Agreed, however some people were playing at the time and because they didn't already have five key lockers at the time (bought the five keylogger bundle on top of the extra anniversary key locker - I forget which way it was) then they couldn't get a 6th on top of it. You would buy up to 5 and then the option for more would disappear before you could get to the 6th.
At this point that minority of people I doubt can be made whole... But for the love of God if they would just offer more I would pay $20 each.
What if, instead of selling lockers and capsules, and weapons or resonators or mods, you guys made a home base feature available for storage items and just charged $5 a month rent on it so if you want unlimited storage that doesn’t count against your inventory it’s available. Then players could save whatever items they needed for whatever reasons they needed them for(anomalies or ops or whatever) without really unbalancing the game in favor of who’s willing to spend the most to buy the most of whatever.
@AvengingGinger if you want to argue that Ingress doesn't need to make money on its own because other games make a lot from updates to the portal database, you're advocating for this game's ****. Once Pokestop Submissions are everywhere and they get PoGo players in on OPR, they have no reason to keep Ingress if it's losing money. Sustainability means independently maintaining itself
Give us the OPTION to subscribe in the store to Ingress for let's say, $5 - $7 a month. You don't have to subscribe if you don't want to. Guaranteed monthly income is a great thing and it'll help alleviate some of the costs of developing Ingress.
Give the players who subscribe a special symbol and some sort of reward (that is not over powered in the slightest) for doing so. I would gladly subscribe and I know other agents would too.
Ingress is almost a lifestyle and we want to see the game flourish and support good development.
OR
Add the 6th key locker
OR
Add a media locker
But this Fracker price hike is kinda ridiculous, atleast give us better output if the price has to be this much higher
I've read through each reply; thank you for your honest feedback and your feature requests. I screwed up by not updating the forum until hours after I made this change, and I'll make sure I share updates here more promptly going forward. (I know you'll hold me to that.) But I still stand by my decision to increase the price of frackers because I believe they're very high-powered items, and based on their current usage and hack output with additional mods and Glyph Hacks, I think this is a better direction for the overall game economy. Decisions I make with Ingress don't have to be permanent, I'm a true believer in "launch and iterate," and I'm listening to qualitative feedback from players as well as monitoring quantitative feedback from how it affects game usage over time.
There are a lot of great suggestions for different ways to make Ingress more sustainable here and on the linked threads people have included. Some of the most common trends highlighted increased inventory space, consumables or temporary buffs, and cosmetics or skins. Please keep your feedback and suggestions coming, I read every post even though I don't personally reply to each one, and thank you for playing.
Thanks for being a Trooper and reading all the feedback, negative and positive. Communication is key, ingress is a communication based experience. We appreciate it :)
But I still stand by my decision to increase the price of frackers because I believe they're very high-powered items, and based on their current usage and hack output with additional mods and Glyph Hacks, I think this is a better direction for the overall game economy.
You don't have to treat us like children. We know you're not increasing the price because you think they are high powered....You're increasing the price because you want more money. That's it. If you thought they were too powerful for the game you'd simply remove them. This on the other hand? Pure greed.
@mortuus I just joined Niantic to lead the Ingress team as its producer last month. But before that, I was previously on the Niantic Labs@Google team that originally launched Ingress, from 2012–2015.
@NianticBrian I would love a key fracker. It can be the same cost as a regular fracker, but it needs to be silent. Basically, it would operate like a normal fracker, but would be silent (not reporting in COMM), and only double keys. So many times I want to use frackers for remote portals, but I don't want to broadcast that I am farming keys.
I also think that it would be cool to have some sort of process for requesting custom beacons.
Don't forget all the times when they had the anomaly packs of frackers... I still have some from Obsidian.
I wonder if this combined with the current horrible glyph challenge will bring back the rise of the 100+ portal tap hack farms and the fun they brought?
People are backpacking regardless... at least this way Niantic gets paid. Its something to do when you get back home... and its something you cant leverage when you are out. I like this and i would pay for it.
