Thanks for championing Ingress and for the transparency. I know for myself and so many others, this game and community means a lot. I've met some of my best friends because of it. I always tell people I found my tribe. 😊
I definitely looking forward to what you and the team have planned for a sustainable future! 💙
Regarding "Monday night football" coverage, while I'd love to see Niantic step in and help with this or run it themselves, Umbra did have an agent-run live show with in-studio commentary live from agents @Redfox1701 and @stoopedFoxinSox and on-the-ground reporting from myself. We had live score updates and maps, recorded and live interviews with agents in the field, and lots of discussion. You can watch the recording here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYs32R87Gs
This was no trivial task to set up, but we'd love to keep doing it bigger and better.
I hope Requiem doesn't get a victory medal. Given that there's only one city, we can already practically guarantee the outcome: Resistance will win in a landslide, because it's a Euro city.
Anomalies with multiple cities at least are a toss-up, but only choosing a single city is basically deciding in advance who's going to win the series.
@XK150 yes, I’d like to return to doing monthly global challenges, and we’re working on one for Dec across 2 weekends over the holiday break. Building on feedback from the last global challenge, we’re looking at ways to encourage more group play and also keep the rules simple.
This second post does clarify a bit of where Ingress events will be heading in the future, however, it is highlighting some alarming progression that is definitely drawing Ingress away from what makes it unique, especially compared to Niantic's other two big games: Pokemon Go and Harry Potter; Wizards Unite.
PVP versus PVE
Ingress is unique in the lineup compared to the other games. Pokemon Go mostly centers around Catching 'em All. You can PVP or mess around with (easy) gyms, but it's not mandatory. HPWU is baffling in that there's currently no PVP elements and it's entirely cooperative...strange when the source material is huge on wizards being sorted into the Houses and competing against each other. That game is still young so there may be yet PVP added but it's pretty clearly not a core element. The Nemesis storyline has introduced a lot of PVE and cooperative gameplay events, which is great to bring something new to the table, but at the same time it feels odd after six years of ENL vs RES.
Ingress events
The progression to a single anomaly site and dozens of hexathalon sites also reminds me a lot of the event set-up for Pokemon Go, where GoFest is a single event, always held in Chicago, only once per year. Never managed to go; it didn't feel like it was worth the hassle and cost. I felt sorry for the Pokemon Go playerbase for a while since they didn't have as many chances to attend these worth-it-to-travel events like Ingress did. For an Ingress player unable to handle the logistics and costs of leaving one's continent to go to an anomaly, having so many events scattered throughout the year all over the globe provided many more opportunities.
Finally, the anomaly itself offers a lot. When Abbadon Prime was scheduled for Chicago, I definitely went. It helped that there was Goruck, yes, but to attend an anomaly is to be there for the team, and to make a difference in the inherently PVP gameplay. And since anomalies weren't set to a single city, it gave people an opportunity to explore somewhere new. If the hexathalons are anything like the Field Tests this past year, then I cannot say there'd be much motivation to travel to an individual event that is more or less a First Saturday that tracks more stats.
For a primary anomaly site that has a Niantic presence at it with a rented room, park, and actors-yes, I'd expect tickets to cost something and I can understand wanting to limit the number of these to maybe one or two a year if (and I assume they are due to the presence and event draw down we've witnessed) they're getting too cost prohibitive. How about running something such as Umbra Brooklyn, which had no Niantic presence at it and had seems to have ironed out remote anomaly registration, as satellite sites or flipping a switch to setting certain portal-dense areas as Anomalous Zones make up for areas being starved for events?
All neutral portals in the world turn teal and have been infected by the Jarvisada Nemesis Techthulu. Agents must race to neutralize 70% by capturing them for one faction or the other. Failure me result in random faction changes for agents and Jarvis and ADA refractors permanently merging.
Anomalies are the core of ingress. Fewer events is the wrong answer. I look forward to Anomalies and meeting new people and making me friends. It's been an adventure every time. Not everyone can afford to fly halfway around the world to Germany.
Thanks, @NianticBrian for explaining about everything!! Cause we are the "South Florida Resistance", like Kendall, Miami, Orlando and the other locations!!
