If you go look for discussions about the cooldown in the general threads, people do not forget or discount heat sinks, they are still useful even now, who's gonna complain about 30 second cooldowns to go play thw game?
I dont usually find an issue with the lag for hacki g except for the occasional missed glyph, it's the charging that the lag causes me annoyance and grief with, especially when trying to keep portals alive while they arw being attacked
@gazzas89 I get really annoyed with the hack lag when I have a fracker going, because I don't enjoy paying money to stare at my phone unable to do anything useful. Deploy lag annoys me too.
Must be the times I'm playing or something because genuinely I've not had hack lag other than the game freezing for a second or 2 while glyph hacking (if anything, ive found I have more issues with the glyphs just not registering when my finger goes over the dot).
It's actually fun right now for me. I've already smashed up all of the opposing faction's P8s in a particular city (over 250), and now I get to smash up most of their P7s.
With the price of fuel right now? As if it excites some players to drive around the city and smash portals whether it's 8s or 7s. It doesn't give any more incentive to build and maintain farms either particularly in an area with very few players from one's own faction. Just dirty farm is that what's it all about now?
@Otrera35 Don't forget that the whole purpose of Ingress is to fight for control of territory. I can't see any reason to let my opponents keep a giant sea of P7s and P8s without opposition, and triple onyx isn't going to purify itself. The thing that is most interesting to me in Ingress is strategic and tactical territory control, and it's rewarding to succeed at that.
Not all cars consume petrol, and some of the ones that do sip it gently rather than chugging it down. If my car is running on dinosaurs it probably costs me three dollars for a couple of hours of really satisfying gameplay. That's cheap entertainment.
And this exactly proves my point: the game has to be extremely unbalanced (three to one) for you to find it fun, for the joy of it appears to be in punishing collaboration among agents. It's apparently not enough that we need two agents to build something that a single agent can take down (for a ratio of two to one). The fact that your strategy and tactics depend on the lack of balance of the game says it all.
There was always a frog in my town who would gladly devote his entire playtime to smash our farm. They would do nothing else but that: ten minutes to end the work of a few days. That's the main reason most of my playmates don't play anymore. I'm glad that you finally got your fun back. Enjoy it while it lasts.
@Akeca I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
I live in a large metropolitan area with a lot of active Ingress players. As often happens in such situations there are localized pockets where one team dominates, and they often wind up with a relatively stagnant playfield of established high-level portals. I don't think stagnation makes for a fun game-- it's much more interesting when the game is dynamic.
Big smashes are fun for me, as evidenced by the fact that I got onyx purifier before platinum builder and double onyx purifier before onyx builder. I enjoy cleaning up the stagnation and clearing space for both factions to play. And you can bet your sweet you-know-what that one of my opponents smashed up my couch portals and my neighborhood as soon as double R7 went away. That is exactly what I would have expected, and I wasn't the least bit bothered by it.
Do you think a stagnant playfield is fun? If so, what makes that fun for you?
@Hosette Apologies if I misunderstood you, we seem to have slightly different personal experiences with the game. I also live in a pretty large city with tons of portals and an active community but have never seen a stagnant area, not in seven years of playing. That has never been a problem for us, fields and portals get taken down, no matter the level, no matter the protection. I don't particularly enjoy the smashing and have almost double onyx builder and still no onyx purifier (that's also partially on the local frogs). I just don't see the strategy, besides the occasional dance with the scanner to strike a few ultras.
My point was that nothing prevented you from enjoying your big smashes before, whereas I was especially enjoying the possibility of microfielding while farming, since P6s glyphing would give me plenty of material without needing a 50-minute walk round trip to the nearest farm every other day. That's gone, for me it's a completely different experience. Of course I could still build fields with lower level portals and glyph P3s and P2s. Sure, that might be fun (unless you really like glyphing P8s in which case the P1s to P5s glyphs are just annoying).
Your community might not have a problem with this reversal to old days. Mine had already suffered (most agents had got tired of upgrading portals to see them smashed before they had time to farm them) and I welcomed the change, because I never understood why a single agent should have as much power as a group of eight. The farms in my city might survive the reversal but only because people will use non-active accounts to upgrade the portals and I'm not willing to do that.
@Akeca You are right that nothing prevented me from big smashes before, and I did lots of them. I don't particularly enjoy building but I love smashing, and one of the wonderful thing about Ingress is that it can be played a lot of different ways.
I don't like the removal of double R7 either, but I accept that it's reality and I will adapt my strategy to it.
