Chronos - Impressions from Day 1
TheAuraStorm
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So it’s less than 24 hours into the Chronos global challenge. I’m currently on about 1670 - so about a third of the way to 5000.
To start with, it’s great to see Global Challenges back. They are one of my most favourite parts of the game - taking this sandbox game and tweaking the rules to turn gameplay upside down.
It’s unfortunate that there are only two tiers, the past few years have set a precedence for three. A tier that everyone can attain, one for most people and a challenging tier for those who work for it. In future, it would be nice to see a return to 3 tears.
The artwork isn’t particularly special. It looks like something you will see in an FS media, just a generic blend of green and blue. A stack isn’t really going to make me think of this event, unlike the characters from the Nemesis series: (Aurora, Didact, Optima etc.)
I like how there are multiple ways to earn points, than the event based on one specific metric. This helps people play the event in a way that suits them and their resources.
This event also gives a very long time window, rather than the conventional 10 days. This will help more people find the time to play.
Now for the main part, Overclocking.
if I was to summarise, I would say that the network is not ready.
We’ve recently had a wave of android devices no longer being compatible with scanning, so there is a large chunk of the community feeling disgruntled. I’m fortunate enough to have a high-end iPhone so these changes don’t directly affect me, I have to acknowledge that this event is significantly harder for others.
Many portals need more scans. Put simply. I live in a medium city that has had a lot of scans, people scanning for Battle Beacons, many people scanning portals for their scout controller, (uniques scout controlled) and at the start of this event, only a very small minority were actually eligible for overclocking.
I’ve had to spend my time trying to scan different portals to make more eligible for overclocking, but as familiar with the rules know, scanning, does not earn points for the event metric. Immediate feedback I would give to the team is to include a successful portal scan upload to count for a Chronos Point, it is contributing to the event, the network and is a necessity for a number of people.
The actual process of making a portal eligible for overclocking is extremely convoluted. Members of the community must scan the candidate, successfully upload the scans, then access the Wayfarer App (still in beta), create a lightship dev account to be able to see how many scans are needed and then request VPS activation.
I’ve found, and this is in my experience of about 15,000 scans, that probably between 50 and 80% of my slow, good scans are actually accepted by the database. so this would require between 15 and 20 scans to be uploaded, to meet the minimum requirement of 10 accepted scans to request VPS activation.
Even then, I have found in the field that just because a portal lets you overclock, it is not necessarily a good experience. Some simply do not want to calibrate or it can take multiple attempts.
The only reliable way I have found is to try and overclock portals I know have got upwards of 100 scans, that myself and my teammates have done.
There are wayspots that I know have been tasks in Pokémon GO, requesting scans for premium items that have 50+ scans uploaded on the wayfarer app, but then cannot be VPS activated because of the poor quality scanning.
Pokémon GO players are not scanning to build the network, they are doing it, begrudgingly for free premium items. As Ingress does not have incentives like that, only badges. Most Ingress players are scanning because they want to scan, and the quality seems to be better.
I’ve also noticed that VPS enabled portals on the lightship app I’m not showing as overclock eligible in Ingress, still wanting to receive more scans. I went to a park where the Wayfarer app said the majority of wayspots would be VPS enabled, to find only a pitiful, minority or actually overclock eligible. So instead of earning points for the event, hacking the portals with overclock. I found myself scanning.
As for the actual hacking process.
When it comes to citing the glyphs, not all glyphs are built equal. Some are exactly how they appear in 2D, but just rotated - these include: ‘civilisation’ and ‘shapers’.
Others are not clear representations of their 2-D counterparts, these include - Potential, Pure, Capture and Chaos, for example.
It is also not clear what orientation and agent should be facing to see the glyph clearly. Many people in my groups have sent videos of them frantically circling around, trying to get some resemblance of a glyph. Even for experienced glyphers, this is not interesting, fun or engaging.
Some kind of indicator of what angle you should be facing the box for the cliff to correctly resemble needs to be added to overclocking.
The box does not seem to be stationary, in my experience, and from videos, other people have shared people are trying to circle the box to see the pattern from a different orientation, and the box is rotating with them. This does not help some glyphs that have a mirror image like ‘Create’ and ‘Destroy’ or ‘Simple’, ‘Gain’ and ‘Lose’.
I have also seen a bug where the glyph appears as very thin lines and is not clearly visible.
One thing Niantic has taken on board is the timing. It is much better and actually gives agents enough time to recite the pattern. I think this is finally at a happy medium. So one thing I will say thank you for is that
This is my feedback from day one, I’m happy to have a global challenge back, but these are a combination of my thoughts and what others have shared in my communities. I hope I can take this on board and make the game better for everyone. Thank you.
