Probably an unpopular opinion but Ingress moving to Lightship has been a net negative in my books.
Submissions:
Going for clear emails and immediately online to a confusing email and daily sync is down right a downgrade.
AR:
AR for me is just a gimmick and adds absolutely ZERO to the gameplay experience. I cannot recall a single game or app that has an AR component where the AR component adds to the experience in a worthwhile way.
Adventure Sync:
Too easy to exploit: Niantic recently posted (and subsequently removed) an info chart saying that their top adventure sync users have walked 250000 km since Adventure Sync was enabled...
That tweet was posted roughly 1000 days after enabling it in Pogo, meaning that those top users did 250ish KM every singly day for nearly 3 years...
Plenty of top athletes would be envious of such endurance.
And it somehow irks me that someone can achieve in-game stats without playing the game.
I can guarantee that weeks/months after AS is in Ingress, that an account will exist that has onyx Trekker without ever touching a single portal and having Ingress open just enough to enable AS and claim the distance.
So now people will be able to get instant trekker and kinetic programs by "hacking" adventure sync. Nothing learned from Pokémon GO, I see.
At least leave it only for kinetic capsules, but don't turn the Trekker medal useless.
EDIT: I'm seeing some people confused about how adventure sync works. I'm sure this gonna be an optional feature (like already is on Pokémon GO). If you don't want your Trekker ruined, just don't enable it and you'll be fine.
The 90s called; they want their Intel Inside campaign back.
This post isn't some developer's diary entry. It's a poorly written advertisement and a heavy-handed attempt at trying to build name/brand recognition for "Lightship."
There's not one mention of something specific or unique to Ingress — not one mention of something that says, "this is why you play Ingress and not those other games."
Please note that Adventure Sync is optional and can be turned on or off at any time. This new feature is optional, if you don't want to use it then don't. It's all about your choice to use or not.
play as usual, hack, deploy make a triangle and enjoy your journey. this is Ingress.
Awesome updates! Keep up the good work! This is exciting stuff!
Also kudos to you all for having to wade through all of the negative comments that amass after each announcement of your hard work. Your efforts really are noticed and valued. 10 years is coming soon!!! It's time to move!!! :D
It's unfortunate, isn't it? I know a lot of the original Redacted features were spaghetti code, but at least they were purpose-built for the Ingress experience. I'm still optimistic about Lightship as a platform, but it still has a way to go before it enhances Ingress rather than forcing it into a mold.
I'm excited for Adventure Sync, because I spend a good deal of time walking with my friends/spouse and would rather not have my phone open in my hand/pocket draining battery when I'm walking but not actively playing at the moment. But why does the AS/Ingress dev team assume that a sizeable portion of players are walking/running more than 40 km a day? How many Ingress players are casually running daily marathons? Why are there no checks in place to, say, stop tracking when it becomes obvious that an account is maintaining inhuman levels of foot travel? Sure, edge cases exist, but I'd bet a hefty sum that the number of accounts legitimately walking 40 km a day are outnumbered by bots by an order of magnitude.
I could think of a few ways to implement Adventure Sync in a way that wouldn't break the game, and I'm looking forward to providing that feedback when the time comes.
Adventure sync is a good feature to hopefully attract new agents from other games to play.
However, I am sure there are agents who feels that their trekker badge will be undermined during their years of playing ingress(imagine a new agent with adventure sync able to hit onyx trekker within 2 months by maxing out their "distance" daily). Let's be honest, everyone knows that adventure sync is exploitable from playing pogo and other niantic games.
Hence, this needs to be implemented correctly so as not to chase your old agents who has been through thick and thin with ingress problems. I am sure you don't want to lose agents just because the new adventure sync feature.
Only spoofers and a chosen few rechargers want that. why should you get stuff for NOT playing?? And You totally **** hard badges, clowns will just buy 10€ stuff to "walk" 20km over night
AdSync is good for the Kinetic Capsule, but absolutely terrible for Trekker. For best purpose (and your mental health because there will be a lot of Rivers of Cry) you should add new medal, you can call it «Adventurer» (a little Easter Egg to the Via Lux) for example.
