Could you use the infection as a virus on anchors? If so, the infection could spread and infect all portals within a field, may impact long term play xD
The concept is to be completely automated, not something players cause.
But hypothetically if you were to infect a portal, it would lose all links because a red portal can't link to a blue or green portal, just like if you used a flipcard on an other faction portal.
The goal is to have an player who doesn't get bored or distracted, rather than to use it as a tool against other human opponents. We have flipcards and bursters to use on them.
The biggest issue I see with this (and I see a lot of them) is that Niantic doesn't know real world access rules, especially during covid. Imagine being unable to execute a field you've been planning for a while because an AI fielded a botanical gardens or a zoo that's closed for a season or due to covid.
And very close behind, at the rate of infection you're talking about, this would very quickly stop being a faction v faction game and instead be a factions vs AI game. And then you might as well not even have blue vs green, because all anyone cares about is stopping red.
Massive AP clusters of linked red portals, owned by no one, with no one getting attack notifications to report them dying from bots.
Entire abandoned towns of gray portals, being wiped out by spoofer networks. I give it two weeks before you start seeing accounts for sale with platinum/onyx purifier.
I hadn't read this when it was being discussed earlier, but something like this would be excellent if carefully implemented. It would give players in areas without many opponents something fun to do.
So grey areas slowly turn into red L8s. Eventually all "dead" areas are all p8s with link mitigation on everything. This could be solved by balancing red-faction against actual activity to prevent this. Red portals should ONLY spread within a certain range of existing blue or green portals.
This is an interesting ideal but seems very VERY non-trivial to actually implement and I have a hard time trusting the required balancing will happen. All the balancing we've seen has been turning a dial all the way to 11 and then back to 0. This type of overhaul would HAVE to come with balancing, it would NOT work as expected first iteration. Maybe links work better at 8km, maybe the redfection spreads on any activity within 10km, 50km might be too much but without actually following up with some balance, if the "right" answer is somewhere in the middle it will never be found.
It would give players in areas without many opponents something fun to do.
It really depends on what you're looking for and what you're comparing against.
As described in the original post, I find the concept… boring? It's too slow. It's too random. It's devoid of the personalities that make playing against other people interesting. Or rather, it has the personality of a troll, that player that does one or two random, non-strategic actions every now and then, just to see if they can make you scurry around like a busy critter "fixing" things.
As a weekend event, you'd have to dial up the rate, and reduce the limits on where the infection can start, which might have impacts on people's or play areas though.
Could be good, guaranteed to get complaints. As a slow moving constant infection, the worst complaint is that it doesn't do enough.
Random portal being temporary taken over by dark energy (similar to Rocket invasion) would be easier to implement and have less side effects. While being "dark" it can't be used to create links and provide less or none hack output.
Being temporary, players can just wait if it ever happen to one red portal appear on a strategic one.
The idea of it infecting only neutral portals really can be backfired, since it will probably spread on areas that nobody will play anyway...
Explorer-driven players will have reason to go to places they don't normally, both to destroy the infected portals, and to cap greys to prevent an infection in an area.
Existing agents could flip to Red, but there would be stipulations:
1) you have to have recursed once.
2) you cannot build like blue or green does - only infect built fields & ports. Run into a ghosted portal? Hack, yes - but cap, no.
3) you can infect existing blue or green - EVERYTHING connected would become red (fields, links, portals, mods etc) - not destroyed. IE a field would become red etc. Flip cards can change it back, but would destroy it. Versus if an opposing faction would flip something, all would be destroyed. This would also prevent a truce with an existing faction because if you flipped something for that faction's benefit guess what? It's red.. wouldn't really help the other team much.
4) you only get points (like AP) for things you turn red. So you're counting on the blue & green to build. You're like a vampire.
5) changing back to a blue or green agent is possible, but not right away. You'd have to stay red for a length of time (perhaps the choice could be presented when recursion is possible?)
As presented, the idea is specifically designed to not allow people to "become red" because it's designed as a way to have an extra faction that doesn't require players since the player base is already too small to keep every region active as it is.
Plus some of the features of the interaction are too powerful for player to be allowed to have.
Comments
So... they're gone now. 🤣
And I don't think anyone wants a virus to be making mind fields over us, so it's in our best interests to combat it.
why niantic dont want create this mode ??
They didn't say they weren't going to create the minigame, but they have other ideas to develop right now.
ok i have yet to hear about a mode...
I never expected it until they moved to RWP, but now that they've ditched that move, they could begin working on it at any time.
that would be fun.
Could you use the infection as a virus on anchors? If so, the infection could spread and infect all portals within a field, may impact long term play xD
The concept is to be completely automated, not something players cause.
