OPR Bonus Location Issue

BlaumutBlaumut ✭✭✭✭
edited September 2019 in Wayfarer (Archive)

TL;DR Niantic has changed the rules about the Bonus location, once you choose one it will be locked.

Some weeks ago I asked trough the support webiste how can I change my bonus location, because i want to help in other countries and I reviewed in the same country for more than a year. However the option is not available at this moment. According to the opr website, we can change the location once every 365 days.

Hereafter the answer they provided me today.

Hello Agent,


We understand that you want to know about the changing of Bonus location.


I want to let you know that once the bonus location has been set, it will not be changed. As communicated earlier, we will be not able to reset the bonus location from our end.


Once the Agent has selected the particular location as his bonus location for his account, it will not be changed. Also, each player will be able to set the bonus location only once to their respective account.


On the other hand, we are unable to provide additional information regarding the internal mechanism of the OPR and the bonus location process.

Thanks for your understanding. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to us.

Nevertheless in the OPR FAQ we can read the following:

Where should I set my hometown and bonus locations?

Hometown should be an area away from your active play location, such as where you grew up, went to school, or an area you know very well. You may also set an additional bonus location once per year.

@NianticBrian @NianticCasey @NianticScot could you confirm if the Bonus location is locked forever or could we change it once per year?


Suggestion : If bonus location is locked, could be possible to agents with onyx OPR medal to get more bonus locations ? And one more each 10k agreements (this is a very high threshold) ?

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Comments

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    Did you respond to support with the screenshot? You're more likely to get a response through them then on the forums

  • I've had mine changed by support in the past.

  • BlaumutBlaumut ✭✭✭✭

    Yes, three times. Always the same answer. Bonus location is locked abs and home location can be changed one time.

  • s3w2s3w2 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2019

    This is awful. Honestly. Terrible news to Niantic's volunteers.

    I've been working abroad from home country in the past years. I've my home location set at my home town and I set my bonus location to where I'm/will work for the next months/years. I, as others, thought we could change that when the time comes do it, per Niantic's official information... only to know now that is incorrect? What gives?!

    On the other hand, I feel there's a lack of proper communication and information given to OPR volunteers. As an example, if you are an active player and do OPR, your OPR queue will be filled by candidates around the place where your last hack was (this is tested!). I do frequent travels across Europe and I have set my home location in Western Portugal and Bonus Location in SW England. If I go to Spain, my queue will be 90% Spanish candidates, 5% Portugal, 5% England (I get Scotland, Wales, N Ireland and Ireland submissions, too!).

    If I knew beforehand how it would work (from official channels), I'd probably change my bonus location to some countries that struggle to have OPR reviewers - https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/comment/26637/#Comment_26637


    I don't want to be stuck forever with a Bonus Location that in a reasonable time frame won't mean anything to me. It does not make sense. I can't see it as being a technical issue, too. Honestly, this is such a poor demonstration towards volunteers' work.


    I feel that Niantic should encourage the change of bonus locations to territories that struggle to have enough people doing OPR. That is the only way to grow their games and player base. I'd be delighted if they could develop something like Waze does. They organise Map Raids. During a specific time frame, Waze Editors are invited to map out countries that are out of their scope and draw roads and populate their maps with information. While some editing errors may occur, there will be usable information for the local community and they will be able to use the product!

    I can see this work for Niantic. Give reviewers the chance to change their bonus on a more reasonable amount of time. Be able to change their bonus from a 3-6 months period would have a massive impact on those territories. Just imagine.

  • JSteve0JSteve0 ✭✭✭

    Has anyone ever asked in an AMA why the Bonus Location is locked for a full year? It really doesn't make sense to me. I am a willing volunteer that takes reviewing seriously and would love to help clear the backlog in other locations. I think 30 days in each location should be long enough. Does anyone else see any wisdom in limiting Bonus Location changes to just one time per year?

  • only once or only once per year? That seems odd.


