. However, I would be surprised if everyone who has a permafield maintains an epoch streak.

  • I think rate of decay increasing with the amount of mu tied to an anchor would be best.

  • I'd rather see the portal decay rate based on cycles won. When you see a place brag about how they've won 500 cycles in a row, their portals are clearly not decaying fast enough. Maybe the decay rate can increase by one percent for every cycle you won in the past year. Won all the cycles?

    52 + 15 = 67% daily decay rate.

  • dstrykerdstryker ✭✭
    edited March 2022

    See I don’t like this because it disincentivizes playing. Even if it is only a 1% extra decay. Some will reason that they should “take a week off” and just wait until the next week because their actions now will ultimately hurt them later.

    By requiring players to have an active Epoch streak, I am ENCOURAGING gameplay. If your side has a 500 cycle win streak, that’s great. But I am suggesting that you should be a active player, as defined by maintaining an epoch streak while your fields are up.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Maybe make it so that instead of a straak, it's based on the past year, so say a cell wins all 52 in the past year, thats the 67% decay, but then they lose the next 5 weeks in a row it goes down to 62%, but they then retain their win and it goes for the rest of the year, it would still stay at 62%, means that the underdogs always have a chance.

  • XK150XK150 ✭✭✭✭✭

    That wouldn't accomplish anything. The players who make megafields are definitely the type who play every day.

  • You sound so sure! I disagree.

    But let’s assume you’re 100% correct. Do you have a problem with the suggestion that players who put up fields be required to maintain an active epoch streak?

  • I’m also trying to think of a suggestion that would require minimal coding, but also zero prior knowledge of the specific history of a regional area. Visitors to new areas should not be punished for playing in an area that happens to have a history of domination by one side. This is straightforward. Maintain an epoch streak and your fields degrade at the normal rate. Break your streak and after a week, they degrade at an exponential rate.

  • Are you a developer for Ingress? If so, this is such a hostile response to a player suggestion. Otherwise, I’m not sure why you feel so strongly.

    Anyway, I have to disagree with you again. If your premise was 100% correct, every single player with a large field would have a current 45 week epoch streak. This could be easily verified.

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    I doubt even 99.9% a day would do much to prevent permanent BAFs staying up.

    My vote would be to have an exponentially increasing risk of all resonators (maybe all but 1) self destructing at each checkpoint based on something like:

    probability = exp(MU*days/X)

    “days” is the age of the oldest field, MU is the total MU of all fields anchored on that portal, and X is a constant that needs to be calibrated (I’m thinking on the order of millions).

    self destruct triggers after the checkpoint (so it still gets at least that 1).

    and you could always put a cap on the probability (maybe 10%) and/or require a minimum age before it starts taking effect (maybe 10 days?).

  • I doubt even 99.9% a day would do much to prevent permanent BAFs staying up.

    Combined with keys not replicating in Quantum Capsules, and it most certainly would have an effect. If you can't replace a field without regularly travelling to an impossible to access anchor, that anchor soon becomes a more accessible one.

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭

    i don’t follow. You just need 1 key to keep recharging. You are only limited by your power cube supply, and it’s not hard for one agent to maintain any priority portal at 30k-48k energy per day.

    I also interpret a perma BAF to be one where all the anchors are difficult to reach and so number of keys is secondary to having one spare each.

  • edited March 2022

    Most 'perma-BAFs' aren't permanent. They're regularly replaced. e.g. 2 impossible anchors, and then someone rethrowing from a viable anchor but so often that it's essentially always up. There are almost no locations where a field is up and all 3 anchors are impossible, unless one of them is only accessible to one side, etc.

    Part of the problem with these massive fields is people use them for layering, for score. So they make a spine they can recreate every 5 hours, and no matter how often they're knocked down, they put them back up easily, because they have unlimited keys to the two permanent anchors due to capsule duplication.

    If the anchors are completely inaccessible, then the guaranteed decay of links over time would result in them falling. If one or more of the anchors are not completely inaccessible, then the other team knocking them down becomes pointless while the throwers don't need to revisit the inaccessible portals.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm not saying all fields, but say portals that have fields (combined) that generate 100k mu (so say 2 anchors have 5 fields coming off them all roughly 20k each, so the anchors would then be hit by the harsher decay) are the ones effected

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    Remove keys from mufg dupe could be a way, u want keys? Go to the portal lol... Its way to easy sit home and keys grow by doing nothing kinda goes against what The game is about: play outside...

  • It won't fix it immediately, because people already have all those keys, but the sooner they start, the sooner those supplies will dwindle.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm not sure tying it to a single player's EPOCH streak would be the way to go. This would still result in permafields when the fielder is an active player. And could negatively affect players that may break or lose a phone, be in an area without portals for a time, have account login issues, etc.

    Others have suggested solutions before, and some of those suggestions are reasonable.

    Severely reducing key replication rates or removing key replication altogether would be a good solution for this.

    And/or Introducing a link decay rate (not portal decay) might be another, specific to those links that close fields.

    So basically, the last link thrown to close a field would have a set decay rate (could make that 15% a day, same as the portal). This would then destabilise the field in a week, and leave the remaining links in place (so your strategic links that are often used as bases would not fall). Might be a better compromise than losing all strategic links, including those that serve as blockers.

    Link A and Link B are thrown, then Link C is thrown to close the field. Link C now has a decay counter and will destabilise in 7 days, regardless of portal recharging. Link A and B remain as they did not close a field.

  • Hi Azhreia, Thanks for your comments here.

    From my view, permafields will be part of the game. I'm not trying to eliminate them. There should be nothing stopping players from creating them because they require cooperation, are an exciting part of the gameplay, and you have to go explore outside.

    Making field decay dependent on an epoch streak for an already active player with large fields would add in a minimal necessary requirement to prevent their fields from degrading quickly. However as I mentioned in a previous post, I would be surprised if every player with large fields right now currently maintains an active epoch streak. People commenting in this forum are likely definitely the exception. But this is added pressure to those players. It would also prevent players who are only active when their fields are taken down from making permafields, which are currently only limited by XM and can be recharged by any team member. It would force those with this gameplay style to be an active player. And if you are an active player underneath a permafield the sentiment is this: Why should active players be preventing from full gameplay by non-active players?

    I could see link decay also be tied to ones epoch streak as well.

    As for players to lose their phone, are in an area without portals, or have login issues, these are things that Niantic already has close to zero wiggle room for appeals. I don't see how this suggestion would negatively affect them any more than the current rules.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    yes since u can farm portals to a hard reach area once and then everything gets done by itself, kinda defeats it point u go once to that portal and u have endless keys.. briliant...

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Personally I think the base would be better, defeats the purpos if the last link thrown goes first, the person who threw it would just go to the anchor they all fall team and rethrow everything along a spine as each one falls. Really it would only help when both the anchors are pitas, then it could maybe improve it

  • GorillaSapiensGorillaSapiens ✭✭✭✭✭

    Field decay rate based on MUs (larger fields decay faster / take much more XM to keep up)

    New weapon to damage a FIELD, can be used anywhere under the field.

    New weapon to damage a LINK, can be used anywhere near the link.

  • GorillaSapiensGorillaSapiens ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    [IGNORE THIS COMMENT (why can't I delete it?) ]

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