Agent Ops initial review
Many of us have now done the MZFPK event.
After a rough start, @NianticThia @NianticBlue @ofer2 and the whole Ingress dev team, thanks for pushing out the initial fixes fast.
I know that the dev team would have been up very early on Friday Morning to attend to any unforseen issues as New Zealand players were out to get started with the event at the stroke of midnight Saturday morning, and being the first after the island nation of Kiribati to try out the new Agent Ops.
Very much appreciated.
Thank you.
This is my initial review of the Agent Ops Task System.
These are my own opinions and thoughts. Yours may differ.
1) The location of the active task I found to not be great, and would have been better if it was in a different location.
Where it is, the Recent Local Activity comm is gone. This for many it is essential as it enables having to run intel on the run without having the Intel page open every 5 minutes.
Moving it to the left hand side also has the benefit of having several tasks/events on the go. We saw this worked very well in Catan World Explorers.
2) The long press to minimize the Active Task is counter intuitive.
This should be a single tap to maximize and minimize.
Where a long press should bring up the task list
Kind of the opposite behaviour it is now.
On top of this, when it is maximised on the screen, it should minimise itself after 5 seconds.
3)
This layout I'm sure the devs will probably redesign it a bit.
As these are all separate list items, it would have been clearer if the sub tasks be listed in the same list item as "Complete 6 HexQuest Ops to finish HexQuest"
4) Continuing with #1 and #3
The user should be able to highlight the sub-task from the Active Ops screen, so that they can keep tabs on the task they are aiming for, for example "Hack 60 times" appearing on the main map view screen.
5) From the pic in #3 in the example "Complete 6 HexQuest" main task, it would be helpful to list what the reward(s) are. In that, if one isn't clued up about a specific event or tasks, listing the rewards, in this case just from the HexQuest, one could assume they would get nothing from the completion.
Closing thoughts
- Overall, it worked well.
- However the "Last Updated" time index, is a bit confusing, and doesn't seem to line up to when the last action was done.
- - Some people over the world had different time indexes on some tasks, which was confusing, an hour ahead, or an our behind
- I did find some tasks did not update promptly, same with Agent stats not syncing as expected. Which often requires the app to be restarted to ensure the goal/stat is being syncd
Comments
Finished as well, and have same feedback:
Last Update time is definitely a pain, it was 6am and it shows 9pm. The time updated, so I knew it was correct, just the wrong time zone.
Tasks sometimes took a few seconds to register and update.
Just wish the task completion was a bit more pronounced, didn't even notice it until the last two tasks lol
No screen displaying the badge being earned either (or maybe I skipped it?)
Overall pretty good. Keen to see future tasks
There are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding Agent Ops.
Especially once HexQuest is over.
Will the Jacksonville Mission Day and NL-1331 meet up use Agent Ops?
Will there be daily/weekly tasks to choose from?
Will players be able to get Bundles high level XMPs from such tasks?
What about Kinetic Capsules as rewards?
These and many more
Oh, forgot to mention one thing: A running tally to see how the ENL and RES are performing.
Without a global scoreboard, we agents don't know how we're going for this "anomaly", so it makes it difficult to compete.
agent ops seems fun but iwish niantic test more internal with vanguards and xma i mean we were not supposed to get badge on march 17🤪 also yeah why is local comm broken for this? testing testing ⚡
I'm okay with it being top right, didn't know you could collapse the thing to begin with, thanks for that, but I also believe that if you collapse it, the comms should be shown in their place again, that or make the tasks bar a bit lower and smaller. Also choosing the one you're actively going for is a must :<
Comm isn't broken, it's been replaced on the map screen
its broken to me when i cant see on the main screen comm which was not supposed to break or ? dont tell me its intended thats just bad ui to put it there where u see local comms and now even after badge its still not working.
I do hope they reconsider and bring comm back to the main screen. It's very handy to keep tabs on what's happening without going to the comm screen.
Exactly ⚡
I still miss the old full width 'comm' messages, and especially the 'you've been hit for nnnnn XP' ones.
The windows in 'prime' aren't wide enough for portal names, although without the 'local activity' window maximal drone moves are probably easier.
I'm also sure the 'dynamic compass' button could be retired.
I didn't get the badge, and the 0/6km is still displayed where my activities would have been before, now that I can no longer get the task done why Is it still there, I disagree with the OP that niantic did some great job on fixing anything, what really happened is as per usual it was a poorly executed upgrade, and niantic decided rather than **** it up anymore they'll just let it run, so the challenge ended up being 12 hours longer than intended. Many of us not happy we can't see local activities without sifting through menus. Please update this.
Well, progress? (Oops, wrong thread)
Current and completed ops are blank.
hack op notification is gone but some random op status is on the scanner instead
iOS 16.3.1 / ingress 2.11.2 both English
they should just disable the on_skip message
Agent Ops appears to have been disabled.
Which may mean that the feature nerds a lot more work done to it.
No official information yet
look like in june is next time its coming back hopefully less buggy
I definitely think any future events should have 50% extra tasks than the requirement. If fields, links, scans etc were added, it would allow people to customize the experience and skip things like "I did all my tasks, then put the phone in my pocket and drove slowly for 5 more kilometers while listening to an audiobook on the car stereo."