Mission functionality needs to handle banner missions gracefully
When Niantic created the concept of missions they envisioned that each mission would be a single stand-alone quest. There are some excellent examples of these in the world, my favorite of which is The Capture of Lee Harvey Oswald, which starts at the Texas School Book Depository and traces the route he took. However, banner missions have become the predominant type of mission these days... or perhaps it just feels that way because a single banner consumes most of the mission list in its area.
Unfortunately, the mission system has not adapted to the reality of banner missions even though they've been around forever. My personal preference is to do single missions as travel souvenirs because I don't have the patience or desire for banners, but it's nearly impossible to find the single-mission needle in the haystack of banner segments. I've heard from other people that it can also be difficult to find the next mission in a banner.
My recommendation would be for Niantic to create a system by which banners could be designated as such and managed as a set of missions rather than as unconnected individual missions. I envision that the mission display would show the first mission only of each banner, with a plus sign or some other mechanism by which the banner could be expanded to show its individual components. This would also require changes to the mission authoring tool so that banner authors could group and sequence the individual missions within a banner.
There's a huge wild west of data out there right now, but it seems like most of the existing banners could be grouped programmatically by a one-time conversion process-- most banner missions that I've seen tend to have a common name for each of the segments along with some variation on "#X", "X/Y", "X of Y", or something similar.
This seems like a net win for everyone-- people who enjoy banner missions could follow them more easily, and people who are seeking out individual missions wouldn't have to wade through a long list of banner segments in order to find them.
Comments
Constantly mentioned and still they haven't touched the system since 2014. It's more embarrassing with a nomination system where the reason for rejection is equivalent to throwing a dart into a room blindfolded and if it hits a wall, it's approved. Why is it even still used? Do they still see missions one by one?
@MoogModular Throwing a dart is basically the old portal review system, right?
I'd guess they do see missions one by one. That seems to be their paradigm for how missions work.
Given that there's no way for someone to say "These missions are connected" independent reviewers will receive different missions to review split up. So one person may see 5 of the missions, and the 6th goes to someone else with a different view of the requirements, who rejects it.
Then those reviewers are idiots if they still don't realize that a freaking mission which has "17/24" in its name is part of a banner.
They have a list. That's not on the list.
They are probably minimum-wage contractors who have never played Ingress and don't care what a mission actually IS. Their job is to follow the list (as they understand it).
The list needs updating.
Some of this needs automating. Another system for banners, maybe. Or a system to knit them together after being approved.
@MargariteDVille Before and after being approved, IMO. Submitters should be able to tie them together as part of the submission process, and they should be grouped after approval when displayed to players.
They don't have access to the rest, and previously people have used the breakup to put inappropriate images into banners, for example.
We are why we can't have nice things, sometimes.
This won't get implemented because it makes perfect sense. I like singles and can't find them SO OFTEN due to congestion. What I hate even more is accidentally doing a banner mission and I didn't know it unless I really paid attention. I have to spend a ton of time mapping out a route if I want to avoid issues...but overall, have been demanding something like this since I started doing missions.
Come to my area. 😉 I have 45 single missions live right now and about 50 more I'm working on.
I'm quite a fan of single missions myself. A banner can take hours to complete but a lot of the time on my travels I'm only passing through a place. Like back in May, I went to London and had to change in Birmingham. I opened up the Ingress scanner for something to do to **** the time but every mission nearby was a banner. I'd have had time to do a quick 6-10 portal single mission but not six times that.
It'd be great if banners could be grouped to appear in the mission list as one single heading, with the full banner mission list if you tap on it. But Niantic are unlikely to do that as it would probably require a lot of work. So maybe an option could be added to the mission authoring tool at least where you could suggest a next mission to agents when they finish one of yours. In a banner series it could point to the next mission in the series but with single missions authors could point you to something similar nearby and help you avoid the banners.