That's a serious misunderstanding of GORUCK events and/or participants. The hardcore rucking agents barely pay attention to normal anomaly play, because they're showing up for the rucking events and medals. Urban Ops is traditionally held during the anomaly window, so requiring TKOs to interact with battle beacons would actually be more Ingress action than normally required for them.
Superposition Munich is a six-medal weekend (anomaly, OPR Live, Mission Day, 3 GORUCK medals). Plenty of people are going to show up for that.
I can't even figure out what "real anomaly" you guys are missing. Anomalies have always been mostly shards and "fighting over designated portals." Battle beacons are just the new version of "fighting over designated portals."
Literally nothing stopping people from organizing recharging rooms -- beacon battles and preserving shard paths can both benefit from recharging. If the problem is that your locals won't recharge without a free medal, have the room organizer buy 10 beacons and launch them afterwards. (Recharging counts as beacon battle participation, also, but hard to guarantee an agent distributed random keys will get 10 battles without having local beacons.)
Literaly nothing stopping teams from having remote op coordinators, either.
I swear, the biggest problem with this community is the old-timers who refuse to think any new thoughts about how to play the game. If the anomaly isn't exactly the format of their favorite anomaly, they starting screaming "Calvinball!" and insisting Ingress is ruined forever.
I'm super pissed though, having to travel from AU to in essence get a masturbatory badge (achieved via solo play)... What the **** are NIA thinking?
$100 says that this is another brain child of the "wonderful" Brian Rose...
Is there anything we can possibly do outside of whinging in a forum to send Niantic a message about this ****? I mean these BB ****-nomalies generally get flooded with spoofers trying to "legitimise" their accounts with Anomaly badges.
... Anger, much anger at Niantic, definitely not the news I wanted to wake up to 😠😡😤😾🤬
I really try to provide constructive criticism whenever I really dislike something. I’m not sure that’ll happen here. I was mad when I first read this announcement and hoped some time would cool me off. I’ve only become more enraged.
This seems like the biggest “**** you” I’ve seen from Niantic to date. They advertise this like a real anomaly, announce a date and location way ahead of schedule so people book international (hell, intercontinental) travel and lodging before they drop their **** poor ruleset that agents have been complaining about for nearly 6 months. I’m sure they’re going to add a mandatory paid ticket for your participation to influence scoring 2 weeks before the event, ala Umbra. Get ****.
As previous commenters have pointed out, the Osiris and Nemesis sequences were packed with a variety of fun rulesets and competitions. It’s cool to see shards here, but it’s a bad excuse not to have at least one more scoring event. Hell, even having “interact with unique NIA RBBs” instead of “unique anomaly hacks” would have gone a long way. Dang it, here I am giving constructive criticism. I was SUPER excited for the possibilities that Requiem held, especially after the puzzles and riddles and lore of the Tessellation. What a sad shadow this is.
I understand not wanting to have very enticing rulesets and announcing dates last minute to avoid encouraging travel during the pandemic. Why announce and hype this ahead of time, knowing full well what your community expects? It’s clear you don’t give a damn about your community. You still have a chance to salvage this, but I’d be surprised if you care to.
Yep I agreed with this, honestly what is this? Pogo? Niantic need to get people who understand the game to participate in running it again... Brian and Thia need to go...
I was signed up and planned a trip to Munich 2 years ago and have been waiting for it to be rescheduled. THIS IS NOT IT!!! I've become less active since the pandemic and lockdowns but when the Munich anomaly was announced I was ready to get back out there! I bought tickets, made reservations and planned another trip. This is just a HUGE disappointment. I'm far from a stellar player but I played. I bought your merchandise to help support the game. No more. I'm done. I will still go to Munich. I will take part in your BB activity (it's not the anomaly I signed up for) but I will cancel my core membership and stop spending money in the store. You are not worthy of my patronage. Your bait and switch business model needs correction to earn my money.
Niantic should to remove agent deploy battle beacons to get anomaly medals.
Instead anomaly badges should be only from satellite sites or main anomaly sites like in the past.
Basically you are pissing off those who decided to attend on site for the anomaly by the amount of effort it gets to obtain the badge. (Travelling on site Vs an agent who paid 10 battle beacons to deploy from their home city)
I just want to add that for me a pre-BB anomaly was much more than a badge, although nice and should be unique, it's about complex team play. I love watching the strategy and planning involved play out. The previous anomalies included a variety of teams (on foot, bikes, cars, skates, etc.) with all levels of players working together and lots of mentoring and skill development. I'm sure I missed a lot of what's involved. I don't know if all of that will happen with this new format. Perhaps BB will add a new dimension and enhance the anomaly but it is hard to imagine and it should have been announced from the start.
