Retiring the Quantum Capsules might backfire
Removing the Quantum Capsules could have the exact opposite of the intended effect.
I don't know what the idea or reasoning behind the initial release of the MUFG Capsule was but the Quantum Capsules have worked as somewhat of an equalizer. Many Agents living in rural areas don't have access to high-level Portals, even more so now that each Agent can only deploy a single L7-Resonator per Portal again, preventing two-Agent-teams from creating Level 7 Portals. Sure, as a Level 8+ Agent you still get the occasional L8-Resonators or L8-XMP Bursters from Level 6 Portals every now and then but it's not enough to sustain active gameplay which means that if you play Ingress in a low activity rural area as it's supposed to be played, on foot, the retirement of the Quantum Capsules will be a big blow.
There is a group of players however who will not be hit nearly as much: "Cargress" players; those people who use their cars to drive from Portal to Portal to hack, link, field, capture and destroy. For them a lack of high-level items virtually doesn't exist because if they run low they'll just jump into their car, drive to the next Level 8 Portal, hack it until it's burned out and repeat that process until their stocks replenished just to then descent upon those rural Agents with overwhelming force which, if those rural Agents don't have other active Agents from their faction around, can take them months to recover from.
Quantum Capsules have worked as an equalizer in that regard. Even those Agents that don't have the luxury of having a Level 7/8 Portal within normal reach (2-3 km radius) are able to get decent numbers of high-level items (XMP Burster, Ultra Strikes, Resonators, Power Cubes) to defend themselves from attacks as well as regain and rebuild what they've lost reasonably quickly.
The argument for retiring the Quantum Capsules seems to be that they allegedly cause Agents to be lazy and sit at home only using Quantum Capsules as their source of items instead of walking around hacking Portals, fulfilling Ingress' moto "It's time to move" but I would argue that even if that might be partially true in some cases, removing the Quantum Capsules will not resolve that issue instead expediting it, because the advantage of those "Cargress" players over rural, walking Agents will be even larger.
Since the 26th of December 2016 Quantum Capsules (then still MUFG Capsules) are no longer able to reproduce Very Rare items, which is a good idea since if Agents want to get those top Portal Mods for example they have to go out and hack a large number of Portals. The addition of the rare Kinetic Capsule on the 14th of September last year was a great idea and complements the equalizing effect of the Quantum Capsules quite nicely since those who play Ingress as intended, especially those in rural areas, now have a way (which isn't available to "Cargress" players) to get their hands on top items by refining the rare Portal Mods they have gotten through hacking and the Quantum Capsules into the very rare versions of said Mods by doing what they already do best: Walking and really living up to the moto "It's time to move".
The use of Quantum Capsules and Kinetic Capsules in concert will get Agents to walk around more as it gives them a true gameplay advantage. If the Quantum Capsules are removed however the scale will move back into the direction of those who use their cars instead because them driving from one high-level Portal to the next can overpower the beneficial effects of the Kinetic Capsules since one still needs (rare) items to start a Kinetic Capsule-program and if you have fewer Portals around and take more time to get from one Portal to the next you are still at a clear disadvantage to those who simply choose to drive around.
Conclusion: Considering everything laid out above I would suggest to retain the Quantum Capsules and to expand the range of Kinetic Capsule-programs (e.g. break down Force Amps into L8-Ultra Strikes and Turrets into L8-XMP Burster) to award all the walking Agents out there and give them a fair chance against those people who choose to drive instead.
Comments
Didn’t quantum capsules dupe very rare items until 2018 or something?
All those lazy players will just get one of those swings to put your cellphone in and “walk” kinetic capsules at home.
As a rural player, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Quantums are my sole source of level 8 gear. Sure, I can bribe the next closest team **** (2 hours away) to meet me halfway, deploy on a couple portals in a park, use vrbb to flip bump them; but unless we can double deploy l8 resos, I'm still at lvl 7 gear at best.
If I could create l8 XMP, resos, and PC, with kinetic caps, from lower level gear, I have no trouble with walking to create them. But since I can't, I'm not sure I have a big interest in continuing to play.
I'm pretty sure it uses location to calculate traveled distance
Nope lol. Know a local who was putting 100km a day on their scanner with defit/swing
You dont have the possibility to put your drone there?
The removal of the Quantum capsules from my account (that ive collected over the years) has made my choice easier to let the Core subscription run out/end this month.
Well I'm not happy on many fronts. I'll NOT be purchasing anything else from Niantic in the stores, this removal of quantum capsules is the latest thing going wrong with the game. I was there when it started this is right up there with prime as dumb ideas. Bring back the quantum capsules. Ppl should weigh in on this make their dissatisfaction known. Game writers just lazy sitting on their butts is what we have here not game players.