I.e. Trekker should be counted by old mechanics, only when screen and ingress is on. Yes, it's obsolete, but it's Trekker medal, it's a challenge. You can obtain it only when you playing, not just walking or cheating like in Pokemon Go. «Just walking» is good for Capsules or Brand New Medal, but not for Trekker.
I live in a rural area where it is difficult to go out just for walking, so I have high expectations for Adventure Sync as an encouragement for exercise at home. I envy hard-working people who are free to go out and oppose this feature.
The time for that feedback is now, before the feature is released. First impressions matter, and it's a lot harder to change how something works once it's out in the wild and people get used to.
On that note, I'll recycle my previous comments on Adventure Sync and "playing Ingress":
I used to burn through over 10gb a month when playing ingress since i've been offline i never seem to touch that with pogo & wizards when visiting new areas over 16km away like today so maybe i should downgrade my data plan lol and save my cash.
It's upsetting to hear that the Trekker medal will be devalued by this update, many agents have worked hard for theirs for so many years. The kind of changes are what demotivates many from continuing as it introduces a fear that other efforts may be devalued in the future as well. Additionally with the old distance requirements this medal becomes too easy to complete, medals are only worth something when they -feel- like achievements.
I think it would've been smarter to change it's description to "while playing" and keep it untouched by adventure sync. Instead you could introduce a new medal such as for Kinetic programs brewed, which would still require some game actions (opening, putting in a new recipe) than just walking with the sync on.
Funny to read all the “Oh no! My Trekker Medal” comments. Well done if you got it before, others game play shouldn’t affect your enjoyment of the game (unless they’re spoofing and/or multi-accounting) so I don’t get the gatekeeping with it.
It’s an optional feature. You can just turn it off if you want to play “the old way”.
Una de las mejores noticias es el no tener que llevar ingress siempre abierto para que cuente la distancia, aunque en mi caso la batería después de 4 km y toda la mañana encendido el móvil, aún está sobre el 50%
No offense, Brian, but that's not what most users want. Let's take a look at everything in order.
1. Portal scanning is absolutely useless for Ingress Prime players. Even more! Many players consider it improper behavior that we do work for you without getting anything in return.
2. Your game client is lagging. Are you trying hard to solve this problem? We do not see this.
3. You were repeatedly asked to correct the client's translations, and many players (who are native speakers of many foreign languages), including myself, offered you assistance in this. What result? Here's a typical topic that has remained unanswered so far. Look at the screenshots in it to understand the quality of the work that your employees have done.
4. The plot as well as intelligible explanations of what the factions are fighting for more than a year after the exogenous creatures left.
5. Each new update of the client is not an interesting event, but a routine in the style of "we fixed this and that bugs, and perhaps, most likely, we added a few more new bugs that will have to be fixed in the next update."
Conduct a survey of what the players really want, and based on this, develop the client.
I cannot imagine a rural area where it is hard to go walking. Would love to see it.
Anyway Trekker is the second easiest onyx medal IMHO. After playing 4 months I have already platinum and I will make onyx in another 3 or 4 months. The irony is, most of it was made during short and easy walks in portal dense areas. When I am actually trekking longer distances between portals somewhere outside the city, the phone is in the power saving mode or I use a different app, for example the camera app or the navigation app (the Ingress map is mostly useless for navigation). So the real trekking is not tracked at all.
Why do people claim the trekker badge is a “hard” badge to get? It just counts up while playing the game, you don’t even need to put extra effort in it. I’ve never done special effort for it and i’m 500km away from onyx. Been playing since 2018.
I am sure it will not be retrospective, but I already have 8,000km in Ingress, Pokemon has three times that , has overcounted by a factor of about 3 every since adventure sync came in!
Comments
I disagree since power bank has been around for more than 8 years, I always walk with one while playing.
Scanner has to be open to count km, but anyway it's just my opinion.
Probably an unpopular opinion but Ingress moving to Lightship has been a net negative in my books.
Submissions:
Going for clear emails and immediately online to a confusing email and daily sync is down right a downgrade.
AR:
AR for me is just a gimmick and adds absolutely ZERO to the gameplay experience. I cannot recall a single game or app that has an AR component where the AR component adds to the experience in a worthwhile way.
Adventure Sync:
Too easy to exploit: Niantic recently posted (and subsequently removed) an info chart saying that their top adventure sync users have walked 250000 km since Adventure Sync was enabled...