Unironically, judging from the grey portals I see in my frequent travel, it would not surprise me to find the U.S. is no longer one of the "countries where we have the most Ingress players." Even a large part of what I see here in the forums is Pokemon players instead of Ingress.
@NianticBrian The weekends around the December holidays are jam packed with cleaning, shopping, decorating and getting together with friends and family. Please don't try to pull us away from our families for Christmas by tempting us to participate in a group event. It will just discourage people more because they can't participate, and push them yet another degree further from Ingress. Maybe something we can do in odd moments while we are running here and there would be ok, an individual event where we could choose to play or not. But for many of us, holidays don't mean MORE time to play Ingress. It means our families rightfully require us to put our phones down and celebrate together with all our hearts and souls. January - fine. The last two weeks of December are not really great for a group/team event. I recognize that not all of us across the world celebrate holidays at the end of December, but for quite a few of us, this is the biggest holiday of the year. Have mercy please :-)
Agreed @MysticalGnu - I am hyper competitive and participate in all the challenges but I will not be doing so at the expense of my family Christmas time.
@NianticBrian Been here since the beginning, old beta invite. Keep up the great work with a great game. I look forward to any events close to home where I can play ingress, have some laughs and make friends. Looking forward to 2020 and new agents discoving the fun!
As an American who does not celebrate any December holidays, THANK YOU for having an event for the last two weeks of December. Events such as these allow us to join into a holiday tradition, It also gives us something interesting to do with all of those random (to us) days off our work schedule.
For those who celebrate, I understand that Christmas season is a busy time for the year. I'd love to see you all use Ingress events as a way to take off the stress during the holiday season and spread the holiday cheer. Perhaps you can even convince your friends and family to join your faction.
I want to see more events, not less. Unfortunately, that means that some events will conflict with some folks' personal calendars. If there are many events and you can't make one of them, I'm sure your team will understand. Just attend the next event. :)
I think an important part to bring up is the launch of Prime had such a focus on a new "onboarding" process.
I feel like engagement for new players (and old) is jarring. We know we want more anomalies but we also need engagement for new players. We know the announcement a few weeks ago about "nano packs" were for this but the "onboarding" still seems very minimal - like more is missing.
There are 2 weekends left this month. They are usually a hectic time where availability needs to be coordinated with other family members. When do you expect to reveal this?
Question is, is it such a, good idea having a global event now with xmas ans holidays around the corner? Not sure but i know many players will have it hard ditch their family and friends just to go out play and help the global challenge whatever it will require us to do....
Better imo would be do the global event first or second week of Jan 2020.
That's great but a bit more heads up would be great. We've gone from a years notice ahead of time on events to 3-0 months advanced notice. It lets us plan around other events. I actually liked it when we had the whole year's worth of Anomalies listed.
@NianticBrian It seems that Niantic has been going backwards for some time now. Perhaps, it's because you don't understand that we like competition and that's what we are asking for. You are taking the Teamwork out of the faction by going to individual competitions, which are led by a big corporation with little understanding of what grassroots means, yet they seem to use the definition often. You don't seem to realize that POGO players are switching to Ingress, because they are looking for something different. That difference is that we create teamwork, within our communities, which we use to recruit for our larger agendas of winning anomalies.
Neutral events like xfact Shards and hexathalon are not in the spirit of the game. It will become a boring game with no competitors. I think that it's a serious mistake to not have more anomalies scheduled. You are building apathy in the community. Many of my friends are grumbling, because they can't afford to attend an anomaly in Europe. Anomalies should happen more frequently and in more locations.
The combination of a poorly executed switch to Prime and neutralizing competition will bring Ingress to a much quicker ending.
Comments
Given the pattern of the Osiris Sequence, will the Nemesis Sequence also have an overall faction winner medal?
If so, how does Niantic plan on a fair distribution since so many places will have not had an anomaly during the Nemesis Sequence?
Yay! Thank you Brian.
Thanks for championing Ingress and for the transparency. I know for myself and so many others, this game and community means a lot. I've met some of my best friends because of it. I always tell people I found my tribe. 😊
I definitely looking forward to what you and the team have planned for a sustainable future! 💙
Regarding "Monday night football" coverage, while I'd love to see Niantic step in and help with this or run it themselves, Umbra did have an agent-run live show with in-studio commentary live from agents @Redfox1701 and @stoopedFoxinSox and on-the-ground reporting from myself. We had live score updates and maps, recorded and live interviews with agents in the field, and lots of discussion. You can watch the recording here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYs32R87Gs
This was no trivial task to set up, but we'd love to keep doing it bigger and better.
