Going to add my voice here that this feels like a slap in the face.
Battle Beacons aren't necessarily 100% boring, but they can be experienced in full potential anywhere with a little organizing from both teams without any official parties involved. Shards are a bit more interesting, but it seems that they can be experienced often elsewhere and their concept seems more interesting for large area events. Then the medal.. can also be earned anywhere with little to no effort. MD medal is a little more interesting, but there's also no distinction whenever you did some local any 6 missions past year vs actually went somewhere? Medals (ideally) represent the memory of having been somewhere, running into someone later who went to the same thing so you can connect by sharing memories of the trip. Obviously nobody goes to events for the medal, but people do generally want to bring memories home from an adventure. A memory distinguishable from sitting at home.
The only activity worth travelling for seems to be Goruck... but what do we need Ingress in for that? The main attraction is meeting other agents, but.. that could be organized on our own too.
Also what ever happened to lore? What is the purpose of Superposition? What are we even fighting for? Will there be characters at the site? Will there be any decoding, clues?
Overall this seems like nobody at niantic bothered to put any effort in. How can you expect agents to get excited and put effort into organizing the battle if the official aspects read as a lazy flop? All these questions, will it be worth the travel?
This is utter BS. It is profoundly idiotic to devalue anomaly by giving the badge to lazy twunts playing with their home portal. I understand recharge rooms giving badges because they actually interact with portals on site and require key transports. But giving badge in exhange of self deployed bbs is just stupid. I myself have missed one anomaly badge due to conflicting schedules and I'm happy it is so. I did not interact with site portals and helping with dead drops back then was awarded in another way. NIA should exclude self deployed bbs from this badge completely.
I don't often stack on the outrage on things Ingress but this is just wrong.
I already think the anomaly BB events were questionable at best, but covid times. restrictions, whatever I get you want to do something. I can get on board with that.
But now that we can have an actual anomaly, it's still just the same BB event with extremely low targets that anyone anywere can just participate in?
What is the point of me forking over half a grand to be in Munich then?
Please restrict this event to just this city at the very least. It's just not a proper anomaly if you don't explicitly have to be there in some capacity to be awarded for it.
There is one positive, this way there might not be enough players in one place and the game might actually not lag out 100%. I fear for the event given the current latency issues.
Again, I think the communication is the issue. It's clear now that the community's expectation of the anomaly was way WAY different than what Niantic was planning to deliver. Key people in Ingress/Niantic claim that they follow the forum and chat groups even if they don't participate, so if that's true, they would have to know where it was heading almost from day 1, but did absolutely nothing to adjust the expectations over the last months/weeks by offering the details early on. This is purely on them.
after umbra 2019 it was clear that the number of anomalies was gonna be heavy reduced but i still think just 1 big anomaly in europe is not enough, not everyone can afford or want travel due to the costs and other stuff in the way kids work etc....
100% with you. As detailed in another thread, I want the 12 sites per weekend style that we'd settled on years ago and it worked. Then they can make anomalies realistic, and no-one's more than 4000kms from a site, to recharge if that's their thing, but easier to attend if they're able.
A single site in Europe is only good for Europeans and people rich enough to blow X thousand dollars for a video game.
I feel like this isn't really about on-site vs. off-site so much as it is about site vs. non-site.
Traveling to a site means your actions contribute to a specific site and compete against a specific group of other agents. The same is true for recharge rooms, intel operators, and Umbra-style decoding.
Plopping a battle beacon down by your lonesome self is qualitatively different. Your action might technically contribute to the global score and thus rightfully be eligible for recognition, but it lacks competition against an opponent, seen or unseen.
The logic is: if you are going to lose, you are better off abandoning the fight. If you continue, the portals interactions value keeps increasing hence the beacons worth more points to the winning faction. Better to walk away and leave them with a low point win.
Since the forum doesn't accept longer posts, split up in three parts. Part 2:
Flaw 2: No Elite Boss reward
Ever game has challenges that are difficult to overcome, and those challenges are usually rewarding. In MMORPG’s those are often a huge elite boss or dragon that needs to be killed, most likely with a group of players and a mix of skillsets needed. The reward is for instance a unique sword/ item or a unique skill, and it shows to all other players what you have achieved. Yes, status is part of games. And pride!
The equivalent in Ingress are badges. There are many elements in which agents can show their skill, but most are progress based and not event based: adding more mu or hacks will “up” the badge towards black. There are several event-based badges, but there is only one that is comparable to killing the elite boss dragon. And that is the anomaly badge.
