A Case for Shutting Down the Game
Hear me out before you insta-disagree with this.
I have been playing since 2012, so I have a broad frame of reference when it comes to Niantic and Ingress. I have done fielding, anomalies, First Saturdays, NL POC, field art, goruck, shards, Mission Day POC, IO, you name it.
My propositions for the community are simple:
- Many players have lost objectivity regarding expectations of the Ingress team. I have witnessed an increasingly blind level of support for Niantic and Ingress no matter what. Perhaps players are terrified of losing access to something they've spent so much time and money on?
- Niantic's level of effort to support and promote the game has fallen to an all-time minimum. They seem to have abandoned the community. Who is our community manager? How is communication with the community to be done and how often should we expect it? What is going on with development? Where is the release roadmap?
- The (active) Ingress player count has fallen below the level required to sustain a functional community. Many areas are nearly devoid of any player activity. Red faction was an interesting diversion, but not a long-term solution to a declining player base. Has Niantic done anything recently to promote or advertise Ingress to the public?
- If Niantic is unwilling to make vast, measurable improvements to #2 and #3 above, they should consider shutting down the game.
That said, I asked ChatGPT to write a scenario for game shutdown:
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As an AI language model, I am not privy to Niantic's internal workings or decision-making processes, but I can offer a general plan that Niantic could consider if they were to decide to shut down their game Ingress after years of decline:
- Notify the community: Niantic should give advanced notice to the Ingress community that they are planning to shut down the game. This notification can be made through official Ingress channels, such as the game's website or social media accounts.
- Communicate the reasons: Niantic should communicate the reasons behind the decision to shut down Ingress. This can help to provide closure for the community and potentially generate goodwill if the reasons are reasonable and justified.
- Provide a timeline: Niantic should provide a timeline for the shutdown, including when the game will be officially taken offline. This can help players plan their remaining time with the game and potentially drive engagement in the final days.
- Offer incentives: Niantic could offer incentives to players who continue to engage with the game in its final days. This could include bonuses or rewards that are exclusive to the shutdown period.
- Provide information on refunds: If players have spent money on the game, Niantic should provide information on how players can request refunds for any unused in-game currency or purchases.
- Preserve game data: Niantic should preserve game data for historical purposes, and potentially make it available to players or researchers. This can help to ensure that the legacy of the game lives on even after it is no longer playable.
- Offer alternatives: Niantic could offer alternative games or experiences that might be of interest to the Ingress community. This could help to retain some players and potentially generate goodwill by showing that Niantic is committed to providing engaging experiences.
In general, it's important for Niantic to be transparent, communicative, and empathetic throughout the shutdown process. Ingress has a loyal and passionate community, and treating them with respect and dignity during the shutdown can help to ensure that they remain loyal to Niantic in the future.
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If you disagree with the above, what are some circumstances where most players would agree that the game is ready to end?
Comments
You can easily end the game on your own. There is now a delete account button. Turn in your founder badge at the door. Right, we know you won't.
Its alarming to see how quiet brian and thia is here but i guess she changed roles internal within the ingress company a while ago, i dont remember last time brian replied in the general section when was that like over a year ago if not longer ? Are they even active on campfire brian or thia ? Even if u post a nice idea good feedback or whatever u dont get the feeling someone from niantic has even read it or even replied "good idea i pass it along the rest of team" or something... Its sad to see that Q2 has no global events at all, we only get rainbow xm next month and thats it.. i guess maybe end of Q3 we will maybe get a global event like we did in the end of Q1 but imo thats too long between global events 6 months, better would be 3 months optimal...
Game needs more events, anomalies is good that they do now but thats just a very small % of agents that will go to them sadly i cant go to any anomalies even if i wanted, and the rest that cant for whatever reasons have like no events to do at home except fs & ss which feels boring long ago no ingame badge to earn...
They could do a global event on machina where it infects everything even blue or green portals, its weird they havent already i think that would be fun i have so far only taken out 2 portals and that was just random on a bus drive home and if they would be at full health i would probably didnt have a chance in the speed taken em out...
Not chat GPT but let me summarize the best I can.
I am done playing, Can we now remove it for everyone else too? -- @joecain
just quit and let the others still have fun.
why do you want so much to remove a good game.
Dude you are 100% right. We haven't had a community for a long time. And we haven't played in a long time. Since the tessellation, we have dropped the number of players to an all-time low.
And yes, we do not even have the necessary number of people in order to convey to the company the idea of an endangered game! And worst of all, the old-timers don't give a damn about the fact that there are no players left in the game. As long as they can draw their favorite triangle along a route that has been proven 100,500 times, the game will be the most alive for them. It is impossible to arrange a coordinated action with comrades who are still playing due to the fact that everything suits them.
I'm surprised Brian doesn't have online statistics in his project? He does not want his project to bring more profit?
A good game has good updates. Not like ours. The same problems hang for years, there is no new content, and some of the content that appears is designed for playing in big cities and works crookedly.
Let me tell you about the machine. During the entire game, the car appeared in my city no more than 5 times. And each time it captured no more than 10 portals in a small area, although there were many gray portals around. and in a neighboring city where no one played at all, it infected all the portals in general. Do you understand what I mean? all innovations are clumsily made. Campfire does not work in Ukraine, even in the scanner. Also, in the latest version, restarting the agent training does not work. we have a lot of problems, and a lot of broken functions. But the company does nothing about it. so I can't call this product a good game. We haven’t had a normal plot for a long time, videos either, there are also no normal scanner translations that Brian has been asking for for many years.
You know you can just delete the app off your phone if you’re no longer enjoying it?
