To be fair, Prime dropping early without a sufficient beta wasn't necessarily Niantic's choice, they were forced into it by Apple dropping iOS support for Redacted's game engine software suddenly that October (2018) just after the Cassandra Prime anomalies, and had to scramble to get Prime out while they negotiated for a year's support for Redacted to give them time to get Prime into better shape. That extended support ended in September 2019 and that's when Redacted had to retire. From what was said at the San Diego primary, I think they had every intention of running a longer beta and doing a big launch (likely at Abaddon Prime Chicago), but got handicapped by Apple/RoboVM. I pretty much consider Prime 2019 as the beta, and it's this year that's really the fully developed "launch" version (well it's always going to be a work in progress, but it's pretty playable these days and I like it).
So yeah anyway, players need to keep that in mind when talking about the early versions of Prime. Could they have been better communicating what was going on? Probably, but it's not always all their fault. It's entirely possible due to the nature of contracts with Apple/RoboVM they couldn't talk about what was going on too.
Those are all legitimate reasons that I would have loved to have heard when everything was going down. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that was communicated to the community. I was active in a few different Ingress communities back then, and everyone I spoke to felt blindsided by how things went down. We knew about RoboVM being deprecated, of course, but the reintroduction of Scanner:Redacted seemed to suggest it wasn't as big an issue as expected.
I understand Niantic not wanting (or being able) to lay blame on other parties for releasing early, but the shortened beta and lack of communication about what was going on really gave off a sense that they were acting reactively and not proactively with releasing Prime.
I certainly agree that the discontinuation of Redacted could be better considered the "launch" of Prime, but unfortunately that was just not how Niantic communicated things and I think they ended up paying for it.
I have every app review from the Play Store sent to my inbox, and it's a clear split between 5-star or 1-star reviews. People like Ingress, or they really want us to know how much they don't.
I hear you loud and clear, and I'd like to find ways to try and win you back by improving Ingress Prime. Also, to clarify some speculation in this thread, Google changed the way Play Store ratings work in Aug 2019 to place greater emphasis on recent reviews. The 3.0 rating reflects our Ingress reviews coming in since I've joined the team, not our lifetime rating or reviews from Prime's launch in Nov 2018.
It's going to take some time to improve our Play Store rating, and it's on my mind because of how this impacts our ability to attract new players. If you're looking for a real world game and see Ingress has a 3.0 — I'd like to fix that. I do think it may help if more people who are actively playing right now rated Ingress. But the biggest driver will come from our continued work towards improving Ingress' stability and performance, while also building new features designed around Faction-based competition and finding ways to help cultivate community.
We've got a lot of work ahead, I appreciate all your words of support and constructive feedback, and thank you for playing our game.
Brian, please start listening to the community that asks you to do something specific in the game. Read the forum carefully. For example, а lot of agents have been waiting for you in this forum thread for a long time.
Until the community begins to cooperate with the players, the application will have a rating of 3, the vanguards will leave you, and the game will not bring decent profit.
If you want to fix this, Brian, then please consider to do something about all the points which were laid out in the following post. Please start not just saying "thanks for feedback", but actually doing something about the feedback. And communicating more often than once a month. This will improve Ingress rating better than another annoying popup.
I still love Ingress. It is by far the most interesting and enjoyable of Niantic's games for me because it is the only one that has strategic elements and the ability to make changes to the playing field. When I play Ingress I make things happen and those things affect other players. With the other two games I feel like I'm just doing the same repetitive actions over and over in order to accrue personal stats, but with Ingress I can point at the map at the end of the day and say "I did that." That is far more satisfying than anything I have done in HPWU or PoGo.
Having said that, I sometimes feel like I am in an abusive relationship with Ingress/Niantic. I have never felt like the company cared about my concerns or was interested in providing me with a better experience I've been flat out lied to by Niantic[1]. There have been so many cases where Niantic showed so little concern for the customer[2] experience that I wondered if anyone making the game had ever played it. I have not rated Ingress in the app store because I can't reconcile these paragraphs into a rating. A part of me wants to heap love on the game but another wants to be brutally honest. Being brutally honest in a forum like this can be helpful, but doing it in a rating of the business would be harmful.