There are many drivers for agents to join an event, or join to battle and elite boss. Working together, strategic planning, testing skills, etc. And in case of an anomaly, all the added events like Goruck or the party. But…. There still needs to be a reward for killing the elite boss. Without that, basic gameplay rules that have been researched for decades now, are ignored.
The badge that can be obtained for battling in the anomaly is now easy to be obtained by ****: putting 10 battle beacons on the neighborhood portals and interact. This inflation of reward, and the inflation of status and pride is ignoring every aspect of good game design.
Niantic has moved in the direction of making every small BB event or deploying 10 BB’s comparable to killing the elite boss, calling at an anomaly and rewarding with the same badge. And that movement is just wrong from a game design perspective. **** (deploying 20 BB’s) is not comparable to a small boss (local small BB event) and certainly not to killing the elite boss (anomaly). There is no problem with funding game mechanics that earn Niantic money; there is a problem with ignoring fundamental game design criteria.
Wow Niantic. I spent £600 on being in Munich, and I feel like I could've better used it elsewhere.
1) Presence in Munich, hacking the reg portal, needs to be enough for the badge. I've spent money and travelled, and if I get put on a shard team, I won't get the badge? Seriously? I already had this happen. I travelled 150 miles to get to Cambridge UK last month. I was on a shard target portal. I didn't get the badge. People who played the event heavily still had to then go deploy some BBs to get the badge.
2) BBs completely change how the anomaly fight works. We know that we give more points to the opposition if we fight a hopeless battle. As such, there is way less interaction, teams don't want to risk giving the other team more points. BBs are BAD for anomalies. We need to see the small teams taking on the big teams, and sometimes even winning. This NEVER happens with BBs because they need to walk away and not risk it. Is it fun to walk 10 minutes to a BB, see it's surrounded by the other faction, and so just not do anything? No it is not.
3) Even when there is a fight for a BB, it isn't fun. BBs tend to clump players more than they used to be in actual anomalies, You end up with feeling like you aren't contributing because 20-40 (or more) players can be surrounding one portal. Anyone remember charlie chaplain statue in London flash shards? 100+ agents of each side surrounding it. No idea if it's even worth letting off bursters because anything you do is instantly undone.
4) The decision to award the same badge to anyone who just deploys a few BBs is a plain old money grab. And it will mean this is likely the last anomaly, as people will not trust you again that anomalies are worth going to.
5) I just. I am beyond disappoited. There is a reason why Niantic is a word synonymous with self inflicted injury. You're killing the best part of the game. Anomalies are good enough to bring people out of retirement, make them travel across continents, spend periods of time away from home. BB events - most people can't be bothered to go to the next city, There is a reason for this. They just are NOT THAT MUCH FUN.
6) Anomalies don't need to be expensive for Niantic. TBH not many people really care if Niantic is there at all. Set up a reg portal, set some FUN rules, and the factions will do the rest. We are happy to do our after parties, faction and xfac - all you need to do is designate sites and apply fun rules. Then you can go back to having 2 dates, 12 anomaly sites, like you used to have, and everyone will be happy. You'll still make money from the sale of frackers and beacons. Even some BBs will likely be sold. Just stop giving us a wet t u r d when we wanted something fun.
People are paying a lot of dollars to come to Munich just to realize that they could done it remotely. Without taking vacations, buying tickets or hotels. This is not anomaly. This is bullcrop.
If you want money - just bring the freaking swag. We are paying hundreds of dollars to go there - we will get swag for 25-50$ for sure.
Bring people from your team for paid AMA. Bring OPR Live. NL-1331.
Maybe pay 1000$ to Andrew Krug and ask him for consultation and simple advices how to do it.
@kamilus83 Do people really travel to anomalies for no other reason than to get the badge? That strikes me as bizarre. I've traveled to a lot of anomalies, including flying as far as 3000 miles and going to another country, and the badge was always the least of my concerns. I've traveled for the people and the competition, the experience of being there. I've traveled to anomalies and run intel/dispatch from my hotel inside the playbox because I wanted to be there in person even though I was going to be sitting at a computer during the event itself... and I've occasionally scored a few points for the intel team.
The argument that people would pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for travel just to get a few pixels on their profile seems disingenuous to me.
I don’t think people are saying they only do it for the medal. I think people are saying their medals are like a passport and being able to flex certain medals says something about their level of play and the places they’ve been. If I travelled 3000 miles, participated in this awesome event, etc, etc. I want people to know exactly what that medal means when they tap on my name, that it was hard earned and not something I earned by spending $10 in the store and walking down the street to the park.
Founders union? Why aren’t they vocal about the game performance the past 1,5 years?
