28 easy ways Niantic could improve the scanner right now
As my (possibly) last post in this forum, I'd like to remind Niantic that there are still many trivial bugs in the scanner. Obviously no software is perfect, and many users would overlook a few small details in a product that is overall very good - but there are so many little irritations in the current Ingress scanner product that they are everywhere you look and sometimes it just joins together into one big irritation. I know they are capable of solving many of these, as I've removed two items that just recently got fixed. Maybe they can print this out and use it as a checklist.
I know not every agent will agree with all of these, but you can probably all point to at least something that irritates you on a daily basis. I am only including stuff here that I have personally encountered on multiple occasions. They are not in any particular order. So here goes…
- When tapping the screen the balance between detecting 'tap' and 'move' is not optimal, leading to many taps just being ignored. This is particularly true of the key carousel, but also when selecting inventory items to recycle or manage. [link] [link]
- This also applies to the widget that selects between keys and inventory. In the early days the inventory view was a slider with three tabs, but that should be done away with so that you can just tap the controls at the bottom.
- The 'redo' button when glyphing doesn't always work - either the above tap/move thing is affecting it or the hitbox is too small.
- It's too easy to accidentally rotate the screen (e.g. if you try to select a portal that's very near the centre but accidentally move your finger by 2-3 pixels then the screen rotates by a massive angle; it sometimes rotates while swiping up to invoke bursters, and often rotates if you try to enter a glyph command but the hack aborts while you are doing it).
- Some screens that could have a scrollbar don't have one (e.g., comms log and the store).
- The key carousel scrolls down by 1-2 keys every time you revisit it, instead of keeping the same position where you left it. [link]
- If you recycle or use all of one level of item in your inventory, your position in the carousel shifts to the left or right. [link]
- It's too difficult to select portals when zoomed out; too easy when zoomed in.
- The default zoom level for drone hacking is awful and resets itself every time you view or move the drone even after you set a different zoom level. [link]
- If the network connection temporarily drops for some reason while doing an action (for instance if you walk out of Wi-Fi range) then even if the phone reconnects immediately you can be waiting 1-2 minutes for the action to complete in the scanner, and all similar actions are blocked during that wait. If this happens while you hacked a portal, then when the hack eventually goes through it says "Portal not in range" instead of hacking the portal, even though it clearly was in range when the
button was pressed. This also applies to delays that happen because of server lag. - If you miss the button you intended to press while deploying or recharging a portal, it punishes you by throwing you out of the portal screen. [link] [link]
- While deploying mods or resonators or firing bursters, the carousel moves spontaneously if it thinks you are low in XM. This can lead to deploying the wrong mod or using a cube when you didn't want to. Since we have the easy access '+' button to use cubes, the carousel should not move and should just grey out the deploy button. [link] [link] [link] For the same reason, we don't really need cubes on the attack menu any more. [link] [link]
- If you are using mid-range cubes and run out of that level, then it correctly moves up to the next level. But if you close and re-enter the cube menu it then places you at the lowest level, which is not what you wanted. This also applies to firing mid-range bursters.
- Resonator level choice during deployment is far from logical and sometimes seems to happen at random. In particular, if you were deploying starting at R8 but don't have any R6, and you come to a portal that already has your R8 and R7 on it, then it will choose the lowest level of resonator to deploy on the portal instead of going down to R5 [link] [link]. If you use a cube while deploying resonators, it will next try to put an R8 on the portal even if there is already one on. [link]
- When looking at keys in the carousel it is impossible to tell the difference between an absent resonator and one that is present but has very low charge. [link]
- When there is a "kinetic capsule ready" message at the bottom right, if you last looked at keys then tapping the message goes to keys instead of to the capsule. In addition, tapping the message always goes to inventory or keys even whan the capsule has been claimed and no other capsules are ready. [link] [link]
- When a Rare Kinetic Capsule finishes and you claim its contents, then automatically goes to the management screen for this capsule, the "uses remaining" count for this capsule is incorrect - it still has the old value, before the capsule was claimed. If you just claimed the capsule for the third time, this means you still get the management screen (sometimes for several seconds) before it resets to the inventory view. The management screen should not be shown if the capsule has reached its limit (ideally there should be something such as a short animation to show that the capsule has disintegrated).
- When the client has been runnning for a long time it can get into a state in which tapping on keys in the carousel has no effect, and tapping on inventory items does not display the UI controls that let you use or recycle the items. The only way to fix this is
to restart the client. [link for items] [link for keys] - Occasionally (particularly if frequently locking and unlocking the screen, and if the scanner has been running for a long time) the app completely loses Internet connectivity even though the connection is fine for all other apps. Trying to perform any action gives a very long wait and then an error message, and Portal status in the key carousel shows as constantly loading. The only way to fix this is to restart the client.
- Amount of XM can sometimes become permanently out of sync between the client and server. This means that a portion of the XM displayed in the client is yellow, and it cannot be used. The yellow XM also prevents XM from being collected when the client thinks the XM bar is full. The only way to fix this is to restart the client. [related]
- When recharging a portal key for the first time after deploying a resonator on a portal, it often only recharges one resonator instead of charging all resonators. [link]
- When a resonator is selected for recharge and you use a cube, the UI does not show the resonator selected any more even though it is in fact selected. [link] [link] [link]
- Boost recharge works inconsistently, particularly when you are picking up ground XM at the same time - either does not fully charge the portal or says "Need more XM" even though you have sufficient XM to recharge the portal. [link] [link]
- If you finish a correct glyph hack with less than 1 second left, no AP is awarded for the glyph hack (though the 100 or 200 basic AP for hacking a portal is still awarded). If you had got one glyph wrong, it would have awarded the AP for each correct glyph, so you are being punished for having got all the glyphs right. [link] [link] [link] [link]
- After viewing a remote portal (by tapping on a portal either on the drone screen or while viewing through a portal key), long-pressing anywhere on the home map screen gives hack options for that portal even though it's nowhere in range. [link]
- The toast message saying why you can't hack a portal either doesn't appear or appears for a very short time if there's a queued hack results window to be displayed. [link] [link]
- Select some items for recycling. Scroll the carousel to a capsule. Do not select the capsule for recycling. Press the lower-right recycle button. Receive the scary message "The selected Capsule contains items that will also be recycled. Continue?" even though you didn't select to recycle any capsule.
- When tapping on the COMM notification at the top-right of the screen (when the app has been running for a long time) you sometimes only get old activity and have to wait half a minute or more before it will update (at which point it goes blank and you have to tap 'Latest' in order to see the messages). [link]
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Comments
(And if any post shows the value of leaving the forum online it's this one. Don't you feel sad that most of the above links will be dead in a couple of weeks?)
Advertise the game = Get more players!
Not really. The incessant complaining in this place is one of the worst advertisements the game has.
We'll get more players when the existing community stops scaring people away.
We'll get more players when the scanner is a dream to use instead of fighting the UI at every moment. New players don't need to come here to get scared off (and the chances are, they haven't been doing so).
If niantic took some of the constructive criticism and did better (or at the very least, responded) I am positive the tone of the forum would have changed.
When a community feels abandoned (as we are) with no back and forth dialogue, expect complaints.
I think it takes more than just advertising or fixing annoying bits of the scanner. I think Ingress would need to lose some of the game design issues that make the game difficult or annoying to play for some people or in some areas.
Would help fixing basic UI problems. Bounties is the one that annoys me daily. If you are recharging or even doing other actions, its possible to hit the bounties button when trying to recharge too quickly, because the UI is too slow and shows the dang bounties button.