A large part of traveling to an anomaly was the pride you could get with showing off your badge profile.
"I was there!" They also promote community much like special issue coins do. "I'm one of you/was there/contributed".
It's why Anomaly badge codes are banned from being traded or sold on every good swag trade forum/chat whereas character badges are not.
I don't have every anomaly badge - the one's I do have I earned, and I value them. The last couple of Battle Beacon one's felt cheap even though I was on the ground fighting for control for the NIA deployed ones.
In the case of recharge rooms it means that I'm fighting not just against the people who have traveled to the site and are on the ground with me but also against an unknown, unverifiable number of people who are sitting at home on their couches. It's not fun to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to an event and then compete directly against a bunch of people who stayed home. (Here come a lot of dislikes... people like staying at home and getting anomaly badges for it.)
In this case what I'm hearing is that it's not fair for people to get the anomaly badge unless they travel to the event or sit at home and recharge. I have some sympathy for the people who think that the badge for the first anomaly in over two years should be special, but it's not like the people who are on site are having the badge taken away from them. I wonder how many of the people complaining have anomaly badges that came from recharge rooms, shards, connected cells, or they got the Initio badge for buying a T-shirt...
niantic (lower case to show disrespect) is really out-nianticing itself with the utter lack of presence in these threads or response to this event's well-deserved criticism anywhere else.
Have they completely abandoned the community, except as a revenue source and free scanning labor?
(Here come a lot of dislikes... people like staying at home and getting anomaly badges for it.)
Actually most people prefer to be onsite, but due to cost, distance or circumstance can't. And therefore in order to help support those who can, they recharge. Recharge rooms are often also a 'gateway drug' for new players going to the next anomaly in person to see what it's all about.
And since I know you know all of that, you're just being intentionally contrary.
I agree - to a point with this. A lot of effort does go into recharge rooms though. I've organised a few and getting people to farm the keys, transport the keys, collect keys, **** up the keys between players, setup Intel feeds for what keys to charge on a priority basis, set up/organise venue and then actually charge. I think it's a badge well earned. (At least for the organisers!)
Same for connected cells, shards etc... It requires quite a bit of effort.
Throwing 10 Battle Beacons and hacking them once.... That's a total cop out.
I really really hoped Niantic news about this superposition would give us a boost in numbers for Munich, but it just gave a boost in being dissapointed.
People payed good amounts of money to travel to Munich and be part of something special.
I consider this an absolute low blow from Niantic towards the playerbase who love actual anomalies.
The way this "anomaly" has been communicated to the community is really not how it should be done. First a tease, whether it was twitter, TG or insta, doesn´t matter, it got the community all excited - finally a classic anomaly after this dark age! Then utter silence from the ingress team while the excitement grew in the community over the last weeks/months while reservations and bookings were made,
At this point, someone from Niantic (IDK maybe the "community specialist") could easily have stepped in and said "look, I see what kind of event you are expecting here, but it will be a battle beacon event, and it will be repeated throughout q3, and you can also get the medal by deploying your own BBs" as this must have been the plan all along. Instead Niantic tried to get people to travel to Munich under the assumption that it would be a classic anomaly since they never confirmed what it was going to be until yesterday. This kind of "snake oil" marketing of events can only hurt ingress and Niantic´s reputation and the trust of the community (whatever is left). So yeah, thanks for nothing, I guess.
@Perringaiden No, I'm actually not being intentionally contrary. I've known plenty of people who would have gone to an anomaly but stayed home because there was a local recharge room. And I HATE HATE HATE competing against unknown, unseen, unverifiable opponents when I've invested time and energy in being on site. A lot of the fun of being at an anomaly is being able to accomplish things on the playing field and it's not fun to try to smash self-healing portals.
However, I think it's hypocritical to complain about people getting badges when they aren't on site while also advocating for recharge rooms. If local battle beacons count as part of the worldwide score then it's reasonable to give people badges. A tiered anomaly badge system would be nice-- gold for on-site participants and the core planners, silver for intel/dispatch and offsite support, and bronze for people who contribute in other ways like local battle beacons.