So, Brian, consider me your target. I'm probably a whale by Ingress spending standards. I care deeply about the game, I've recruited many players over the years, and I've invested a lot of my personal time and energy in making Ingress successful. I would like to believe that my concerns are thoughtful and rational rather than whiny and bitchy, and that I have expressed them in a manner that is constructive and helpful. Finally, my rating of the game is up for grabs. I look forward to seeing how you and the company attempt to re-establish trust with me and the rest of the player base.
[1] We were repeatedly promised full feature parity before Redacted would be retired. I still find myself swearing several times per week because there were two features I used frequently that did not get ported. One currently has a very awkward workaround and the other literally has no way to replicate the functionality.
[2] "If you're not paying you're the product, not the customer." I just went through my email archives and figured out how much money I have lobbed at Ingress through the play store. As it turns out I didn't even correctly guess the number of digits. I have deliberately flung a lot of cash at Niantic by paying for frackers[3] at nearly every build I attend, spewing 200 toast beacons in Manhattan to get back to L16, deploying 500 beacons during a rolling bus event because it was more fun than fighting for deploys, and generally just spewing money at Ingress so it would stick around.
[3] Though I will admit that I slowed way down when Niantic capriciously raised the price of frackers to an absurd level. I've heard that the rationale was that there was too much gear in the game, but doubling the amount of toil required to gear up doesn't increase the fun factor of the game for anyone. This event is a prime example of the disrespect that Niantic has for its customers.
some highlights of 1* ratings in the google store..
May 14, 2020
1
Blocked for rooted phones. Even if it's not rooted anymore, the app thinks it is and you can't play. Basically, if you have ever done anything to your phone, this is unplayable. Terrible choice.
May 13, 2020
1
Ruined by spoofers and Niantic refuse/do nothing to address the issue.
ay 13, 2020
1
Used to love the game. Stopped working on my phone after an update, and I had already been feeling disenfranchised with changes to the live event structuring. So I guess I'm done.
1
May 12, 2020Keep trying to download Prime but it simply won't install. Bring back Redacted!!!
1
May 11, 2020Ingress is a dead game! Niantic never listen to the playerbase they just do what they want to do no matter what. They because money making company as soon as they launched ingress!
Muchos jugadores dejaron e desintalaron y calificaron en play store en baja calificación por decisión de dar el scaner redacter..
Mala decisión...
Ese scaner era parte de la esencia del juego..
Actualmente el prime.. Es vulnerable muchos spoofer aprovechan de hacer actividad destruir portales capturados de agentes que viajaron
Aparte denunciar a través de soporte y que se te respondan el mismo mensaje
Agent,
Thank you for reporting this issue.
We’re writing to confirm that we have carefully reviewed your report and have taken action where appropriate. Note that not all outcomes may result in a ban. Based on our policy, we may warn a person, place restrictions on their account, or take other appropriate actions.
For privacy reasons, we cannot discuss actions taken against other agents; therefore, you will not receive any additional updates on this report. If you need to report a new incident, please submit a new report from the Help Center: http://ingress.com/support.
Thanks again for your help in keeping Ingress fun and fair.
Tampoco no veo acciones que hagan de prohíba al spoofer y sigue haciendo actividad prácticamente uno pierde el gusto por el juego..
Ingress es mas q una comunidad pero la todos los agentes tienen una paciencia y en muchos se les termino.
This is well said, and that abusive dynamic is why I finally walked away. A company that claims to value players and their perspectives, but devalues and disrespects those who represent the community and work to make things better is a dishonest company. Actions speak louder than words @NianticBrian , and the company has shown time and again that it still, after all these years, does not understand the magic of Ingress.
The new "update" is out! Where are all the people who disagreed with my "every update is slow and disappointing" comment. Because that's what the new update is all about. smh.
Nope! The green portals still has the blue flames...? And the other one is a rare bug but i think it's still not fixed. I usually just restart app and it fixes itself, like many other bugs that prime normally hoards :/
thanks for the feedback all. we do read and listen. the team (and myself) do care passionately about ingress. brian and team are working hard to fix bugs and get into position to begin adding new features.
