In case Niantic does not respond like ALL agents want to read, in a respective manner, we should contact some good lawyers to make them aware that they had big issues with a paid event... thats all i say and will support anyone (tl/dr)
I went to Gothenburg with my other half and we spent hours and hours hacking playbox keys...which we couldn't use when we needed to because our scanners wouldn't work. The only reason I knew I had hacked enough keys was because I had screenshotted my numbers before the Anomaly...Prime was so broken there was no way to keep a reliable count otherwise. Our whole team had problems.
Even today on Mission Day, Prime crashed frequently, I often couldn't manage inventory and the city was full of ghost fields.
Agents all over the world invested time, effort and money in this Anomaly and we deserved a working app.
Unfortunately, I was not clever enough to make a few screenshots during the anomaly in Dresden. Anyway, for about 30-60 minutes the app was lagging: it was impossible to fire, to deploy resos, to hack. It showed black screen. 10 or 15 times during the anomaly I had to reload the Ingress Prime app, because it just freezed. 2 or 3 times during reloading the app asked me to login via Google or Facebook and responsed that my account was incorrect.
When we were defending a blue portal, a group of Enlightened agents passed by. They stayed for 1-2 minutes trying the fire but nothing worked. And they went away. Well... 5-7 minutes passed. A measurement window came. And their boosters began to fire! There were no other Enlightened teams at the moment. It was really a 5-7 minutes delay between pressing the fire button and servers reaction for this.
The second part of the Anomaly was better. But still... A lot of fantom fields and resos in the scanner. The same was during the MD. No option to resync the scanner and a lot of links across fantom fields. Yeah, that looked funny, but that's not the way it was supposed to work.
Thank you Nia for screwing the anomaly experience of thousands of players who PAID YOU for this serie and the weeks of job (for free) of all orgas for their organisation. You really know how to treat your volunteers and your customers... Almost 1h of not being able to play... Thank god we have amazing communities that help us get over your mistakes! Kuddos to all orgas who MANAGED to handle their players and organise successfull sites!
Not to discount other’s experiences (and it sounds like the European sites had major Server issues), My personal experience in Brooklyn was that things were minorly glitchy but far from unplayable. Others on my team seemed to have far more issues playing, to the point that some quit altogether during the later measurements.
What was unclear to me was whether those were server issues or carrier issues (TMob users seemed to have the most trouble). As a person who has experienced issues due to carrier and signal, I’m not willing to 100% blame Niantic for the Brooklyn problems.
I paid €17,85 registration fee for your event "Umbra Anomaly Dresden".
You did not deliver the service.
Not only many people in Dresden, participants world-wide reported problems. Similar to those of Field Test and First Saturday.
I personally was unable to interact, using your official client, for most of the time during the paid "Umbra Anomaly Dresden" event.
Besides causing personal disappointment, I feel I have paid without anything in return. Worse, I had expenses for travel and accommodation to attend your paid event.
I ask you to refund the €17,85 ASAP and to let me know how you are planning on refunding my travel and accomodation expenses.
Best regards
---
Sent to Ingress Support on October, 14th. Will insist.
I paid to get in game recognition as remote agent, and found your server performance to be worse than previous anomalies. The difference now is that you are asking for money to receive recognition as a remote agent... remote agents are integral in helping those on site have a positive experience just like the local community puts their blood, sweat, and tears into organizing the event. (...and now they pay for that suffering!) Maybe Niantic can crank up the server speed? Especially for those who /paid/ to participate. (City: Sacramento, Issues with Intel)
I did not play in Dresden but I was onsite for the whole anomaly and watched that mess. I'd say if the next event again costs something (which I assume) the orga should not do the orga. If I had to work for an event where I must pay the entry fee myself I would not do it. I also assume that they will raise the price for the next anomaly and that there will be no free tickets. Just my 2 cents.