I also get the "being part of something special" thing, but for me that would come from attending. Other people also having a shiny thing on their profiles wouldn't decrease my enjoyment.
Personally, I think the elitist "I was there" badge waving is a problem attitude. Better to do it like other games where simply playing during the window of the event sequence gets you the badge.
Because the badge is not why people go to anomalies, and if it is, that's a problem.
Look - the badge IS awesome and all. They mark your profile like a diary. Yes it is a bit elitist - but let's face it, apart from locals and people from surrounding towns, ANYONE who travels 100's or 1000's of km to play is also going to be a bit that way. Casual players for the most part, won't travel too far.
But yeah the biggest thrill of attending is the battle and the before and after parties, possibly uniques for some and the thrill you get from having so many players in one spot.
Battle Beacon on the ground anomaly is just not what people were chasing when we can also battle beacon at home. Also - I think people are pretty tired of battle beacons, the gameplay is just too simplistic.
Well, to be honest I was fully expecting the anomaly to be mostly battle-beacons. They created them to “guide” the portal battles.
Even the past two anomalies were actual anomalies. A change from normal gameplay; or an “anomaly”, is fine this way; I already accepted that. But the fact that any agent can participate in battle beacons anywhere and get the anomaly “badge”, is silly.
I might still go for the mission day, but the other activities are a no for me. Especially the ridiculous fees for the OCF etc.
Comments
Rucking for intel hasn't been a thing for years now. Please try to make your objections reality-based.
That's a serious misunderstanding of GORUCK events and/or participants. The hardcore rucking agents barely pay attention to normal anomaly play, because they're showing up for the rucking events and medals. Urban Ops is traditionally held during the anomaly window, so requiring TKOs to interact with battle beacons would actually be more Ingress action than normally required for them.
Superposition Munich is a six-medal weekend (anomaly, OPR Live, Mission Day, 3 GORUCK medals). Plenty of people are going to show up for that.
I can't even figure out what "real anomaly" you guys are missing. Anomalies have always been mostly shards and "fighting over designated portals." Battle beacons are just the new version of "fighting over designated portals."
Literally nothing stopping people from organizing recharging rooms -- beacon battles and preserving shard paths can both benefit from recharging. If the problem is that your locals won't recharge without a free medal, have the room organizer buy 10 beacons and launch them afterwards. (Recharging counts as beacon battle participation, also, but hard to guarantee an agent distributed random keys will get 10 battles without having local beacons.)
Literaly nothing stopping teams from having remote op coordinators, either.
I swear, the biggest problem with this community is the old-timers who refuse to think any new thoughts about how to play the game. If the anomaly isn't exactly the format of their favorite anomaly, they starting screaming "Calvinball!" and insisting Ingress is ruined forever.
Grow up and adapt, people!
If some of the bookings weren't non-refundable I would have replanned the weekend now to smth more exciting like bbq/PoGo/count clouds... 😥
This marks the final end to my Ingress anomalies.
I'm super pissed though, having to travel from AU to in essence get a masturbatory badge (achieved via solo play)... What the **** are NIA thinking?
$100 says that this is another brain child of the "wonderful" Brian Rose...
Is there anything we can possibly do outside of whinging in a forum to send Niantic a message about this ****? I mean these BB ****-nomalies generally get flooded with spoofers trying to "legitimise" their accounts with Anomaly badges.
... Anger, much anger at Niantic, definitely not the news I wanted to wake up to 😠😡😤😾🤬
Been saying the cheapening of medals is a bad idea for ages. Now Niantic have gone nuclear on it.
Plus BB are booooring.
Also what oppolot said. We have ppl paying $1000s to fly to Munich from Australia and now Niantic do this.
It's obvious Niantic have zero understanding of the player base or how players play the game.
Like a primary school class EVERYONE gets a participation badge and ultimately everyone's less satisfied.
Players used to grudgingly accept some badges were out of reach due to other commitments or expense or whatever. Now?
Promised communication improvements? Its obvious Niantic didn't listen to anyone on this.
Niantic dump Brian and Thia now.
You're not @joecain
Yeah if they need money:
Superposition? More like Super****You, agents.
I really try to provide constructive criticism whenever I really dislike something. I’m not sure that’ll happen here. I was mad when I first read this announcement and hoped some time would cool me off. I’ve only become more enraged.