Comments
If Lightship is saying "VPS activated - experimental", it means it's not activated for Ingress.
The Wayfarer app shows some details, the website's Geospatial Browser shows some more exact details. The only thing I hate is that it's not mobile friendly. https://lightship.dev/account/geospatial-browser/
That's a direct link to the website view. Its default views shows VPS activated portals. Enable desktop site mode which change the agent view to desktop. You can click at the bottom right of the map "Not Activated" to show all of the portals in the area.
The artwork isn’t particularly special. It looks like something you will see in an FS media, just a generic blend of green and blue. A stack isn’t really going to make me think of this event, unlike the characters from the Nemesis series: (Aurora, Didact, Optima etc.)
I like the artwork even if it is a bit simple. The silver tier reminds me of the Tessellation Paragon medal. I would still like to see the missing Nemesis global challenge medal (Lucida and Optima were teased with Didact challenge announcement and Optima was eventually held).
The actual process of making a portal eligible for overclocking is extremely convoluted.
100% agree. I've been looking at my own city's portals and submitting them for VPS evaluation but it's definitely not something we as players should have to do. I also find myself looking at the resulting meshes to find out how to calibrate the hacks.
Only a few portals being overclock ready (21 in my city) is somewhat nice, it reminds me of the time I started playing. There were way fewer portals and each of them felt more special. I'm getting the same feeling with this challenge, I need to go out of my way to these special portals.
Pokémon GO players are not scanning to build the network, they are doing it, begrudgingly for free premium items. As Ingress does not have incentives like that, only badges. Most Ingress players are scanning because they want to scan, and the quality seems to be better.
The medals are a somewhat effective incentive plus you get 500 AP for each one you upload. During Eos, I popped an Apex and started uploading for nice AP boost.
One thing Niantic has taken on board is the timing. It is much better and actually gives agents enough time to recite the pattern.
I personally think there should still be a bit more time to draw the glyphs or there should be a practise mode with no time limit. It can be intimidating to find out what the glyphs can even look like for some time when starting.
All in all, I agree with a lot of what you wrote. My biggest wish would have been that the first global challenge of the year wasn't in the coldest time of the year. Either way, I will be aiming for the silver.
150+ portal park, only 6 OC portals. Another 150+ portal park, only 5 OC portals. Disappointing to try to run around and grab the other one here or one there, or the ones that you can't scan without actually walking in traffic. Soo much fun.
Glad I'm going the #hardmode way. Captures and mods. Took about 2.5 hours to unlock the low tier. Not even going to mention how much gas I wasted. How much extra **** I tossed into the air to get that (or how much more I will do, to get the remaining amount). If you gave me a point per resonator deployed, I'd of been in the park, walking and glyphing away. then driving to the next park, rinse and repeat. But there isn't hardly anything to OC. So I'm just gonna drive it out and do parks, but its disappointing that there isn't other ways to gain points. Those who have nearly no portals and/or have recruited all their pals to play, are gonna have to figure out OC if they have the ability to even do so.
As is, I see this event as a way to make the VPS network larger. Get agents out scanning, adding to Niantic's data pool. Scanning doesn't even give you points in this event either. So all of that scanning to hopefully make an OC portal gives you nothing!
RE Scan Quality.
I wish NIA had been a bit more forthcoming about why they wanted, high-quality scans.
Lots of people have been very sceptical over the last couple of years, and basically refused to take part with high-quality scanning, because they just assumed that Niantic wanted to monetise the database, which is true, but these people did not have enough foresight to think about the game that they play themselves.
Now, it is coming back to bite them, because those 500 scans they did of their feet in their living room, are not suitable for Overclocked enabled POI, so they’re gonna have to start all over again with real scans.
I’m glad that quite a few of us in the north east of Scotland have been appropriately scanning, and now we actually have lots to choose from.
One event isn't going to change my opinion of scans and whether they should be of some certain quality or not. That's not my problem to worry about, especially since Niantic has been so vague with ANY details regarding what they're doing with them. If Niantic gets scans of my feet, that's what they're getting, if I feel like I wanna scan a cool statue in town 100 times over so it hopefully ends up in the game as a 3D model, maybe I'll do it. 9 times out of 10, I'm not being careful about what's scanned or isn't scanned. We have to be near 3 years of scanning by now and up to this point, the only real advantage it's brought to the game is the overclock feature that a ton of folks can't even use and the other folks who can, don't seem overly interested in dealing with the buggyness of it all. I'm definitely one of those. Talk about a frustrating aspect of the game...
I bet I can activate a lot of your portals in St Louis - a lot of portals can be stuck on this minor step. It's literally a button press away.