I hope Requiem doesn't get a victory medal. Given that there's only one city, we can already practically guarantee the outcome: Resistance will win in a landslide, because it's a Euro city.
Anomalies with multiple cities at least are a toss-up, but only choosing a single city is basically deciding in advance who's going to win the series.
But Enlightened has ready won the first two battles in the sequence
Any thoughts on pairing up GoRuck events with the mini events, like Operation Clear Field?
@XK150 yes, I’d like to return to doing monthly global challenges, and we’re working on one for Dec across 2 weekends over the holiday break. Building on feedback from the last global challenge, we’re looking at ways to encourage more group play and also keep the rules simple.
Thank you for sharing the "behind the scenes" planning the new type of events.
A festival-style anomaly does sound fun. Be sure to have lots of lazzers and good DJs to spin good vibes!
Godspeed!
This second post does clarify a bit of where Ingress events will be heading in the future, however, it is highlighting some alarming progression that is definitely drawing Ingress away from what makes it unique, especially compared to Niantic's other two big games: Pokemon Go and Harry Potter; Wizards Unite.
PVP versus PVE
Ingress is unique in the lineup compared to the other games. Pokemon Go mostly centers around Catching 'em All. You can PVP or mess around with (easy) gyms, but it's not mandatory. HPWU is baffling in that there's currently no PVP elements and it's entirely cooperative...strange when the source material is huge on wizards being sorted into the Houses and competing against each other. That game is still young so there may be yet PVP added but it's pretty clearly not a core element. The Nemesis storyline has introduced a lot of PVE and cooperative gameplay events, which is great to bring something new to the table, but at the same time it feels odd after six years of ENL vs RES.
Ingress events
The progression to a single anomaly site and dozens of hexathalon sites also reminds me a lot of the event set-up for Pokemon Go, where GoFest is a single event, always held in Chicago, only once per year. Never managed to go; it didn't feel like it was worth the hassle and cost. I felt sorry for the Pokemon Go playerbase for a while since they didn't have as many chances to attend these worth-it-to-travel events like Ingress did. For an Ingress player unable to handle the logistics and costs of leaving one's continent to go to an anomaly, having so many events scattered throughout the year all over the globe provided many more opportunities.
Finally, the anomaly itself offers a lot. When Abbadon Prime was scheduled for Chicago, I definitely went. It helped that there was Goruck, yes, but to attend an anomaly is to be there for the team, and to make a difference in the inherently PVP gameplay. And since anomalies weren't set to a single city, it gave people an opportunity to explore somewhere new. If the hexathalons are anything like the Field Tests this past year, then I cannot say there'd be much motivation to travel to an individual event that is more or less a First Saturday that tracks more stats.
For a primary anomaly site that has a Niantic presence at it with a rented room, park, and actors-yes, I'd expect tickets to cost something and I can understand wanting to limit the number of these to maybe one or two a year if (and I assume they are due to the presence and event draw down we've witnessed) they're getting too cost prohibitive. How about running something such as Umbra Brooklyn, which had no Niantic presence at it and had seems to have ironed out remote anomaly registration, as satellite sites or flipping a switch to setting certain portal-dense areas as Anomalous Zones make up for areas being starved for events?
@NianticBrian can we please not have any more, except for mission days and first saturdays, xfac events for a very very long time.
All neutral portals in the world turn teal and have been infected by the Jarvisada Nemesis Techthulu. Agents must race to neutralize 70% by capturing them for one faction or the other. Failure me result in random faction changes for agents and Jarvis and ADA refractors permanently merging.
Anomalies are the core of ingress. Fewer events is the wrong answer. I look forward to Anomalies and meeting new people and making me friends. It's been an adventure every time. Not everyone can afford to fly halfway around the world to Germany.
/facepalm
No idea why I thought it was tied up, thanks! That would be even dumber, then. At least in Osiris it came down to the last city.