(Can't quote @CliffM above due to not being allowed "to post links").
Great idea!! Just today I was out at a remote portal with the sole purpose of farming keys. I would prefer tripple keys, no gear. 😇 I only wanted the keys, after all, not the endless Level 5 gear.
The recent price increase, with no improvement, has left me quite dishearted. After hundreds of previous frackers, I will be more selective with rewarding this increase.
Many good ideas in this thread to earn revenue and offer something for that received revenue.
How about a subscription model where for a monthly fee you get additional inventory space. It could be tiered also eg for $2 per month you get and extra 100 inventory space, for $5 per month you get an extra 200 inventory space, for $10 a month you get 500. I'd pay for that and I know plenty of others who would too. None of this selling gear packs and stuff, just a simple and elegant solution to drive some revenue without affecting game mechanics.
@NianticBrian As mentioned numerous times, and in AMAs there are lots of options for players to buy stuff with the in-app store, however, with Redacted still around those options are not feasible.
Doubling CM cost isn't good, and just limits what players will tend to spend.
Please consider returning prices back to what they were, add more options once redacted is gone.
An example would be "Anomaly Lockers" as one person requested in an AMA, a locker that prevents unloading stuff, for a period of 1 week. Such that players loading up for Anomaly, can do so, and important stuff left in those Anomaly Lockers. After 1 week, those lockers will disappear, and the items in tem put into the players main inventory auto-magically
I don't know your history with Niantic and Ingress, but if you think that there is no issue with selling gear, you are truly out of touch with the community.
There was not much complaining about the inclusion of high level gear in the old rare and very rare Anomaly swag packs. The gear was mostly a bonus, the packs were mostly bought for the swag. They were also limited to anomalies and you had to pick them up in person.
Once you (Niantic) moved to virtual goods for the gear pack, there was more grunting from the community. When you started selling gear last time, there was outrage.
The gear you sell now is basically useless for 99% of players. I guess that is why you want to sell better stuff. But it is also the reason why no one is really complaining about it.
Selling gear would absolutely change the soul of the game. I would like to say that I'd quit if you go through with this, but I'm probably too addicted. I would however despise Niantic forever for ruining the game.
I agree with those who argue that the dynamics of Ingress are very different from e.g. PoGo, and the revenue model needs to be adjusted accordingly. This is tough, no question, and may require some out-of-the-box thinking. I think a lot of good suggestions have been made, including:
Some kind of subscription model. This is a low-turnover game, and key to its survival is cultivating a community of dedicated players who will be heavily engaged for years on end. That's the kind of thing for which subscription-based services are well-suited. I pay for all sorts of subscriptions, and I don't see why Ingress-as-service is so different. I also like the fact that the Ingress-as-service model creates excellent caretaking incentives for Niantic, while producing a fairly reliable income stream. The hard parts are (1) pricing, (2) finding the right way to incentivize moving from free to paid participation without either driving people off or breaking the game, and (3) continuing to draw enough folks in going forward to deal with the inevitable exits. But micropayments are going to be tough to make sustainable without killing the game, so this seems like an essential step.
Cosmetics. Ingress. Players. Love. Cosmetics. Just look at the swag and bio card markets. Yet, there are currently few digital means for players to build their "characters" and convey their Ingress personas - which means that Niantic is missing out on a fantastic non-game breaking sales opportunity. Personalized avatars are obvious, but why not also digital bio cards? Subscription-based social media functionality with some extra bells and whistles on this site? (Yes, you'd have to bring it out of 1996-vintage functionality, but it can be done.) If this made it easier for folks to recognize each other and connect either at events or when encountering each other in the field, it would be both attractive and a basis for community building.
Souvenir keylockers. Yeah, that's a small one, but it's a super easy win. No game consequences, and it lets players do something they really want to do (archive personally meaningful keys without burning inventory). Ditto with media. Ideally, this could be linked with some of the cosmetic things mentioned above. What if you could let others see your souvenir key collection? Or curated views of it? (It's like a ultra-tiny Flickr where someone else took the pictures.) This functionality could be for subscribers, with locker space increments being purchased separately.
