Hack droprate change suggestion
Currently if you hack a Level 7 portal, you get some 6's and 8's along with 7's.
Instead of basing the level on portal level, I propose changing it to 8 chances to get gear, each based on the level of the resonator.
This would make a level 7 portal with more 8's gradually approach the same output as a level 8 portal.
The current random +-1 level could still apply, so a level 8 portal has the same output as now, with some 7's.
This would allow farms to be called in areas where its not possible to get 8 players, and with a finer degree of granularity than having double deploy events where 4 agents can make an 8. Now 6 agents could make a reasonably good portal.
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a) From the little droprate information people have given, the balance of higher vs lower items is affected by the resonator totals, not just the coarse level value.
b) If you want to make more L8 gear available, double deploy literally does that already, and requires no development work.
This seems like a convoluted method of getting gear without a team, that would be near impossible to explain to a new player, and take valuable development time away from more important things.
Hacking isn't broken, and they can manipulate the deploy counts to adjust the density of portal levels already. We've got a lot more 6s right now by giving everyone an extra R7 for example.
I spent a month in a city with zero level 8 portals. (We had a farm and only got 7.)
I visited another city where there were exactly two level 8 portals when I arrived, and because they were the wrong color, there were zero when I left.
While needing 8 people to make level 8 portals is an important part of the game, there are lots of places where the critical mass to do that either never developed or is gone.
The suggestion above would give people motivation to upgrade portals that they don't expect to ever get to a full 8, and chip away a bit at the idea that level 8 resos are a precious commodity which needs to be hoarded carefully.
I have never heard before that total reso power affects anything but link distance; it's certainly not documented anywhere.
An alternative way to encourage people to upgrade portals would be a Mason badge. Like Builder, but 1 point for a 6, 2 points for a 7, and 5 points for an 8, and upgrades of your own don't count. (And of course a Wrecker badge as the opposite.)
So I deploy a single level 8 resonator.
The portal level is now 1, but I can hack L8 gear?
Correct, that is the suggested mechanic. Instead of 1 roll of the dice based on portal level (in this case level 1), you would get 8 rolls of dice - one per resonator. Each roll would give 1/8 as much gear/odds, so with only one R8 your odds of getting an 8 are still very low, but not zero.
On the single resonator, it would still be a roll of the dice, and you might get a 7, and probably wont get an 8 unless you have it many times. Your odds would go up with more 8s.
This would apply to resonators and xmp where there is a dice roll based on portal level.
I think there should be a more individual and greed incentive to upgrade portal, like r7 and 8 providing more AP.
I have no motivation to upgrade portal to the max because I don't need lv 5+ gear, neither attack or resonators, due the lack of players in my area. I would instantly trade all my 300+ xmp8 for level 1 resonators right now.
I'm not sure I like that mechanic. Sometimes I intentionally "under-deploy" a portal to farm low level gear because that's what I need. With your suggestion instead of guarantee that I get low level gear that I need, there's a chance I'd get high level gear which I don't need...🤔
Similarly, if I'm helping lower level player gear up, if I deploy my R8, there'd now be a chance that player might hack useless-to-them higher level gear.
Total reso power does not affect droprate. Just the level of portal: A level 7 portal with 2 R8's is the same as a level 7 portal with 7 R8's.
I dont dislike your Mason badge idea, but I dont know if it would help?
It would help in the case where people have the resonators, but little incentive to bump.
But it wouldnt help where there arent high level portals, youve run out of high level resonators and there aren't many agents
If anything, your Mason badge would disadvantage those agents that dont have a way to get high level resonators?
As it is now, if a low level player hacks a high level portal, they get gear at their level, as if the portal was the level of the agent. That could stay the same, just applied to each resonator.
Also you could deploy low level resonators to select what level you'd like. e.g. 88888884 would give you a change at a 4.
Trivia: A 'rainbow' portal is a portal with 1 of every level resonator on it. It looks pretty in the scanner, like a rainbow of colors.
With the hack droprate change proposal, such a portal would give you a chance at every level of gear.
Use ADA or Jarvis to Easy get L8 portal with 2 agents. Very nice balance now and niantic screws up hacks on events often now.
ADA / Jarvis is not practical:
-flip cards are very rare. It would take too many to do on a regular basis.
-It takes too long - 12 flips, so 12 hours. during this time, an enemy can easily **** it.
Some users have suggested a variation of my proposal.:
Make portal level fine grained, as far as hacks go. Use the sum of the resonator level. So I high level 7 gives more 8s than a low level 7.
This achieves my intent and reduces the need for double deploy. A few agents can make a pretty good portal compared to just 1 agent, and not require a large gathering of 8 agents, which is very hard to get with so few active agents during the pandemic. In my area the covid restrictions are relaxing, but agents that stopped playing havent come back, and most of the world is still struggling.
I'd rather see a new "raid pass" item equivalent, where players are given one or two per week. Item allows them to double deploy on one or two portals. That way a group of 4 can meetup once a week, build and farm 8s in a single spot, and then do it next week wherever they meet up. Some sort of time limitation that all people have to activate their raid passes at the same time, otherwise they can't activate and double deploy. Make it a social item. No stacking them, the item is max of 1 or 2 in inventory until you use them and get more. Maybe hand it out when you get your epoch 7 day streak and call it an Epoch deployment module?
Ya that works. I dont play PoGo, but its sounds like there would be special item that enables short term 2x deploy.
As the pandemic is winding down in the US, things havent changed much. I think we simply lost too many players to build 8s anymore.