But hypothetically if you were to infect a portal, it would lose all links because a red portal can't link to a blue or green portal, just like if you used a flipcard on an other faction portal.
The goal is to have an player who doesn't get bored or distracted, rather than to use it as a tool against other human opponents. We have flipcards and bursters to use on them.
What if xmp lv1 were more effective?
The biggest issue I see with this (and I see a lot of them) is that Niantic doesn't know real world access rules, especially during covid. Imagine being unable to execute a field you've been planning for a while because an AI fielded a botanical gardens or a zoo that's closed for a season or due to covid.
And very close behind, at the rate of infection you're talking about, this would very quickly stop being a faction v faction game and instead be a factions vs AI game. And then you might as well not even have blue vs green, because all anyone cares about is stopping red.
Also this would create spoofer paradise.
Massive AP clusters of linked red portals, owned by no one, with no one getting attack notifications to report them dying from bots.
Entire abandoned towns of gray portals, being wiped out by spoofer networks. I give it two weeks before you start seeing accounts for sale with platinum/onyx purifier.
At least the cheaters won't be messing around and interfering where people actually play.
I hadn't read this when it was being discussed earlier, but something like this would be excellent if carefully implemented. It would give players in areas without many opponents something fun to do.
So grey areas slowly turn into red L8s. Eventually all "dead" areas are all p8s with link mitigation on everything. This could be solved by balancing red-faction against actual activity to prevent this. Red portals should ONLY spread within a certain range of existing blue or green portals.
This is an interesting ideal but seems very VERY non-trivial to actually implement and I have a hard time trusting the required balancing will happen. All the balancing we've seen has been turning a dial all the way to 11 and then back to 0. This type of overhaul would HAVE to come with balancing, it would NOT work as expected first iteration. Maybe links work better at 8km, maybe the redfection spreads on any activity within 10km, 50km might be too much but without actually following up with some balance, if the "right" answer is somewhere in the middle it will never be found.
No they'll still do that too.
It would give players in areas without many opponents something fun to do.
It really depends on what you're looking for and what you're comparing against.
As described in the original post, I find the concept… boring? It's too slow. It's too random. It's devoid of the personalities that make playing against other people interesting. Or rather, it has the personality of a troll, that player that does one or two random, non-strategic actions every now and then, just to see if they can make you scurry around like a busy critter "fixing" things.
If it was a one-time event type of thing, that would work. As a permanent game "feature", I don't think it is viable.
For players who have no opposition, even a troll is interesting.
COVID-XM
As a player with no meaningful opposition, I have to say that actually, no, a troll is not interesting. But maybe that's just me. 🤷♂️
This could be a fun week-long event occasionally.
As a weekend event, you'd have to dial up the rate, and reduce the limits on where the infection can start, which might have impacts on people's or play areas though.
Could be good, guaranteed to get complaints. As a slow moving constant infection, the worst complaint is that it doesn't do enough.
Week-long, not weekend.
I think this whole concept is overcomplicate.
Random portal being temporary taken over by dark energy (similar to Rocket invasion) would be easier to implement and have less side effects. While being "dark" it can't be used to create links and provide less or none hack output.
Being temporary, players can just wait if it ever happen to one red portal appear on a strategic one.
The idea of it infecting only neutral portals really can be backfired, since it will probably spread on areas that nobody will play anyway...
That's part of the concept.
Explorer-driven players will have reason to go to places they don't normally, both to destroy the infected portals, and to cap greys to prevent an infection in an area.
I think this idea of the redfection is a very good idea.
THIS is a great idea!
And - it would include the Red Faction (technically) in the game, fulfilling a lot of players' requests for it.
(I've my own thoughts as to how to incorporate it, but about as likely as this...)
Existing agents could flip to Red, but there would be stipulations:
1) you have to have recursed once.
2) you cannot build like blue or green does - only infect built fields & ports. Run into a ghosted portal? Hack, yes - but cap, no.
3) you can infect existing blue or green - EVERYTHING connected would become red (fields, links, portals, mods etc) - not destroyed. IE a field would become red etc. Flip cards can change it back, but would destroy it. Versus if an opposing faction would flip something, all would be destroyed. This would also prevent a truce with an existing faction because if you flipped something for that faction's benefit guess what? It's red.. wouldn't really help the other team much.
4) you only get points (like AP) for things you turn red. So you're counting on the blue & green to build. You're like a vampire.
5) changing back to a blue or green agent is possible, but not right away. You'd have to stay red for a length of time (perhaps the choice could be presented when recursion is possible?)
As presented, the idea is specifically designed to not allow people to "become red" because it's designed as a way to have an extra faction that doesn't require players since the player base is already too small to keep every region active as it is.
Plus some of the features of the interaction are too powerful for player to be allowed to have.
BUMP