The Value of Competitiveness: What Niantic Doesn't Get
Hamsterrific
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Today, Niantic announced another Global Shards Event, something that's been talked about endlessly in the community for the last two years and something that my friends and I were eagerly anticipating, something that I even made a point to mention to Andrew Krug when speaking to him in person in Kaunas (yep, I was the one to approach you with a circle of other Russian agents and tell you how much we all want an anomaly in Russia and how much we loved Global Shards!) Yet I don't feel any enthusiasm at all. Why, you may ask?
Simple. Like a lot of recent Niantic-pushed events, both global and not, it feels tailor-made to promote their new policy aimed at attracting casual players and thus, eliminating any focus on competitiveness between the two factions—the core of the game. Driven, most likely, by the explosive success of Pokemon Go, the company decided to try and attract a part of that crowd to its older and less popular sibling. Let me explain why this strategy is fundamentally wrong.
In winter of 2017, I was still a newbie agent, maybe level 13 or so. I hadn't taken part in any anomalies, other than offsite recharging, and was only making my first steps as a field ops agent, let alone organizing or operating. And then, the global shards came. I saw a posting in one of my many ENL Telegram channels recruiting agents for the shards, and without any hesitation, PM'd.
What followed was hands down the most memorable and fantastic experience in my Ingress career. Lots of players, including me, had to take last-minute vacations or even fake a sick leave and waste hundreds of dollars for traveling, only to spend all their time standing vigil at shard portals or targets, sleeping for only two or three hours a day. It was still worth it. The day we bought out all the tickets to a guided tour near St. Petersburg because there was a shard inside a restricted area was something that could never be repeated in another game—or with another community. Even the guards following us, wondering why anyone would take the same tour for several times in a row and finally starting to interrogate one of our agents, didn't spoil the experience. And as for the events that I couldn't attend in person, I still read about and cheered for those in the field. That was a shared passion, a shared joy, and a memory I will cherish for a long time.
Which is what brings me to my point. Things like the Global Shards, the XM Anomalies, the agent-designed operations, whether big or small—all of them bring to the table something unique to Ingress, something that strongly resonates with a lot of people, and that is competitiveness. It's not even win or lose, it's the feeling of teamwork, of community, of us versus them, that awakens passion in so many players. And more often than not, it works on a local scale rather than global.
See, I may cheer if I see a huge multilayered green field over Asia, but I am much more happy when my local Enlightened field the area I live in, even if I cannot take part. It's the feeling of complicity, of involvement, of familiarity that does it—and global shards allowed for this feeling to spread over the entire world as we transferred a shard from the city I was born in, somewhere on the border between Europe and Asia, all the way to Seattle. I guarded that shard along one of its stops, and so did hundreds of my fellow agents. It's similar with Anomalies, even if not quite the same. Those of you who take part in off-site Recharge Rooms must know the feeling you get when you recharge a portal owned by someone you know, someone you're friends with, someone you might have given all of your Aegis Shields to use for the glory of your faction. Exhilarating, isn't it?
For the game to retain this unique element, Niantic must focus on a simple point: let it be competitive, the way it was designed to be, and let it be local before becoming global. Let me explain the second part: lately, we've had a lot of events "on global scale", starting with (I think) the Global MU Challenge. It failed rather spectacularly, from my point of view, because of inherent imbalance in the MU count and agent number all over the world. That said, the idea wasn't bad, for people who couldn't take part in the Anomalies on- or off-site, to do something to help their comrades. Problem was, it should have been done on a local scale—say, in cells, or using a ratio of some sort. But as for the subsequent events like portal capturing, portal hacking, or glyph challenge—now they were simply dumb. They didn't add anything to player experience but were rather generic, badly-designed, and badly-executed ways for agents to get a cadge. Instead, Niantic could have, again, done something local-based, something that made players organize and play together—or against each other. Why didn't they?
TLDR: Niantic doesn't understand that competitiveness is what drives people to play the game and invest a lot (and seriously, it's A LOT) of time and money into it. Maybe it's time to realize what a huge part your core community really wants.
Thank you for reading my rant, and I appreciate any feedback and opinions :)
Comments
Absolutely agree.
Niantic - dniwe ebannoe.
2 weeks no hack challenge!
You lost me when you said this is an event for casual players. Shards are the least casual thing in Ingress.
All you complainers aren't getting it: The casual players are your opposition here. Anybody who isn't connected to the wider Ingress community is somebody who might accidently block a shard. The secret challenge here is community-building.