There was no entry fee. gaming experience was free for everyone(and from what iv'e heard strongly debatable). only the medal was paid, so as long as medal is provided, "there is nothing to rant about since the game is free of charge"(that's what people told me after every (every) laggy anomaly). lags and scanner malfuntcion were always present at anomalies and so far everyone took it as a part of a game since "the game is free". nobody paid attention that game owner didn't care to provide sufficient server power for players who sometimes came from few thousands km afar, even out of pure respect for their commitment to the game. why should it be different this time? You'll get your medals you paid for.
A free event with glitches, we can forgive, just as we have forgiven the slow/glitchy game all the way from the first anomaly until now. An event we had to pay to go to, that is still glitchy, now people are pissed off.
Yet another reason why they shouldn't have charged tickets for participation.
The first POGO event should have been a wakeup call - look at all the tickets they had to refund for that.
people are mad becusue their money is on the line, which is weird cause actualy it's their time they will not get back at all. they can get those 15 bucks from someplace else, You can't get back time You wasted on this poor of excuse event. and as far as i recon nobody lost any money yet, at least not until medals are pushed.
I was playing for the Resistance in Anvers for the Umbra Anomaly.
First hour was unplayable ... Then it went slowly better and at the end of the event we still had the access level error when trying to spam XMP and some crashes but it was playable.
First measurements were totally **** ...
Then i saw many players who just did the 13 hacks for the medal and then gave up because they were bored of what happenned.
It would have been great if Niantic made apologies and refunded people who paid, or atleast gave them some passcode (which doesn't cost them anyathing). But they didn't.
Brooklyn was my first experience with an Anomaly event and overall I had fun, but the server issues were terrible. I couldn't do any more than a few actions every 10-15 min the first 2+ hours of the event. Toward the last hour we moved to just hacking the playbox and even then I was stuck not being able to hack because a previous hack wouldn't go through for a minute or two. When you're trying to move quickly through the playbox, a minute is a few portals you just missed. I think they seriously underestimated the required load on the servers. I hope they really take the feedback and consider altering their plans for next event.
Side note, upon attending I expected to see NIA people at their own event. To my surprise there was no such thing. As this was my first experience, I had been watching the pictures and everything from other events via twitter/fb and I thought that was the experience I was going to get as well. Things like the photo of participants, NIA/general Ingress swag, etc were non-existent at the Brooklyn event.
You could play freely during this anomaly because people complained as they changed rules some weeks before the anomaly and everything were already booked. But there will not have free tickets anymore for next anomalies.
"Can be comfortably played with one hand by people with large enough hands" is not something to judge universal design by, especially given how popular Ingress is in Asia where average stature is shorter.
Prime is playable, when it doesn't crash. And some features are really nice and show thoughtful design. It just doesn't feel like fast accurate play was a design criteria, nor was playability outdoors in sunlight.
Without endorsing all aspects of OP's rant, I must say that I and everyone else I talked to about it at Umbra Sacramento found Prime to be really, really, really awful for anomaly play. It is important to note that these folks were not universally anti-Prime in general: they just found it not to be fit for purpose under the specific conditions that dominate during Anomalies. Among the defects:
The (virtual) buttons for critical actions like reshielding and resonator upgrades are too small to hit accurately under field conditions (bright light, distracted, moving rapidly). Personally, I found portal defense to be essentially impossible - when even one misstep can mean a lost portal, you just can't afford the error rate generated by those tiny, tiny activation areas.
The disambiguator for portal selection is all but unusable under Anomaly field conditions. When portal densities are high, almost every click leads to a disambiguation choice, which again requires clicking in a very tiny area (on a tiny, hard to read icon) at speed. The slow-down is really substantial, and resulted in a lot of failed captures (and lost portals). Again, every second counts in Anomaly play.
High burster activity in portal dense environments makes you essentially blind: everything on the scanner is blocked by the visual effects. Not being able to tell what is happening (or where you are) for 10-20 seconds (thanks, lag) or more at a time is not viable in an Anomaly setting. There were periods where Prime was not usable, and I had to abort mission. That's not acceptable.