This seems like the biggest “**** you” I’ve seen from Niantic to date. They advertise this like a real anomaly, announce a date and location way ahead of schedule so people book international (hell, intercontinental) travel and lodging before they drop their **** poor ruleset that agents have been complaining about for nearly 6 months. I’m sure they’re going to add a mandatory paid ticket for your participation to influence scoring 2 weeks before the event, ala Umbra. Get ****.
As previous commenters have pointed out, the Osiris and Nemesis sequences were packed with a variety of fun rulesets and competitions. It’s cool to see shards here, but it’s a bad excuse not to have at least one more scoring event. Hell, even having “interact with unique NIA RBBs” instead of “unique anomaly hacks” would have gone a long way. Dang it, here I am giving constructive criticism. I was SUPER excited for the possibilities that Requiem held, especially after the puzzles and riddles and lore of the Tessellation. What a sad shadow this is.
I understand not wanting to have very enticing rulesets and announcing dates last minute to avoid encouraging travel during the pandemic. Why announce and hype this ahead of time, knowing full well what your community expects? It’s clear you don’t give a damn about your community. You still have a chance to salvage this, but I’d be surprised if you care to.
Yep I agreed with this, honestly what is this? Pogo? Niantic need to get people who understand the game to participate in running it again... Brian and Thia need to go...
This is the best response
Highly disappointed Niantic, reconsider!
I was signed up and planned a trip to Munich 2 years ago and have been waiting for it to be rescheduled. THIS IS NOT IT!!! I've become less active since the pandemic and lockdowns but when the Munich anomaly was announced I was ready to get back out there! I bought tickets, made reservations and planned another trip. This is just a HUGE disappointment. I'm far from a stellar player but I played. I bought your merchandise to help support the game. No more. I'm done. I will still go to Munich. I will take part in your BB activity (it's not the anomaly I signed up for) but I will cancel my core membership and stop spending money in the store. You are not worthy of my patronage. Your bait and switch business model needs correction to earn my money.
Basically TLDR:
Niantic should to remove agent deploy battle beacons to get anomaly medals.
Instead anomaly badges should be only from satellite sites or main anomaly sites like in the past.
Basically you are pissing off those who decided to attend on site for the anomaly by the amount of effort it gets to obtain the badge. (Travelling on site Vs an agent who paid 10 battle beacons to deploy from their home city)
It's like umbra drama all over again.
Seen a lot of comments this evening about easy badge, I feel for the people in Munich, res / enl sorting out a welcome to our city.
Niantic has once again done an own goal.
This is to Niantic, please sort ruleset out before you announce anomalies...
This is to help your customers (players) plan on attending...
To Niantic, for players on ground, should get:
Tier the badge.
Extra kit and, extra badge on people attending.
Battle beacons are an absolute slap in face for people that are spending money to travel.
I just want to add that for me a pre-BB anomaly was much more than a badge, although nice and should be unique, it's about complex team play. I love watching the strategy and planning involved play out. The previous anomalies included a variety of teams (on foot, bikes, cars, skates, etc.) with all levels of players working together and lots of mentoring and skill development. I'm sure I missed a lot of what's involved. I don't know if all of that will happen with this new format. Perhaps BB will add a new dimension and enhance the anomaly but it is hard to imagine and it should have been announced from the start.
A large part of traveling to an anomaly was the pride you could get with showing off your badge profile.
"I was there!" They also promote community much like special issue coins do. "I'm one of you/was there/contributed".
It's why Anomaly badge codes are banned from being traded or sold on every good swag trade forum/chat whereas character badges are not.
I don't have every anomaly badge - the one's I do have I earned, and I value them. The last couple of Battle Beacon one's felt cheap even though I was on the ground fighting for control for the NIA deployed ones.
Mod please delete this post.
In the case of recharge rooms it means that I'm fighting not just against the people who have traveled to the site and are on the ground with me but also against an unknown, unverifiable number of people who are sitting at home on their couches. It's not fun to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to an event and then compete directly against a bunch of people who stayed home. (Here come a lot of dislikes... people like staying at home and getting anomaly badges for it.)
In this case what I'm hearing is that it's not fair for people to get the anomaly badge unless they travel to the event or sit at home and recharge. I have some sympathy for the people who think that the badge for the first anomaly in over two years should be special, but it's not like the people who are on site are having the badge taken away from them. I wonder how many of the people complaining have anomaly badges that came from recharge rooms, shards, connected cells, or they got the Initio badge for buying a T-shirt...
niantic (lower case to show disrespect) is really out-nianticing itself with the utter lack of presence in these threads or response to this event's well-deserved criticism anywhere else.
