Updates to temporary in-game changes on Thursday, 31 March 2022 - Discussion

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  • PkmnTrainerJPkmnTrainerJ ✭✭✭✭✭

    Few thoughts. Drones being able to hack portals is a temporary thing? I thought they were in the game for good?

    I like the extra AP for capturing a Portal, and makes sense that submit and review are the same level. Don’t know how long that’s been a thing for.

  • ZeroHecksGivenZeroHecksGiven ✭✭✭✭✭

    Definitely an interesting note. I assumed the introduction of drones wasn't a temporary addition, especially considering there is one medal attached to it and several stats in our scanner.

  • PkmnTrainerJPkmnTrainerJ ✭✭✭✭✭

    I don’t think they said it was temporary. Maybe it’s just poor phrasing and they mean it won’t count for Sojourner or there’s a limit to how far away you can send it/hack from it?


  • ZeroHecksGivenZeroHecksGiven ✭✭✭✭✭

    I don't think they said it either, which is why I'm surprised by the verbiage they used:

    The following temporary changes remain in place and will be reviewed quarterly:

    Dronenet enables Agents to hack a Portal from anywhere.

    Would be nice to hear more about what they mean...

  • IshiraIshira ✭✭✭✭✭

    This has been corrected on the post.

    -Dronenet enables Agents to hack a Portal from anywhere and counts towards Sojourner

  • ZeroHecksGivenZeroHecksGiven ✭✭✭✭✭
  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    And shifted to the permanent column. April Fools came early this year apparently.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    @NianticThia I am one of those deeply saddened that the decision to keep the 90 second hack. Surely your analytics would have shown that players are not using Heatsinks to their fullest. I certainly haven't

    We have the ability to craft them.


    Likewise with the Drone being the main way to farm gear.

    If the decision is made to keep the 90s hack, then I would expect that the speed bonus for glyphing is removed from Drone Hacks

  • I'd be happy to see the current state (aside from the one just introduced) stay permanently.

    You still need 8 people for a P8 but gear is plentiful off 7s because it only takes two people.

    And the faster hacks means people are able to complete fielding efforts easier. I'd like to see layers get devalued in favour of covering more territory with individual fields, bit that's a different discussion.

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭


    And I use heat sinks more than ever because now they allow you to hack at a reasonable time interval at a fixed location.

    You shouldn’t assume your play style is representative of everyone’s.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The analytics have probably found that people are hacking portals more because of the 90 secind cooldown making the game faster and more dynamic. I doubt more than a handful of people want it put back to the 5 minutes, while you'll find at least 90% want it kept as is

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    faster cooldown also makes it more likely that u will camp at the same portal and not move around as much.

  • Honestly, the change they reverted that I think they never should have taken away, was R8s in the store. You don't need them, but people want them can grab them, but since you can only deploy one, they're not a huge advantage, just a useful thing for people who never encounter P8s. X8s would be bad because they are the removal of capability, so they shouldn't be sold, but R8s are like the bootstrap point for people with minimal players around them. You can get them from P7s , but in far smaller quantities.

    I'm mostly fine where I am, personally, now. But when I was living in a little town with almost no other players during COVID they were a godsend. That town still has almost no players, and none of them on my faction, so if I was still living there, being able to pay 1000CMU for 10 R8s would have been fair but effective.

    But all the kneejerk "This is bad because this other thing that's completely different is bad" demands got that one removed.

  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    It's the opposite, particularly for key farming. Players will move around more because they finish burning out the portal in less than 5 minutes rather than having to sit there for 15 minutes.

  • ledelede ✭✭

    Please reevaluate now giving "couples" the chance to build L7 Portals...

    Thanx!

  • Otrera35Otrera35 ✭✭✭✭

    This will be interesting particularly when one has to travel to an area with a lot of portals so an agent can capture them all and get the AP. If you live in California, that's hard on your wallet since the gas per gallon is $ 7.00. Suddenly, this game is getting more expensive to play.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    Quite the opposite, my play style is much like everyone else here. And enjoy the 90s Hacks.


    HOWEVER, I look at Ingress as a strategy game, and fully understand the need for limiting resources, all resources including keys.


    When you have unlimited resources, you really not playing a strategy game at all. Which is what is happening with the 90s hack. If I am short of time I'll throw on a VR heatsink. However this is becoming so rare, that Rare and Very rare Heatsinks have become junk mods.


    As I stated countless times now, it is a counterintuitive of what players want, versus what they need.

    We have unlimited gear, that it is just plain wrong, as a strategy game philosophy!


    And I personally enjoy Ingress the most when I am moving, not sitting around like other games.

    A 5 minute hack cooldown is ideal


    But we also have a LOT of trolls in this forum that force Niantic to make bad decisions, as evident in my last post, the quotes and pings I get, and likely this one too.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    When I look at play across my city and many other cities in my country, Ingress has languished so much that there simply is not enough competition to keep people engaged.

