Global Pandemic Mission Day - ADA Driven Mission
Perringaiden
XM Ambassadors › ✭✭✭✭✭
While discussing Mission Days with some SoCal locals, I had an idea for how we could do a socially-distanced, pandemic Mission Day globally.
Concept: The idea is that a Mission Day mission simply consists of hacking 6 consecutive portals. Now yes, in a given location, it's used to educate people about the area around them. But ultimately, you're completing a set of missions by hacking portals in a set.
So what if the set could be created on-the-fly based on choosing a starting portal? It can be called an ADA Driven Mission. This wouldn't be a traditional Mission Day in the sense that you're going to an area, but rather, that you can choose where to start your missions, and have the system generate 5 other selections of portals to hack. Lorewise, ADA would be providing you with a mission to complete.
Each ADA Driven Mission would simply be you providing a starting point, and then moving around your local area. You might even discover new things by going to a portal you'd never gone to before.
Notes:
- Initiate the "ADA Driven Mission"
- Select a portal within view, similar to selecting a drone movement.
- That portal, and 5 others selected by the game, become a mission, hack in any order.
- By completing the mission you get a mission icon, possibly simply a number based on the number of ADA Driven Missions you've done. E.g. 1 for the first, 100 for the 100th.
- Completing 6 missions over the course of the weekend would give you credit for the event.
- People can complete as many of them as they want during the weekend.
- Anyone in the world could get a Mission Day credit for it.
- Run the event every 3rd weekend of the month (or some other weekend choice, not FS) until pandemic restrictions are lifted.
Comments
This is a great idea. Niantic could focus the missions on Ingress themes or special interests, such as BLM or Pride. It would be a way to encourage agents to play more frequently, but stay within the restrictions in their area.
I would like to see a media challenge, where people could post pictures, while they complete the missions.
In fact, agents should receive media to know that they completed the requirements, after 6 missions or immediately receive credit in their badge.
The premise is kinda cool. I have a couple of feedback items on the format. 1.) A generic Mission 1-100 icon is a bit uninspiring. I don't know that I'd be interesting in that type of flair on my scanner. 2.) What happens when 'ADA' picks a portal behind a locked gate? Does one abandon the mission set and ask ADA for a new set?
I'd love to see ideas for medals but it'd have to be extensible. As for impossible missions, yeah, simply discard the mission and start over with a new randomly selected nearby set.
MD goal visit new places and gather the community, the missions are landmarks of the city. Random missions just break this spirit with the intention not giving the MD badge globally for everyone.
A far more desirable approach (for the sake of doing something) is to make a new Nemesis challenge, using the drone hack of unique portals. Niantic is avoiding any excuse to let players loose in streets, and the drone challenge is a good one. About 150 unique drone hacks in 10 days is pretty challenging.
Right now, gatherings are not possible. However, there's plenty of opportunity to go outside ourselves. This gives people the opportunity to explore their local area, without the overhead of manually creating thousands of missions.
Drone's are not only slow, but they don't actually suit the game. You are not exploring and moving, if you're just using your drone. We are recommended to leave the house and exercise. Ingress should be supporting that.
With all that's gone on, actually playing Ingress should be encouraged as a priority before more people quit.
Until next year when real event gatherings will be allowed and possible for now we can use drones, there is no harm and everyone can join safe from their homes or whatever, better then nothing? we only have Fs@home.. ifind that rather boring and not much gameplay really... so i hope niantic brian gives us something before next years real events..
No-one is asking for a gathering. That's the point.
But moving a drone is not Ingress. It's basically ineffective spoofing.
Drones cant shot down fields or portals, spoofers can i dont see how its spoofing using ingame feature.
'ineffective spoofing'.
And all the changes required to allow a mission day not take 4 days, would make it 'more effective'.
Tell me how its "ineffective spoofing" when in fact it's an in game feature that Niantic has made? Answer that for me if you can please.
What I find funny is your ineffective way of seeing how a drone can be used for a mission day. Its not hard to set up a play box and reset the timer for a drone to move inside said play box. It can be done, but you just like to dismiss everybody else's ideas if they don't conform to your's. That's the single reason we had the argument in SoCal Cross Faction Chat. I had an idea and you didn't agree with it. That's fine with me. Unfortunately drones are here to stay and if you're not using it for the potential it has then that's your loss. You may not like the new feature that's in play now, but others do and they have been using it effectively for hacking and seeing just how far their drone can go.
