I was holding off because I didn't get the update until this morning, but:
HALLELUJAH!
And key sorting broke in June 2019 (rel 2.25.2) so it's actually a bit less than three years to fix. So for all you folks complaining about the lag: cheer up, it's only another couple of years now...
You never experienced the complete inability to click a portal because it was too close to keys dropped on the ground then.
I've been here almost as long as it's possible to have been without getting a Founder badge. I've experienced dropping a cube for someone (yes, one single power cube - probably not L8 either) or dropping a key to the portal so I could hack another one, and having it accidentally land right in the portal so it took 20 minutes of rotating and zooming to try to get it back out again. (In my experience, Ingress 1.x would always select the portal rather than the item if there was a choice.) We've had portals that were on top of each other (two portals for the same thing, both inaccurately placed, both approved and then both moved to the correct place because moving portals didn't have to obey any proximity rules) and it took quite some skill to select one and not the other.
But just maybe, when I said "I know that tap disambiguation can be very useful in some circumstances", I was referring to scenarios such as the above.
What I am saying is that the existence of tap disambiguation does not mean it is now OK to put portals right next to each other. It's best avoided where possible.
Well, the patch interval hasn't been 'two weeks' for a while now. When you wait a long time in between patches you hope for bugfixes. And while I get the key sorting thing has been an issue for a long time, we've been experiencing so much issues for the past 12 months, that a QOL update is long overdue. Fix the latency fix the xm.
If the latency issue goes on as long as the key sorting thing, it won't matter, 80% will have stopped playing. They need to fix it NOW and broadcast it to the world, and hope that the players that left because of it will make their return. This game is no fun when it's so stale and boring as it has been for the past few months. Not even 'battle beacon' anomalies can make them return to the game longer than the event time window :(
Just went and tested the portal scan feature. Seemed to work as expected. Did 7 scans and it said the battle beacon was scheduled. No way to turn off the layer in the map, though I suspect we wont see a ton of them. Did another 6 scans and the fracker was deployed by NiaSection14. Neat, I guess...
I've added this to the main post but for those who follow along via feeds -
17 March: As of today, all Agents will be on 2.90 and as such, the Portal Scan Meter has been activated! I've included some additional screenshots below.
Also, for clarification, a single Agent can do all the scans required for the rewards or do it with other people. When, collectively, everyone has contributed the total needed scans, the reward will be triggered. The Portal Scan Meter shows ALL scans contributed by Agents during the Septicycle.
Example: I could submit 7 Scans on Portal A by myself to get the meter for Portal A to 7 for the Septicycle to trigger the Rare Battle Beacon for the end of the Septicycle. Another Agent could come along and contribute 3 scans putting the meter for the Portal at 10 for the Septicycle. 3 more Agents could come along before the Septicycle's end and submit one scan each (3 in total), putting the meter for the Portal at 13 and trigger the Fracker deployment.
I flagged this with the team after a few players reported it when 2.90 initially released; I believe we got it fixed (I can see one on Intel at the moment) but have a note out asking for confirmation.
Stop trying to retcon the purpose of the feature. It was brought online before the 20 meter rule so its intention is absolutely for portal dense areas as well. I don't know how the flow can be interrupted when you know you're expecting a second menu to pop up to choose a portal.
"Too close" emails have been going out since they brought in-game submissions on, in 2013, after they stopped accepting the geo-tagged email submissions, so there's always been a density limit. Moving portals doesn't seem to be affected by it, but that's also always been the case.
Disambiguation was definitely added after the density rules were at least informally decided by Niantic Labs employees doing reviews, but it's primary purpose at the time was for items on the ground vs portals, since there were very few instances of portals too close together (and all caused by a move).
The whole point of raising this however, was that we have the tools, and whether people hate them or not, it does allow for the capability of having more dense areas. The decision to allow closer than 20m portals however, has nothing to do with the tools or the functions in game.
Niantic has a database, and how they want to curate their database is completely on them. They accept those portals that are "too close" for Ingress, and at any time could enable them all in Ingress. Whether they feel that's appropriate, shouldn't affect your submitting of portals, because if they do decide to increase the density, they will already have those portals ready to go.