Park the car and use your feet if that's how you feel about that.
really hate the while overclock thing, in winter stand still doing that is just torture and not very fun. glad we can get points cap and mod aswell
You're welcome. I gave up after a bit.
Nothing has made me want to rage quit Ingress in a long time!
So frustrating!
There are only OC portals available because I did a bunch of scans in the summer before Niantic broke scanning. Many portals were rejected for unknown reasons. 21 OC portals in 4 distinct areas in my neighborhood. No others in the entire province. Because scanning is broken cannot fix or add more. My biggest concentration of OC is 11 of 16 possible portals in a park that is not maintained in the winter. Need to break trails in the snow to get to the portals.
Spend several hours trying my best. It is winter and there is snow on the ground so 90% of the portals are covered with huge canvas bags or there signs removed to protect them. Was not possible to achieve calibration on any of these. I assume if scanning was possible it would just mess things up for the summer. It would not create two possible scenarios where calibration would work. I don't think any of the portals are in their actual position. PoGo has moved them to enable stops. My GPS today was sluggish I had to constantly walk 10 meters past to be able to attempt a scan. No way to tell which portals I successfully got a calibration and burnt the portal out or one it failed and needed to do it 3 more times to get all the possible points. I had to give up trying to move around in the snow to figure out the glyphs were and stick to the trails that I already stopped down.
The Pop up message of asking to do a scan needs to be disabled! until Niantic reenables scanning on all phones.
Being restricted to daylight and good weather is going to greatly reduce the time possible to get this badge. Last night I tried three portals that failed even though they were illuminated brightly by a street lamp, but were successful to day in daylight. I got more points yesterday modding a bunch of portals driving around at night. Half way to first tier.
City of Knoxville has 7 portals capable of being overclocked. This was a for mer mission day city with a population of almost 200k people. That's far less than 1% of the portals. Also if nobody is going on wayfarer app, it could have 50 good scans and nothing. This event is not very well thought out.
Go for it
Gotta drive that 20 minutes to go play, then I can walk. But most of it is driving. Vroom Vroom!!
"but I'll ignore everything about the many walkable portals in St Louis"
Come on.
I've already gotten over 20% of the badge done by capturing/modding portals. What have you been doing today?
Doing overclock hacks. Already at 237 from 12 OC hacks and some capping. 🤷♂️
Also checking Lightship for any potential VPS activation. I'm still going to check St Louis since I'm nice 😉
Remember people you can manually enable VPS if there’s enough decent scans on a POI by using the Wayfarer App.
iOS https://testflight.apple.com/join/VXu1F2jf
Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticlabs.argeo.niamapapp&hl=en_US
Why cant u enable overclock in ingress ? for average players this is a huge setback
Reminder that you should only really use said app if you're a Lightship developer...but we all know many use it anyways. Just have to do a quick "this is the official stance"
I'm surprised they don't allow you to login through your Niantic account, a HUGE oversight especially if you're designing apps.
I could give a **** less about developer when that's the only way to view the status of VPS enabled portals.
I am sure that’s the plan eventually but right now it’s still in beta and not intended for general use, but I agree it seems like there should be a way to view activated/to activate Portals on Ingress with a layer or something.
Must be nice to live in a place that's not in the near PEAK darkness of winter and scans won't work.
To be honest, I don't care too much of this event. No real connection with lore, only a bunch of portals are required to get to low tier, if you haven't a high number, you are screwed.
Snow on ground makes it almost impossible calibrate since most scans are when there was not and it doesnt seem to recognize i point at teh fountain. Pointless do overclock with x1 only. But i got the badge not gonna bother highest tier too much hazzle imo
I wondered how well some scans would work in the dark.
Position of some streetlights have been very useful and managed to get some.
The wayfarer app was supposed to be released to Ingress and Pokémon players back in March 2023.
And for to also include the ability to review nominations
Once there are enough scans, instead of asking for more scans, it should automatically VPS-Activate it/quality check. It’s really DUMB that we have to manually do the work that a computer can easily do. We should not have to do anything after scanning for Overclock to be activated.
Obviously, because its a "challenge" and what's more challenging when you can't even get VPS to OC with.
Further lack of foresight by Niantic.
Not really, it was planned as a dev feature to enable devs to integrate VPS into their products.
But that was almost a year ago.
And I agree, that the activation process should be automated by now
However, neither Pogo or ingress show any details about how many quality scans are required before activation
I only found a overclock enabled portal so far and faced the “rotated glyph” thing. For a feature like this you’re expecting at least to get some orientation indicator or hint…
I think I’ll go just for the calibration part on the next ones and get those 5 points.
Events don't have to connect with lore...at least state the problems with Overclocking more than the lore argument.