Anomaly is “gameplay that deviates from normal day to day”. So deploying Bb’a technically is an anomaly. It’s just not what the community wants, but niantic won’t care or change up; both coming anomaly badges can be obtained by buying Bb’s
****, people investing money in Travel, accomodation and others in organisation, the travel because it is supposed to be a special event, nothing you might as well play at home. The charme of an Anomaly is gameplay, real battle (something special) and meeting people from all over the world. If people from other countries cancel the reservations, the others will follow. Battle Beacons we 've got every Month at home and getting the same badge on site and from my couch is just ****. It is a slap in the face for Orga and Travellers.... Sorry, but this needs improvement. Keep BB out of Anomaly and please do not substitute them by portal scans for Odin's sake. Thank you...
One site won't need people from all over the world to recharge when noone is on the ground anyways, if one wants an Anomaly badge go there- oh wait no throw a beacon🤪. RR was always only second choice. And never secured for a badge. There are special badges only travellers get and that's a good thing. Makes for a special event and that's what everyone expected of Munich... Especially after waiting for 2 years, now...
Next step Hexathlon with Battle Beacon 😅 and maybe a biocard Niasection14, seriously before announcing an event it would be good to announce the rules and not change them.
Agents often assume that an anomaly medal means that you did something "worthy" of it, but in 8+ years, Niantic has never* actually required anything like that. For example:
Shonin - Someone put my name on a list, handed the list to Niantic, and I got the medal. I have a story to tell that I'm rather fond of, but Niantic didn't check for that.
Myriad - I literally could have left home, walked down the street to an anomaly playbox, hacked 13(?) portals, walked back home, and received the medal. I did a bit more than that, considering it was a hometown anomaly, but the requirement for the medal was a few hacks in the playbox.
This is not to mention all the intervening anomalies where all someone had to do was show up and get a (free) ticket scanned or hack a "registration" portal or something else similarly trivial.
*At one point, Niantic started measuring and requiring a minimum amount of XM recharged for recharge room participants, rather than simply accepting an alleged list of attendees.
You think so? lol I think I'm stating the obvious because I've seen a TON of threads where people are super worried about their profiles and what's on them.
You really think I'm insecure because I see "value" in what a medal means?!?!? That someone is able to say, hey, I was there! Quite the assumption, but if that's what you're reading, so be it...
Comments
Excellent compromise, but nia might be too lazy to try that.
Medal for anyone with 10bb interactions is as lazy as they could be.
Going to add my voice here that this feels like a slap in the face.
Battle Beacons aren't necessarily 100% boring, but they can be experienced in full potential anywhere with a little organizing from both teams without any official parties involved. Shards are a bit more interesting, but it seems that they can be experienced often elsewhere and their concept seems more interesting for large area events. Then the medal.. can also be earned anywhere with little to no effort. MD medal is a little more interesting, but there's also no distinction whenever you did some local any 6 missions past year vs actually went somewhere? Medals (ideally) represent the memory of having been somewhere, running into someone later who went to the same thing so you can connect by sharing memories of the trip. Obviously nobody goes to events for the medal, but people do generally want to bring memories home from an adventure. A memory distinguishable from sitting at home.
The only activity worth travelling for seems to be Goruck... but what do we need Ingress in for that? The main attraction is meeting other agents, but.. that could be organized on our own too.
Also what ever happened to lore? What is the purpose of Superposition? What are we even fighting for? Will there be characters at the site? Will there be any decoding, clues?
Overall this seems like nobody at niantic bothered to put any effort in. How can you expect agents to get excited and put effort into organizing the battle if the official aspects read as a lazy flop? All these questions, will it be worth the travel?
This is utter BS. It is profoundly idiotic to devalue anomaly by giving the badge to lazy twunts playing with their home portal. I understand recharge rooms giving badges because they actually interact with portals on site and require key transports. But giving badge in exhange of self deployed bbs is just stupid. I myself have missed one anomaly badge due to conflicting schedules and I'm happy it is so. I did not interact with site portals and helping with dead drops back then was awarded in another way. NIA should exclude self deployed bbs from this badge completely.
I don't often stack on the outrage on things Ingress but this is just wrong.
I already think the anomaly BB events were questionable at best, but covid times. restrictions, whatever I get you want to do something. I can get on board with that.
But now that we can have an actual anomaly, it's still just the same BB event with extremely low targets that anyone anywere can just participate in?
What is the point of me forking over half a grand to be in Munich then?
Please restrict this event to just this city at the very least. It's just not a proper anomaly if you don't explicitly have to be there in some capacity to be awarded for it.
There is one positive, this way there might not be enough players in one place and the game might actually not lag out 100%. I fear for the event given the current latency issues.
