Eh.... I remember a few years back, they gave one away for some kind of anniversary. I haven't used that one. I haven't purchased any frackers since. 🤷♂️
I'll only purchase frackers if I'm within a group of agents, and that's pretty rare for me, now. Someone in the group always has frackers, so I rarely ever use my own. Now I just keep a set of VR hack mods handy, instead.
In Pokemon Go, Lures at base price cost around 1$ USD each, while Frackers at base price now almost cost 4$ USD each.
Poor move in my honest opinion on Niantic's part to milk their remaining small community of Ingress players dry if their goal is to actually build their playerbase back up.
Dang, I almost ended up buying a 5-pack last night on a whim and to use some expiring survey credit, but the old price already seemed high to me. This new one is a definitive no for me..
This puts a 10-pack of frackers at nearly $20 USD, which I think is too high. I could see a higher-priced version that was invisible to the opposite faction, for example, as a way to tier them, but just doubling their price tag without any announcement...I cannot say I support that.
Niantic has just finished investigating a massive bot farming operation, and undertaking bans.
During this operation, they probably found that frackers were being used for bot farming.
As a result, they have opted for a major increase in fracker prices to hurt bot farming operations.
Alternative theories...
Niantic looked at game mechanics, and found they were having an unbalanced impact on gameplay, so raised prices to change gameplay mechanics.
Or, frackers are the only things that Niantic is actually selling and making any money on, and since there aren't any other items that are popular, they had to increase the price of frackers.
I don't personally use frackers, so it doesn't bother me too much. I actually hate them at farms, because I fill up too quickly and have to drop X8s everywhere for everyone else :)
It is a relief that there isn't any storyline intro for such a price change. I reckon that there is a funds problem for Ingress Prime development or Niantic wants to discourage people to have farms with 8 people. Understandable since you only need 2 people to get 4 out of 5 points of every neutral portal for the glyph challenge.
No that's not true ofcource, it probably has a reason that I'm not aware of. Could be item traders, upcoming events, money, inattentive stagiairs, Trump taxes or Bitcoin exchange prices :). Fact is that buying frackers is discouraged. So back to the walking farms it is.
Just as selling hackmods is an incentive to play solo instead of cooperation. So my guess would be that we can buy portal-level-upgrades in the store (soon®) to exclude any other need for teammates in this event.
But let us not dispair and just wait till this silly pricing is over and enjoy portals NOT being level 8 since that helps everybody to get the newly invented pink medals.
No players have ever relied on frackers. They don't produce any kind of unbalanced gameplay at the price they were.
My theory is that NIA wants to shut down Ingress and that's why they are screwing up every little bit they can. You just don't start an event before it starts. You don't announce anomaly sites and after lots of people booked tickets and hotel rooms you tell them it is possible all you posted is wrong. And you don't simply do a 200% price increase on a virtual feature that costs NOTHING and it's been there for years.
@Tobbyhush good point I thought the same thing. Playerbase has been dwindling for some time now and prime didn't reverse this.
I hope you're wrong and they just want to discourage the use of frackers but this doesn't seem logical, why discourage the sales of the only thing that brings in moneys?
I just posted an update on the forum here. Just a couple quick replies: The meetup bundle included frackers and for the sake of quickness I temporarily removed it. It'll be back after I finish reviewing other metrics on what players have been using, and what they've been buying on the Store over time.
No, the NIA isn't behind this. And it's not an obsession with legacy modems. I'm making these updates as part of our efforts to make Ingress more sustainable, and I appreciate the open, candid feedback people are sharing.
Y'all remember Ingress when there weren't any frackers or glyphing? Did people die of it back then? No. Stop complaining because your pay-to-win just got a little more expensive 😂
Comments
From what to what?
Portal Fracker 2,400 CMU → 4,800 CMU
Fracker 5-pack 9,600 CMU → 19,200 CMU
Fracker 10-pack 14,900 CMU → 29,800 CMU
Before and after. I would understand a maybe 10% increase, but to double the prices is incomprehensible for me.
Eh.... I remember a few years back, they gave one away for some kind of anniversary. I haven't used that one. I haven't purchased any frackers since. 🤷♂️
Well then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYnhckZcllU
I'll only purchase frackers if I'm within a group of agents, and that's pretty rare for me, now. Someone in the group always has frackers, so I rarely ever use my own. Now I just keep a set of VR hack mods handy, instead.
That's the way I play. I just use those and call it good.
