Its December 2019, and prime is still bad

We're now on Prime V2 36. Classic Ingress got to V1.34. Prime is a year and a half old. Prime has been the only Ingress for three months. The transition was rushed and botched from day 1.

I'm still seeing the same complaints.

*several of your players can't even see ingress well enough to use prime. Even those who see it aren't excited by the graphics. No word on this issue at all.

*keys still can't be sorted alphabetically.

*linking causes phantom portals.

*speed lock is only partially fixed.

*navigate to still fails feature parity.

*missions are still a hot mess.

*avatar/compass is still being treated as one problem, when 90%of the issue could be solved today if it were recognized as two separate problems.

Just admit that Unity isn't the right platform for a game like Ingress.

Admit that the graphics of prime may be technically better, but are not experientially better than classic ingress.

Give up on this ugly baby. You need Ingress to be reliable and fast. You need a new platform anyway. You need a better UI anyway.

You need a new platform that can run Redacted. It was on V1.34, and ran almost flawlessly on even the faintest of connections.

Prime is on 2.36, and still crashes regularly, still has dozens of repeatable errors.

Get a new platform. With a new platform, you can work on improving the version of this game that actually worked instead of relying on this dead albatross that is Prime.

We dont need to zoom in and change angle of view. We dont need flashy 3d graphics. We need a map that works, a compass that works, measurements that work, and we need to be able to see the things in the game.

Redacted had what we need. Prime does not. I dont think any amount of "improvement" can fix that. What I want is Redacted, and it CAN be brought back. It just needs a new platform. Prime isn't working on the Unity platform so for any ingress to progress, you need a new platform anyway. Make it a platform for Redacted.

Prime has little more than one year, and a lot of frustration to its name.

Redacted has over seven years of work, and a higher rating than any other niantic game. You can develop from there.

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Comments

  • 1valdis1valdis ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    I don't even know why Niantic considered using Unity game engine. It didn't have a reputation of performant and just good enough engine ever. But what it has to it's name is that it's easy to develop on it, thus it's very popular. Maybe that's what Niantic has fallen for. I believe Unreal engine would be far, far better option.

    But yeah. Nothing is really changing with Prime. It's hard just to see, with such flashy useless things as chromatic aberration that only causes headaches... Violet text on violet buttons breaking all possible accessibility guidelines, hell yes good job for designers... It's hard to be relied upon because it's power hungry, network data hungry, has so many bugs I can't even count them, and can freeze right when you had to take down that last cross link for a BAF... It's hard to play day by day too: during a week of playing on it I say as many bad words during interaction with it as I haven't said during 3.5y of Redacted... I can't say "it just works" as I was able to with Redacted, because obviously it doesn't.

    And here come other problems. The playerbase in our region has cut in 30-40% from the summer. And it's still declining. The main reason is that people dislike Prime. Prime didn't bring new players as we hoped.

    But rather than fixing this situation in some way, it may even look that Niantic just makes it worse and worse, with paid-only anomaly bs (sorry Niantic but who I really want to pay for an anomaly is the agents who really organize them and not you). Umbra is a complete fiasco. The unpopular decisions are coming one after another.

    And they still have guts to cry about "sustainability". You, Niantic, should better fix your game rather than taking money for events you didn't organize and making Store in our carousel. You don't need more money from existing players, that will only decrease playerbase further; you need more players and what you need for it is working, stable, accessible scanner.

    I see 2020 as a deciding year for what we know as Ingress.

  • XQlusioNXQlusioN ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    @Gersterwind the original scanner got up to 1.134, you forgot a 1 there


    @1valdis They used Unity because their other games run Unity. It makes for simpler development in the end.

    I agree that Unity might not be the best choice for Ingress, but it's what we got.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    I was expecting prime to be more stable by now when they shut down redacted, still so many issues and no word on the freezing issues etc... :( i can understand many players have quit for good when prime still is a nightmare to play. We were promised new exciting prime features once redacted is dead, when are those coming out ? when is overall stability to be improved overall ??

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    The constant crashes/freezes is due to using the old Classic Ingress server backend. As well as other crashes, things not working right.


    The switch over to the new server backend was originally slated for September, but as everyone knows there is a lot to Ingress, with a small dev team, and a LOT of issues to work on, progress is slow.


    We are however due for a big update this week

  • 1valdis1valdis ✭✭✭✭✭

    We are however due for a big update this week

    As always will have one or two most critical bug fixes, some stuff to fill up the change log, then probably a feature no one asked for and more bugs along with that. I'm waiting...

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    yea i understand that, but since no info on critical issues is posted so they cant expect people to wait forever for the client to be fixed, the longer it takes the more people quit in the long run, so less people attending anomalies or buying from shop the less money niantic will get...

  • The advantage of Unity is that performance improvements in one game translate to the others. So the highly lucrative PoGo market helps pay for Ingress improvements.

  • Yeah, in theory.

    But instead, we're just Guinea pigs being used to prove that Unity has permanent issues... admittedly issues that may not matter much for the highly lucrative PoGo, or even Harry Potter, but issues which are fatal to cooperative play on Ingress, and very frustrating for individuals.

    Speedlock was only a partial fix. The other part apparently affects all three games. Why? It's a flaw in the underlying platform.

    Pogo, HP, and ingress are very hard to play together on the same device. Why? Is it the platform, or that we're still using the old ingress servers? Who knows? Will merging the servers make it better or worse? I'm guessing Niantic expects the latter, since they keep delaying the switch.

    Will we be able to sort our keys alphabetically soon?

    Will linking long distances get more reliable any time soon?

    Will my virtual compass ever be able to point at the virtual North on the map? Are they just waiting for me to give up? Because it's awful quiet on these boards besides me, and truthseeker.

  • We dont know if still runing the "old ingress servers" or new ones?

    Who knows? 

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