/sarcasm
Again, I think the communication is the issue. It's clear now that the community's expectation of the anomaly was way WAY different than what Niantic was planning to deliver. Key people in Ingress/Niantic claim that they follow the forum and chat groups even if they don't participate, so if that's true, they would have to know where it was heading almost from day 1, but did absolutely nothing to adjust the expectations over the last months/weeks by offering the details early on. This is purely on them.
after umbra 2019 it was clear that the number of anomalies was gonna be heavy reduced but i still think just 1 big anomaly in europe is not enough, not everyone can afford or want travel due to the costs and other stuff in the way kids work etc....
100% with you. As detailed in another thread, I want the 12 sites per weekend style that we'd settled on years ago and it worked. Then they can make anomalies realistic, and no-one's more than 4000kms from a site, to recharge if that's their thing, but easier to attend if they're able.
A single site in Europe is only good for Europeans and people rich enough to blow X thousand dollars for a video game.
I feel like this isn't really about on-site vs. off-site so much as it is about site vs. non-site.
Traveling to a site means your actions contribute to a specific site and compete against a specific group of other agents. The same is true for recharge rooms, intel operators, and Umbra-style decoding.
Plopping a battle beacon down by your lonesome self is qualitatively different. Your action might technically contribute to the global score and thus rightfully be eligible for recognition, but it lacks competition against an opponent, seen or unseen.
Contested beacons, yes. Uncontested, no.
The problem with this is the fact that the opposition might ignore another agents battle beacon, because “they might score”.
I really don’t understand the logic, but it’s a real tactic here: “if I don’t play, you can’t play either”.
The logic is: if you are going to lose, you are better off abandoning the fight. If you continue, the portals interactions value keeps increasing hence the beacons worth more points to the winning faction. Better to walk away and leave them with a low point win.
Since the forum doesn't accept longer posts, split up in three parts. Part 2:
Flaw 2: No Elite Boss reward
Ever game has challenges that are difficult to overcome, and those challenges are usually rewarding. In MMORPG’s those are often a huge elite boss or dragon that needs to be killed, most likely with a group of players and a mix of skillsets needed. The reward is for instance a unique sword/ item or a unique skill, and it shows to all other players what you have achieved. Yes, status is part of games. And pride!
The equivalent in Ingress are badges. There are many elements in which agents can show their skill, but most are progress based and not event based: adding more mu or hacks will “up” the badge towards black. There are several event-based badges, but there is only one that is comparable to killing the elite boss dragon. And that is the anomaly badge.
There are many drivers for agents to join an event, or join to battle and elite boss. Working together, strategic planning, testing skills, etc. And in case of an anomaly, all the added events like Goruck or the party. But…. There still needs to be a reward for killing the elite boss. Without that, basic gameplay rules that have been researched for decades now, are ignored.
The badge that can be obtained for battling in the anomaly is now easy to be obtained by ****: putting 10 battle beacons on the neighborhood portals and interact. This inflation of reward, and the inflation of status and pride is ignoring every aspect of good game design.
Niantic has moved in the direction of making every small BB event or deploying 10 BB’s comparable to killing the elite boss, calling at an anomaly and rewarding with the same badge. And that movement is just wrong from a game design perspective. **** (deploying 20 BB’s) is not comparable to a small boss (local small BB event) and certainly not to killing the elite boss (anomaly). There is no problem with funding game mechanics that earn Niantic money; there is a problem with ignoring fundamental game design criteria.
Wow Niantic. I spent £600 on being in Munich, and I feel like I could've better used it elsewhere.
1) Presence in Munich, hacking the reg portal, needs to be enough for the badge. I've spent money and travelled, and if I get put on a shard team, I won't get the badge? Seriously? I already had this happen. I travelled 150 miles to get to Cambridge UK last month. I was on a shard target portal. I didn't get the badge. People who played the event heavily still had to then go deploy some BBs to get the badge.
2) BBs completely change how the anomaly fight works. We know that we give more points to the opposition if we fight a hopeless battle. As such, there is way less interaction, teams don't want to risk giving the other team more points. BBs are BAD for anomalies. We need to see the small teams taking on the big teams, and sometimes even winning. This NEVER happens with BBs because they need to walk away and not risk it. Is it fun to walk 10 minutes to a BB, see it's surrounded by the other faction, and so just not do anything? No it is not.
3) Even when there is a fight for a BB, it isn't fun. BBs tend to clump players more than they used to be in actual anomalies, You end up with feeling like you aren't contributing because 20-40 (or more) players can be surrounding one portal. Anyone remember charlie chaplain statue in London flash shards? 100+ agents of each side surrounding it. No idea if it's even worth letting off bursters because anything you do is instantly undone.