That might work with a fitness tracker and 'Adventure Sync' but as far as I know the guy is right, in the Scanner the distance is calculated using locations plotted e.g. when you recharge, drop/pick up items, hack, deploy Mods or Resonators, link etc. ...
For me that unfortunately doesn't work. For starters I have never seen a true Lvl. 8 Portal in person, secondly you would need to be able to get close to those Portals and would have to make sure they are never destroyed/turned because otherwise your Drone is returned.
For me I don't even know where the next closest Lvl. 8 Portal even is but I reckon it's way out of range.
I often get "just use the Drone" as a response (not as a friendly question like in your case but more in the tone of "You're such an idiot. Just use the Drone, dumb-dumb.") but I don't think those people have ever been in a similar situation to me. Don't get me wrong, the Drone is awesome and I like and use it a lot but it's no fix for the mounting issues of rural, secluded Agents...
If you have never seen a true lvl 8 portal, then you also don't really need level 8 bursters. I am a semi-rural player (I work in a city), but all my bursters in my inventory have come from drone hacks because any level 8 portals in places I manage to play in would be swiftly smashed. The daily drone hacks I can make wouldn't supply enough gear if I lived somewhere where there was a lot more opposition, but as a rural player, 5-10 daily drone glyphs is more than enough for my visits to the big cities. In fact, currently I only drone tap hack 1 or 2 times a day because I haven't had the opportunity to use the gear I have.
I just want to echo what others are saying: This feels like a very bad idea, for rural players, suburban players and city players. It also feels like a bad idea for players who are more casual players, like myself, who don't calculate how to make long links and huge control fields and who don't drive.
I play in a city with a lot of portals, where the best solution is just to often hack, load up portals with resonators and link. The next day or two, that portal might flip teams so using high level resonators doesn't work because you can't get them back unless you do loads of walking or bus rides and others are actually using them. Hacking a level 1 portal isn't going to get level 3, 4 or 5 resonators.
As a casual player, the quantum capsules helped to make sure I had high level resonators to deploy in areas that can be defended. (Coupled with the kinetic capsules, it also means I have inventory to fill portals with resonators.) And it means I could attack the other team as otherwise who coordinate better at times and do make higher level portals that last longer.
My barrio is like a small town in that sense. Inventory is always an issue and this makes certain aspects of inventory management to accomplish basic game tasks harder.
(Apologies if not explaining this well. But, yeah, more a casual fan who doesn't think about creating shapes with links.)
Lucky you. I am the only active Enlightened Agent in my area which is utterly dominated by the Resistance. Also the argument "if you don't have any Lvl. 8 Portals you don't need L8-XMP Burster" is frankly ****. If we had unlimited inventory space you might have a point there but seeing as we don't you don't. I simply can't afford to carry 80% more L6 weapons to get the same firepower as I have with L8 ones. My inventory is already at its limit.
Whether you accept it or not, an Agent moving from a city with good high-level Portals to a rural area which lacks them will have a massive advantage, one a rural Agent moving to a city with high-level Portals simply cannot hope to achieve. Maybe you get by just fine without any high-level gear, good for you, but I and quite a few others in similar or comparable circumstances don't.
At the end of the day Niantic will have to decide whether they want to retain us as active players or not. We don't have any power in that regard. As for me, a challenge is fun, an impossible challenge is not.
not everyone has access to p8. I know since the neighbour city lacked them for some time. When I asked what they needed it wasnt b8, but r8, for building.
but do the rest of the agents use lvl8 gear? Since p8 seems to be a very rare resource where you at.
I haven't asked the Resistance Agents what they use to destroy my Portals but they do it extremely quickly, even when they are alone to they must be using high-level gear, otherwise I would be able to counter-recharge to save my precious Lvl. 6 Portals I have managed to keep alive since we can't deploy two L7-Resonators per Portal anymore.
The issue is that the Resistance is dominating my area and seems to consist primarily of "Cargress" players not to mention that they are the worst kind of people. (I was forced to spend over six months under a 7+ layer Field surgically set up to cover my usual AO with the anchor Portals so far out of range that I would have needed to use a car to get there. Them doing that to me isn't that much of an issue but they did that to every new Enlightened Agent that popped up anywhere which is why there's no-one left now.)
I'm sure they have their high-level Portals for Drone-farming somewhere but even if I knew where and would make the trip to place my Drone there they would turn the Portal with my Drone on as soon as they noticed its presence, sending it back to me and preventing me from using it to get the gear I need.