These are really serious problems. They were foreseeable based on tests conducted during Myriad (and before) - there's really no excuse for this. Personally, I found it bad enough at various points that I was tempted to simply give up and walk off the field (something I've never felt before). Obviously, I didn't, because I'm not going to let humanity down. But fighting against that wretched scanner took the fun out of much of the event, and made it extremely difficult to actually play the game. This needs to be fixed.
Prime has come a long way, and while I have my gripes I think it works well enough for day-to-day use. But Anomalies are not like day-to-day play, and Prime is utterly broken for this application. Fixing this is going to mean (at minimum) dramatic increases to the sizes of visual and tactile elements, coupled with reduction in the obscuring effect of visual elements. If the Niantic folks are reading (and I hope you are, because otherwise why am I writing this?), I really strongly suggest the following testing protocol:
Create a series of minor objectives (capture, smash, hack, deploy, shield, upgrade) and assign them to your UI developers (yes, the developers - make them eat their own dog food) at random.
Require that the objectives be performed during the day, while jogging. (That's the best way to emulate the distractions and pressure of an Anomaly, without having an Anomaly.)
Log the success rate.
Force the developers to keep doing this until the UI gets to the point where these tasks can be performed reliably in bright light while moving.
Yes, this is a pain. But do you want it to work? If so, this is the direction I think you should consider.
Here's hoping this is fixed by the next round. Because this is really taking the fun out of what some of us consider the best part of the game. :-(
Regarding the lag, I don't get how this issue hasn't been resolved years ago. I was playing during Persepolis, and we had this kind of lag. I would have thought they could hack a way to get extra server capacity for a single day event.
Can the developers make a sandbox environment with a robot that just performs tens of thousands of actions in the same area all at once, so that the developers can test ways to fix the lag? Bonus points if they can fix PoGo events that have the same problems.
Comments
In case Niantic does not respond like ALL agents want to read, in a respective manner, we should contact some good lawyers to make them aware that they had big issues with a paid event... thats all i say and will support anyone (tl/dr)
Very disappointing 😕
I went to Gothenburg with my other half and we spent hours and hours hacking playbox keys...which we couldn't use when we needed to because our scanners wouldn't work. The only reason I knew I had hacked enough keys was because I had screenshotted my numbers before the Anomaly...Prime was so broken there was no way to keep a reliable count otherwise. Our whole team had problems.
Even today on Mission Day, Prime crashed frequently, I often couldn't manage inventory and the city was full of ghost fields.
Agents all over the world invested time, effort and money in this Anomaly and we deserved a working app.
Unfortunately, I was not clever enough to make a few screenshots during the anomaly in Dresden. Anyway, for about 30-60 minutes the app was lagging: it was impossible to fire, to deploy resos, to hack. It showed black screen. 10 or 15 times during the anomaly I had to reload the Ingress Prime app, because it just freezed. 2 or 3 times during reloading the app asked me to login via Google or Facebook and responsed that my account was incorrect.
When we were defending a blue portal, a group of Enlightened agents passed by. They stayed for 1-2 minutes trying the fire but nothing worked. And they went away. Well... 5-7 minutes passed. A measurement window came. And their boosters began to fire! There were no other Enlightened teams at the moment. It was really a 5-7 minutes delay between pressing the fire button and servers reaction for this.
The second part of the Anomaly was better. But still... A lot of fantom fields and resos in the scanner. The same was during the MD. No option to resync the scanner and a lot of links across fantom fields. Yeah, that looked funny, but that's not the way it was supposed to work.
The paid tickets should be refunded.
Thos is a current screenshot from Dresden. Ghost Fields Galore.
Wait, you're saying it was completely functional once the ornaments were lit? Message me. I want whatever version of Prime you have.