4) The decision to award the same badge to anyone who just deploys a few BBs is a plain old money grab. And it will mean this is likely the last anomaly, as people will not trust you again that anomalies are worth going to.
5) I just. I am beyond disappoited. There is a reason why Niantic is a word synonymous with self inflicted injury. You're killing the best part of the game. Anomalies are good enough to bring people out of retirement, make them travel across continents, spend periods of time away from home. BB events - most people can't be bothered to go to the next city, There is a reason for this. They just are NOT THAT MUCH FUN.
6) Anomalies don't need to be expensive for Niantic. TBH not many people really care if Niantic is there at all. Set up a reg portal, set some FUN rules, and the factions will do the rest. We are happy to do our after parties, faction and xfac - all you need to do is designate sites and apply fun rules. Then you can go back to having 2 dates, 12 anomaly sites, like you used to have, and everyone will be happy. You'll still make money from the sale of frackers and beacons. Even some BBs will likely be sold. Just stop giving us a wet t u r d when we wanted something fun.
Pffff. Well then; these won't ever be a viable anomaly minigame addon then.
I found this in a tg chat I'm in.
People are paying a lot of dollars to come to Munich just to realize that they could done it remotely. Without taking vacations, buying tickets or hotels. This is not anomaly. This is bullcrop.
If you want money - just bring the freaking swag. We are paying hundreds of dollars to go there - we will get swag for 25-50$ for sure.
Bring people from your team for paid AMA. Bring OPR Live. NL-1331.
Maybe pay 1000$ to Andrew Krug and ask him for consultation and simple advices how to do it.
Sincerely
C.O.R.E subscriber
@kamilus83 Do people really travel to anomalies for no other reason than to get the badge? That strikes me as bizarre. I've traveled to a lot of anomalies, including flying as far as 3000 miles and going to another country, and the badge was always the least of my concerns. I've traveled for the people and the competition, the experience of being there. I've traveled to anomalies and run intel/dispatch from my hotel inside the playbox because I wanted to be there in person even though I was going to be sitting at a computer during the event itself... and I've occasionally scored a few points for the intel team.
The argument that people would pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for travel just to get a few pixels on their profile seems disingenuous to me.
I don’t think people are saying they only do it for the medal. I think people are saying their medals are like a passport and being able to flex certain medals says something about their level of play and the places they’ve been. If I travelled 3000 miles, participated in this awesome event, etc, etc. I want people to know exactly what that medal means when they tap on my name, that it was hard earned and not something I earned by spending $10 in the store and walking down the street to the park.
Founders union? Why aren’t they vocal about the game performance the past 1,5 years?
Anomaly is “gameplay that deviates from normal day to day”. So deploying Bb’a technically is an anomaly. It’s just not what the community wants, but niantic won’t care or change up; both coming anomaly badges can be obtained by buying Bb’s
****, people investing money in Travel, accomodation and others in organisation, the travel because it is supposed to be a special event, nothing you might as well play at home. The charme of an Anomaly is gameplay, real battle (something special) and meeting people from all over the world. If people from other countries cancel the reservations, the others will follow. Battle Beacons we 've got every Month at home and getting the same badge on site and from my couch is just ****. It is a slap in the face for Orga and Travellers.... Sorry, but this needs improvement. Keep BB out of Anomaly and please do not substitute them by portal scans for Odin's sake. Thank you...
One site won't need people from all over the world to recharge when noone is on the ground anyways, if one wants an Anomaly badge go there- oh wait no throw a beacon🤪. RR was always only second choice. And never secured for a badge. There are special badges only travellers get and that's a good thing. Makes for a special event and that's what everyone expected of Munich... Especially after waiting for 2 years, now...
Next step Hexathlon with Battle Beacon 😅 and maybe a biocard Niasection14, seriously before announcing an event it would be good to announce the rules and not change them.
Agents often assume that an anomaly medal means that you did something "worthy" of it, but in 8+ years, Niantic has never* actually required anything like that. For example:
This is not to mention all the intervening anomalies where all someone had to do was show up and get a (free) ticket scanned or hack a "registration" portal or something else similarly trivial.
*At one point, Niantic started measuring and requiring a minimum amount of XM recharged for recharge room participants, rather than simply accepting an alleged list of attendees.
Because the Founders Union is a made-up thing that only exists in @joecain's head.
You think so? lol I think I'm stating the obvious because I've seen a TON of threads where people are super worried about their profiles and what's on them.
You really think I'm insecure because I see "value" in what a medal means?!?!? That someone is able to say, hey, I was there! Quite the assumption, but if that's what you're reading, so be it...