Communication.
So, we've had many promises from Niantic to improve communication with the Ingress player base over the years. Despite the promises, I think we can agree we are at an all-time low.
A recent example - Machina threads, we have 100's of posts, and not a word from Niantic.
Serious question to @NianticBrian @NianticOfficial @NianticThia :
Do you want the Ingress player base to grow?
Why I ask -
It's really hard to recommend a game to someone where there is effectively zero communication from the company.
Do you expect the existing player base to try and recruit, when you make absolutely zero effort yourselves to recruit via any method other than the odd email to EXISTING older player base?
No effort on social media.
No effort at the (defunct?) Niantic Community Days.
When you do communicate, it's a scattered, and incoherent, done via Anomaly announcement, Ingress News post, Twitter, Reddit or, word of mouth.
Tell us why we should care; when all that Niantic Ingress staff do appears to reinforce the appearance that you do not care.
Comments
More communication is needed, just a few replies in report bug section doesnt count.
Thanks for the lively discussion, agents! Proceeds to close the thread
In all seriousness, how are we still expecting improvement? It's been like this since forever and since the one that communicated with us left the company, we're left with nothing.
Maybe if we can't get the actual Ingress team to respond, @ace might be more willing?
Actually, he hasn't been signed into the forums in almost a year. Reading his previous comments make it seem like he's interested in quite a few updates to existing Ingress systems.
Previous comments he's posted. Some really make you wonder what's actually changed since these comments were posted.
But yall keep paying core every month and buying swag subscriptions, like good satisfied customers.
fomo is beautiful thing...
CORE is 100% about those 500 extra inventory slots. When people decide to cut back or quit playing, they cut those spaces. Or some do it to spite Niantic for that whole "$5" a month.
I keep mine because of the space. Sure Ingress is a hot mess. When isn't it? $5 is the cheapest game subscription of any I'm currently paying for.
I wish these threads actually worked. Allegedly the Niantic teams reads them. It's clear they've got their own agenda and plans though, so it really does feel like a bit of a waste. It's also clear they don't understand how valuable we could be to their long term goals and the viability of the game in general. Work with us, communicate with us and we'll do whatever it takes to help. But keep shutting us out and players will continue to drop...
Why do you care so much about this game? Niantic doesn't seem to care about Ingress Prime anyway? It's just an empty mines of Moria here.
Because it is the ONLY persistent real time strategy augmented reality game
At least this is why I care about Ingress
Just about everything else is a collection game. And we're tired of those
Everyone keeps saying more communication but what exactly do you want Niantic to communicate here?
This is a good point. A lot of the reason I think Niantic do not engage, is that engagement will be expected, heavily time consuming and lead to arguments/demands.
I would expect Niantic NOT to do this- the following would be good guidelines:
1) Post on the news section in the forums, as well as Ingress news/twitter/Reddit anything that may be of direct or indirect interest. This should be non controversial normal way of doing business.
2) Bugs - If Niantic discover, or, are informed of a bug, report it on the forums. "We are investigating is fine". Recently I have seen conjecture/word of mouth reports that Machina is supposed to decay, but is not, due to a Google server side issue. This sort of thing should be communicated. (Also may be why some players are seeing odd decay times etc).
3) Forum threads asking for clarification on something, reply and clarify, don't take the bait and get involved in an argument, think out the reply, make it and walk away. If someone complains about cheating, point them at NIAOps - we expect that.
4) Some general updates, more often - how's the anti cheat system going? Roadmap seems too much to expect some the odd teaser would be nice. Some general feedback on Sitreps or god forbid, send the participating team a thankyou and small passcode for taking their time to write it up and post it in this graveyard echo chamber.
I think people are hoping for something similar to how it used to be. Maybe communication is the wrong word. Maybe engagement is a better one?
@NianticBrian @NianticVK Why, by the way, have we not been given information about shapers yet?
Because you keep asking. The details will be released either by POCs (if they were given the info) or by Niantic when the decide to. No amount of questioning or begging will make them release it.
Niantic promised to do this during the last anomaly. as a result, we got nothing, nothing at all. Am I wrong about something? If I'm not mistaken, the organizers of the previous anomaly don't know themselves whether Niantic employees will give them this information or not.
The news tab was a nice addition to the scanner. It gave people a place where they could go to see some information about events. It's been blank for a while for me so maybe they are updating it. But if they could start using that again it could help get people more engaged with the game.
Thinking on the news tab, we used to get emails with Agent Spotlight
and when it was International Women’s Day (and also for long after) we got a women of Ingress spotlight too.
I still get Ingress emails, but am guessing they’ve stopped these monthly news reports now that they have the News section on the site.
I wonder if we would get a spotlight section there or something similar.
The actual lack of communication or engagement now is Niantic not responding to any of the machine threads I believe. How hard can it be to answer at least one of those questions?
Not a single answer.
The obvious protest is cancel core, which I did around 6 months ago as I refuse to pay for a game that doesn't work, also the above point that CORE is great for those extra 500 spaces, let's not act like people can't just make another account for a free 2000 space. Niantic are silent to these threads because simply put they can make money from the game with zero input, the community run all the events, second Sunday uses player inputted mission tiles, first Saturday is run by players, anomalies rely on the community to make them a success, this forum is full of frustrated people like myself who love ingress, but can see its fallen from what it was and won't recover.
I like the sentiment but not the extra account bit.
@Grogyan , Ingress Prime maybe an augmented reality game, but it is not FUN as before. It's just a Machina wasteland out there. Plus, there is zilch engagement from Niantic with the community. Do you think that's a pleasant experience for the majority of us? NO!
i dont agree with it either but my point was people won't pay £5 a month when they can get x4 the space for free, everyone knows you shouldn't but we all know people do. Core needs more benefits than just extra space and items every month that no one needs.
I mean they havent responded to a single Machina feedback post what ive seen or... 🤨
A prime example, pardon the pun.
Kinetic Caps. A major release. Quite hackable initially.
Then Niantic lowered the drop rate and added them to the store WITHOUT A WORD to the players.
People went for like a week trying to figure out if they were in some statistical anomaly wondering where they went. Now people are saying they won't buy them, (you should get 3 for that price and others won't buy them on principle because Niantic left us to figure it out).
This is just abysmal customer relationship management.
The person heading up Ingress should resign their role and step down and let another person take the reins as it's just been a train wreck since they took charge.
It hasn't been as "fun" as before since 2018.
The barrenness you speak of has been there for nearly 4 years.
I disagree that Ingress isn't fun, just different.
Stop complaining and whining.amd get out there, do what you can in the time you have. Which for myself is a few hours on weekends only and primarily only in the burbs.
1). We know that Machina Links shouldn't be able to cross link
2) we know that Machina portals are not decaying to zero after 2 weeks
No need to keep harping on on these things. The devs are very much well aware.
Tomorrow, is the MZFPK Anomaly.
I'll post my thoughts on the whole Quantum removal, 90s Hacks, Machina issues and the task system in the coming weeks. When we have a better overview understanding of the bits that Brian Rose has been changing in the last several months.
I hope you are right and this all will be resolved after the anomaly tomorrow.
But if so, and given how unbalanced this has become in many areas, would it really have been so hard for Niantic to just make an announcement like, “We are noticing significant increases in Machina aggression … etc … expect more information at the MZPFK anomaly on March 18”?
It won't be resolved tomorrow, reckon we will have a better idea of what is happening with all these different parts that Brian has changed/implented and us players have given constructed feedback on over the last several months.
Bit difficult to see the big picture when we're focused on one thing at a time.
Communication this week
Despite the fact we have a global event tomorrow
I decide if I want to go out there and play because I am the client here.