Better event partnering. As others have noted, we spend a lot of cash on Anomalies, which means that Niantic is producing a ton of revenue for various hotels and airlines without getting a cut. Based on my experience w/professional conferences, I'd say that it's at least possible that Niantic could negotiate bundling/branding deals with some hotels that would allow them to obtain some revenue in exchange for funneling attendees there. (This is not trivial, and hotels are rapacious. But seems like a natural route to try. The agents that travel for events are also likely to spend a lot on travel more broadly, which would make them a good group for companies like hotels to try to impress. Niantic also has a lot of data on agent travel habits, which could be used to make that case.)
Beyond this, I think that one direction that hasn't been mentioned is trying to play up the e-sports potential of Ingress. I am not personally an e-sports fan, but Ingress events have a lot simultaneous digital/RL drama that could make for great spectator interest if packaged well. (Figuring out how to do that is tough, but aren't you an AR company? Figure it out.) There are many approaches to e-sports monetization, so that would open up a new direction without resorting to micropayments.
Finally, I have to say that I'm dubious about selling special power-ups or other stuff that is too easily PTW turf. Anomaly gear packs are generally accepted because they are special-event related, actually serve a vital function (they help players participate who lack farms and need a huge gear pulse for the event), and aren't available often enough to impact regular play. Selling regular gear is non-ideal, but may not break farming too much so long as the gear level is capped and it's not cost effective as a regular play solution. Frackers seem to work OK because of their limited focus and community use - they are pretty hard to abuse. But it's a slippery ****. I think that it is better to avoid putting effort into trying to squeeze micropayments into the game, and instead focus on finding sustainable macropayments that don't make Ingress into something that it isn't (and shouldn't be). In the short run, that's a lot harder, but in the long run it has a better chance of success.
(Oh yes, also work on getting accounting to find a way to track the value of OPR to Niantic's other games, and to "tax" them - i.e., some of their profits flow to Ingress - for it. That's an organizational pro tip, and I won't even charge you my consulting rate.)
I tried to add a little bit of rationality into the discussion by attempting to analyse what value a fracker actually has (in CMU) compared to other items. I'm aware of pitfall and simplifications - but I hope it makes sense over all.
Excellent thread. I feel compelled to comment that I absolutely and without hesitation hate the idea of a subscription model. I would prefer to pay once for a permanent fixture than have an ongoing cost. I think of it as owning versus leasing. I calculate final cost, not if I can afford a monthly payment.
I'd much rather pay $20 or $25 for an extra key locker, for example, than any nominal monthly fee. (****, I'd probably pay more!)
(And who wouldn't pay for a VR duplicating Quantum?!?! Cha-ching!)
I would encourage selling items of value. That will drive sales and bring in cash.
Comments
Agreed, however some people were playing at the time and because they didn't already have five key lockers at the time (bought the five keylogger bundle on top of the extra anniversary key locker - I forget which way it was) then they couldn't get a 6th on top of it. You would buy up to 5 and then the option for more would disappear before you could get to the 6th.
At this point that minority of people I doubt can be made whole... But for the love of God if they would just offer more I would pay $20 each.
What if, instead of selling lockers and capsules, and weapons or resonators or mods, you guys made a home base feature available for storage items and just charged $5 a month rent on it so if you want unlimited storage that doesn’t count against your inventory it’s available. Then players could save whatever items they needed for whatever reasons they needed them for(anomalies or ops or whatever) without really unbalancing the game in favor of who’s willing to spend the most to buy the most of whatever.
I hope Niantic listen when lots of agents never buy frackers now.
*Double take*
I don't really see a downside to this. Inventory away from home doesn't change... Have to come back home to access your cache.