That tweet was posted roughly 1000 days after enabling it in Pogo, meaning that those top users did 250ish KM every singly day for nearly 3 years...
Plenty of top athletes would be envious of such endurance.
And it somehow irks me that someone can achieve in-game stats without playing the game.
I can guarantee that weeks/months after AS is in Ingress, that an account will exist that has onyx Trekker without ever touching a single portal and having Ingress open just enough to enable AS and claim the distance.
So now people will be able to get instant trekker and kinetic programs by "hacking" adventure sync. Nothing learned from Pokémon GO, I see.
At least leave it only for kinetic capsules, but don't turn the Trekker medal useless.
EDIT: I'm seeing some people confused about how adventure sync works. I'm sure this gonna be an optional feature (like already is on Pokémon GO). If you don't want your Trekker ruined, just don't enable it and you'll be fine.
The 90s called; they want their Intel Inside campaign back.
This post isn't some developer's diary entry. It's a poorly written advertisement and a heavy-handed attempt at trying to build name/brand recognition for "Lightship."
There's not one mention of something specific or unique to Ingress — not one mention of something that says, "this is why you play Ingress and not those other games."
Adventure Sync is a long awaited feature, but please don't add it to Trekker.
I've walked over 5000km so far, so please don't make it worthless.
LOL at the "I got real trekker the hard way" gatekeepers
Good job Agent,
Please note that Adventure Sync is optional and can be turned on or off at any time. This new feature is optional, if you don't want to use it then don't. It's all about your choice to use or not.
play as usual, hack, deploy make a triangle and enjoy your journey. this is Ingress.
Awesome updates! Keep up the good work! This is exciting stuff!
Also kudos to you all for having to wade through all of the negative comments that amass after each announcement of your hard work. Your efforts really are noticed and valued. 10 years is coming soon!!! It's time to move!!! :D
Not at all, buying a year old flagship, costs as much ad the latest midrange.
Potter players keep complaining the same thing, with regards to cheap mobiles not having a gyroscope. For the sake of a $2 device.
Nothing wrong with buying a slightly old device.
It's unfortunate, isn't it? I know a lot of the original Redacted features were spaghetti code, but at least they were purpose-built for the Ingress experience. I'm still optimistic about Lightship as a platform, but it still has a way to go before it enhances Ingress rather than forcing it into a mold.
I'm excited for Adventure Sync, because I spend a good deal of time walking with my friends/spouse and would rather not have my phone open in my hand/pocket draining battery when I'm walking but not actively playing at the moment. But why does the AS/Ingress dev team assume that a sizeable portion of players are walking/running more than 40 km a day? How many Ingress players are casually running daily marathons? Why are there no checks in place to, say, stop tracking when it becomes obvious that an account is maintaining inhuman levels of foot travel? Sure, edge cases exist, but I'd bet a hefty sum that the number of accounts legitimately walking 40 km a day are outnumbered by bots by an order of magnitude.
I could think of a few ways to implement Adventure Sync in a way that wouldn't break the game, and I'm looking forward to providing that feedback when the time comes.
Felicitaciones por ese gran esfuerzo que hace ingress mejor cada año
Adventure sync is a good feature to hopefully attract new agents from other games to play.
However, I am sure there are agents who feels that their trekker badge will be undermined during their years of playing ingress(imagine a new agent with adventure sync able to hit onyx trekker within 2 months by maxing out their "distance" daily). Let's be honest, everyone knows that adventure sync is exploitable from playing pogo and other niantic games.
Hence, this needs to be implemented correctly so as not to chase your old agents who has been through thick and thin with ingress problems. I am sure you don't want to lose agents just because the new adventure sync feature.
Anyone else reminded of this technology when you hear about AR and photo mesh?
Microsoft: Always decades ahead in research, then they never get it to market.
Only spoofers and a chosen few rechargers want that. why should you get stuff for NOT playing?? And You totally **** hard badges, clowns will just buy 10€ stuff to "walk" 20km over night
Oh, please, don't.
AdSync is good for the Kinetic Capsule, but absolutely terrible for Trekker. For best purpose (and your mental health because there will be a lot of Rivers of Cry) you should add new medal, you can call it «Adventurer» (a little Easter Egg to the Via Lux) for example.
