Machina is just killing player engagement.
So, if I wanted to go throw some casual fields I no longer can.
Even moderate size urban fields are requiring hour plus clearing time due to Machina.
If I do, then an enemy player kills the field, Machina rapidly starts adding blockers.
What used to be fun, casual play now is becoming a moderate op every time.
Others on the team are expressing similar thoughts. Machina just sucks the fun out of the game, fighting a bot is just not engaging.
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Get your local faction players to help?
Niantic must balance out machina how it works it shouldnt drive players out from playing
Iam not sure niantic still wants you to create boring big field. Look over the changes of the past:
- linking under fields now possible, with big fields you cannot prevent other players from creating fields.
- Hack time increased = you get keys slower
- cant duplicate keys = less keys
- no secound 7lvl resi = weaker portals
Maybe the game is now different and we have to adapt.
It's actually motivating me to play more. I seek out the red because it's fun to blow through it.
Problem here is adding PvE when a lot of players are not playing anymore. [REDACTED] days were over long time ago and I think that even Niantic is struggling on finding a way to bringing new players here.
Is sad to see here a CPU faction being more active than the human ones.
The tools we have enable farming of large amounts of portal keys super fast.
I've use this tactic several times already
Double level 7 and 8 resonators come out for a short event each year, the idea is still to collaborate with your faction mates to make higher level portals
against an enemy u cant see ? i dont call that fun exactly.... the games charm is playing against human players, not ai things.. but alot has happen last years sadly not for the better.
This really was more of adjustments that probably should have happened a while back I think it's no question looking back that duplication of VR items and keys really was overpowered since MUFGs were implemented in 2015.
The second L7 reso was a temporary change due to covid.
Owning the portal provides a lower hack timer and you still have VRHS and VRMH to your benefit.
This does not change people being able to communicate to others for moving keys...a thing that always has been encouraged.
@mortuus The beauty of Ingress is that you essentially create your own fun. Some people really love microfielding. Some like throwing big fields. Some like chasing badges or stats. Some like doing big banner missions to explore an area. Some people like blowing things up.
I'm not generally motivated by stats, but I'm not immune to their lure. I absolutely love blowing stuff up. Typically I prefer tearing through an entrenched P7/P8 farm, but Machina is also fun for me. I'm also trying to keep my ratio of destroys to deploys at 3:1 so that I can wear the Hosette the Destroyer nickname with honor, and Machina is a cheap way to balance out the times when I've done more building than smashing. It's also a good way to plan a road trip and pick side excursions.
In short, different people find different things fun in Ingress. That's choose-your-own-adventure aspect is what makes the game fun.
I am changing an apartment in a city where red portals do not want to breed for an apartment in a city where there are a lot of red portals))).
No guys, where do you get so many problems with red portals? In my city, 4 red portals have been hanging for more than a week and do not want to multiply at all, and if they are demolished, then there will be no red portals for several months at all. What is happening there that there is no escape from the red portals? I kindly envy you.
@GreenVam Red portals show up in droves in places where there aren't many active players. Active players aren't as likely to find a lot of red portals near them, but they may find them close by.
I just started typing US cities into the intel map and found these:
Even in areas that have a lot of activity there can be nests of red portals. I work near Stanford University in California and the campus has quite a lot of red on it.
Not certainly in that way. There are places where agents play and there is a lot of red, There are places where agents don’t play and there is no red, but there are places where agents either play or don’t play and a lonely red portal hangs for several months. The portal generation algorithm is buggy in full. And yes, the red faction never became a worthy substitute for the opposite faction.
Machina is once again destroying the motivation of players in my community. For those who just grind away in cities it's probably alright, but for those of us who play differently, like going to rural areas and off the beaten path and try to make big fields happen, Machina is the absolute **** knell.
Please, please: If you want this game to survive, AI-generated links CANNOT block human links.
Machina encourages single player activity for the badge. Which is another negative.
Hosette may enjoy killing red but to me it's just boring, the equivalent of flipping a portal just so I could **** it. It doesn't care if you **** it, it doesn't fight back, it's just mindless and about the same fun as endlessly kicking a ball at a wall.
In large portal dense areas with little play it just takes over like pond weed.
Machina encourages single player activity for the badge. Which is another negative.
So does anything in Ingress if you're going for any of the badges. Anything after level 8 is extra.