Niantic still feels that Ingress is best served with the 20m rule or they wouldn't have re-added it when it got broken. It would be nice to know their reasoning why, but we rarely hear that about many of the decisions made.
Que regalo tan mala....El juego nesecitan de más agentes para interactuar...y hacer el juego mas ameno...Más point mejor a el juego...Y hay más posibilidad de nuevos agentes...pero pocos point a nadie motiva...que quiere Niantic...Hacer de esto un juego exclusivo...para solo unos cuantos...Cuando carambas pensaran en lo realmente nesecitan los agentes...
Cómo por ejemplo después del Séptimo scan cargado debería ya liberar la BBR...y no después de 7dias...almenos así valdría la pena los MB gastados...y ahora mismo la Anomalía se pondría más luchadá e interesante...
We get that Niantic wants more scans, but the rewards here make no sense. Scan a portal 7 times and...in an unspecified number of days or hours (depending on where in the cycle you are), a random battle beacon appears on a portal. Which will come in super handy when a cycle starts at 4 am...
Does Niantic think we think Rare Battle Beacons have any value whatsoever outside of anomalies? There's literally zero reason to ever deploy one. And if they deployed VR Battle Beacons, that would flip a portal and drop links/fields, which would be a tremendously trolly thing to do, so we don't want that either.
Okay, then lets add to the confusion...13 scans gets a Fracker, except that happens immediately and not at the end of the cycle. Why on earth is one tied to a cycle and one isn't?
This is too confusing and overall pretty useless, and it's certainly not going to make a huge number of agents start scanning if they didn't want to already.
Prime disambiguation is terrible. Remember in Redacted how it would give you options that were actually close to what you clicked on, and they would NOT appear at the far opposite sides of the screen?
In Prime, I frequently want to get to a portal, instead get disambiguation for the key drop next to the portal, and the options are inches away from where I originally tapped, making it harder to quickly evaluate the options and pick the right one.
Hmmpf. On the other side there are portals which are simply not scannable if you wanna do it right. I got the impression, that mostly happens when a portal is not at the exact spot in reality as in the scanner. There seems an "you git out of range. Abort" thing to happen. Or if you can't really circle the portal (because the portal is on a wall, which is the case for at least half of all portals) and try to do a somewhat large half circle instead. At least those were the cases when i couldn't submit a scan.
Scan a portal 7 times and...in an unspecified number of days or hours (depending on where in the cycle you are), a random battle beacon appears on a portal.
I don't disagree. My statement stands that what they want is more scans. I'm not sure their implementation will achieve their goals though.
On the other side there are portals which are simply not scannable if you wanna do it right. I got the impression, that mostly happens when a portal is not at the exact spot in reality as in the scanner. There seems an "you git out of range. Abort" thing to happen.
Scan the area it would be in.
Or if you can't really circle the portal (because the portal is on a wall, which is the case for at least half of all portals) and try to do a somewhat large half circle instead. At least those were the cases when i couldn't submit a scan.
You should still be able to get a sufficient scan of a mural etc by moving back and forth in front of it and turning the phone at different angles. Just depends on the subject, but not every portal is a scan-worthy item, and that knowledge is relevant to Niantic's public goals.
a rare bb makes no sense yeah, i mean they dont flip which is good ok.. but it wont be any battle lol so whats the point really?... should have been a faction fireworks instead..
The other reason it makes no sense is that cycles end at different times every cycle. What's the point of having battle beacons pop up all over, at 3 o'clock in the morning?
Comments
There's still a visual bug when opening up a Capsule if you have Name previously selected.
The sort shows "Distance" and it sorted by Distance, but if you tap the drop down box, Name is ticked. But yes, the order is fixed.
well one bugfix i guess. sure would like to see more bugfixes and fewer new features.
I was holding off because I didn't get the update until this morning, but:
HALLELUJAH!