Edit: I knew I had to have misread that. Lol I'm tired.
woo ****
Thank you Nia for screwing the anomaly experience of thousands of players who PAID YOU for this serie and the weeks of job (for free) of all orgas for their organisation. You really know how to treat your volunteers and your customers... Almost 1h of not being able to play... Thank god we have amazing communities that help us get over your mistakes! Kuddos to all orgas who MANAGED to handle their players and organise successfull sites!
Sacramento was last out so they might be why you had no problems.
In Gothenburg we had massive amounts of issues.
And the start of our Anomaly intersected with the Community day for Pogo (might be a part of the issue and might not be)
And in our timezone there were three concurrent Anomalys running at the same time.
I'm not mad at Niantic. I just feel the this could have been avoided.
Having their first Prime only anomaly break down is not good PR
Anomaly in Dresden started for me like this:
Next I saw portals but... Can't hack - hacking button was inactive, can't shot - too low level. Everywhere "supernovas" from lagged xmp.
Portals got way too much resonators. I over 19 here...
And finally - day after anomaly - still ghostfields from the day before.
Not to discount other’s experiences (and it sounds like the European sites had major Server issues), My personal experience in Brooklyn was that things were minorly glitchy but far from unplayable. Others on my team seemed to have far more issues playing, to the point that some quit altogether during the later measurements.
What was unclear to me was whether those were server issues or carrier issues (TMob users seemed to have the most trouble). As a person who has experienced issues due to carrier and signal, I’m not willing to 100% blame Niantic for the Brooklyn problems.
Dear Ingress support,
I paid €17,85 registration fee for your event "Umbra Anomaly Dresden".
You did not deliver the service.
Not only many people in Dresden, participants world-wide reported problems. Similar to those of Field Test and First Saturday.
I personally was unable to interact, using your official client, for most of the time during the paid "Umbra Anomaly Dresden" event.
Besides causing personal disappointment, I feel I have paid without anything in return. Worse, I had expenses for travel and accommodation to attend your paid event.
I ask you to refund the €17,85 ASAP and to let me know how you are planning on refunding my travel and accomodation expenses.
Best regards
---
Sent to Ingress Support on October, 14th. Will insist.
I paid to get in game recognition as remote agent, and found your server performance to be worse than previous anomalies. The difference now is that you are asking for money to receive recognition as a remote agent... remote agents are integral in helping those on site have a positive experience just like the local community puts their blood, sweat, and tears into organizing the event. (...and now they pay for that suffering!) Maybe Niantic can crank up the server speed? Especially for those who /paid/ to participate. (City: Sacramento, Issues with Intel)
I did not play in Dresden but I was onsite for the whole anomaly and watched that mess. I'd say if the next event again costs something (which I assume) the orga should not do the orga. If I had to work for an event where I must pay the entry fee myself I would not do it. I also assume that they will raise the price for the next anomaly and that there will be no free tickets. Just my 2 cents.
There was no entry fee. gaming experience was free for everyone(and from what iv'e heard strongly debatable). only the medal was paid, so as long as medal is provided, "there is nothing to rant about since the game is free of charge"(that's what people told me after every (every) laggy anomaly). lags and scanner malfuntcion were always present at anomalies and so far everyone took it as a part of a game since "the game is free". nobody paid attention that game owner didn't care to provide sufficient server power for players who sometimes came from few thousands km afar, even out of pure respect for their commitment to the game. why should it be different this time? You'll get your medals you paid for.
A free event with glitches, we can forgive, just as we have forgiven the slow/glitchy game all the way from the first anomaly until now. An event we had to pay to go to, that is still glitchy, now people are pissed off.
Yet another reason why they shouldn't have charged tickets for participation.
The first POGO event should have been a wakeup call - look at all the tickets they had to refund for that.
pogo event was "pay to attend" this one wasn't.
people are mad becusue their money is on the line, which is weird cause actualy it's their time they will not get back at all. they can get those 15 bucks from someplace else, You can't get back time You wasted on this poor of excuse event. and as far as i recon nobody lost any money yet, at least not until medals are pushed.