This. So much this
said absolutely awesomely
Well said, The entire point of Shards is removed by XF part. The people vs people is replaced with people vs event rules. That's just not exciting.
Shards are scheduling time every jump window to ensure portal control and contesting it against an entire group of the other team's more dedicated agents.
Shards are hours upon hours of lane control, both offensive and defensive, creating links _and blockers_.
Shards are knowing your oponnent wins by scoring this so you cannot let that happen.
Shards are competition between the factions at the core.
This isn't shards. This is some bogus Pokemon Go Research Event.
I'm surprised such a creative, intelligent, resourceful group of players is taking such a negative attitude as this. Nia has made no indication they want to move us completely to Player vs Enemy instead of Player vs Player. They do seem to be having events of BOTH types, they give us a nice variety and we can choose the ones we want to participate in. Global competitive shards is awesome, for sure. But it is exhausting and maybe not the best way to help engage new community members. And we need new community members desperately. Since we have this event, why don't we use it? Play it, try it, teach your newer community members about shards in a gentler way that we have seen before without completely burning them out.
We have never tried shards like this before. I expect there will still be plenty of difficulties, stray links, angry players who just want to see the world burn, that it won't be easy. You don't even have to be cooperative if you don't really want to be - try to be the team that scores all the shards. Go ahead! No one is stopping you from trying. But to just say no, I don't want to play this - that's not the Ingress players I know, the ones who can rise to whatever challenge comes their way and have fun doing it. I'm disappointed in this reaction and hope it's just temporary.
I plan to get out there and have fun.
Conversely, this isn't the Ingress we know.
You're seriously surprised people are reacting negatively to what appears to be another step toward making Ingress like the other Niantic games, notably different for their utter lack of competitive team vs team gameplay?
Yes, we should use the event - perhaps as a set of timeframes to utterly disregard the event and do something more appropriate to Ingress and make large fields.
You go off and sulk while the rest of us have fun.
Oh, I'll be having fun playing outside this noncompete sham of an event.
Niantic is trying something different to bolster greater engagement from those who don't care about the FvF game play, but would still like to participate in a global event, and all you can do is exclaim "but my competition!"
The game you're looking for is called Pokemon Go.
Definitely I'm totaly agree with you.
In my region, I'm seeing something magical happen. The same players who spent many sleepless nights chasing shards all over, fiercely competing against each other are coming together in an xfac chat to prepare for this new format, sharing memories of shards past and our different perspectives on the same jumps/blocks. It's a recognition that even though we are all fierce opponents when it is called for, we are all enthusiasts playing the same game.
I don't want every event to be cooperative - competition is a major driving force behind this game - but I welcome a change of pace from time to time to help break down some barriers and create new and different memories.
Anybody who isn't connected to the wider Ingress community is somebody who might accidently block a shard.
Have to heavily disagree. There's still teams, it's not casual vs non casual, it's pro-helvetica decay rate, vs anti-helvetica decay rate.
The underdogs in cells, who are completely swamped in cities by farms they don't have the means to **** should be pro-helvetica.
Increasing the decay rates help them massively.
So whilst it isn't xfac, it should definitely still be competitive. Just depends if the teams can organize themselves in time, and trust each other.
It sure sounds like those teams cross faction.
Looking at the 'reward' for this, and the penalty for failure, "The Portal decay rate will increase by 75%" is the best outcome for me. It would help with my Recharger medal, and stop me waiting around for my own fields to collapse before I can gain more AP locally.
We'll still have two teams for this event just not blue and green ones. We'll be split into those who want the portal decay rate to go up and those who want the portal decay rate to go down.
Absolutely agree.
That's exactly what people are afraid of -- that one faction will take the xfac cooperation needed to move shards and use the lanes opened by it to make large fields that would otherwise not be possible without huge amounts of work.
This is the first cross faction event like this, ever. Jeez, you'd think they killed the entire game based on the whinners
You're not going to enjoy every challenge that Niantic provides. Just deal with it.
I believe this shards event has helped many people see Ingress as a game and the opposing faction as just other people enjoying the same game. It reminds me of the Christmas truces during World War 1 when troops on opposing sides found out how very human their enemies were. I saw a post a few days ago where someone said they'd just been operator for an xfac operation, something they'd never expected to even want to do, and it was actually fun. I bet they're happily planning and carrying out activities against the same people today, but maybe they'll stop for a beer together after a heated battle.