mission authoring slots
Niantic, could you increase the number of missions we are allowed to author?
Currently it is 180.
Many people are mission enthusiasts; They love nothing more in ingress than doing missions.
But only a few devoted agents create the vast majority of high quality missions.
And just when they get good at making missions, they hit their limit. Some stop making missions. But the devote have 2 options
- unpublish old missions to make space for new ones. or
- ask their friends to donate inactive ingress accounts to make missions under their agent name
None of these are good options. I go with (1) and unpublish live missions to make space to submit new ones. And then when someone asks, I republish old ones, but have to unpublish something else. It makes for a lot of bureaucracy of niantic reviewing the same missions over and over, and updating websites/documents with which missions are currently live.
I like to do missions more than make them, but I've done all the missions in my area and can't travel to other counties/states to do them due to the pandemic. Now would be a great time to make missions from home.
We, the people that make missions, would like substantially more mission authoring slots.
Ideally uncapped and if thats too much, make a nomination quota like portal nominations.
If you unlock our potential, it will breath new life into ingress for mission goers.
Comments
Last I heard, the issue was that they need to rebuild the Mission Creator website, because too many missions and it buries itself under the spaghetti code.
Not much point having 500 missions available, if you can't use the website to make more than 200 without it crashing.
I'm fully in support of revamping the mission creation website and getting us more slots, it would make a lot of agents, including myself, very very happy. I've had full mission slots for a year now.
If Niantic doesn't have resources to "rebuild" mission maker website, community will step up, and they already did, just like with IITC. However, we need additional slots to create missions.
Given an option between double deploy event and doing more missions, I'll pick missions 100% of the time.
An overhaul is much needed, regardless of spots available. Would love to see that eventually :) Would also love to see if missions can be better integrated into gameplay. Not exactly sure what that looks like, but maybe completing missions offer rewards, hidden portals or some other bonus 🤷🏼♂️🤞🏼
There is no limit to the number of missions a single agent can author or do. Just the number of live missions at any given time.
I've made more than 500... its not an issue. Some people make more than 1000 on a single account. Most spread it across multiple accounts to work around the 180 live missions limit.
As a frequent user of the authoring tool, I havent experienced 'crashes'. If you experience one, please report it.
The most frequent issue with all niantic websites, including this one, is cookies. You need to enable cookies for third party websites. That clears up most issues.
In this thread, I'm not proposing a code change, because that is hard. I'm only suggesting the easiest, most impactful change Niantic could make - change the constant 180, to a larger number. Lets say 500
For those that think a bigger change is high priority, I'll open another discussion.
I wish there were a place to talk about missions. Because many people dont care about missions. But those that do, are passionate; Its why we play
I've made more than 500... its not an issue
The limit is 180 per account. So, no, you haven't.
Some people make more than 1000 on a single account. Most spread it across multiple accounts to work around the 180 live missions limit.
This literally is why they haven't got >180 missions on one account. Because they're spreading it around. By spreading it around, the page isn't bogged down trying to load all the data for 1000 missions.
Except that comments previously have made it clear that they can't keep increasing the limit without a code change.
Once Niantic can hire more Devs, and get some with primary Javascript knowledge, maybe they can rewrite Intel and the Mission Creator to be far more friendly, but until then, I doubt they'll keep expanding it. If they weren't worried, they wouldn't keep giving smaller and smaller increments. 100 -> 50 -> 30.
I wish there were a place to talk about missions. Because many people dont care about missions. But those that do, are passionate; Its why we play
Put it in this category, because for sure, people who care about missions, read this.
Here's the quote from Brian about why they can't add more missions slots at this time...
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/comment/130304#Comment_130304
brian rose via twitter:
Mission Authoring Tool performance degrades with more missions per Agent. We’re considering how to address that before expanding the per-Agent mission limit. One thing you can do in the meantime might be to help newer Agents level up and create missions together.
If you guys are requesting a specific community spot where you could discuss mission, creating missions, etc (and not just mission days) I'd suggest you just ask for one - go to the community feedback thread and put a request there. Any suggestions that make these forums more useful for everyone are always welcomed... Missions are great and benefit the whole community. I think a spot to talk about them would be awesome.
https://community.ingress.com/en/categories/ingress-community-feedback
Sure. Ive requested it before but posted another request https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/13681/mission-category/p1?new=1
The confusion seems to be what you can have live, versus what can live in the Creator. You can only have 180 missions LIVE at a time, per account, I am told, but you can have pretty much as many as you want stored in the Creator. So @phthoruth is trying to say he has MADE more than 500, but they haven't all been live at the same time. You mission experts, correct me if I am wrong on that - but that's my understanding of the situation.
There is no limit to the number of missions you can make on a single account. You seem to be questioning how many missions I have authored? You can see some of my missions on ingressmosaic
https://ingressmosaic.com/profil/phthoruth/mosaic
Deleted missions: 353
Its interesting I've deleted 353. Thats roughly how many I still have in the mission authoring tool that are not live, but I can republish on request. Which I often do.
When someone requests a banner be made available, I unpublish one, and republish another. I never delete a mission.
Nianitic is pretty quick to review missions that have no changes.
I have roughly 500 missions, and will continue to make more, but only 180 live at any given time.
To publish new ones, mission quota is needed while waiting on review.
At the moment I've got a banner I submitted in July up for review. While I wait, that takes up valuable mission slots too. I had to unpublish live missions to make those slots available to request review of the new banner.
On my side, I have not noticed a performance issue with have 500 missions in the authoring tool.