While people can adapt to a new interface and put up with bugs, it's impossible to get anyone to put up with spoofers & multis. Not dealing with spoofers harshly is what is pushing people away. Your 3 strike policy is partly to blame. Someone on a rooted Android 7 (Redmi phone) + FGL Pro + Magisk can still spoof all over. If you do eventually decide to take action this account has already reached L16 by the 2nd strike.
fighting spoofers is hard but that's no excuse for not doing a good job of it. will have to just take that feedback and take the lumps for not doing a better job.
There is such a thing as cyberpunk, in which hackers break into networks, penetrate into a hostile environment, infiltrate the enemy’s structure ...
There are films about secret agents "mission impossible", "James Bond" and so on.
And there is an ingress scanner, which, it seems, should create an atmosphere of secrecy as in secret communities, or spy organizations. But alas, this espionage atmosphere, or I would even say the spirit ... It simply does not exist. It feels like you are playing a neon bright game about triangles, and not an intense spy strategy ... Although maybe this is just my impression.
I see your point, @GreenVam but my personal experience is the exact opposite, so I feel it's worth me chipping in to balance your view.
There are lots of posts from people who prefer Redacted, but that's not necessarily a fair picture of the average gamer's preferences, as Redacted's user-base consists of people who liked redacted!
Around the launch of Pokemon Go, I gave Ingress a quick look. All I can really remember from the few minutes I spent in game before I deleted it was that it looked like an explosion in a firework factory and I had no idea what was going on.
Around a year ago, I decided to grind Ingress just to get OPR access. I found a really interesting game about triangles, and I got hooked into it, to the extent that I play it much more than Pokemon Go these days. As for all the 'it's not a game' stuff, and the media content, I'm very happy ignoring that, it all seems a bit low budget sci-fi to me. My view is that the game would be better off without it.
I think both of you are right, in a sense. A balance between both your perspectives can be reached. The storyline out-of-game is (to be brutally honest) pretty camp, but that doesn't mean parts of it can't be added to create more compelling gameplay.
One easy addition would missions. You start with a simple daily set of tasks and add some flavor text to give it meaning.
"We detected anomalous XM readings from nearby portals. Mitigate it by creating a link star with at least four outgoing links."
"Hostile agents were spotted interacting with portals near you, but their activities were encrypted. Glyph hack different portals to see if we can decrypt their communications and gain intel."
Boom, you've added story immersion for those who care about it, while adding gameplay for those who don't.
Here is an example, this is a scanner of abnormal activity from the game s.t.a.l.k.e.r.
Stylish, ergonomic and functional, that is, nothing more. Sincere things, you look at her and imagine a colorful man with a machine gun in an anti-radiation suit and body armor ...
And what emotions does the ingress scanner evoke?
During training, yes, there is that unique atmosphere. Even the visual effects of noise on the screen look amazing. Just think, they’re recruiting me into a secret organization! What's next? The gameplay is like a cardiogram of a deceased, smooth and uniform. The sense of real in-game danger to the world disappears, and after several weeks of active play, the secret of the agent disappears. Everyone knows everything about the enemy and the enemy knows everything about you - where he went, what he did, which portal was captured. There is no atmosphere of secrecy inside the software product, no secrets and mysteries.
There is no spirit of secret penetration into the enemy system, no spirit of underground resistance, no spirit of selfless struggle to defend the world. Agree for most players, the plot is not known since it is not represented in the game. If a person is not picked up and brought to the plot chats, then he will not know for what purpose he draws triangles.
I'm not talking about the fact that even the bright topic of Pokemon is visible in the afternoon better than the ingress scanner.
And one more thing. There is a scanner created by ADA and there is a scanner patched by jarvis. Why is there no attempt to conquer the scanner technology? For example, if one fraction wins, then the other begins to interrupt the scanner, periodically junk functions, and so on?
Personally, my opinion is that the scanner is absolutely not like a secret agent tool.
We know about all the committed actions of the enemy, and I will say even more than each individual agent. Shouldn't an agent conduct its operations covertly without impersonating itself once again?