    This is incredibly sad because Ingress at it's heart is an excellent game.

    We got layers, this brought some action back. But we really need more competitive reasons for an opposition to play. Infinite gear has kil led the social factor of Ingress. The brunches, the pub meetups etc, all gone.

    Without them, Ingress is dead.

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭

    I know, I’ve participated in this same discussion with you in other threads.

    my main beef is that you just say 5 minutes is ideal, point to some general theories that limits are important in games (an obvious fact), and then repeat 5 minutes is perfectly balanced.

    90 seconds is also a limit, as is the far more important 4 hack burnout (that you conveniently don’t mention).

    I’m still waiting for a complete argument showing that 5 min is better than 90 s, particularly in the context of a 4 hack burnout (so resources are still just as limited).

    So I have to keep saying this to counter any potential Niantic might read you posts as a typical agent opinion:

    With a 4 hack burnout, the resource balance difference between 90 s vs 5 min cool down is trivial. And so the shorter hack time is superior as it significantly improved most players in game experience without having any meaningful impact on the in game resource supply .

  • edited March 2022

    We got layers, this brought some action back

    To be fair, heavily layered sections of a community came about because of the lack of players, and was weaponised to reduce the number of players. The player drop started (significantly) in 2018 with a lot of people quitting because they didn't want to switch to Prime (whether that was a sensible decision or not), and it was the opportunity others saw to push their opponents out of the game. COVID made that even worse because people were trapped in a given area they couldn't even go elsewhere to play.

    Pushing opposition out of the game has been a 'plan' for many shortsighted players though, for years. Ingress is directly competitive, and always has been, but the game is so tilted towards a runway leader effect now, that it requires significant changes both in the way that the players act, and the company manages the game, for that effect to be properly blunted.

    Double R7s and the 90s cooldown actually help the 'underdog'. 65AP damages it because they're encouraged to not go outside. That was the whole point of the change originally, and it worked, but the ability to build a P7 with two people supports getting people back out and active again, because you only have to coordinate with one other player.

    It will take more changes, like the leaderboard for destroying MU, removing key capsule duplication, and maybe making only one layer count, but at least given the current player base, extra gear benefits destroyers, not builders, and with the layer issue, more destroyers is what we need.

  • KarM3LKarM3L ✭✭✭✭

    Don't think anyone actually thinks 5min is better, just that 90s is too short....

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    Exactly this is why it should go as they dont need the third player can more or less play on their own which is ok but then they should only able build p6.

    Also with the ongoing lag the lower hack cooldown isnt always to my advantage sometimes its like im faster then server can react when im out fielding whats it good for when i need to stop because it gets stuck and breaks my flow.

  • What about polyamorous throuples? Should we require 4 people to make a P7? This argument has always been silly, saying that "Because they're a couple, they don't deserve it". Because there's not much difference between a couple and a friend, as three friends. And there's more Ingress Agents that play alone than couples, so by removing the P7s, you're actually making it harder for everyone while the couples still have an easier time.

    The logic is basically "How can I make other people unhappy."

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Would be even less if the cooldown was longer, I would be stuck at an anchor for like an hour hacking keys if it was normal cooldown, 30 or something like tha with vr heat sink and multi hacks on, but now I can be gone in 10 minutes with the vr heat sink and multi hacks on amd away fielding, meaning I'm moving much more

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    How are people being trolls by disagreeing with you and brining up several valid points? If anything, you act more like a troll for thinking your opinion is more valuable than everyone else that disagreed with you

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    game balance mostly i dont see anything wrong in that otherwise its just too easy as things are today hardly any strategy..


    edit: was meant to perringaiden too but i quoted wrong

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    No chance is strategy an excuse to have to sit for 5 minutes waiting on a portal to get keys, it's actually better for strategy being quicker.

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2022

    In my area, multi-layer fields are mostly made relatively small by players on foot. Large single layer fields are made by players in cars driving large distances. The “car fields” end up blocking small scale play over most of the city.

    I’m taking about a large number of 5 km+ long links that make fields that each cover dozens of neutral portals.

    So speaking just to the dynamic I see here, I’d like to see much more credit to smaller multilayer fields and less to large single layers.

    I don’t see how the problem is not enough weapons to take down multilayer fields. It’s that the game is too easy for a single agent to locally dominate by being willing to drive a car endlessly and throwing up large single layer fields that nullify/block the efforts of several players who want to mostly play on foot.

    Post edited by DrHydrosaur on
  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭

    The person I was responding to definitely wants it to be 5 mins as they have repeatedly referred to that as “perfectly balanced” (mostly in other related threads).

    It's that position I am trying to push back on.

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