The removal of R7s is fine as long as a few things happen:
R8s are added as a paid item in the Store
During the COVID times we had 10 R8s for 1000CMU. This provided communities with few active players to still be able to coordinate for P7s, and allowed people to continue building decent level portals in isolation. For now, this should be reinstated, because the playerbase is still largely inactive or playing in isolation.
Ingress needs to be marketed to new players
This one is much harder, and includes things like people who actively play Ingress re-reviewing the game on the Play Store and App Store in a favourable light. Don't 1-star a game you play daily. Providing a binary review where it's "All bad" until it's "All good" doesn't help anyone. If you have the game installed, you can't justify a 1-star rating, and if you play it daily then clearly it's worth at least 3 or 4 stars. While the overall rating is below 4, Ingress will not be blind recommended to new people.
Additionally, Ingress needs to be marketed by Niantic. This means handing out Ingress cards at Community Days, recommending Ingress in PoGo and Pikmin, and other methods that push the game out to a wider audience of already 'outside the house' gamers. However, this costs money, which leads to the next part.
Ingress needs to be better monetized
I know this part will get people all up in arms, but it's been true for years. Ingress doesn't make money. The dev team keeps shrinking because it's not paying for it's own. We "built" PoGo's playing field, and we've ridden that good will for seven years now. We got subscriptions which I'm sure has helped (though I still want my "Tier 4" CORE subscription with +2000 inventory 😂) but we need to accept that Ingress needs to make money off us to be a viable business entity.
The R8s in the store as per above is a minor but ongoing thing. Niantic needs to find other ways such as selling single or triple use kinetic capsules that either have additional patterns like converting 9 CHS into 3 RHS, or simply run faster. Single purchase Avatars and Medals aren't going to help, and neither are all the high development low sale count ideas.
Communities need to rebuild themselves
This is one that is on us. COVID damaged an already shaky playerbase that was struggling with the change to Prime. Since that client has been dramatically improved (ignoring 2.54), talking to old players and getting them to try the game again, coming back to community organized events and operations, and capturing the few new signup players and getting them hooked into a group of friendly people, are great ways to make the game populated again.
Added to that, the toxicity between teams turns new players away. Building up cross faction events, running in-person IFS to humanize the other side, and generally making it clear that the "opponent" is just like your own team with a different color, not an "evil enemy to be destroyed at all costs".
Work on the process not jump to the end
More population means more activity, more revenue, and more development effort, which will then be able to put more time into solving bugs, solving the cheating issues, and improving the game. We're all focused on the end goal of a highly populated, fairly played, and functional game. The problem is that people aren't putting enough time and effort into the building blocks that allow that situation to be realized.
The key issue with Ingress is that it's a shoestring budget with a tiny group of developers. We can't get the things we want until we can work out how to build the revenue to get that development team enlarged again. You can't fix hard to solve bugs and lag and provide new features, when there's only 4 or 5 people working on a global spanning game running on spaghetti code.
@Perringaiden Yes, Ingress needs to be marketed and grown, and monetization is important. No, players in remote and low-activity areas should not be forced to pay for basic gear.
Double R7 should have remained until the playerbase grows to a point where it's no longer necessary. Some of the things you mention are a mechanism for getting to that point.
I do not want the game balance to go haywire due to double R7 deployments, as Niantic has said before.
However, I would add that this does not preclude the possibility that the current maximum level portal a player can create is lvl 5 (87665544), which may discourage new players in rural areas from continuing to play.
The reason is that Lv5 portals do not produce R8 and X8 items.
This is one of the issues that has been a concern since the beginning.
If we were to make some changes, if we could deploy R6 and R5 up to triple instead of double R7 deployments, one could create a Lv6 portal (87666555).
And the only thing that would make this less of a game imbalance is that even with two players you can't create a Lv7 portal, two players are limited to a Lv6 portal (88776666).
I'm still of the opinion that a double r7 deploy is better for game balance. For example, in my area, the res are outnumbered as little as 5 to one, bit could be as high as 8 to 1. It means that, the enl could easily make l8 portals, fair enough, but as res, we have l5 portals, with rare level 6 portals and very rare level 7 portals, whereas before wd could make level 7, so while not exactly an even playing field, it was a lot closer than it will be now.
This is where the "Selling R8s in the Store" part comes in.
The lowest single agent deploy of a P5 with access to R8s is 86554444. So while they won't be able to advance without teammates, being able to obtain R8s externally will allow an individual player to maintain their general play. X8s aren't actually 'necessary', and X7s can be obtained (albeit slowly) from a P5. However, the longer an agent goes without anything above a P5, the less R8s they have making it harder to make a P5 at all.