Someone told me that you're trying to come up with a solution for a different problem while trying to automate more of it. With your proposal I can understand and see why they said that. The whole point of Mission Day has always been for Agents to showcase their local history and city to other Agents. Your solution totally takes that away from what Mission Day is all about. As someone who actually hosted a Mission Day and an Anomaly Mission Day, I just can't see your proposal actually working out in the traditional sense or spirit of what a Mission Day should be. In other words, you're trying to re-engineer the wheel.
As discussed elsewhere, you would require the drones to be able to hack more regularly, move more regularly, only within a certain area. You would also require people to be allowed to move their drone there from anywhere in the world. All a lot of changes that make this more like spoofing.
Someone told me that you're trying to come up with a solution for a different problem while trying to automate more of it.
The mock outrage is amusing since you were in the channel where this was discussed, and I was the one who told you to post this on the forums.
The whole point of Mission Day has always been for Agents to showcase their local history and city to other Agents.
But you want people to remotely move around a location which negates any learning. It's less effective at "Showcasing the area" than opening the Intel map and clicking on portals there. Much in the same way that spoofers don't actually have to go to a place and just point at the map to move.
I just can't see your proposal actually working out in the traditional sense or spirit of what a Mission Day should be.
If you tightly define what the mission day is, to exactly what your idea claims to do, sure. Your idea fails your own requirements, but that's a different post. We're living in a pandemic where travel is restricted, yet we're still able to get out and explore our own environments. This gives people a fun way to maintain some level of real play instead of sitting at home on the couch pointing at the map.
Mission Days are supposed to be made personally. And the drones are supposed to just do a few hacks to prevent sojourner lost and keep your inventory filled a bit.
Two things not meant to be together or part of each other. This whole idea of virtual global MD is nuts. What's next? Global anomaly and allow drones to attack?
Wouldn't it be better to save all of the hard work that you put into creating a mission day, for a day when we can meet up to do it together? I would actually like to visit those places in person and have a cool meetup. I don't see the point of doing it by drone, since there is no explanation and no interaction with other agents.
However, I do see a point of exploring, using a virtual tour of Ingress, in our own area. It promotes our ability to go out and explore in our own community safely, while still playing Ingress with an added layer of interest. I think it could be very interesting, if waypoints had challenges and followed the story line. It could be more interesting than the Tesselation, which was difficult to participate in, if you are a newer agent. A global pandemic mission day, where you could interact with portals and waypoints in your area, would bring a similar spirit of exploring to everyone.
We are in this together, after all.
My Idea does not fail the requirements of what a Mission Day should be. Your's on the other hand most certainly does with how your trying to set up something completely different. You said it yourself, "We're living in a pandemic where travel is restricted". And what better way to go to a city outside one's country or somebody who's town may be on a lock down than by using a drone and clicking a link that Niantic provides to go do a Mission Day in another country. Its not spoofing if it's provided by Niantic. Its only spoofing IF you use a third party app. Which is where you seem to have the idea confuse. By your thinking any hacking done in an area where you're not at is spoofing. Isn't the pandemic the reason why we now have drones? All they can do is hack currently. They can't build of tear down fields or claim portals.
Actually no, you didn't tell me to post it on the forums, yet you have failed to point out the flaws like you said you would do in another comment. Also that wasn't mock outrage, you just don't like others raining on your parade that came with another idea.
There is learning involved, If you have ever done a mission day you will know that there has to be a write up or brief history written in 200 characters to fit in the mission itself. You don't get that by looking on the intel map and clicking on the portals. Only the missions show that on the intel map. You keep bringing up spoofers which have absolutely nothing to do with a drone mission day. Again drones are an in game mechanic provided by Niantic, so my idea is very much viable to produce. Also you can't participate in your idea if the town that a Agent lives in is on lock down. Have you thought about that at all?
It would be better if everyone could meet up, but unfortunately that can't happen right at this moment. This is one thing I agree with @Perringaiden with having another event other than VIFS. It breaks the staleness that comes after each VIFS every month.