I'm explicitly not requesting a revamp of the code in this request. Just increase the number live at any given time.
There are no mission day events right now, so thats not a great place to discuss Mission authoring tool.
Its a bit off topic, but if we were talking about mission days or first saturdays, historically there are missions that people author for such events, and I would make missions for them, if I had more quota. But as all events are on hold, its not a concern.
I've started a discussion about creating a mission category. Please provide your insight there
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/13681/mission-category/p1?new=1
Thanks for that feedback... at least we know what Niantic is thinking. But I dont understand the rationale?
If theres a performance issue I dont see how the number of 'live' mission in the mission authoring tool matters?
Only about 30% of my missions are live. They're all in mission authoring tool. I never delete old missions.
I plan to continue making many more missions. I'll unpublish the 180 I have now and make another 180. So thats 360. The first 180 are still there in the authoring tool. Its not ideal for anyone that we have to unpublish/republish
The Ingress Mission Authoring Tool does need to be upgraded. It's been long overdue. I only wish to be able to group banners so it helps de-clutter the Missions View.
This is a perfect way to start interacting more with the community. You've seen ITC, so you know we're able to throw resources at this stuff and make great tools. Share the mission format with us and we'll build whatever tools we need to submit nice clean data in that format. If you want us to do community reviewing, let us know your review criteria and we'll build that too.
It would also be helpful if the reason for a mission was rejected was more clear. I've had 17 (of 18) missions for a banner and the 18th rejected. The reasons given were all not applicable. I've also had entire banners rejected and the reasons were also not applicable.
I think the hard part is getting an "agreed upon" format. We have several Ingress mosaic websites out there, right?
Also, I don't know if @ofer2 is even responsible for anything pertaining to the Missions database. There's the Waypoints from Field Trip as the service has officially shut off at the end of 2019.
I'm thinking more of Niantic just revealing the existing internal format used to store missions, the file format that the Mission builder website currently generates. If we knew the spec (maybe it's an XML format, maybe it has an API?), we could write our own tools to create files in that format that would bypass the builder site. This would need a fair bit of co-operation and testing, but longer-term it would relive Niantic of the burden of maintaining their mission creator site, in the same way FEV Games takes on the burden of organising First Saturdays.
100% agree.
MOAR BANNERS
What would people want to see in an improved mission creator tool?
Id love missions grouped together and seen as one. Stuff like making missions hidden until all are approved, then hitting a switch and it’s a go. Could be nice for something like banners you might only want available for an event as well.
I have submitted one Mission, and I would love to do a banner or mural of the greater area of my community now that our portals have doubled in the last two to three years thanks to the ever-changing criteria. What I currently have are missions that need severe updating, but the Agents who submitted them have not been active for a significant amount of time. Furthermore, a county-wide mural cannot be completed unless you are employed at our local state hospital, which has banned non-employed gamers from playing on hospital grounds for safety purposes. Rather than making new missions that may seem like a Version 2.0 of the original mission because of inactive Agents, is there a way active Agents can contribute to old Missions as long as the edits can be reviewed before going live, and if an Agent already completed the original mission, could a grandfathered credit option be applied as opposed to redoing said mission?
It might be possible to get that hospital portal removed since it probably meets rejection criteria anyway. In that case, that one portal would be removed from the mission.
Another solution I have seen to that sort of issue is for someone to make an alternative version of just the one mission with the inaccessible portal.
We've been asking for this consistently since the first day this particular online community was founded. sigh. It is frustrating to keep hearing this when this is exactly what we have been doing.
Mission Days and Missions are actually wildly different communities and groups of people, and that might seem a bit odd to people on the outside of the communities. Having POC'd 3 MDs and having over 13k missions - there are a significant number of people that participate in Mission Days that are completely uninterested in actual missions. They are more there for the community, badge, and event benefits than the actual missions. It IS important for missionaries to have separate space from MD and its been tone-deaf for Niantic to not have a space for it.
I'm at 180 as well. The suggestion to work with another agent to create missions isn't as easy as it seems, particularly in this era of COVID. I have had 3 attempts at that. One success and two failures. Regarding the failures ... I have a friend (without a computer) who is willing, but in order to do that we would need to share breathing space and my laptop. I've also tried working with a new agent, now Level 8. He had his own ideas and I tried to work with him. But he gave up with the rejection on his own banner. Again, if I could sit with him, maybe things could be different.
I've heard of someone creating banners on someone else's account. But that involves either sharing or temporarily changing passwords. Not good. Or writing down a lot of instructions on the pathing.
I've done over 1500 missions, and it would be nice to have more local (non-travel, more COVID friendly) banners to do. But I'm running out. The ones I haven't done are undone for a reason (like I refuse to drive and hack in the city, and it's too sketchy to walk it.) Usually the people that are at limit are pretty darn good at creating them.
Mohr banners!
Missions promote exploration and exercise and were a major reason for my getting into ingress. I'm grateful to the people that have volunteered their time and local expertise to benefit the player base.
It makes no sense to me to restrict limit the creation of new missions to players that lack the experience of making successful ones because of an arbitrarily low number.
Many/most missions can be completed in a socially distant way which has been a sanity saver during the pandemic. For many players I have spoken to, missions have been a highlight of the playing experience while many other aspects of the game have been curtailed since last year.
Missions is probably one the oldest parts of our codebase. I havent really done much in it. As far as APIs, thats a feature request which only Brian can answer.
How about you just delete old ones to make space?