It is a good game?
a lot of people still playing after 10y and still travel for anomalies so i would think so.
why would they play if they really don't like it
"Wizards Unite" went through the same: community liaisons disappeared, time between updates went up and severe bugs were left in the game for over half a year. It was canceled soon afterwards. Same went on for Transformers (ok, that never left beta).
I think it's because Ingress doesn't have an expensive franchise license fueling it (it's Niantic's own intellectual property) it's still here. The withdrawal of community managers and fewer events mean it's probably not making enough money, but because there's no Pokemon company, WB or Hasbro to pay it still exists and might still contribute enough to Lightship.
In short: if there's no reason to shut it down, why should anyone "make a case for it"? I say: let it run, and let it run cheap. At least it still runs then. Although a randomized automated tasks/quest system wouldn't hurt.. at least gives you something else to do again.
It’s called fomo….
What is your playbox? Mine is still hyperactive.
Ingress still makes money!
Ingress is still "fun"
If you aren't enjoying it, you are free to uninstall the game and try something else.
Ingress does NEED and urgently new players to take up the game, this is now down to Niantic effectively markering the game.
Which we have so far seen, their marketing is for one game only.
We also need more events, small and large. This I still belive is the plan with Agent Ops.
we have almost no active players left, if earlier there were about 4-6 active players in the city every day, now it is 1-2 maximum. Sometimes there are visitors but this does not save the situation.
I love bread. I regularly brought it to the local supermarket. The bread maker regularly spoiled me with Easter cakes for the Easter holiday, and for my birthday or the birthday of my neighbors, I could always buy a delicious cake. The baker regularly updated the assortment of bakery products. And what was most popular was produced with the best quality.
But now, at the enterprise producing bread, they changed the chief technologist, hired a specialist for public relations, and generally restructured production. As a result, only two varieties of bread were sold, wheat bread and rye bread. Wheat bread began to be sold rotten, due to which the next day it was covered with mold and rye bread was unpleasant in taste. My favorite croissants are gone. Cakes began to be produced only in one standard pattern, and I decided to do something about it. I wrote to the hot line of the bread factory, they also hired a community manager, which they themselves announced in the press. But the community manager did not answer, the chief technologist was silent on Twitter and did not comment on the quality of his bread.
Since I have no other sources of bread nearby, I have to continue to eat what they give me.
It was an allegory for our favorite game.
Niantic look at the quality of your product!
https://youtu.be/2sztw3zNz_Y
literally this thread:
As others have said, if you don't enjoy the game anymore, feel free to drop it, nobody is forcing you to play it
if all of us who disagree with the company's policy and the quality of the released updates leave, then who will play with you?
The people that still have fun with the game? Believe it or not, people can have gripes with something and still have fun with it. Is Ingress a polished game? Not really. Could there be more events and a proper story. Absolutely. Do I still have fun? You bet I do.
If you truly do not have any fun with Ingress anymore, like none at all, you can and should leave, otherwise you just make life miserable for yourself and others
I am hungry my friend, I am unspeakably hungry for the ingress that was 8 years ago. I wasn't young then, but I saw the potential for a full online strategy game in the real world. But alas, we have come to an extremely sad situation. We have a stratification of the community between those who like to play triangles and those who really want updates and new content. By the way, how many active players do you have in your habitat? I have 3 of them per 200,000 population. I can't bring more agents into the game because I can't answer simple questions like what are the factions doing? And why are there so many bugs in the game, the map does not load as it should, and so on? Why level up after 8 if there are no new features?
The lover of triangles does not care about all these questions and the decrease in the number of players, but for those who remember another ingress, it's a shame that such a good game was turned into this farce.
I see a lot of folks telling me not to play anymore. And I mostly have.
However, like most of you, I have years of my life invested in the game, and it's hard to walk away entirely.
I still haven't seen any answers to my question:
If you disagree with the above, what are some circumstances where most players would agree that the game is ready to end?
What is your bridge too far - what would make you say "OK now that's enough"?
Watch an ad before hacking a portal?
Drones hacking keys or throwing links?
Scan a portal to glyph hack it?
_______________ (fill in the blank)
3 per 200k population is what I'm seeing as well. Niantic probably sees a lot of backpack accounts so they probably think the game is super popular still.
I have left games where the mechanics got so broken it became not worthwhile to continue. It would take ridiculous P2W to go there.
A fan of triangles will help develop interest in the game in a person from another city, as it is a potential helper in the game. :)
A triangle lover will develop a community and seek to meet more players in his city for the same reason - the more players, the easier it is to build that triangle over the city :)
The facts speak for themselves. The number of active players is falling. And not a single lover of triangles could overcome this problem.
In Moscow, Niantic helped the players score an ingress, but otherwise there were a lot of new players here. And in other cities, too. People were called together to build triangles, and people liked it :)
And with the help of big intercity triangles, people from different cities got to know each other and became friends :)
Big triangles are cool, it's really good and fun :)
Show your medal Illuminator :)
Triangles lost their power and enjoyment when niantic started allowing under-field linking.
Reading some of these posts you would think some players would benefit from stopping something they no longer enjoy and going to do something else to fill their play time. Then again perhaps these forums is their alternative? For myself the game is still quite enjoyable and I intend to continue playing for the foreseeable future. And I fully intend to continue to support them financially through purchases. Because I don't expect something for nothing.
I've posted this on Niantic's new game Peridot's twitter page but I'll leave it here too, games should be fun. If the game is causing you more stress or frustration than fun, it's time to find a new game. I know it's hard to give up something you've played for so long but hey, maybe some time away will make things fresh for you when you decide to install again in weeks/months/years. Wishing you the best.
As to what might be enough to make me quit the game. It would take a lot, maybe being forced to view excerpts from some of the toxic forum posts before a hack would process would do it.