I've committed to Umbra with flights/hotel/time off booked, so I'll begrudgingly pay. I do not want the POCs efforts go in vain. Going forward, as anomalies became a paid event, I expect Niantic employees to step up and take over the volunteer roles the POCs and the orga do for anomalies and have Niantic presence at every paid for event
As an active member in my community i know that we put a lot of effort, time and money into events, I'm from Buenos Aires and we don't get much official activity around here (the last time our city was an anomaly site was for the Persepolis Anomaly) so, every event we could participate in was exclusively organized by agents (IFS, Mission Days). We try hard to keep ppl involved with the game and work endless hours to make our events appealing to agents eager to experience an official Ingress event that never happens... So if you live in South America you'll likely have to travel more than a 1000km to attend to anomalies, which, of course involve some serious money spending in tickets, hotels, etc. Having to pay to play makes this experiences almost prohibitive.
I can't begin to express how disappointed i feel about this last turn of events..
I completely agree. It's incomprehensible how a decision like this could be made so close to an anomaly which people have committed to. Niantic knows people want lots of notice about anomalies so we can plan for them. The timing of this announcement, as well as making the anomaly paid-only is distasteful.
How typical of Niantic to restrict comments from their **** post about tickets. There is nothing about that post that remotely addresses the issues brought forth.
Eloquently put! It's not what they did, it's how they did it.
I'll be attending Umbra Gothenburg, but I will withhold my decision regarding the purchase of an event ticket until such a time when Niantic has addressed all the issues pointed out in the main post of this thread. Combined with the addition of new game mechanics that will influence the course of the anomaly gameplay, this entire debacle is something that should have been addressed candidly and in depth before throwing it in your playerbase's faces.
My utmost sympathies go out to each and every single POC and member of the local Umbra orgas who had this heaping pile tipped on them.
NIA should consider that HP WU and Po Go would not be such a huge success without the countless hours Ingress players invested in building the portal network. NIA couldn't have done this on their own (and the Network for all 3 Games ist still growing - thanks to the Ingress community). The hundreds of millions of Dollars from the other games could partly be reinvested to give something back to the Ingress players which helped NIA earning that much money in the first place. But instead NIA kills the Redacted Scanner and focuses on Ingress Prime which is buggy as hell and some things in Prime are not very usable (imho) like in the Redacted Scanner (a fancy design is not everything).
Great decision NIA, honestly - **** the version with fewer bugs because Prime has a modern look and feel.
I invested hundreds of Euro's in anomalies and a small fee for the key capsules - like most serious Ingress players did - but NIA seems to become greedy. Maybe the whole thing will resolve itself. In our area Ingress Prime brought no new players to the Game and most of the older ones stay with the Redacted Scanner - so at the end of this month all those have to decide if they'll switch or if they go. I know at least one of my fellow players will leave. And he will not be the only one. So go on NIA - **** the user base. Sad but true.
Since I'm from Australia, many of us have to spend quite a lot to get to an anomaly anyway so while the US$15 is extra, it's not like it would be make or break me or most others that travel and it's good that we give something back to niantic.
The timing and communication was poor.
Having said that, I agree with everything that Claudi has put here.
2x ap if you pay isn't my favourite option. This gets closer to pay to win, but it's only for a few hours.
Great result that niantic listened and brought the free ticket back. Well done for listening to the community! Let's hope the community is consulted on some way next time and the change management is done better.
I would imagine that any further changes are going to take time, And probably discussions with lawyers on at least five continents. We shall see where this goes.
Please stop going on about Redacted. It's probably not viable to keep it up, plain and simple. The maintenance of two versions with different codebases tends to be resource intensive, and consume energy that should go towards the future rather than the past.
So the free ticket is back, at least for now. That's a good step. However, I can't support the idea that the anomaly scanner badge is for paying customers only. That's the memento for attending a community-organized event. Give the paying customers a shinier version of the badge or something, that'd be totally fine.
The free ticket, does not grant you the Anomaly medal, which is partly the reason people go, to prove to others that they played a part during the Anomaly.
The updated post by Niantic still does not cover, what players are expecting.
We understand that these events need to paid for in some way, and there have been numerous suggestions of ways in which to do that, without greed.
Even the new store item for the FTE is laughable.
A rare defense pack costs less, and the FTE gives 10 RHS and 100 R1s.
Well well...after the excellent open letter nia responded. What a slap in the face to the open letter. Claudia explained very good the moment your charge for a event the consequences it's going to bring with the responsibilities.
Now suddenly nia made the event "free" in fact nothing change..even worse..under the word "free" they just loopholed Claudia's whole open letter.
Disgusted
15 euro is no issue to me but for some people it does. It's going to be hard for me to think there will be agents participating but due to financial circumstances they will have nothing to show for it and maybe they helped organised it and afterwords some will look at their scanner and will notice no badge. You took the whole pay-to-brag rights to a whole new level.
