Anomaly planning, or complete lack thereof.
worldchicken
✭✭✭
Dear Brian Rose,
I am writing out of a place of utter confusion. The anomaly in LA was announced 10 weeks ago via several official Ingress channels. We are now 10 days out of the event. Somehow, even though Ingress is your job (or so I assume), 10 weeks is not sufficient time to publish a full set of rules. 10 weeks is not sufficient time to publish the active playbox for the event. In 10 weeks, there is zero public information coming out about the event coming up in 10 days. We have been told "Chinatown." We have been told what day. I apologize, there has been one new piece of information that has been published in 10 weeks: the event will occur from 1 pm to 5 pm. After 10 years of this game, I should be able to expect better.
I am assured that you have heard earsful about how "Chinatown" does not provide for a sufficient number of portals to host an anomaly. Expansion of the playbox around Chinatown posed a problem of your own creation with that announcement. For those not familiar with LA (which included myself prior to the announcement), Chinatown is bounded by Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles Historic Park, US 101, and everyone's favorite destination in LA: Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Within minutes of the announcement, many observers from home could see that this proposed play area might be problematic.
But that's fine. It's your game, your strategic direction, and I can tell you'll die on this hill before taking any feedback from experienced agents. By experienced, I do not mean how long Ingress has been installed on a device. Nor how many portal keys one has collected over the years. Nor how many posts one has made here on the Niantic community boards. I refer to hands-on experience at anomalies. Agents who've played the game head-to-head against an opponent. Serving as leadership in anomaly situations, whether this be leading a team on the ground, helping organize remotely as "eyes in the sky", or the thankless position of being the POC for the site or any of the even more thankless, invisible positions who help make all of the things happen.
And we are back to the first paragraph: if this is in fact your job, the thing you get paid for, and you cannot decide on a rule set and playbox in 10 weeks, what is your expectation that these groups of volunteers can reasonably respond to these things in a matter of 10 days? Are you that utterly incompetent? Are these the trustworthy hands that will be carrying Ingress forward in a new direction? Do you intend to drive yourself out of a job?
In-person events and anomalies in particular are the primary drivers (from Niantic) of player engagement. The way both Munich and LA have been handled from the official standpoint have been offputting for many agents. Long delays, unpopular mechanics (No, Brian. No one likes Battle Beacons.), minimal communication, blatantly ignoring advice and suggestions from POCs and Vanguards. From the financial side, the agents who are turning away from the game due to these poorly organized events would have been CORE subscribers. These would have been agents deploying frackers to help shore up gear for the events. From the community side, these would be the community leaders who historically been the drivers of agent recruitment and retention, which leads to more dollar signs for Niantic.
Do not get me wrong nor taking this as whining that we don't have enough time. We will respond to the very delayed rules and playbox, and will do so successfully. But please take a moment to reflect. As someone in charge of this event, your performance is terrible. Sending a message on Twitter two weeks prior to event apologizing for delays in not only insufficient, it's acknowledgement of your incompetence. I will not speculate on the nature of the delay. However, I can reasonably place the entirety of the delay in publication of rules and playbox in your lap. I hope (and expect) that this anomaly will be a fun and successful event for all participants on ground despite your utter incompetence in planning.
Sincerely,
One of the many thankless, mostly invisible agents who has helped make anomalies fun and successful for years.
Comments
We're making our own rules at this point
At some aspects Ingress not only didn't improve in 10 years, but even gets worse...
soon(tm) 🥳
I'm worrying this is shaping up to be as rough for the community as Umbra was. Sincerely hope we don't come ten days out from future anomalies with no rule announcements. Niantic, please tell us what we're doing!
If only more agents would core subscribe.
Also nobody from Europe (or even other continents) wants to take part in this anomaly. Surely one city is enough. Just like 640K ought to be enough for anybody. ;-)
Playbox will be extended to Skid Row due to lack of portals in Chinatown 😆
With the suddently increasing, piles of new MEME photos in primememe channel in the past two days, I can feel that players are anxious....