I follow your logic but arrive to a very different conclusion. Everything you described sounds like justification for adding more features to increase that cyper-spy aesthetic, rather than removing it entirely. The devs could add a mod that pixelates player names on portals when viewed by the opposing faction. They could add a cloaking device that prevents a player's activities from being broadcast to the opposing faction. They could add the ability to create covert faction channels in the in-game comms that require a password to join, instead of having an unsecured free-for-all in the current faction chat.
I beg you to open a topic with (more of) your ideas if you didn't already. They're really good, and I think such topic would be a great reading (and talking).
Symbol, image, metaphor of Spyware to protect the world from rivals. This is what a scanner should be. And it should become a scanner - a functional, stylish, ergonomic “device”. Nothing more is needed. The plot should be, but it should be presented in the scanner, at least with the help of voice assistants Jarvis and ADA. While the storyline in the scanner is expressed extremely unfinished, because of this, newcomers often ask what kind of face is this on media? And what kind of piece of picture fell out of the portal? Ordinary agents should also be involved in the plot.
The redact problem can be easily solved by adding a skin feature into the game.
Just by change colour pallets will already work as a good pacifier for almost every redacted orphans out there. If change some of the buttons styles and places/format would be a even better solution, pacifier and milk.
@Hydraulinski They also would need to reimplement a couple of things for feature parity. I care less about the look and feel than I do about the features that I used to do easily and regularly... things are now difficult or impossible. I used to just be able to take a quick screenshot of a stats screen and share it with friends, or keep it for my history, and now that requires multiple OS screenshots plus an external program to reassemble the manual ones into a single image I used navigate to portal regularly for exploring an area quickly and efficiently and now that's just impossible-- there is no workaround.
I find myself wanting to do one of those two things nearly every day, and every time it's just as frustrating as it was when Redacted went away.
Comments
To be fair, Prime dropping early without a sufficient beta wasn't necessarily Niantic's choice, they were forced into it by Apple dropping iOS support for Redacted's game engine software suddenly that October (2018) just after the Cassandra Prime anomalies, and had to scramble to get Prime out while they negotiated for a year's support for Redacted to give them time to get Prime into better shape. That extended support ended in September 2019 and that's when Redacted had to retire. From what was said at the San Diego primary, I think they had every intention of running a longer beta and doing a big launch (likely at Abaddon Prime Chicago), but got handicapped by Apple/RoboVM. I pretty much consider Prime 2019 as the beta, and it's this year that's really the fully developed "launch" version (well it's always going to be a work in progress, but it's pretty playable these days and I like it).
So yeah anyway, players need to keep that in mind when talking about the early versions of Prime. Could they have been better communicating what was going on? Probably, but it's not always all their fault. It's entirely possible due to the nature of contracts with Apple/RoboVM they couldn't talk about what was going on too.
This is actually a good idea... I'm probably gonna change my 5* to 4* once this comes out
Those are all legitimate reasons that I would have loved to have heard when everything was going down. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that was communicated to the community. I was active in a few different Ingress communities back then, and everyone I spoke to felt blindsided by how things went down. We knew about RoboVM being deprecated, of course, but the reintroduction of Scanner:Redacted seemed to suggest it wasn't as big an issue as expected.
I understand Niantic not wanting (or being able) to lay blame on other parties for releasing early, but the shortened beta and lack of communication about what was going on really gave off a sense that they were acting reactively and not proactively with releasing Prime.
I certainly agree that the discontinuation of Redacted could be better considered the "launch" of Prime, but unfortunately that was just not how Niantic communicated things and I think they ended up paying for it.
I have every app review from the Play Store sent to my inbox, and it's a clear split between 5-star or 1-star reviews. People like Ingress, or they really want us to know how much they don't.
I hear you loud and clear, and I'd like to find ways to try and win you back by improving Ingress Prime. Also, to clarify some speculation in this thread, Google changed the way Play Store ratings work in Aug 2019 to place greater emphasis on recent reviews. The 3.0 rating reflects our Ingress reviews coming in since I've joined the team, not our lifetime rating or reviews from Prime's launch in Nov 2018.
It's going to take some time to improve our Play Store rating, and it's on my mind because of how this impacts our ability to attract new players. If you're looking for a real world game and see Ingress has a 3.0 — I'd like to fix that. I do think it may help if more people who are actively playing right now rated Ingress. But the biggest driver will come from our continued work towards improving Ingress' stability and performance, while also building new features designed around Faction-based competition and finding ways to help cultivate community.