Have they completely abandoned the community, except as a revenue source and free scanning labor?
(Here come a lot of dislikes... people like staying at home and getting anomaly badges for it.)
Actually most people prefer to be onsite, but due to cost, distance or circumstance can't. And therefore in order to help support those who can, they recharge. Recharge rooms are often also a 'gateway drug' for new players going to the next anomaly in person to see what it's all about.
And since I know you know all of that, you're just being intentionally contrary.
I agree - to a point with this. A lot of effort does go into recharge rooms though. I've organised a few and getting people to farm the keys, transport the keys, collect keys, **** up the keys between players, setup Intel feeds for what keys to charge on a priority basis, set up/organise venue and then actually charge. I think it's a badge well earned. (At least for the organisers!)
Same for connected cells, shards etc... It requires quite a bit of effort.
Throwing 10 Battle Beacons and hacking them once.... That's a total cop out.
I really really hoped Niantic news about this superposition would give us a boost in numbers for Munich, but it just gave a boost in being dissapointed.
People payed good amounts of money to travel to Munich and be part of something special.
I consider this an absolute low blow from Niantic towards the playerbase who love actual anomalies.
Side note.: How come 'drug' is not a banned word, but '****', '****', and '****' are. And ****. What the hell is wrong with ****?
The way this "anomaly" has been communicated to the community is really not how it should be done. First a tease, whether it was twitter, TG or insta, doesn´t matter, it got the community all excited - finally a classic anomaly after this dark age! Then utter silence from the ingress team while the excitement grew in the community over the last weeks/months while reservations and bookings were made,
At this point, someone from Niantic (IDK maybe the "community specialist") could easily have stepped in and said "look, I see what kind of event you are expecting here, but it will be a battle beacon event, and it will be repeated throughout q3, and you can also get the medal by deploying your own BBs" as this must have been the plan all along. Instead Niantic tried to get people to travel to Munich under the assumption that it would be a classic anomaly since they never confirmed what it was going to be until yesterday. This kind of "snake oil" marketing of events can only hurt ingress and Niantic´s reputation and the trust of the community (whatever is left). So yeah, thanks for nothing, I guess.
@Perringaiden No, I'm actually not being intentionally contrary. I've known plenty of people who would have gone to an anomaly but stayed home because there was a local recharge room. And I HATE HATE HATE competing against unknown, unseen, unverifiable opponents when I've invested time and energy in being on site. A lot of the fun of being at an anomaly is being able to accomplish things on the playing field and it's not fun to try to smash self-healing portals.
However, I think it's hypocritical to complain about people getting badges when they aren't on site while also advocating for recharge rooms. If local battle beacons count as part of the worldwide score then it's reasonable to give people badges. A tiered anomaly badge system would be nice-- gold for on-site participants and the core planners, silver for intel/dispatch and offsite support, and bronze for people who contribute in other ways like local battle beacons.
I also get the "being part of something special" thing, but for me that would come from attending. Other people also having a shiny thing on their profiles wouldn't decrease my enjoyment.
Personally, I think the elitist "I was there" badge waving is a problem attitude. Better to do it like other games where simply playing during the window of the event sequence gets you the badge.
Because the badge is not why people go to anomalies, and if it is, that's a problem.
Yeah I wrote d i v v y up the keys and d i v v y is not allowed apparently....
Look - the badge IS awesome and all. They mark your profile like a diary. Yes it is a bit elitist - but let's face it, apart from locals and people from surrounding towns, ANYONE who travels 100's or 1000's of km to play is also going to be a bit that way. Casual players for the most part, won't travel too far.
But yeah the biggest thrill of attending is the battle and the before and after parties, possibly uniques for some and the thrill you get from having so many players in one spot.
Battle Beacon on the ground anomaly is just not what people were chasing when we can also battle beacon at home. Also - I think people are pretty tired of battle beacons, the gameplay is just too simplistic.
Well, to be honest I was fully expecting the anomaly to be mostly battle-beacons. They created them to “guide” the portal battles.
Even the past two anomalies were actual anomalies. A change from normal gameplay; or an “anomaly”, is fine this way; I already accepted that. But the fact that any agent can participate in battle beacons anywhere and get the anomaly “badge”, is silly.
I might still go for the mission day, but the other activities are a no for me. Especially the ridiculous fees for the OCF etc.