Time To Retire Quantum Capsules
With the release of Rare Kinetic Capsules we should begin discussion on the retirement of Quantum Capsules.
I believe the regular item duping (resonators, weapons, mods) was never a major issue, even when VR items duped, but keys have created a major issue over the years, so we should start addressing the issue now, giving us time to see how the game board reacts before considering any actions with excess keys that exist. Niantic can supposedly determine which keys were hacked, and which were dupe'd, so this can definitely play a part in reducing numbers of keys in circulation, although I would think letting people keep 5-10 keys no matter what would be a good compromise.
Also, instead of Qcaps just reverting to a rare capsule, they could remain as a VR item with a higher capacity (200 items?), or even a new mechanic.
Comments
No
How would you retire them?
I dont have any normal caps. Guess just turn off dupe rate.
Would not want to lose contents!
Nah they'll be retired. No actions for previous duped items or keys, not required and too much work.
I liked that one idea of a 'gear locker', holds 100 items, destroy to get items out. Max 5. That could be the new 'quantum locker'.
Turn off duplication, revert to either rare capsules, or new higher capacity type.
And definitely don't remove the items!
It should and will happen. That's the point of these new kinetic capsules. Quantums will stop duplicating. This is a good thing even though many will disagree.
Even 'tentatively' confirmed on twitter...
I've shared the screenshot in one of the other threads. Looks like we'll get some processing power back, calculations of 'interest' from the capsules is generating some load on the backend.
I can't think of a single reason why the current caps are a problem, nor can I think of any reason why they should be changed.
What did a key ever do to harm you?
We need more items and game mechanics not less
but getting more keys should be from hacks, not sitting on couch and having them duped overnight without doing anything...
So, BrianRose mentions some issues, all of which are also confirmed by other agents. And he mentions that it puts quite some load on the backend, so we'll get more 'performance' back.
Yeah keys won't dupe anymore, big whoop, now you need to organise trips to actually farm them.
It seems like that would increase the use of backpack accounts. Instead of farming a dozen keys and waiting for them to duplicate people would just create backpack accounts and use them to farm more keys.
It's not like the keys duplicate in any great quantity. Assuming you used hack mods and got 20-25 keys to start with you'd get maybe one extra key a week at first. After six months or so you'd be up to 50 keys and be getting a couple of new one a week and so forth.
Yes, there are some remote portals used as anchors that have 100s of keys floating around among whole teams of agents, but that's not really a key duplication issue and would be better addressed with an accelerating decay rate.
well, that is another problem entirely. And also already happening.
the keys don’t duplicate in great numbers one 1 capsule, but once you distribute 50 keys amongst other players, it will go pretty fast.
Limit up to 3 Qcaps per account with some km metric tracker added to activate a duping power, that works only once a day... As well as cannot be dropped.
Of course all existing Qcaps would needs to be merged with normal caps b4 rebalanced version would come into play.
Thoughts, @NianticBrian ?
yea u can go to a really hard to reach remote portal somewhere get enough keys and put all in many quantums and u will have keys for a year no problems....
want more keys? visit the portal
The backpack issue seems easy enough to mitigate-- just tie the duplication rate to some (probably complex) metric for account activity, and it would have to include comm-visible activities. An inactive account gets no dupes. A sort-of active account gets the dupe rate turned way down, and an account that is active regularly gets the full dupe rate for each item type.
The key duplication issue seems easy to solve by dialing down the duplication rate for keys. I personally like that keys duplicate and I use that for a few humorous/souvenir keys, but I'd be perfectly happy if keys duped much less frequently.
I would also love it if VR items duplicated again, albeit at a rate consistent with them being VR and only if duplication was limited to active accounts.
I have not assessed my ideas for unintended consequences.
If there is enough accounts left to generate a significant server load then games alive n healthy.
Oooooh you mean all the cheater accounts...
The issue with stopping key duplication is that big baffers will be more inclined to leave fields up forever to save keys.
One of our anchors costs around $500 to get to. Leave BAF up, or drop it and spend another $500 to go get more keys...
Currently we can afford to flip the BAF off because... we have a lot of keys.