There is learning involved, If you have ever done a mission day you will know that there has to be a write up or brief history written in 200 characters to fit in the mission itself. You don't get that by looking on the intel map and clicking on the portals. Only the missions show that on the intel map.
The author of the missions might learn something but without a player being there in person, there's no real difference than clicking on a sequence of portals on the Intel map.
And the overriding thing is Drones are not really Ingress. It's a stopgap measure for a way to keep Sojourner going when you can't go outside. It would be better to not have a Mission Day, than have that Mission Day on the couch. Ingress is about exploring your surroundings, not just tapping on things from home.
Mission Day would be good, but we have a "stay at home get a badge" event. It would be nice to actually be able to go out for it though, since there are very few places left in the world under a "You can't leave the house" type lockdown.
If "drones are not really Ingress" if you say they are and they are in game created by the programming team that said they had the vision of putting them in from the start of the game back in 2013, but the technology wasn't there to add them yet. Then who are you to say that drones are not really Ingress? If it's in game and usable as it currently is, then Drones are Ingress! It was never a stopgap. It was planned as an added feature.
The Author of the missions has to do a write-up for each mission. Something in 200 characters can be summarized in the mission itself. Waypoints can still be used as a viable option to go more in depth with the history of the portal.
I can say the same thing about VIFS as IFS was about socializing in person and exploring cities while helping new Agents out with the game. As it is you're sitting on the couch recharging portals and not much else. You can't tell me that it isn't the same as we're currently doing exactly what I just said for IFS.
The Niantic team that still exists today is Brian and John. And there's probably a good reason the development team back then put them in.
I can say the same thing about VIFS as IFS was about socializing in person and exploring cities while helping new Agents out with the game.
It's about socializing. The exploring isn't what First Saturdays are about. It was created at a time when XFac tensions were some of their worst, and in a number of places people started trying to change that. The idea caught on and got organised.
XFac relations and socializing still occur in any IFS run properly. If you're not all required to be on Zoom, it's not being run properly as per the covid requirements. If you're out playing Ingress by yourself instead of on Zoom, you don't need a drone either. If all you're doing is recharging, you're missing out. Most people are having fun doing the decoding, and talking to each other.
I guess SoCal has slipped a bit during the lockdown if there's no actual First Saturday socialization.
We still do zoom, but unfortunately not many Agents joined in today. We had 42 attend the Disneyland VIFS and only 15 showed up on zoom.
It's part of IFS, it always has been because Ingress is all about exploration. Even if its a virtual event, it can still be about exploration. How did you learn history in school? you were given a book and told to study it. Today's World, things have changed since I've went to school. You can actually do a virtual tour of just about any city in the world and learn something about it. That's where I am going with my proposal.
I also do miss the events, one event a month or per 3 months would be nice (in normal days). Because of Covid we seem to get 0 events (except fs). I hope that Niantic can come up with some safe alternatives so that we have something to do :)
i really will be sad if we dont get any event besides the virtual fs :( come on niantic..... give us anything.. mission day drone or something thats safe to do from home ....
Theyve given pogo players several events lately yet we get nothing?
that would make the MD badge really too easy, the idea is nice but without the MD badge increase. That is not a mission day if you play around your home.
edit : hum didn't notice that was an old post 😅
Yup sadly...
This was a good idea. Sounds like fun.
That is not a mission day if you play around your home.
Are people so desperate to control other people's badge points? It's a mission day if you complete a specific set of missions on a given day. Since we can't come together, the idea was one to allow "events" during a pandemic, without having to have people actually travel.
No-one's gotten Mission Day points in nearly a year, so it's not like they're "extra".
Maybe it's too late in the pandemic to introduce something that wouldn't carry on past the pandemic, but some sort of virtual alternative to Mission Days would have been a good idea. What would be cool is if Niantic were to run a virtual Mission Day in the area around Niantic HQ. Perhaps they could set up a special portal that all drones are able to hop to and give us a time-limited boost allowing as many drone visits as we like once we've made the hop.
Yes it could work, because i dont see missiondays or real anomalies happen anytime soon unless travel restrictions will go back to normal for 90% ppl on planet we can wait forever then.... I still need unlock this missionday badge it feels sad i will maybe never even unlock it...
I’ve made a post about this very idea back in July.
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/11506/drone-mission-day#latest