The local RES and ENL teams had fund raisers to pay everything...maybe next time nobody put effort in and just send Nia the invoices.
After all said and done, they still took a free participation badge and made a product out of it. It's one step forward after two steps backward (three if you count the x2 AP too) and I have yet to see any added value here.
I am concerned about further monetizing anomalies. I prefer to buy swag. Paying for a participation medal, especially if you are an off-site participant just feels wrong.
Ingress *has* sustained Niantic as a company, by providing countless hours of free labor from its players to give you the backbone that Pokemon Go and Harry Potter Wizards Unite are based on. The way you have been paid for Ingress is that free labor, including almost entirely populating your databases, and acting as your test bed for your "real world game engine." Your decision to not maintain feature parity and to create a substantially different user experience for Ingress Prime was just that, your decision, when what would have been more advisable would have been to recreate Ingress in the Unity engine and perhaps add new skins as a paid option. The only mechanism via which your Portals/PokeStopsGyms/InnsGreenhousesTowers network gets new entries other than by sponsored groups is still Ingress. You are still reliant on free labor from the Ingress playerbase to do that work for you. Asking the players who are going to stay with the game after it goes Prime-only to now pay you for doing free labor that directly benefits you/the players of your other games is ill-advised.
When anomaly dates are announced, people make travel plans and commit to their faction, and lay out real money to pay for travel and lodging and related expenses. You should not be charging people for badges in-game. Badges represent the time spent participating in an event. Physical swag is a reasonable thing to charge for, and historically that's how you've monetized these events. It's an insult to the POCs and local orgs who put in the real work and often out-of-pocket expenses on anomalies to change conditions out from under them, and you should not be charging for participants' badges for any anomaly events that have already been announced as existing.
Comments
Very well written initial post and in agreement.
I've committed to Umbra with flights/hotel/time off booked, so I'll begrudgingly pay. I do not want the POCs efforts go in vain. Going forward, as anomalies became a paid event, I expect Niantic employees to step up and take over the volunteer roles the POCs and the orga do for anomalies and have Niantic presence at every paid for event
Great post.
As an active member in my community i know that we put a lot of effort, time and money into events, I'm from Buenos Aires and we don't get much official activity around here (the last time our city was an anomaly site was for the Persepolis Anomaly) so, every event we could participate in was exclusively organized by agents (IFS, Mission Days). We try hard to keep ppl involved with the game and work endless hours to make our events appealing to agents eager to experience an official Ingress event that never happens... So if you live in South America you'll likely have to travel more than a 1000km to attend to anomalies, which, of course involve some serious money spending in tickets, hotels, etc. Having to pay to play makes this experiences almost prohibitive.
I can't begin to express how disappointed i feel about this last turn of events..
The utter disrespect that Niantic has for the a ingress player base confounds me.
I completely agree. It's incomprehensible how a decision like this could be made so close to an anomaly which people have committed to. Niantic knows people want lots of notice about anomalies so we can plan for them. The timing of this announcement, as well as making the anomaly paid-only is distasteful.
Well said @Claudija you said all our thoughts
Well said
No! Come to Hawaii first and I'll get you 2 beers.
How typical of Niantic to restrict comments from their **** post about tickets. There is nothing about that post that remotely addresses the issues brought forth.
Yup, that recent post just made me lose hope in Niantic.
Eloquently put! It's not what they did, it's how they did it.
I'll be attending Umbra Gothenburg, but I will withhold my decision regarding the purchase of an event ticket until such a time when Niantic has addressed all the issues pointed out in the main post of this thread. Combined with the addition of new game mechanics that will influence the course of the anomaly gameplay, this entire debacle is something that should have been addressed candidly and in depth before throwing it in your playerbase's faces.
My utmost sympathies go out to each and every single POC and member of the local Umbra orgas who had this heaping pile tipped on them.
Band-aid has been applied. Stay tuned for more tone-deaf and heavy-handed monetization in the future.
NIA should consider that HP WU and Po Go would not be such a huge success without the countless hours Ingress players invested in building the portal network. NIA couldn't have done this on their own (and the Network for all 3 Games ist still growing - thanks to the Ingress community). The hundreds of millions of Dollars from the other games could partly be reinvested to give something back to the Ingress players which helped NIA earning that much money in the first place. But instead NIA kills the Redacted Scanner and focuses on Ingress Prime which is buggy as hell and some things in Prime are not very usable (imho) like in the Redacted Scanner (a fancy design is not everything).
Great decision NIA, honestly - **** the version with fewer bugs because Prime has a modern look and feel.
I invested hundreds of Euro's in anomalies and a small fee for the key capsules - like most serious Ingress players did - but NIA seems to become greedy. Maybe the whole thing will resolve itself. In our area Ingress Prime brought no new players to the Game and most of the older ones stay with the Redacted Scanner - so at the end of this month all those have to decide if they'll switch or if they go. I know at least one of my fellow players will leave. And he will not be the only one. So go on NIA - **** the user base. Sad but true.