I assure you that they have no honour or sense of fair play at all. One time they were attacking my Portals from their cars again so I moved out to retake them just to see them drive back to the Portal, park on the sidewalk with running engine to continuously attack the Portal I was just retaking without even leaving the car. And they did that repeatedly. And just in case you're wondering I have seen them before and they aren't disabled or anything, they're just unbelievably lazy. I don't know about you but as far as I'm concerned just driving in your car from Portal to Portal not what playing Ingress is about...
I am not allowed to drive a car, since having narcolepsy, so Im walking. Very rarely traveling by car, and when I do, I can assure you, I am not the one driving.
You dont have any contact at all with them?
You mentioned a green comunity a bit further away? See if you can get in more help from them, in return maybe you could help them out with other things?
All gear isnt weapons, and modds are for moust player, easier to farm on p1 (Im not joking) than on p7.
P8 is of course the best, but also the hardest to build and keep.
Modds like heatsinks and shields are moust ofteb always valuable. So maybe you could find a closer cooperation with them?
I cant imagine how it is playing like that, since my town is totaly different. But I think the game should be a funny place to be. I know you cant link long without higher resos, but for farmportals.. p1 is as good as anything, and many player would like to travel quite far to exchange 100 r8 and 100 b8 for say 100 aegis.
It's not about get out there and move, it's about you paying for those 3 use capsules.
Thanks Niantic, I'm done.
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with your first paragraph. I have never accused you of being a "Cargress" player and since I don't know you I will not do so unless you tell me or otherwise give me strong reason to believe that you are one.
And no, I don't really have contact to them but I'm pretty sure they don't have any interest in having contact either considering that when I got in contact with the singular other Agent in my village (Resistance), who hasn't been active in quite a while, to broker an agreement to use ADA Refactors and JARVIS Viruses to level up a Portal to our mutual benefit they attacked him for it calling him and our agreement a disgrace and quickly destroyed the Portal after he turned it green for me to place another L7- and L8-Resonator on it.
Also no, there are no other Enlightened Agents anywhere in the area, I think you might be confusing me with MayaTheSiren.
To be honest I wouldn't exchange a hundred Aegis Shields for a hundred L8-Resonators and hundred L8-XMP Burster, since I only have 40 Aegis Shields but 70+ L8-Resonators and 480+ L8-XMP Bursters and the protection those Aegis Shields afford to my Portals is more important than being able to retaliate. I currently have 32 Portals which I personally keep alive and which the amount of L8-Resonators I still have in my inventory I could replace theirs twice over but since 27 of them are Lvl. 6 Portals I wouldn't be able to rebuild them until we get another 2x L8-Resonator deployment event.
I really don't know why they limited Agents to deploying a single L7-Resonator per Portal (again) because not only does that also hurt Agents in areas with low Agent density since you can't create Lvl. 7 Portals with two Agents anymore but it also doesn't fit the pattern...
With the years of collecting gear, niantic pushing pay to play and not even at market rates - yes a farmer will sell for 1/5th of what trash niantic are selling - and players are vanishing ,
i am donating gear to locals who are struggling to play with trash portals. More expensive gear to buy now sits on the scanner inventory and cant be disabled from the scanner realeatate.
Seriously laggy play - dont tell me 100mb 5G mobile data isnt enough. - throttling play has been happening.
the remaining players are resorting to either multi accounting or collecting inactive accounts to create farms. Its no longer competitive .
Prime <spit> saw huge agent dropouts due to bad ill conceived poorly planned software rollouts - pay to play with little or no value - social justice virtue signaling during covid and the American riots add up.
We want to game. Was considering subscription but they didnt listen to us before Prime, refused to see their software advances hurt basic game play. Refused to read suggestions that we didnt want animations and bloatware that a 3 yo phone wont run .when the gear runs out so will the desire to play with years of game play .
Removing the mufgs/ quantums is the last gasp of a dying developer to force us away or pay.
their ears are painted on.
"i am donating gear to locals who are struggling to play with trash portals."
Yeah, that's one major issue with letting Agents only deploy a single L7-Resonator per Portals and the retirement of Quantum Capsules.
"the remaining players are resorting to either multi accounting or collecting inactive accounts to create farms. Its no longer competitive ."
Yeah, I have seen similar things as well and it makes gameplay even more unfair for those that follow basic rules.
"[...] - social justice virtue signaling during covid and the American riots add up."
Could you elaborate what you mean with that?
"Refused to read suggestions that we didnt want animations [...]"
I'm not sure what you're talking about with this one. If I recall correctly the area blanket in Control Fields used to move like clouds/smoke or something (which I personally actually preferred) while it's completely static now.