I will say once again that I don't like @Perringaiden's suggestion of selling R8s, since that essentially becomes a tax on people who are gear-deprived because there aren't enough players in the area. It also means people who have money to burn get to buy R8s instead of hacking them.
Having actually availed myself of the 10 R8s for 1000 CMU pack in the past, I will say this: It's akin to giving someone a fish instead of teaching them to fish. It's a fine, short-term solution that enables you to bootstrap some builds, but it doesn't change the long-term dynamics of there not being enough players. The practice eventually feels like a burdensome tax.
@Hosette, your position only applies to your experience playing in a large metropolitan area where there are numerous players. The scenario is different in a rural or an area with very few players from the same faction. With the nerfing of the R7s and R8s deployment, it encourages dirty farming to save money while playing this game. Other players get more creative by creating new accounts and leveling them to 8 to redeem codes for gears and etc. Just saying. You can just imagine what will be the income generated by Niantic by changing the rules of deployment of R7z and R8s.
@Otrera35 I'm arguing that it's better for rural/low-player-density area to have double R7 deploy than it is to force them to buy R8s. Am I wrong about that?
So, your point is that it is ok to change rules and make accommodations for certain areas where are there fewer players only? Why not make the rule uniform and simple? Change in rules confuses your base players which contributes to the churn of this game's base players. The motives for changing the deployment of R7s can cause a backlash and are considered non-productive. It will only (a) encourage players to quit; (b) dirty farming; and (c) encourage multi-accounting. Enough said. Good luck with your moves.
And the alternative is literally not having the gear. You're not one of those 'gear deprived' people, so how about letting them decide whether they want to spend money or not.
Having choice lets people decide on their own terms. People who can hack R8s aren't going to buy them because they don't need to. Rural players who will never see a P8 in daily play, have mentioned repeatedly that this is a good idea.
Comments
If you go look for discussions about the cooldown in the general threads, people do not forget or discount heat sinks, they are still useful even now, who's gonna complain about 30 second cooldowns to go play thw game?
I dont usually find an issue with the lag for hacki g except for the occasional missed glyph, it's the charging that the lag causes me annoyance and grief with, especially when trying to keep portals alive while they arw being attacked
@gazzas89 I get really annoyed with the hack lag when I have a fracker going, because I don't enjoy paying money to stare at my phone unable to do anything useful. Deploy lag annoys me too.
Must be the times I'm playing or something because genuinely I've not had hack lag other than the game freezing for a second or 2 while glyph hacking (if anything, ive found I have more issues with the glyphs just not registering when my finger goes over the dot).
I don't like the removal of double R7s
It harms our opposition, who h we rely on to be able to play the game ourselves.
Would a Bounty Board system where some goals allow for a second Level 7 Resonator to be deployed be an option?
Well, it just made the game less interesting nowadays...
It's actually fun right now for me. I've already smashed up all of the opposing faction's P8s in a particular city (over 250), and now I get to smash up most of their P7s.
With the price of fuel right now? As if it excites some players to drive around the city and smash portals whether it's 8s or 7s. It doesn't give any more incentive to build and maintain farms either particularly in an area with very few players from one's own faction. Just dirty farm is that what's it all about now?
The removal of double R7s wasn't a good move. IMO
It seems in step with a return to the past game play and a belief that it was some kind of 'right'.
@Otrera35 Don't forget that the whole purpose of Ingress is to fight for control of territory. I can't see any reason to let my opponents keep a giant sea of P7s and P8s without opposition, and triple onyx isn't going to purify itself. The thing that is most interesting to me in Ingress is strategic and tactical territory control, and it's rewarding to succeed at that.
Not all cars consume petrol, and some of the ones that do sip it gently rather than chugging it down. If my car is running on dinosaurs it probably costs me three dollars for a couple of hours of really satisfying gameplay. That's cheap entertainment.
And this exactly proves my point: the game has to be extremely unbalanced (three to one) for you to find it fun, for the joy of it appears to be in punishing collaboration among agents. It's apparently not enough that we need two agents to build something that a single agent can take down (for a ratio of two to one). The fact that your strategy and tactics depend on the lack of balance of the game says it all.
There was always a frog in my town who would gladly devote his entire playtime to smash our farm. They would do nothing else but that: ten minutes to end the work of a few days. That's the main reason most of my playmates don't play anymore. I'm glad that you finally got your fun back. Enjoy it while it lasts.