I've been a fan of the COMM idea for quite a while. Add the quest/task system from pogo and require daily COMM visibility to complete them. All of a sudden the community will have a pulse on who is active in the game and potentially see where backpacks exist. Even if it's handing the player a free beacon daily and they just need to place it to "stake their claim" on the map, it's a useful check.
Tying duplication to KM walked will just shift the cheaters to forging their Adventure Sync data or using cell phone rocker devices. Niantic needs to tread carefully though, the more casual players will probably leave if they can't have "free" bursters. I think there would need to be some rebalancing to gear/key drop levels. Maybe make the current power/radius of XMP8 into XMP7s, then make the range of the new XMP8 bigger (with the same power, just a radius increase). Also increase the number of keys received per hack, perhaps guarantee at least one key is obtained each time, with a max up to 4 instead of 3 on glyphing. If I recall, this has already been playtested during a recent event.
One of the potential issues as well will be a shift in power to spoofers. Quantum capsule duplication allows legitimate players a way to generate keys to replace those hard to reach portals/anchors. By removing this mechanic, you would give players with spoofing backpacks much more power to influence the map. After all, they would have an unlimited source of keys and legitimate players no longer would.
There's potential for improvement, but it needs some additional balancing/consideration before going too far in one direction.
I'm hoping these kinetic capsules will replace quantums. Players with backpacks full of quantums allow players with almost unlimited gear to squeeze out the competition by denying farms of any kind. Legitimate players can't get gear while backpackers have plenty. Even allow these new capsules the ability to replicate a key. But just turn off quantums. They are abused.
@VenomousToad I don't think Quantum capsules should go away because their functionality is very different from that of kinetic capsules. Kinetic capsules have a limited set of recipes. There's only one thing in the current kinetic recipes that's interesting to me, but I have a fair bit of stuff in Quantums. No backpacks, just my account, and I probably earn a dozen items per day... not enough to dominate the area, just the equivalent of an extra hack or two each day.
Ingress engagement is declining. Taking away popular functionality will probably accelerate the decline.
Tying duplication to accounts with map visible activity would help in two ways: It would make backpack account have to come out of hiding and show on the map, plus it would reduce the server load by not having to run the dupe rate calculations for any account that didn't do something visible. ****, deploy, or link daily or no duplication.
Maybe that's the play.
Piss off even more agents, so it will decrease the compute demand, and niantic can move ingress to even cheaper servers. The promised "new prime backends" are 100% out of the question at this point.
Haha, yeah as as the “improvements” that would come with the “better AppStore rating” and CORE subscription.
Niantic interaction with their playerbase is at an all time low, the feeling amongst players is they are ignoring them on the forums and everyone feels like the game is on it’s last legs.
meanwhile cheating is still a huge problem, and support is 1,5 years behind.
I’ve had fun, but I lost all hope they will fix the ever growing amount of long standing issues.
QCs benefit agents who live in rural areas with access to a few portals because they can have enough resources to take down a field and strategic portals. Not all agents use the QCs to duplicate keys because it takes a long time, and some view the method as an "easy or lazy mode" to obtain keys for fielding. I request to stop the key duplication program of QCs, so it does not present an issue with the existence of QCs.
Keep quantums, tie them to COMM activities.
Done.
Just remove the QC key duplication program to address the issue of backpack accounts being used to produce and gather keys. If one wants to field and do rethrows, PHYSICALLY HACK THE KEYS and store them in the key lockers, don't duplicate the keys using QCs. Keeping those BAFs, and permanent fields up is disadvantageous for new players who are trying to learn how to field. New players do not have to wait for a special event just to field under the constraints of another huge field.
Adding new caps and possibly changing the old to eliminate key duplication i can live with. I just hope there is still a way to duplicate L8 resonators, bursters and ultras.
Just convert the capsules to Rares.
The lag is enough of a justification to get rid of them, but from a gameplay stance, keys are the biggest problem. I'd be happy to see them remove key duplication alone, but if the QCs are causing the lag, then ditch them and expand the KC patterns available.
No more overpowered Sponsor Items. Lets get new items because it's good for the game, not because it fit's a sponsor's "theme".
What lag? Make muffy dupes managed by the client.