We've got a lot of work ahead, I appreciate all your words of support and constructive feedback, and thank you for playing our game.
Brian, please start listening to the community that asks you to do something specific in the game. Read the forum carefully. For example, а lot of agents have been waiting for you in this forum thread for a long time.
Until the community begins to cooperate with the players, the application will have a rating of 3, the vanguards will leave you, and the game will not bring decent profit.
Most of 1* are prime haters.
But breaking things in each patch might have also a part in it.
Like throwing everyone in poor rating in wayfarer while giving double recon.
If you want to fix this, Brian, then please consider to do something about all the points which were laid out in the following post. Please start not just saying "thanks for feedback", but actually doing something about the feedback. And communicating more often than once a month. This will improve Ingress rating better than another annoying popup.
Thank you @NianticBrian for your candid response.
I still love Ingress. It is by far the most interesting and enjoyable of Niantic's games for me because it is the only one that has strategic elements and the ability to make changes to the playing field. When I play Ingress I make things happen and those things affect other players. With the other two games I feel like I'm just doing the same repetitive actions over and over in order to accrue personal stats, but with Ingress I can point at the map at the end of the day and say "I did that." That is far more satisfying than anything I have done in HPWU or PoGo.
Having said that, I sometimes feel like I am in an abusive relationship with Ingress/Niantic. I have never felt like the company cared about my concerns or was interested in providing me with a better experience I've been flat out lied to by Niantic[1]. There have been so many cases where Niantic showed so little concern for the customer[2] experience that I wondered if anyone making the game had ever played it. I have not rated Ingress in the app store because I can't reconcile these paragraphs into a rating. A part of me wants to heap love on the game but another wants to be brutally honest. Being brutally honest in a forum like this can be helpful, but doing it in a rating of the business would be harmful.
So, Brian, consider me your target. I'm probably a whale by Ingress spending standards. I care deeply about the game, I've recruited many players over the years, and I've invested a lot of my personal time and energy in making Ingress successful. I would like to believe that my concerns are thoughtful and rational rather than whiny and bitchy, and that I have expressed them in a manner that is constructive and helpful. Finally, my rating of the game is up for grabs. I look forward to seeing how you and the company attempt to re-establish trust with me and the rest of the player base.
[1] We were repeatedly promised full feature parity before Redacted would be retired. I still find myself swearing several times per week because there were two features I used frequently that did not get ported. One currently has a very awkward workaround and the other literally has no way to replicate the functionality.
[2] "If you're not paying you're the product, not the customer." I just went through my email archives and figured out how much money I have lobbed at Ingress through the play store. As it turns out I didn't even correctly guess the number of digits. I have deliberately flung a lot of cash at Niantic by paying for frackers[3] at nearly every build I attend, spewing 200 toast beacons in Manhattan to get back to L16, deploying 500 beacons during a rolling bus event because it was more fun than fighting for deploys, and generally just spewing money at Ingress so it would stick around.
[3] Though I will admit that I slowed way down when Niantic capriciously raised the price of frackers to an absurd level. I've heard that the rationale was that there was too much gear in the game, but doubling the amount of toil required to gear up doesn't increase the fun factor of the game for anyone. This event is a prime example of the disrespect that Niantic has for its customers.
some highlights of 1* ratings in the google store..
May 14, 2020
1
Blocked for rooted phones. Even if it's not rooted anymore, the app thinks it is and you can't play. Basically, if you have ever done anything to your phone, this is unplayable. Terrible choice.
May 13, 2020
1
Ruined by spoofers and Niantic refuse/do nothing to address the issue.
ay 13, 2020
1
Used to love the game. Stopped working on my phone after an update, and I had already been feeling disenfranchised with changes to the live event structuring. So I guess I'm done.
1
May 12, 2020Keep trying to download Prime but it simply won't install. Bring back Redacted!!!
1
May 11, 2020Ingress is a dead game! Niantic never listen to the playerbase they just do what they want to do no matter what. They because money making company as soon as they launched ingress!