Rules when?
As someone who’s been putting in valuable personal time and effort in helping put out information about this Anomaly in an effort to draw in attendees I am both in agreement with frustration about Niantic’s lack of timely communication, but I am dismayed and honestly a little disappointed in the tone, lack of professionalism and personal jabs at Brian Rose in this post. I would never call someone incompetent and terrible if I don’t know for certain what they’ve done behind the scenes in their line of work. My immediate thought was, “I really hope no one involved in organizing on my faction’s side wrote this. I’d be really embarrassed and a little pissed.”
As an agent who has been lead by the original poster and an eye-in-the-sky for countless anomalies: I support and sign the statements made.
Anyone wanna talk about broken scans? Cause anything older than Oct 3rd is broke too.
I want to add that I'm disappointed in Niantic due to the lack of information around this event and an arbitrary ban in my local community. I mean, I've given Niantic the benefit of the doubt many many times, but I'm honestly done. After 21 months, I decided to cancel my C.O.R.E. subscription. I will also not play competitively in the IWWC like I did last year, since I've lost all motivation to play.
i agree with this. I have been involved in countless anomaly preparations at this point. Even older anomaly series had rules at least two weekends before the event. We are 10 days from the start of the anomaly and have no clue what the rules are or what the play box officially will be. This was taken care of by interactions with POCs in the past but, as has been brought to my attention, it seems as though what they have asked for or suggested is not even being listened to. You have been wondering why so many people have drifted away from the game and this is one example of why.
I looked into flying down to LA for my first in person anomaly, but then was reminded of how sloppy things have become and if all that money and effort was worth a couple medals and maybe meeting a few new people. Naaaaa, I'll pass. They'll probably let me earn the medal from home anyways.
I have no faith in Niantic or that they really care about the community they helped create and instead have in many ways, since abandoned besides a breadcrumb or two when we really get vocal. Maybe if a few of you really diehard loyalist could help sell a few more John Hanke handshake/autograph sessions we might get an update from our overlords.
Good luck to anyone who has already spent hundreds or thousands to fly to an event you still know such little about... At least the weather should be nice!
I am not involved in this anomaly but I have have worked with the OP and countless other members of the community on several anomalies. Be it on ground or as eye in the sky.
I wholeheartedly agree with the statements.
Tristemente esto se siente que algo ha fallado y no tienen un equipo de trabajo. No puede recaer todo en un solo sujeto, si uno falla debe haber otro para apoyar.
Tenemos fallas en los Kit, eventos, falta de anuncios, perdida de eventos. Algo pasa. Solo diganlo...
Well said, @worldchicken
I’ve been playing this game since it’s second year. While no anomaly is without a few hiccups, waiting this long before finalizing even a playbox, let alone a set of rules, is absurd. This is the 10 year anniversary for this game. These battle beacon events over the last few months have been snoozefests. Many people are spending a lot of money to attend an event for which, inexplicably, there is no information about.
Why?
1.- anomaly in a city with a high cost of living , South America is always left out of the anomalies, about the rules it seems good to me it is a strategy game the rules of being given at the last moment
I, also, wholeheartedly support what the OP wrote, and I have been working on anomalies, and participating in them, in one way or another, since 2014.
Regarding the rules, I must disagree with the poster I'm quoting, here, since strategy isn't "who can adapt better to last minute information", that would be tactics.... strategy means planning, and for that, we need to know what the actual anomaly will be scored by, and also, where it will take place... i.e. Playbox and RULES. And as was pointed out, the eyes in the sky and other "behind the scenes" community organizers are volunteers, who can't just spend their whole days to discuss strategy, weekends are best for that, since they all got jobs, and also, because not all of them are in the same timezones...
Everything else has been said, multiple times, already.