Yes! Excellent! Thank you for taking the time to write such an insightful letter
Since I'm from Australia, many of us have to spend quite a lot to get to an anomaly anyway so while the US$15 is extra, it's not like it would be make or break me or most others that travel and it's good that we give something back to niantic.
The timing and communication was poor.
Having said that, I agree with everything that Claudi has put here.
2x ap if you pay isn't my favourite option. This gets closer to pay to win, but it's only for a few hours.
Great result that niantic listened and brought the free ticket back. Well done for listening to the community! Let's hope the community is consulted on some way next time and the change management is done better.
Onwards and upwards!
Well said
I would imagine that any further changes are going to take time, And probably discussions with lawyers on at least five continents. We shall see where this goes.
Well said, if they proceed like this, sure they will **** the game. 😭
Agree 150%. Very well and true written, Claudia.
Please stop going on about Redacted. It's probably not viable to keep it up, plain and simple. The maintenance of two versions with different codebases tends to be resource intensive, and consume energy that should go towards the future rather than the past.
So the free ticket is back, at least for now. That's a good step. However, I can't support the idea that the anomaly scanner badge is for paying customers only. That's the memento for attending a community-organized event. Give the paying customers a shinier version of the badge or something, that'd be totally fine.
@Niantic
Anomaly medal also should be - like every other Ingress medal - the award for an achievement and not only available for purchase.
Every registered participant should get this visible recognition of his efforts.
A kind of ticket mustn't make the difference. It's simply not fair.
The free ticket, does not grant you the Anomaly medal, which is partly the reason people go, to prove to others that they played a part during the Anomaly.
The updated post by Niantic still does not cover, what players are expecting.
We understand that these events need to paid for in some way, and there have been numerous suggestions of ways in which to do that, without greed.
Even the new store item for the FTE is laughable.
A rare defense pack costs less, and the FTE gives 10 RHS and 100 R1s.
This is just pure, greed!
Stop it!
Well well...after the excellent open letter nia responded. What a slap in the face to the open letter. Claudia explained very good the moment your charge for a event the consequences it's going to bring with the responsibilities.
Now suddenly nia made the event "free" in fact nothing change..even worse..under the word "free" they just loopholed Claudia's whole open letter.
Disgusted
15 euro is no issue to me but for some people it does. It's going to be hard for me to think there will be agents participating but due to financial circumstances they will have nothing to show for it and maybe they helped organised it and afterwords some will look at their scanner and will notice no badge. You took the whole pay-to-brag rights to a whole new level.
The local RES and ENL teams had fund raisers to pay everything...maybe next time nobody put effort in and just send Nia the invoices.
Thank you for those words.
More is not to be added I at all no more
After all said and done, they still took a free participation badge and made a product out of it. It's one step forward after two steps backward (three if you count the x2 AP too) and I have yet to see any added value here.
I agree with the sentiment in this letter.
I am concerned about further monetizing anomalies. I prefer to buy swag. Paying for a participation medal, especially if you are an off-site participant just feels wrong.
Danke für das Gesagte, Claudija.
Ich bin noch viel zu entsetzt, um die richtigen Worte zu finden.
....what Claudija says.
Bad timeing, bad communcation, bad idea.
Not the best way to (re)gain friends in the community.
What's next, off site betting facilities , where you can put money down on win place or draw at anomalies?
Ingress *has* sustained Niantic as a company, by providing countless hours of free labor from its players to give you the backbone that Pokemon Go and Harry Potter Wizards Unite are based on. The way you have been paid for Ingress is that free labor, including almost entirely populating your databases, and acting as your test bed for your "real world game engine." Your decision to not maintain feature parity and to create a substantially different user experience for Ingress Prime was just that, your decision, when what would have been more advisable would have been to recreate Ingress in the Unity engine and perhaps add new skins as a paid option. The only mechanism via which your Portals/PokeStopsGyms/InnsGreenhousesTowers network gets new entries other than by sponsored groups is still Ingress. You are still reliant on free labor from the Ingress playerbase to do that work for you. Asking the players who are going to stay with the game after it goes Prime-only to now pay you for doing free labor that directly benefits you/the players of your other games is ill-advised.
When anomaly dates are announced, people make travel plans and commit to their faction, and lay out real money to pay for travel and lodging and related expenses. You should not be charging people for badges in-game. Badges represent the time spent participating in an event. Physical swag is a reasonable thing to charge for, and historically that's how you've monetized these events. It's an insult to the POCs and local orgs who put in the real work and often out-of-pocket expenses on anomalies to change conditions out from under them, and you should not be charging for participants' badges for any anomaly events that have already been announced as existing.