And key sorting broke in June 2019 (rel 2.25.2) so it's actually a bit less than three years to fix. So for all you folks complaining about the lag: cheer up, it's only another couple of years now...
You never experienced the complete inability to click a portal because it was too close to keys dropped on the ground then.
I've been here almost as long as it's possible to have been without getting a Founder badge. I've experienced dropping a cube for someone (yes, one single power cube - probably not L8 either) or dropping a key to the portal so I could hack another one, and having it accidentally land right in the portal so it took 20 minutes of rotating and zooming to try to get it back out again. (In my experience, Ingress 1.x would always select the portal rather than the item if there was a choice.) We've had portals that were on top of each other (two portals for the same thing, both inaccurately placed, both approved and then both moved to the correct place because moving portals didn't have to obey any proximity rules) and it took quite some skill to select one and not the other.
But just maybe, when I said "I know that tap disambiguation can be very useful in some circumstances", I was referring to scenarios such as the above.
What I am saying is that the existence of tap disambiguation does not mean it is now OK to put portals right next to each other. It's best avoided where possible.
Well, the patch interval hasn't been 'two weeks' for a while now. When you wait a long time in between patches you hope for bugfixes. And while I get the key sorting thing has been an issue for a long time, we've been experiencing so much issues for the past 12 months, that a QOL update is long overdue. Fix the latency fix the xm.
If the latency issue goes on as long as the key sorting thing, it won't matter, 80% will have stopped playing. They need to fix it NOW and broadcast it to the world, and hope that the players that left because of it will make their return. This game is no fun when it's so stale and boring as it has been for the past few months. Not even 'battle beacon' anomalies can make them return to the game longer than the event time window :(
Just went and tested the portal scan feature. Seemed to work as expected. Did 7 scans and it said the battle beacon was scheduled. No way to turn off the layer in the map, though I suspect we wont see a ton of them. Did another 6 scans and the fracker was deployed by NiaSection14. Neat, I guess...
Kind of cool I guess if you have a couch portal.
I've added this to the main post but for those who follow along via feeds -
17 March: As of today, all Agents will be on 2.90 and as such, the Portal Scan Meter has been activated! I've included some additional screenshots below.
Also, for clarification, a single Agent can do all the scans required for the rewards or do it with other people. When, collectively, everyone has contributed the total needed scans, the reward will be triggered. The Portal Scan Meter shows ALL scans contributed by Agents during the Septicycle.
Example: I could submit 7 Scans on Portal A by myself to get the meter for Portal A to 7 for the Septicycle to trigger the Rare Battle Beacon for the end of the Septicycle. Another Agent could come along and contribute 3 scans putting the meter for the Portal at 10 for the Septicycle. 3 more Agents could come along before the Septicycle's end and submit one scan each (3 in total), putting the meter for the Portal at 13 and trigger the Fracker deployment.
@NianticThia are Volatiles turned off again?
I flagged this with the team after a few players reported it when 2.90 initially released; I believe we got it fixed (I can see one on Intel at the moment) but have a note out asking for confirmation.
Stop trying to retcon the purpose of the feature. It was brought online before the 20 meter rule so its intention is absolutely for portal dense areas as well. I don't know how the flow can be interrupted when you know you're expecting a second menu to pop up to choose a portal.
"Too close" emails have been going out since they brought in-game submissions on, in 2013, after they stopped accepting the geo-tagged email submissions, so there's always been a density limit. Moving portals doesn't seem to be affected by it, but that's also always been the case.
Disambiguation was definitely added after the density rules were at least informally decided by Niantic Labs employees doing reviews, but it's primary purpose at the time was for items on the ground vs portals, since there were very few instances of portals too close together (and all caused by a move).
The whole point of raising this however, was that we have the tools, and whether people hate them or not, it does allow for the capability of having more dense areas. The decision to allow closer than 20m portals however, has nothing to do with the tools or the functions in game.
Niantic has a database, and how they want to curate their database is completely on them. They accept those portals that are "too close" for Ingress, and at any time could enable them all in Ingress. Whether they feel that's appropriate, shouldn't affect your submitting of portals, because if they do decide to increase the density, they will already have those portals ready to go.