Guys .. I like this. I'd pay for this
@AvengingGinger if you want to argue that Ingress doesn't need to make money on its own because other games make a lot from updates to the portal database, you're advocating for this game's ****. Once Pokestop Submissions are everywhere and they get PoGo players in on OPR, they have no reason to keep Ingress if it's losing money. Sustainability means independently maintaining itself
Give us the OPTION to subscribe in the store to Ingress for let's say, $5 - $7 a month. You don't have to subscribe if you don't want to. Guaranteed monthly income is a great thing and it'll help alleviate some of the costs of developing Ingress.
Give the players who subscribe a special symbol and some sort of reward (that is not over powered in the slightest) for doing so. I would gladly subscribe and I know other agents would too.
Ingress is almost a lifestyle and we want to see the game flourish and support good development.
OR
Add the 6th key locker
OR
Add a media locker
But this Fracker price hike is kinda ridiculous, atleast give us better output if the price has to be this much higher
I've read through each reply; thank you for your honest feedback and your feature requests. I screwed up by not updating the forum until hours after I made this change, and I'll make sure I share updates here more promptly going forward. (I know you'll hold me to that.) But I still stand by my decision to increase the price of frackers because I believe they're very high-powered items, and based on their current usage and hack output with additional mods and Glyph Hacks, I think this is a better direction for the overall game economy. Decisions I make with Ingress don't have to be permanent, I'm a true believer in "launch and iterate," and I'm listening to qualitative feedback from players as well as monitoring quantitative feedback from how it affects game usage over time.
There are a lot of great suggestions for different ways to make Ingress more sustainable here and on the linked threads people have included. Some of the most common trends highlighted increased inventory space, consumables or temporary buffs, and cosmetics or skins. Please keep your feedback and suggestions coming, I read every post even though I don't personally reply to each one, and thank you for playing.
Thanks for being a Trooper and reading all the feedback, negative and positive. Communication is key, ingress is a communication based experience. We appreciate it :)
You don't have to treat us like children. We know you're not increasing the price because you think they are high powered....You're increasing the price because you want more money. That's it. If you thought they were too powerful for the game you'd simply remove them. This on the other hand? Pure greed.
I find it weird all years frackers same prices and suddenly they doubled in price that to me makes no sense really..
Ingress needs to evolve and that requires resources.
Ingress was nearly stale for the last couple of years.
@mortuus I just joined Niantic to lead the Ingress team as its producer last month. But before that, I was previously on the Niantic Labs@Google team that originally launched Ingress, from 2012–2015.
wake up. Since when does Niantic listen to us players?
@NianticBrian I would love a key fracker. It can be the same cost as a regular fracker, but it needs to be silent. Basically, it would operate like a normal fracker, but would be silent (not reporting in COMM), and only double keys. So many times I want to use frackers for remote portals, but I don't want to broadcast that I am farming keys.
I also think that it would be cool to have some sort of process for requesting custom beacons.
That's no different than having a bunch of backpacks accounts except you can't drop gear but anywhere at home. This would so easily exploitable...
Don't forget all the times when they had the anomaly packs of frackers... I still have some from Obsidian.
I wonder if this combined with the current horrible glyph challenge will bring back the rise of the 100+ portal tap hack farms and the fun they brought?
People are backpacking regardless... at least this way Niantic gets paid. Its something to do when you get back home... and its something you cant leverage when you are out. I like this and i would pay for it.
(Can't quote @CliffM above due to not being allowed "to post links").
Great idea!! Just today I was out at a remote portal with the sole purpose of farming keys. I would prefer tripple keys, no gear. 😇 I only wanted the keys, after all, not the endless Level 5 gear.
The recent price increase, with no improvement, has left me quite dishearted. After hundreds of previous frackers, I will be more selective with rewarding this increase.
Many good ideas in this thread to earn revenue and offer something for that received revenue.
Why are my comments posting blank. How do I walk !!
How about a subscription model where for a monthly fee you get additional inventory space. It could be tiered also eg for $2 per month you get and extra 100 inventory space, for $5 per month you get an extra 200 inventory space, for $10 a month you get 500. I'd pay for that and I know plenty of others who would too. None of this selling gear packs and stuff, just a simple and elegant solution to drive some revenue without affecting game mechanics.