@Akeca I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
I live in a large metropolitan area with a lot of active Ingress players. As often happens in such situations there are localized pockets where one team dominates, and they often wind up with a relatively stagnant playfield of established high-level portals. I don't think stagnation makes for a fun game-- it's much more interesting when the game is dynamic.
Big smashes are fun for me, as evidenced by the fact that I got onyx purifier before platinum builder and double onyx purifier before onyx builder. I enjoy cleaning up the stagnation and clearing space for both factions to play. And you can bet your sweet you-know-what that one of my opponents smashed up my couch portals and my neighborhood as soon as double R7 went away. That is exactly what I would have expected, and I wasn't the least bit bothered by it.
Do you think a stagnant playfield is fun? If so, what makes that fun for you?
@Hosette Apologies if I misunderstood you, we seem to have slightly different personal experiences with the game. I also live in a pretty large city with tons of portals and an active community but have never seen a stagnant area, not in seven years of playing. That has never been a problem for us, fields and portals get taken down, no matter the level, no matter the protection. I don't particularly enjoy the smashing and have almost double onyx builder and still no onyx purifier (that's also partially on the local frogs). I just don't see the strategy, besides the occasional dance with the scanner to strike a few ultras.
My point was that nothing prevented you from enjoying your big smashes before, whereas I was especially enjoying the possibility of microfielding while farming, since P6s glyphing would give me plenty of material without needing a 50-minute walk round trip to the nearest farm every other day. That's gone, for me it's a completely different experience. Of course I could still build fields with lower level portals and glyph P3s and P2s. Sure, that might be fun (unless you really like glyphing P8s in which case the P1s to P5s glyphs are just annoying).
Your community might not have a problem with this reversal to old days. Mine had already suffered (most agents had got tired of upgrading portals to see them smashed before they had time to farm them) and I welcomed the change, because I never understood why a single agent should have as much power as a group of eight. The farms in my city might survive the reversal but only because people will use non-active accounts to upgrade the portals and I'm not willing to do that.
@Akeca You are right that nothing prevented me from big smashes before, and I did lots of them. I don't particularly enjoy building but I love smashing, and one of the wonderful thing about Ingress is that it can be played a lot of different ways.
I don't like the removal of double R7 either, but I accept that it's reality and I will adapt my strategy to it.
The removal of R7s is fine as long as a few things happen:
R8s are added as a paid item in the Store
During the COVID times we had 10 R8s for 1000CMU. This provided communities with few active players to still be able to coordinate for P7s, and allowed people to continue building decent level portals in isolation. For now, this should be reinstated, because the playerbase is still largely inactive or playing in isolation.
Ingress needs to be marketed to new players
This one is much harder, and includes things like people who actively play Ingress re-reviewing the game on the Play Store and App Store in a favourable light. Don't 1-star a game you play daily. Providing a binary review where it's "All bad" until it's "All good" doesn't help anyone. If you have the game installed, you can't justify a 1-star rating, and if you play it daily then clearly it's worth at least 3 or 4 stars. While the overall rating is below 4, Ingress will not be blind recommended to new people.
Additionally, Ingress needs to be marketed by Niantic. This means handing out Ingress cards at Community Days, recommending Ingress in PoGo and Pikmin, and other methods that push the game out to a wider audience of already 'outside the house' gamers. However, this costs money, which leads to the next part.
Ingress needs to be better monetized
I know this part will get people all up in arms, but it's been true for years. Ingress doesn't make money. The dev team keeps shrinking because it's not paying for it's own. We "built" PoGo's playing field, and we've ridden that good will for seven years now. We got subscriptions which I'm sure has helped (though I still want my "Tier 4" CORE subscription with +2000 inventory 😂) but we need to accept that Ingress needs to make money off us to be a viable business entity.
The R8s in the store as per above is a minor but ongoing thing. Niantic needs to find other ways such as selling single or triple use kinetic capsules that either have additional patterns like converting 9 CHS into 3 RHS, or simply run faster. Single purchase Avatars and Medals aren't going to help, and neither are all the high development low sale count ideas.
Communities need to rebuild themselves
This is one that is on us. COVID damaged an already shaky playerbase that was struggling with the change to Prime. Since that client has been dramatically improved (ignoring 2.54), talking to old players and getting them to try the game again, coming back to community organized events and operations, and capturing the few new signup players and getting them hooked into a group of friendly people, are great ways to make the game populated again.
Added to that, the toxicity between teams turns new players away. Building up cross faction events, running in-person IFS to humanize the other side, and generally making it clear that the "opponent" is just like your own team with a different color, not an "evil enemy to be destroyed at all costs".