And the meetup bundle is gone! 😥
wow thats a very high price increase...
And people wonder why it's hard to have faith Niantic makes decisions with the players in mind
In Pokemon Go, Lures at base price cost around 1$ USD each, while Frackers at base price now almost cost 4$ USD each.
Poor move in my honest opinion on Niantic's part to milk their remaining small community of Ingress players dry if their goal is to actually build their playerbase back up.
****. I almost bought a 5-pack last night. Even that old price seemed high. The new one is a definitive no from me.
****. I almost bought a 5-pack last night. Even that old price seemed high. The new one, though, is a definite no from me.
Dang, I almost ended up buying a 5-pack last night on a whim and to use some expiring survey credit, but the old price already seemed high to me. This new one is a definitive no for me..
This puts a 10-pack of frackers at nearly $20 USD, which I think is too high. I could see a higher-priced version that was invisible to the opposite faction, for example, as a way to tier them, but just doubling their price tag without any announcement...I cannot say I support that.
That's..... a lot of increase. "Hey, people aren't buying frackers -- I know, how about we increase the prices?" <--- hint: that doesn't work.
My working theory...
Alternative theories...
I don't personally use frackers, so it doesn't bother me too much. I actually hate them at farms, because I fill up too quickly and have to drop X8s everywhere for everyone else :)
Double the price, are you freaking kidding me..
That's just plain greed...
Speaking of which, I thought you were going to remove the weapons from the store? Mmm nn
Even worse. Hey people buy less and less frackers...
And the player numbers keep decreasing.
Twice the price, are you freaking kidding me? That's just plain greed...
Speaking of greed, I thought you were going to remove weapons sales from the store? Guess you really don't care about your core community, do you?
It is a relief that there isn't any storyline intro for such a price change. I reckon that there is a funds problem for Ingress Prime development or Niantic wants to discourage people to have farms with 8 people. Understandable since you only need 2 people to get 4 out of 5 points of every neutral portal for the glyph challenge.
No that's not true ofcource, it probably has a reason that I'm not aware of. Could be item traders, upcoming events, money, inattentive stagiairs, Trump taxes or Bitcoin exchange prices :). Fact is that buying frackers is discouraged. So back to the walking farms it is.
Just as selling hackmods is an incentive to play solo instead of cooperation. So my guess would be that we can buy portal-level-upgrades in the store (soon®) to exclude any other need for teammates in this event.
But let us not dispair and just wait till this silly pricing is over and enjoy portals NOT being level 8 since that helps everybody to get the newly invented pink medals.
No players have ever relied on frackers. They don't produce any kind of unbalanced gameplay at the price they were.
My theory is that NIA wants to shut down Ingress and that's why they are screwing up every little bit they can. You just don't start an event before it starts. You don't announce anomaly sites and after lots of people booked tickets and hotel rooms you tell them it is possible all you posted is wrong. And you don't simply do a 200% price increase on a virtual feature that costs NOTHING and it's been there for years.
@Tobbyhush good point I thought the same thing. Playerbase has been dwindling for some time now and prime didn't reverse this.
I hope you're wrong and they just want to discourage the use of frackers but this doesn't seem logical, why discourage the sales of the only thing that brings in moneys?
It's like nobody has considered that CMU would be one of the rewards for daily tasks (just like the other games) when Redacted is retired.
While there are many true comments, greed isn't what I would call this at all. Please continue to enjoy your FREE game.
I'm looking forward to the server upgrades which means new in game potential. If that means double the fracker price then so be it.
In my area, granted not typical, there are 6-8 fracks per week and often that's two rounds of five portals or more.
We very much rely on frackers, and the river of gear they produce had an immediate and dramatic effect on gameplay when they were introduced.
Doubling the price will likely make some people less willing to supply frackers at a farm, and may make it harder to farm at all.
I just posted an update on the forum here. Just a couple quick replies: The meetup bundle included frackers and for the sake of quickness I temporarily removed it. It'll be back after I finish reviewing other metrics on what players have been using, and what they've been buying on the Store over time.
No, the NIA isn't behind this. And it's not an obsession with legacy modems. I'm making these updates as part of our efforts to make Ingress more sustainable, and I appreciate the open, candid feedback people are sharing.
Let's see, what could the store offer that would encourage people to buy...
Man it's gonna be so easy to save my money now
Y'all remember Ingress when there weren't any frackers or glyphing? Did people die of it back then? No. Stop complaining because your pay-to-win just got a little more expensive 😂