Actualmente es juego dejo de ser atractivo
Muchos jugadores dejaron e desintalaron y calificaron en play store en baja calificación por decisión de dar el scaner redacter..
Mala decisión...
Ese scaner era parte de la esencia del juego..
Actualmente el prime.. Es vulnerable muchos spoofer aprovechan de hacer actividad destruir portales capturados de agentes que viajaron
Aparte denunciar a través de soporte y que se te respondan el mismo mensaje
Agent,
Thank you for reporting this issue.
We’re writing to confirm that we have carefully reviewed your report and have taken action where appropriate. Note that not all outcomes may result in a ban. Based on our policy, we may warn a person, place restrictions on their account, or take other appropriate actions.
For privacy reasons, we cannot discuss actions taken against other agents; therefore, you will not receive any additional updates on this report. If you need to report a new incident, please submit a new report from the Help Center: http://ingress.com/support.
Thanks again for your help in keeping Ingress fun and fair.
Tampoco no veo acciones que hagan de prohíba al spoofer y sigue haciendo actividad prácticamente uno pierde el gusto por el juego..
Ingress es mas q una comunidad pero la todos los agentes tienen una paciencia y en muchos se les termino.
Saludos
Thanks ✊✊✊
This is well said, and that abusive dynamic is why I finally walked away. A company that claims to value players and their perspectives, but devalues and disrespects those who represent the community and work to make things better is a dishonest company. Actions speak louder than words @NianticBrian , and the company has shown time and again that it still, after all these years, does not understand the magic of Ingress.
The new "update" is out! Where are all the people who disagreed with my "every update is slow and disappointing" comment. Because that's what the new update is all about. smh.
did new update fix ghost links ? or portals that refuses to throw out a link eventhough it looks like it should and not getting any errors ?
Nope! The green portals still has the blue flames...? And the other one is a rare bug but i think it's still not fixed. I usually just restart app and it fixes itself, like many other bugs that prime normally hoards :/
thanks for the feedback all. we do read and listen. the team (and myself) do care passionately about ingress. brian and team are working hard to fix bugs and get into position to begin adding new features.
Great to hear im excited about upcoming features to Ingress.
While people can adapt to a new interface and put up with bugs, it's impossible to get anyone to put up with spoofers & multis. Not dealing with spoofers harshly is what is pushing people away. Your 3 strike policy is partly to blame. Someone on a rooted Android 7 (Redmi phone) + FGL Pro + Magisk can still spoof all over. If you do eventually decide to take action this account has already reached L16 by the 2nd strike.
On the topic of retaining players. A major change that would overcome that and more is suggested here. https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/comment/96281
fighting spoofers is hard but that's no excuse for not doing a good job of it. will have to just take that feedback and take the lumps for not doing a better job.
Redacted (upper case to show respect) didn't die. It was murdered and replaced with an imposter.
And some of us are still around, if only to watch the show.
There is such a thing as cyberpunk, in which hackers break into networks, penetrate into a hostile environment, infiltrate the enemy’s structure ...
There are films about secret agents "mission impossible", "James Bond" and so on.
And there is an ingress scanner, which, it seems, should create an atmosphere of secrecy as in secret communities, or spy organizations. But alas, this espionage atmosphere, or I would even say the spirit ... It simply does not exist. It feels like you are playing a neon bright game about triangles, and not an intense spy strategy ... Although maybe this is just my impression.
I see your point, @GreenVam but my personal experience is the exact opposite, so I feel it's worth me chipping in to balance your view.
There are lots of posts from people who prefer Redacted, but that's not necessarily a fair picture of the average gamer's preferences, as Redacted's user-base consists of people who liked redacted!
Around the launch of Pokemon Go, I gave Ingress a quick look. All I can really remember from the few minutes I spent in game before I deleted it was that it looked like an explosion in a firework factory and I had no idea what was going on.
Around a year ago, I decided to grind Ingress just to get OPR access. I found a really interesting game about triangles, and I got hooked into it, to the extent that I play it much more than Pokemon Go these days. As for all the 'it's not a game' stuff, and the media content, I'm very happy ignoring that, it all seems a bit low budget sci-fi to me. My view is that the game would be better off without it.
