After all, what is the function of Machina?
After all, what is the function of Machina? Demotivate the remaining players and permanently bury the ingress?
- Portals totally inaccessible to any other player being captured by machina.
- True disabling of previously active cells with hundreds of microlinks running in any direction at all times.
- Places impossible to create any plans or any operation because machines seem to appear exactly where links would pass.
- Cells, previously active having their gameplay for something that seems to have been created for that. Quit Ingress gameplay.
- Before, there were two teams that had the minimum of planning when studying the terrain and knowing that certain regions had no players and cleanings could be done for weeks, mobilizing several players, something impossible today, because machines appear and capture totally inaccessible portals and many don't even were captured someday by some player.
After all, what is the practical meaning of machina in ingress?
Comments
I believe it was started to help areas with no competition have something to do. Rather than address the dwindling numbers of players they created a computer competitor. I see it as a plus in some ways. A telling story of the state of the game in other ways. I can't say it has motivated anyone to play. There are even less players now than before it was implemented. But if you have no competition it does give you something to do. Sure it's created blockers in far away areas but there aren't many big fields anyway. And inaccessible portals, well that's an issue that's never been addressed. Don't expect anything to change there.
It doesn't help that Machina portals are no longer decaying on their own. They grow to L8 in places with no current access (it's a seasonal location), and scud constantly. Driving around to clean up the scuds wastes a ton of gas. Not all places are walkable. Not all portals are accessible all the time.
Only way currently to "fix the problem" is capture every portal and keep it recharged...or simply not play the game...
I'm sure that killing QCs caused a mini exodus in players.
Red portals is kinda like playing with bots in a FPS game.
Exactly. We are competing and spending fuel, money and often hosting, with BOTS that seem to be born at any time crossing links and incredibly coinciding with their plan outlined in any small town somewhere far away that has not even had player activity some day during 10 years of ingress . This scenario is really demotivating
Playing with Machina reminds me of playing with spoofers...and its worse, because they don't get blocked by existing links or fields.
If Machina played by at least the very basic rules of the game (no crossing links) it would be fun doable add-on. But having batsh!t crazy random derping thru existing links/fields from portals no one can currently access? It's really not fun. Well, unless you aren't into making triangles.
Niantic will surely clarify their purpose for red faction once they figure it out.
I have a hope that machina will be explained after nearest anomaly, what is it and where it came from and what is it doing etc
The purpose is 2 fold,
1) those living in areas dominated by a single faction, where there isn't much activity from the other faction, provides them with an opponent.
2) A task system is being introduced on the 18th of March.
Providing those who just want to play in their local area, to have tasks to do, for those that like sort of gameplay (there is a lot of people just interested in that)
Agree. Totally killed the game for alot of people. If you're in an area with no players it's unlikely you'll enjoy walking through every park near where you live to **** the red portals, all its done is ruin the strategic pvp fielding game that many of us played, can't make a field without destroying a 3 meter link in a country park that's been placed by the NPC, times that by 20 and you've got what we have now. Unfortunately it seems to be an idea Niantic didn't fully consider, didn't care how it would pan out, and don't care that people are leaving the scanner because of it. R.I.P the game we loved.
There have been thousands of complaints over the years to improve the state of the game.
From adding a 3rd faction potentially an AI faction
To
Enabling those who have no opposition something to play against.
PvP isn't gone, just refactored to include an AI faction.
It isn't perfect, and no solution will make everyone happy.
In the city where I live, Machina's growth rate is over the threshold. Even if users try to clean up reds, all of they recover all in just a few days, and agents' efforts are in vain.
Machina now occupies almost all of the neutral portals, and they connect to each other, it is like squeezing our neck.
It's similar to the feeling that gravity has multiplied by several times and can't move, or that you can't go out because of the lockdown caused by Covid-19.
Users of this city can't do anything now. after all, "Machina" is a partially failed update due to wrong balance. I don't care if you can handle red assholes in your city, It's just that the progress hasn't crossed the threshold yet in case of your city.
Anyway we can't play games normally here at the moment. we lost all of motivation to play this game.
Wow look at all that potential ap
I go back and forth on this. I haven't seen anything like what I'm seeing above, but if you don't stomp out the first portal you see, within several days, it will already be tough to contain, a couple weeks and it's out of control. As a faction, we've had to communicate better in regards to keeping lanes clear and stomping out any red portals that are even remotely close to a regularly used lane.
I've also enjoyed the shields and other gear these things drop as well, so that's a nice bonus.
Realistically, if you wanna stay on top of these, gonna have to be active and go smash anything red. Keep an eye on in the intel map and communicate with your faction.
Also, like I've said before. A machina medal needs to be released. That will change some areas completely. Agents will be fighting to find red portals, not letting them grow.
I support this thread. I cancelled my C.O.R.E subscription today
The point of machina is to force you to make a choice: should you consume always more gas, driving around your area for hours every time you want to make some long link or should you just stop planning big things and play as a pedestrian in your area. That’s the only impact I saw on the game so far…
I also canceled my next payment. And no desire to buy the medal available in the store.
NIA seems to want even the most passionate about the game to finally give up and she can shut down the ingress servers without protests. It seems that Machina is fulfilling her role very well.