Someone, who wonders when we finally get rules and an actual confirmation on the playbox ..,
Trminator
Berlin, Germany
@NianticBrian if I had an option, i would cancel my flight from Europe to LA by now...
How can there be not be any rules by now and ornaments are also not up...
This was supposed to be the 10 years anniversary and anomaly happening at the same time but it seems to be this will be a disaster...
I'm looking forward meeting friends and attending a standup comedy show when I'm in LA...
But Niantic events... Not really anymore and future once I really need to reconsider if i will attend after this...
As the creator of PrimeMemes I gotta say I usually only post if something is funny but the last 30 hours of my memeathon is just showing the peak of my disapointment. Many people dedicate significant parts of their lives to this game especially during anomaly time and what do we get in response.
Exactly nothing.
As somebody who once already had the fun to be part of an anomaly orga I gotta say things didn't run that well back than too, but the last few years have just been a steep downhill track. The whole Umbra situation. Hexathlons being a single player rather than the massive multiplayer game that Ingress is.
Me not liking Battle Beacons for anomalies and why those same events over and over again is something I already told Dominik back in Munich.
Seeing the defacto onsite gamemaster for an anomaly taking side with their own faction is something that also left a bad aftertaste for me personally. (I don't really care anymore about who wins anomalies I just want to meet friends, because anomalies don't have any meaningfull impact on story anymore anyway. (Not that there would be a good story left since Prime))
But what is happening right now just feels like a spit in the face. I already said it back in 2019 if you don't want to maintain the game anymore because it's not making enough money do it while people are happy with the game but don't tow us behind the car for years and with every day make the game less enjoyable.
geozukunft - Lord of memes (I didn't come up with this name)
Linz, Austria
PS.: While waiting for the rules or waiting for new comments to get posted in this thread enjoy some quality memes from a bunch of amazing memers in this community https://t.me/PrimeMeme
The attention that Niantic gives us.....
For a bit of historical context:
As best as I can tell, the rules for the first day of the Myriad anomalies were published on 2019-07-15. The anomaly itself happened a hair under two weeks later, on 2019-07-27. I couldn't find anything for when the play boxes were officially published, but I'd guess it was no more than a month before the anomaly.
But back then, there was a general pattern and expectation that the rules for Myriad would not be a radical departure from the rules of the previous series. So, thinking about strategy from the initial announcement was possible.
In addition, there were specific agents who were Points of Contact (POCs) with Niantic. The POCs knew what had been submitted as playbox proposals, before they were officially published. The POCs had an opportunity to comment on the rules, before they were officially published. The POCs were given a timeline of when Niantic expected to take care of various things (and as I recall, Niantic effectively kept to it). The POCs could not go public with any of that information, but they could use that information to set general expectations (hey, Agents, if you get a hotel around here, it'll probably work well) or to discuss things in detail with individuals who could be trusted to not go putting everything up on Twitter (yeah, so, we probably wanna farm keys to over there for a link path).
Point being, there was a communication channel back then that seems to be lacking now.
(P.S. I'm not saying POCs should necessarily be that communication channel. I'm saying only that the channel needs to exist.)
"(P.S. I'm not saying POCs should necessarily be that communication channel. I'm saying only that the channel needs to exist.)"
... it also should be a dialog, not a one-way channel ;)
Please note that, because of Connected Cells, the Anomaly will actually begin this Saturday. That is, we are 3 days away from the real beginning of the Anomaly and yet there are no rules.
Go worldchicken!!
The thought of going to the anomaly very briefly crossed my mind.
I am limited mobility and require extra planning for me and much hand holding from the pocs which is greatly appreciated.
I have worked with world chicken before I find him very reasonable and even tempered for him to have spoken up truly shows his amount of frustration for the community.
Anomalies drive the game many people have fallen away without them..... They like to get together and battling against each other and battle beacons is not the way to go.
https://ingress.com/news/epiphany-dawn-rules/
There‘s nothing to add to this remarkable post. 100% agreed. You should take this extremely seriously Brian!