Work on the process not jump to the end
More population means more activity, more revenue, and more development effort, which will then be able to put more time into solving bugs, solving the cheating issues, and improving the game. We're all focused on the end goal of a highly populated, fairly played, and functional game. The problem is that people aren't putting enough time and effort into the building blocks that allow that situation to be realized.
The key issue with Ingress is that it's a shoestring budget with a tiny group of developers. We can't get the things we want until we can work out how to build the revenue to get that development team enlarged again. You can't fix hard to solve bugs and lag and provide new features, when there's only 4 or 5 people working on a global spanning game running on spaghetti code.
@Perringaiden Yes, Ingress needs to be marketed and grown, and monetization is important. No, players in remote and low-activity areas should not be forced to pay for basic gear.
Double R7 should have remained until the playerbase grows to a point where it's no longer necessary. Some of the things you mention are a mechanism for getting to that point.
I do not want the game balance to go haywire due to double R7 deployments, as Niantic has said before.
However, I would add that this does not preclude the possibility that the current maximum level portal a player can create is lvl 5 (87665544), which may discourage new players in rural areas from continuing to play.
The reason is that Lv5 portals do not produce R8 and X8 items.
This is one of the issues that has been a concern since the beginning.
If we were to make some changes, if we could deploy R6 and R5 up to triple instead of double R7 deployments, one could create a Lv6 portal (87666555).
And the only thing that would make this less of a game imbalance is that even with two players you can't create a Lv7 portal, two players are limited to a Lv6 portal (88776666).
I'm still of the opinion that a double r7 deploy is better for game balance. For example, in my area, the res are outnumbered as little as 5 to one, bit could be as high as 8 to 1. It means that, the enl could easily make l8 portals, fair enough, but as res, we have l5 portals, with rare level 6 portals and very rare level 7 portals, whereas before wd could make level 7, so while not exactly an even playing field, it was a lot closer than it will be now.
This is where the "Selling R8s in the Store" part comes in.
The lowest single agent deploy of a P5 with access to R8s is 86554444. So while they won't be able to advance without teammates, being able to obtain R8s externally will allow an individual player to maintain their general play. X8s aren't actually 'necessary', and X7s can be obtained (albeit slowly) from a P5. However, the longer an agent goes without anything above a P5, the less R8s they have making it harder to make a P5 at all.
Is that program for Kinetic only during events? (the one that makes R8). I just started a new program so can't check :D
The program that made R8s is not a permanent program and is not currently available.
Ah okay. Thanks.
I will say once again that I don't like @Perringaiden's suggestion of selling R8s, since that essentially becomes a tax on people who are gear-deprived because there aren't enough players in the area. It also means people who have money to burn get to buy R8s instead of hacking them.
but it doesnt break the game since u can only deploy a single one and build a p5 now i think they should sell 10 r8 for 1000cmu in store permanent.
Having actually availed myself of the 10 R8s for 1000 CMU pack in the past, I will say this: It's akin to giving someone a fish instead of teaching them to fish. It's a fine, short-term solution that enables you to bootstrap some builds, but it doesn't change the long-term dynamics of there not being enough players. The practice eventually feels like a burdensome tax.
@Hosette, your position only applies to your experience playing in a large metropolitan area where there are numerous players. The scenario is different in a rural or an area with very few players from the same faction. With the nerfing of the R7s and R8s deployment, it encourages dirty farming to save money while playing this game. Other players get more creative by creating new accounts and leveling them to 8 to redeem codes for gears and etc. Just saying. You can just imagine what will be the income generated by Niantic by changing the rules of deployment of R7z and R8s.
@Otrera35 I'm arguing that it's better for rural/low-player-density area to have double R7 deploy than it is to force them to buy R8s. Am I wrong about that?
So, your point is that it is ok to change rules and make accommodations for certain areas where are there fewer players only? Why not make the rule uniform and simple? Change in rules confuses your base players which contributes to the churn of this game's base players. The motives for changing the deployment of R7s can cause a backlash and are considered non-productive. It will only (a) encourage players to quit; (b) dirty farming; and (c) encourage multi-accounting. Enough said. Good luck with your moves.
And the alternative is literally not having the gear. You're not one of those 'gear deprived' people, so how about letting them decide whether they want to spend money or not.
Having choice lets people decide on their own terms. People who can hack R8s aren't going to buy them because they don't need to. Rural players who will never see a P8 in daily play, have mentioned repeatedly that this is a good idea.