I think both of you are right, in a sense. A balance between both your perspectives can be reached. The storyline out-of-game is (to be brutally honest) pretty camp, but that doesn't mean parts of it can't be added to create more compelling gameplay.
One easy addition would missions. You start with a simple daily set of tasks and add some flavor text to give it meaning.
"We detected anomalous XM readings from nearby portals. Mitigate it by creating a link star with at least four outgoing links."
"Hostile agents were spotted interacting with portals near you, but their activities were encrypted. Glyph hack different portals to see if we can decrypt their communications and gain intel."
Boom, you've added story immersion for those who care about it, while adding gameplay for those who don't.
Friends, let's drop the whole plot and leave only the scanner (as a software product).
Here is an example, this is a scanner of abnormal activity from the game s.t.a.l.k.e.r.
Stylish, ergonomic and functional, that is, nothing more. Sincere things, you look at her and imagine a colorful man with a machine gun in an anti-radiation suit and body armor ...
And what emotions does the ingress scanner evoke?
During training, yes, there is that unique atmosphere. Even the visual effects of noise on the screen look amazing. Just think, they’re recruiting me into a secret organization! What's next? The gameplay is like a cardiogram of a deceased, smooth and uniform. The sense of real in-game danger to the world disappears, and after several weeks of active play, the secret of the agent disappears. Everyone knows everything about the enemy and the enemy knows everything about you - where he went, what he did, which portal was captured. There is no atmosphere of secrecy inside the software product, no secrets and mysteries.
There is no spirit of secret penetration into the enemy system, no spirit of underground resistance, no spirit of selfless struggle to defend the world. Agree for most players, the plot is not known since it is not represented in the game. If a person is not picked up and brought to the plot chats, then he will not know for what purpose he draws triangles.
I'm not talking about the fact that even the bright topic of Pokemon is visible in the afternoon better than the ingress scanner.
And one more thing. There is a scanner created by ADA and there is a scanner patched by jarvis. Why is there no attempt to conquer the scanner technology? For example, if one fraction wins, then the other begins to interrupt the scanner, periodically junk functions, and so on?
Personally, my opinion is that the scanner is absolutely not like a secret agent tool.
We know about all the committed actions of the enemy, and I will say even more than each individual agent. Shouldn't an agent conduct its operations covertly without impersonating itself once again?
I follow your logic but arrive to a very different conclusion. Everything you described sounds like justification for adding more features to increase that cyper-spy aesthetic, rather than removing it entirely. The devs could add a mod that pixelates player names on portals when viewed by the opposing faction. They could add a cloaking device that prevents a player's activities from being broadcast to the opposing faction. They could add the ability to create covert faction channels in the in-game comms that require a password to join, instead of having an unsecured free-for-all in the current faction chat.
I beg you to open a topic with (more of) your ideas if you didn't already. They're really good, and I think such topic would be a great reading (and talking).
Symbol, image, metaphor of Spyware to protect the world from rivals. This is what a scanner should be. And it should become a scanner - a functional, stylish, ergonomic “device”. Nothing more is needed. The plot should be, but it should be presented in the scanner, at least with the help of voice assistants Jarvis and ADA. While the storyline in the scanner is expressed extremely unfinished, because of this, newcomers often ask what kind of face is this on media? And what kind of piece of picture fell out of the portal? Ordinary agents should also be involved in the plot.
The redact problem can be easily solved by adding a skin feature into the game.
Just by change colour pallets will already work as a good pacifier for almost every redacted orphans out there. If change some of the buttons styles and places/format would be a even better solution, pacifier and milk.
@Hydraulinski They also would need to reimplement a couple of things for feature parity. I care less about the look and feel than I do about the features that I used to do easily and regularly... things are now difficult or impossible. I used to just be able to take a quick screenshot of a stats screen and share it with friends, or keep it for my history, and now that requires multiple OS screenshots plus an external program to reassemble the manual ones into a single image I used navigate to portal regularly for exploring an area quickly and efficiently and now that's just impossible-- there is no workaround.
I find myself wanting to do one of those two things nearly every day, and every time it's just as frustrating as it was when Redacted went away.