@NianticBrian As mentioned numerous times, and in AMAs there are lots of options for players to buy stuff with the in-app store, however, with Redacted still around those options are not feasible.
Doubling CM cost isn't good, and just limits what players will tend to spend.
Please consider returning prices back to what they were, add more options once redacted is gone.
An example would be "Anomaly Lockers" as one person requested in an AMA, a locker that prevents unloading stuff, for a period of 1 week. Such that players loading up for Anomaly, can do so, and important stuff left in those Anomaly Lockers. After 1 week, those lockers will disappear, and the items in tem put into the players main inventory auto-magically
If a knew that, I would had bought all capsules before getting the 6th. I had 3 or 4 at the time.
I believe it's not fair.
I don't know your history with Niantic and Ingress, but if you think that there is no issue with selling gear, you are truly out of touch with the community.
There was not much complaining about the inclusion of high level gear in the old rare and very rare Anomaly swag packs. The gear was mostly a bonus, the packs were mostly bought for the swag. They were also limited to anomalies and you had to pick them up in person.
Once you (Niantic) moved to virtual goods for the gear pack, there was more grunting from the community. When you started selling gear last time, there was outrage.
The gear you sell now is basically useless for 99% of players. I guess that is why you want to sell better stuff. But it is also the reason why no one is really complaining about it.
Selling gear would absolutely change the soul of the game. I would like to say that I'd quit if you go through with this, but I'm probably too addicted. I would however despise Niantic forever for ruining the game.
I agree with those who argue that the dynamics of Ingress are very different from e.g. PoGo, and the revenue model needs to be adjusted accordingly. This is tough, no question, and may require some out-of-the-box thinking. I think a lot of good suggestions have been made, including:
Beyond this, I think that one direction that hasn't been mentioned is trying to play up the e-sports potential of Ingress. I am not personally an e-sports fan, but Ingress events have a lot simultaneous digital/RL drama that could make for great spectator interest if packaged well. (Figuring out how to do that is tough, but aren't you an AR company? Figure it out.) There are many approaches to e-sports monetization, so that would open up a new direction without resorting to micropayments.
Finally, I have to say that I'm dubious about selling special power-ups or other stuff that is too easily PTW turf. Anomaly gear packs are generally accepted because they are special-event related, actually serve a vital function (they help players participate who lack farms and need a huge gear pulse for the event), and aren't available often enough to impact regular play. Selling regular gear is non-ideal, but may not break farming too much so long as the gear level is capped and it's not cost effective as a regular play solution. Frackers seem to work OK because of their limited focus and community use - they are pretty hard to abuse. But it's a slippery ****. I think that it is better to avoid putting effort into trying to squeeze micropayments into the game, and instead focus on finding sustainable macropayments that don't make Ingress into something that it isn't (and shouldn't be). In the short run, that's a lot harder, but in the long run it has a better chance of success.
(Oh yes, also work on getting accounting to find a way to track the value of OPR to Niantic's other games, and to "tax" them - i.e., some of their profits flow to Ingress - for it. That's an organizational pro tip, and I won't even charge you my consulting rate.)
Good luck!
I tried to add a little bit of rationality into the discussion by attempting to analyse what value a fracker actually has (in CMU) compared to other items. I'm aware of pitfall and simplifications - but I hope it makes sense over all.
https://drthod.com/the-value-of-frackers-an-attempt-of-a-quantative-analysis/
That's an entirely different explanation than the initial "exploring sustainability".
Excellent thread. I feel compelled to comment that I absolutely and without hesitation hate the idea of a subscription model. I would prefer to pay once for a permanent fixture than have an ongoing cost. I think of it as owning versus leasing. I calculate final cost, not if I can afford a monthly payment.
I'd much rather pay $20 or $25 for an extra key locker, for example, than any nominal monthly fee. (****, I'd probably pay more!)
(And who wouldn't pay for a VR duplicating Quantum?!?! Cha-ching!)
I would encourage selling items of value. That will drive sales and bring in cash.