While it's fun, its also annoying. I did like 230+ Machina captures over the weekend, but killed many more. There were many that were misplaced portals, or on closed trails, or in in accessible areas.
Machina is actually good at one thing. Highlighting portals that cannot be accessed. Well, actually one other thing, all the junk portals out there. So many junk portals and portals that should of never hit wayfarer to begin with. Schools, stuff like Big Box stores (Walmart, Best Buy, ect), chain stores (O'Reilly Auto Parts), Fast Food (McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Dominos, ect) plus soo many others. Seeing Trail Locator B linking to Trail Locator A is also great fun at 2 AM.
Also finding loads of portal names that are just horrible.
"Sports bar with great family food"
"lighted baseball field for guest at the park to use"
"Slippery when wet"
For St. Louis, MO. 50 mile radius of downtown St. Louis there are approx 3800+ portals (and I know I'm missing a ton, but zooming in/out allows for a guesstimate). Most of the portals are in the hood. Straight up bad areas to be at, let alone play in. Rest of the red is in harder to access areas, which is why they were grey to begin with. Majority of the red in St Louis is generally a 20-30 minute drive to get to.
No, not all. Illuminator, mind controller and a few others I would argue are best done as a group.
I'm saying for anything for tiers beyond level 8, even when fields are group efforts - microfielding is where you progress your tiers
Adding PVE when there's a ton of active players would have been pointless. The PVE is needed when there's a lack of opponents.
I'd like to see machina create fields or at least have AP gain modified to be the near equivalent of taking down microfielded enemy portals. I don't like that the portals drop gear directly and cause the timers for streetsweeper to go out of ****. Dead drops now run risk of loss.
I'd love to see the raising of portal levels occur much slower, but also leave the portals modless and allow both green and blue agents to mod them with a reduced drop rate of items. Dirty-hacking red 8s would be a nice feature to have for players in low population areas.
The lack of player engagement is a continual problem, especially when you're on the winning faction on the scoreboard, and won every week with no effort.
Between the devs coding up Machina to make fields, and to show that score on the existing scoreboard
And
Rebuilding the task system
The latter is definitely a better option for getting players playing more, and for Ingress to appeal to new players that have tried Ingress but prefer to play PvE with a task system
A TOTAL lack of players however, means there is no PVE. It's just Machina taking over towns. With no decay, it takes over.
There will NEVER be enough players to control Machina. In places with few agents, it also becomes a problem as they cannot keep up with controlling it. Players eventually give up trying, and then you have an infestation that is out of control.
I don't think there will ever be a balance here that will work on a global scale. If Machina doesn't decay, it will overwhelm the map. If Machina does decay, it will need to have a significant cooldown before spawning again.
In order for the red portals not to capture the entire city, we need the 4th faction, the yellow one, which will fight with the machine)))
In general, what kind of laziness is this? A week passes from the first red portal to the 10-portal cluster. What? Or like in my city - a month. What? how hard is it to destroy 1-10 red portals in a month?
You're taking your own city as an example of a global problem. That doesn't work.
what happens on a global scale? I have not seen a single machine cluster that could not be cleared in 2-5 hours.
this cluster is more than a week old.
this cluster is more than a month old.
I do not understand what prevents such clusters from being destroyed either in the bud or in 2-3 hours?
Yes, I agree that there are running cases where portals breed in very rapid succession. But alas, if there are agents nearby, then their reproduction rate drops, and they can be destroyed even when the first portal has just appeared, which stands alone in red for more than 3-4 days.
So, why don't you go there to clear it?
Here's New Delhi for you.... tell me that this is not a problem.
Rome:
Milan
and zoomed out to 2.5km link visibility
London at 300m
London 800m
2.5km
Niantic has some work to do, any new player starting in such area where red dominates is just not gonna play for very long if alone in the area..
I don't see any problem with this. It is possible to clear a small region (10 square kilometers in its habitat) in 1 day. And to keep it clean from red portals, you need no more than 2-3 hours a week. Of course, there are agents who like to cover from London to Melbourne, these agents, yes, will have a hard time. But for the average agent who walks around the average district of the average city, it costs nothing to clean up.
Even more than that, I will say, I want more red portals in my house. I'm stupidly bored of butting heads with one last smurf.