    Wayfarer says "Click or tap on the map to set your "bonus" location. Once set, this cannot be changed for one year!"

  • As setting it, the wording implies it can't be changed, ever, again.

  • Not sure what you mean. When you set it it says it can't be changed again? Because the listing on the settings page says you can change it once a year

  • BlaumutBlaumut ✭✭✭✭

    Hi, i am back with more information.

    I dont know when but my bonus location was ready to be changed. I changed the bonus location a month before the transformation of the really-close well designed OPR website to the unfrienldy user experience and scroll lovers Wayfarer website. Because no reason, I can change my bonus and home location again.

    Hopefully I reviewed a bunch of candidates and I still get some agreements. Nevertheless I did not expect to continue to review portals. Good luck and patience to the agents or players who will review portals.

  • BTW, are these bonus locations working at all? Some time ago I visited nearest region (200 km away from me) so my "game activity" location changed. I started to receive OPR from this region and found that this area lacks reviewers. I quickly reviewed few hundreds of candidates, including very interesting submits, but most of them were simple edit requests (typos in titles/descriptions or easy small location tweaks) - there just was not enough players in this area to review them! Unfortunately, I had to return back.

    When I returned back, I set this region as my bonus location to help these players. And... nothing. No more candidates from this area. I'm getting these damn standard playgrounds from over whole Russia (thousands kilometers away from me) but nothing from a city 200km away. Somebody mentioned that he get only 5% of reviews from a bonus location. It's a joke. "Home" and "Bonus" locations should have same chance to get a candidate for review as "gameplay area" (because I've set them intentionally, I know these regions) and country-wide reviews must be last.

  • ZaltysZaltys ✭✭✭
    edited October 2019

    Not sure if it is working. I haven't received any nominations from my bonus location, but I did make the mistake of placing it in a region so remote that there might simply be no active players there.

    How much ground does the bonus location cover, anyway? If it's just a tiny sphere (10 km or so), then it would've been nice to know that before picking the spot. Especially when it can't be changed for a year..

  • @Zaltys I believe the bonus location covers the scoring cell it’s in and the eight surrounding cells. Someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but that does seem to be how it works for me

    @MrSardinelli You don’t get edits from your bonus area, only submissions. So if most of the things you saw there were indeed edits, that could explain why you haven’t gotten any reviews since.

  • ZaltysZaltys ✭✭✭
    edited October 2019

    Oh, so it's square-shaped, not a circle...

    Sigh. That'd definitely explain the lack of reviews. Looking at the cell placements, my bonus location doesn't quite reach any of the population centers in the region. It's just wilderness with few valid POIs and likely even less players. What a waste of a bonus.

  • So, it seems that...

    1. Reviewer will not receive edit requests from bonus location
    2. Normal portal nominations are received country-wide - without any need for extra bonus or home locations. I've seen nominations which were 6000 km away from me.

    Add 1+2 and you get that bonus location is almost useless. If may have any sense only when set in another country

    Look like I'm wasted mine. facepalm.jpg

  • Well, I made the same assumptions and realisations :) What is unclear to me, is if a bonus location in the same country, but far away from your own playbox, will actually give you more reviews from that area. The wording from Niantic seem to indicate so?

  • It does. It's helpful for areas that don't have enough "local" (i.e., in the scoring cell that area is in and the eight cells that surround it) reviewers. Once I picked a rural bonus location that did not have any surrounding cells that contained significant metropolitan areas, I started to see a lot of submissions from that area. (No edits, of course, though.)


  • I play in Utah USA and have my home set to Kansas, USA and my bonus set to Soledad, Colombia. I usually get nominations from the scoring cell and surrounding 8 cells for these locations with a mix of other submissions from the rest of the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii. I occasionally get nominations from northern Mexico, southern Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico and other US territories. My experience would uphold the notion that you get more nominations from your bonus area/home area than from my home country at random.

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