It's not just about "talking to her faction" to keep a street or a block clean. There are thousands of completely inaccessible portals, cities dozens of kilometers away that never had ingress activity, dozens and dozens and dozens of random crazy blocks that cross you and themselves.
You can no longer plan an operation for days, weeks and often even MONTHS, you can no longer send agents to remote locations because a random AI driven by an insane algorithm will get in your way in any small town in the middle of nowhere, and it won't have nothing you can do.
Anyway, knocking machines down in a street, a block, a square or a park, seems to be a great idea. But it definitely feels like something got out of the original idea and is totally out of control and worse, making players really say goodbye to the game little by little.
Competing with other players, spending money to dispute territory with other REAL players is healthy and looks great. Competing with an artificial player bot that has the ability to cross any link, spawn and multiply in the middle of nowhere is definitely not healthy.
23:59 - We will not allow agents to use bots, the intention of ingress is to make agents explore the world on equal terms with competition in the real world.
00:00 - Welcome to the red machina bot. Have fun
Depends. In heavy urban areas it means which public transportation vehicle are you taking today.
Not everywhere has decent public transportation and even those that might, the red is often in places where said transportation goes.
Public transport varies a LOT across the globe. A lot of our city, one bus an hour, plus, a lot of Machina infected portals are on walk only paths around the river, away from public transport. Means driving, getting out, driving getting out over n over. Very bad for fuel use.
Also, countless machina portals, dozens, hundreds. They are in restricted areas and without players. Many portals were "born" during the recent automatic import of locations and are in locations where players never existed. That is, THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY of being neutralized. Unless players also create autonomous bots to neutralize everything inaccessible without leaving home by opening the scanner in the usual way. wowww, but this is against the ToS and subject to banning. And the Machina does what? In my view this is in disagreement with the ToS itself
For now, Machina doesn't charge on you so just get to the closest stop take advantage of the board take out Machina. Take advantage of layovers to run up your unique and pioneer numbers.
After all, what is the function of Machina?
From the original Redfection suggestion post:
This is a suggestion for adding more gameplay to Ingress without cross faction events and to help out places where the player numbers are dropping.
Goal
The goal is to encourage people to play in whatever way they want to be beneficial.
a. Destroyers can chase after the infected portals.
b. Builders can field their area to protect it.
c. Explorers can search out grey portals and deploy on them to reduce the infection rate or control where infections occur.
d. Teams can build P8s in larger numbers to protect portals, or ring infections off with a barrier of P8s and 4 field portals linked around an infection site.
Regions where there are very few players, or very uneven faction populations will have additional activities to be a part of, or could even farm Redfected portals in a controlled area.
While the current implementation doesn't work for D in this list, the others still apply.
Am I missing something or is B not working too?
In theory and on paper, everything was beautiful, wonderful, splendid. But in practice and in the real game it turned out quite different:
A) Hundreds of infected portals in completely inaccessible locations.
B) If it weren't for the letter "A" this would be perfect.
C) A utopia created by employees in offices that I even doubt if they have an ingress account or know the dynamics in the real world
D) Completely utopian and not applicable.
About the "Goal", well the perception is that places where there were no players, remain without players and places where there was relative or a lot of activity is dropping considerably. that is, the implantation of machina did not attract new players and is driving away those who remained over the years.
Look at the overall MU performance and you will see that it is down after the Machina bot deployment.
Machina's creators should do an internship for a few months playing in the real world to realize that their ideas are not applicable. they are just ideas on paper.
P.S:1
The title of the post was an irony with what it should be. But so far nothing that was "planned" by the creators of machina has proved to be efficient or even minimally reasonable.
It could even be just a bigger task in the game, but machina is proving to be a BOT with fakegps, harming and pushing away real players. There is nothing interesting about playing or spending real money against bots.
P.S:2
To make the dispute fair it should then be allowed to use INGRESS on the PC sitting on the couch. because that's the feeling of those who actually play the game. Going out into the street to dispute who is sitting on the couch.
I can't understand your point, guys. No matter how I read you, it's like you got used to do the same scheme over and over. This is a game where the strategies are dynamic and change over time.
In my opinion, Machina is GREAT. I love its addition since it's becoming an intellectual challenge. Think of it like if it was a chess game.
PS: For those who think that Machina is not harming me, yes, it is, but I am still developing a counter strategy. Guys, wake up and watch the world with new eyes.
Adding to the issue are all of the POIs that are seasonally not accessible, and that POIs have been created in ball fields and parks everywhere that close at dark (ballfield 9B).
The rate of spread is crazy and maintaining fields does not prevent link from crossing links into unused portals under the field. So when a field gets hit you have to clear countless red links to put the same link back up.
Well, you can always change your design.
Completely misunderstanding the situation on the ground.
We now have areas which will NEVER be reclaimed due to the size of the infection. There are just insufficient players to deal with it. Then, it will grow back even if you did.
In areas with insufficient players, there is no strategy to stop it now. You cannot wall it off, you cannot destroy it all, it plays 24/7.
@NianticBrian A statement on how this is going to be addressed please? We are losing players because of it.