Niantic still feels that Ingress is best served with the 20m rule or they wouldn't have re-added it when it got broken. It would be nice to know their reasoning why, but we rarely hear that about many of the decisions made.
so you add some things only good for big cities, congrats niantic. to add only things for big cites, no wonder why this game is dead.
the only thing you need to add for new player to continue playing is that agents and their team can field under their own team field.
thats it. Blue under blue and green under green.
Que regalo tan mala....El juego nesecitan de más agentes para interactuar...y hacer el juego mas ameno...Más point mejor a el juego...Y hay más posibilidad de nuevos agentes...pero pocos point a nadie motiva...que quiere Niantic...Hacer de esto un juego exclusivo...para solo unos cuantos...Cuando carambas pensaran en lo realmente nesecitan los agentes...
Cómo por ejemplo después del Séptimo scan cargado debería ya liberar la BBR...y no después de 7dias...almenos así valdría la pena los MB gastados...y ahora mismo la Anomalía se pondría más luchadá e interesante...
We get that Niantic wants more scans, but the rewards here make no sense. Scan a portal 7 times and...in an unspecified number of days or hours (depending on where in the cycle you are), a random battle beacon appears on a portal. Which will come in super handy when a cycle starts at 4 am...
Does Niantic think we think Rare Battle Beacons have any value whatsoever outside of anomalies? There's literally zero reason to ever deploy one. And if they deployed VR Battle Beacons, that would flip a portal and drop links/fields, which would be a tremendously trolly thing to do, so we don't want that either.
Okay, then lets add to the confusion...13 scans gets a Fracker, except that happens immediately and not at the end of the cycle. Why on earth is one tied to a cycle and one isn't?
This is too confusing and overall pretty useless, and it's certainly not going to make a huge number of agents start scanning if they didn't want to already.
Prime disambiguation is terrible. Remember in Redacted how it would give you options that were actually close to what you clicked on, and they would NOT appear at the far opposite sides of the screen?
In Prime, I frequently want to get to a portal, instead get disambiguation for the key drop next to the portal, and the options are inches away from where I originally tapped, making it harder to quickly evaluate the options and pick the right one.
Hmmpf. On the other side there are portals which are simply not scannable if you wanna do it right. I got the impression, that mostly happens when a portal is not at the exact spot in reality as in the scanner. There seems an "you git out of range. Abort" thing to happen. Or if you can't really circle the portal (because the portal is on a wall, which is the case for at least half of all portals) and try to do a somewhat large half circle instead. At least those were the cases when i couldn't submit a scan.
Scan a portal 7 times and...in an unspecified number of days or hours (depending on where in the cycle you are), a random battle beacon appears on a portal.
I don't disagree. My statement stands that what they want is more scans. I'm not sure their implementation will achieve their goals though.
On the other side there are portals which are simply not scannable if you wanna do it right. I got the impression, that mostly happens when a portal is not at the exact spot in reality as in the scanner. There seems an "you git out of range. Abort" thing to happen.
Scan the area it would be in.
Or if you can't really circle the portal (because the portal is on a wall, which is the case for at least half of all portals) and try to do a somewhat large half circle instead. At least those were the cases when i couldn't submit a scan.
You should still be able to get a sufficient scan of a mural etc by moving back and forth in front of it and turning the phone at different angles. Just depends on the subject, but not every portal is a scan-worthy item, and that knowledge is relevant to Niantic's public goals.
Bugs after i use portal scaning. Hope Niantic soon resolve all bugs we get after use portal scaning and we must restart app.
a rare bb makes no sense yeah, i mean they dont flip which is good ok.. but it wont be any battle lol so whats the point really?... should have been a faction fireworks instead..
Just tell us why you have that 20m rule? How does portals close to each other harm the game? I want Niantic to answer this.
The other reason it makes no sense is that cycles end at different times every cycle. What's the point of having battle beacons pop up all over, at 3 o'clock in the morning?