That's Great!!😁
Thanks, @NianticBrian for explaining about everything!! Cause we are the "South Florida Resistance", like Kendall, Miami, Orlando and the other locations!!
Everyone knows that! Got it?👌
Calling it now:
Munich is worth 2 (or more) points
Unironically, judging from the grey portals I see in my frequent travel, it would not surprise me to find the U.S. is no longer one of the "countries where we have the most Ingress players." Even a large part of what I see here in the forums is Pokemon players instead of Ingress.
@NianticBrian The weekends around the December holidays are jam packed with cleaning, shopping, decorating and getting together with friends and family. Please don't try to pull us away from our families for Christmas by tempting us to participate in a group event. It will just discourage people more because they can't participate, and push them yet another degree further from Ingress. Maybe something we can do in odd moments while we are running here and there would be ok, an individual event where we could choose to play or not. But for many of us, holidays don't mean MORE time to play Ingress. It means our families rightfully require us to put our phones down and celebrate together with all our hearts and souls. January - fine. The last two weeks of December are not really great for a group/team event. I recognize that not all of us across the world celebrate holidays at the end of December, but for quite a few of us, this is the biggest holiday of the year. Have mercy please :-)
@NianticBrian I would also add that there aren't enough active players left in my area at this point to do much in the way of group play.
Agreed @MysticalGnu - I am hyper competitive and participate in all the challenges but I will not be doing so at the expense of my family Christmas time.
@NianticBrian Been here since the beginning, old beta invite. Keep up the great work with a great game. I look forward to any events close to home where I can play ingress, have some laughs and make friends. Looking forward to 2020 and new agents discoving the fun!
@NianticBrian
As an American who does not celebrate any December holidays, THANK YOU for having an event for the last two weeks of December. Events such as these allow us to join into a holiday tradition, It also gives us something interesting to do with all of those random (to us) days off our work schedule.
For those who celebrate, I understand that Christmas season is a busy time for the year. I'd love to see you all use Ingress events as a way to take off the stress during the holiday season and spread the holiday cheer. Perhaps you can even convince your friends and family to join your faction.
I want to see more events, not less. Unfortunately, that means that some events will conflict with some folks' personal calendars. If there are many events and you can't make one of them, I'm sure your team will understand. Just attend the next event. :)
This sounds like the bubble the researchers in the lore are in. Maybe the story has been depicting the reality of Niantic (as NIA)?
I think an important part to bring up is the launch of Prime had such a focus on a new "onboarding" process.
I feel like engagement for new players (and old) is jarring. We know we want more anomalies but we also need engagement for new players. We know the announcement a few weeks ago about "nano packs" were for this but the "onboarding" still seems very minimal - like more is missing.
There are 2 weekends left this month. They are usually a hectic time where availability needs to be coordinated with other family members. When do you expect to reveal this?
Swag? What?
Question is, is it such a, good idea having a global event now with xmas ans holidays around the corner? Not sure but i know many players will have it hard ditch their family and friends just to go out play and help the global challenge whatever it will require us to do....
Better imo would be do the global event first or second week of Jan 2020.
do you guys have any ideas for next April?
We already ditch the whole year, why not the last week too?
That's great but a bit more heads up would be great. We've gone from a years notice ahead of time on events to 3-0 months advanced notice. It lets us plan around other events. I actually liked it when we had the whole year's worth of Anomalies listed.
@NianticBrian It seems that Niantic has been going backwards for some time now. Perhaps, it's because you don't understand that we like competition and that's what we are asking for. You are taking the Teamwork out of the faction by going to individual competitions, which are led by a big corporation with little understanding of what grassroots means, yet they seem to use the definition often. You don't seem to realize that POGO players are switching to Ingress, because they are looking for something different. That difference is that we create teamwork, within our communities, which we use to recruit for our larger agendas of winning anomalies.
Neutral events like xfact Shards and hexathalon are not in the spirit of the game. It will become a boring game with no competitors. I think that it's a serious mistake to not have more anomalies scheduled. You are building apathy in the community. Many of my friends are grumbling, because they can't afford to attend an anomaly in Europe. Anomalies should happen more frequently and in more locations.
The combination of a poorly executed switch to Prime and neutralizing competition will bring Ingress to a much quicker ending.