I.e. Trekker should be counted by old mechanics, only when screen and ingress is on. Yes, it's obsolete, but it's Trekker medal, it's a challenge. You can obtain it only when you playing, not just walking or cheating like in Pokemon Go. «Just walking» is good for Capsules or Brand New Medal, but not for Trekker.
I live in a rural area where it is difficult to go out just for walking, so I have high expectations for Adventure Sync as an encouragement for exercise at home. I envy hard-working people who are free to go out and oppose this feature.
The time for that feedback is now, before the feature is released. First impressions matter, and it's a lot harder to change how something works once it's out in the wild and people get used to.
On that note, I'll recycle my previous comments on Adventure Sync and "playing Ingress":
Big day😮😮😮
I used to burn through over 10gb a month when playing ingress since i've been offline i never seem to touch that with pogo & wizards when visiting new areas over 16km away like today so maybe i should downgrade my data plan lol and save my cash.
It's upsetting to hear that the Trekker medal will be devalued by this update, many agents have worked hard for theirs for so many years. The kind of changes are what demotivates many from continuing as it introduces a fear that other efforts may be devalued in the future as well. Additionally with the old distance requirements this medal becomes too easy to complete, medals are only worth something when they -feel- like achievements.
I think it would've been smarter to change it's description to "while playing" and keep it untouched by adventure sync. Instead you could introduce a new medal such as for Kinetic programs brewed, which would still require some game actions (opening, putting in a new recipe) than just walking with the sync on.
horribles daily lags should be fixed before talking about any AR feature.
Funny to read all the “Oh no! My Trekker Medal” comments. Well done if you got it before, others game play shouldn’t affect your enjoyment of the game (unless they’re spoofing and/or multi-accounting) so I don’t get the gatekeeping with it.
It’s an optional feature. You can just turn it off if you want to play “the old way”.
yes but some will just abuse it and get onyx in trekker..
Una de las mejores noticias es el no tener que llevar ingress siempre abierto para que cuente la distancia, aunque en mi caso la batería después de 4 km y toda la mañana encendido el móvil, aún está sobre el 50%
No offense, Brian, but that's not what most users want. Let's take a look at everything in order.
1. Portal scanning is absolutely useless for Ingress Prime players. Even more! Many players consider it improper behavior that we do work for you without getting anything in return.
2. Your game client is lagging. Are you trying hard to solve this problem? We do not see this.
3. You were repeatedly asked to correct the client's translations, and many players (who are native speakers of many foreign languages), including myself, offered you assistance in this. What result? Here's a typical topic that has remained unanswered so far. Look at the screenshots in it to understand the quality of the work that your employees have done.
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/16493/dear-developers-please-fix-the-russian-localization-of-the-game#latest
4. The plot as well as intelligible explanations of what the factions are fighting for more than a year after the exogenous creatures left.
5. Each new update of the client is not an interesting event, but a routine in the style of "we fixed this and that bugs, and perhaps, most likely, we added a few more new bugs that will have to be fixed in the next update."
Conduct a survey of what the players really want, and based on this, develop the client.
Time for buying a sock, yay!
I cannot imagine a rural area where it is hard to go walking. Would love to see it.
Anyway Trekker is the second easiest onyx medal IMHO. After playing 4 months I have already platinum and I will make onyx in another 3 or 4 months. The irony is, most of it was made during short and easy walks in portal dense areas. When I am actually trekking longer distances between portals somewhere outside the city, the phone is in the power saving mode or I use a different app, for example the camera app or the navigation app (the Ingress map is mostly useless for navigation). So the real trekking is not tracked at all.
Why do people claim the trekker badge is a “hard” badge to get? It just counts up while playing the game, you don’t even need to put extra effort in it. I’ve never done special effort for it and i’m 500km away from onyx. Been playing since 2018.
A question on this too. My Trekker badge shows 2,001km
My Niantic Social profile says I’ve walked 7,052km
When Adventure Sync is added, if I switch it on, will those 5,051km be added to my Trekker Badge stats?
Just checked out of curiosity and all the distance is recorded on Pokémon GO, so I would think that it’s a yes?
I am sure it will not be retrospective, but I already have 8,000km in Ingress, Pokemon has three times that , has overcounted by a factor of about 3 every since adventure sync came in!