There was no way to get out of this screen during the missionday
I was playing for the Resistance in Anvers for the Umbra Anomaly.
First hour was unplayable ... Then it went slowly better and at the end of the event we still had the access level error when trying to spam XMP and some crashes but it was playable.
First measurements were totally **** ...
Then i saw many players who just did the 13 hacks for the medal and then gave up because they were bored of what happenned.
It would have been great if Niantic made apologies and refunded people who paid, or atleast gave them some passcode (which doesn't cost them anyathing). But they didn't.
Brooklyn was my first experience with an Anomaly event and overall I had fun, but the server issues were terrible. I couldn't do any more than a few actions every 10-15 min the first 2+ hours of the event. Toward the last hour we moved to just hacking the playbox and even then I was stuck not being able to hack because a previous hack wouldn't go through for a minute or two. When you're trying to move quickly through the playbox, a minute is a few portals you just missed. I think they seriously underestimated the required load on the servers. I hope they really take the feedback and consider altering their plans for next event.
Side note, upon attending I expected to see NIA people at their own event. To my surprise there was no such thing. As this was my first experience, I had been watching the pictures and everything from other events via twitter/fb and I thought that was the experience I was going to get as well. Things like the photo of participants, NIA/general Ingress swag, etc were non-existent at the Brooklyn event.
Sorry ignore the biocard picture I didn’t mean to upload that and it won’t upload the screenshots I meant to upload.
Admin please delete.
You could play freely during this anomaly because people complained as they changed rules some weeks before the anomaly and everything were already booked. But there will not have free tickets anymore for next anomalies.
I know the answer that nia would like to give. Here.
https://i.gifer.com/3NxTE.gif
"Can be comfortably played with one hand by people with large enough hands" is not something to judge universal design by, especially given how popular Ingress is in Asia where average stature is shorter.
Prime is playable, when it doesn't crash. And some features are really nice and show thoughtful design. It just doesn't feel like fast accurate play was a design criteria, nor was playability outdoors in sunlight.
speed response Niantiс
Without endorsing all aspects of OP's rant, I must say that I and everyone else I talked to about it at Umbra Sacramento found Prime to be really, really, really awful for anomaly play. It is important to note that these folks were not universally anti-Prime in general: they just found it not to be fit for purpose under the specific conditions that dominate during Anomalies. Among the defects:
These are really serious problems. They were foreseeable based on tests conducted during Myriad (and before) - there's really no excuse for this. Personally, I found it bad enough at various points that I was tempted to simply give up and walk off the field (something I've never felt before). Obviously, I didn't, because I'm not going to let humanity down. But fighting against that wretched scanner took the fun out of much of the event, and made it extremely difficult to actually play the game. This needs to be fixed.
Prime has come a long way, and while I have my gripes I think it works well enough for day-to-day use. But Anomalies are not like day-to-day play, and Prime is utterly broken for this application. Fixing this is going to mean (at minimum) dramatic increases to the sizes of visual and tactile elements, coupled with reduction in the obscuring effect of visual elements. If the Niantic folks are reading (and I hope you are, because otherwise why am I writing this?), I really strongly suggest the following testing protocol:
Yes, this is a pain. But do you want it to work? If so, this is the direction I think you should consider.
Here's hoping this is fixed by the next round. Because this is really taking the fun out of what some of us consider the best part of the game. :-(
Well, well said!!!
Regarding the lag, I don't get how this issue hasn't been resolved years ago. I was playing during Persepolis, and we had this kind of lag. I would have thought they could hack a way to get extra server capacity for a single day event.
Can the developers make a sandbox environment with a robot that just performs tens of thousands of actions in the same area all at once, so that the developers can test ways to fix the lag? Bonus points if they can fix PoGo events that have the same problems.
It is disappointing that there has been no official comment about any of the issues experienced on Saturday.