The missing 20m rule was pretty nice to have. It opened up room for ~75 new quality wayspots in my town with a huge part being art (stone sculptures). Walked around my town for hours to find new things to nominate only to have them now return back with nothing as they're still in queue or voting.
A few of those artworks got accepted due to upgrades. Now it looks annoying to me as a few are next to each other but the other 30 sculptures won't make it into the game again.
Could you not have let the player-base know this was happening up front? Many of us now have high quality subs in the system that we’ve wasted time researching and fuel on. I’ve had some really nice stuff accepted over the last week such as a parish church, historical information board and a war memorial, none of which will ever appear in Ingress now.
We have been able to get lots of artwork and murals etc accepted in many cities; now anyone who’s got this stuff in Voting may as well withdraw it if it’s within 20m
I thought we were meant to be in a new era of transparency with the players? We’ve gone right back to square one, with Niantic making drastic changes with absolutely no warning.
Really shameful behaviour once again; alienating players who’ve been submitting stuff from the Seer days.
I think it's pretty clear that Niantic has zero insight about their own community and POI database. Reverting the 20m rule is a huge blow to the players' motivation to submit and in turn review submissions.
Literally zero people asked for this 20 metre feature to be reverted back, and everyone realized that it allowed for several new quality POIs to be added to the grid, which made the entire process refreshing and fun like it hasn't been for years. I myself submitted dozens of new POI, and from the looks of it, so did several people above me.
Like I said , reviewing process became funnier and more rewarding, the submission process became less stressful ("will this portal be 1 milimiter inside the 20m radius???") and in turn promoted exploring new and old places alike for more landmarks that might have been overlooked due to the previous distance limitations. Isn't exploring ($$$) the main objective of these games?
I do believe everyone also experienced a severe reduction in fake POI locations, locations edits, and various other false contributions over the course of the last few weeks (which is in the best interest of both parties!), whichs begs the age old question: what is Niantic thinking? Not in the community experience, that's for sure.
Really bad move on Niantic. Since new wayspots were going into Ingress, within 20 metres, this has been fantastic from a Wayfarer perspective.
I and many others in the UK wayfarer community have had our passion for discovering new places reignited.
Since December, I have been able to add dozens of amazing points of interest to the network that would have otherwise not seen the light of day, this was why I started OPR and Wayfarer years ago.
Others who share my enthusiasm, have driven hundreds of miles, spending days just visiting new places, just to be able to add amazing places in our world to YOUR network, Niantic, for everyone to enjoy.
If I’m not mistaken, this is your aim? Promoting exercise, exploration and being social with others. It feels like a kick in the teeth to have put in all this effort for the rug to have been pulled out from underneath.
In the queue and voting, I have over 30 candidates - great and genuine points of interest: pubs, historic buildings, mile markers, sculptures, education boards - all that would just get added to your network, but with no benefit to Ingress.
As others have said, the lack of communication is on of Niantic’s shortcomings. We’re supposed to in a new age, where break downs of communication were a thing of the past, but here we are.
This is probably going to fall on deaf ears, but this was a bad decision. A very bad one.
Hopefully, myself and others expressing our views constructively may help this decision to be reversed, but this very anti-community decision has lost a great deal of good-will from the Wayfarer community- the very people who Niantic owes its network and successes to.
PS - this isn’t directed specifically to Thia, just replying to your comment.
But, I do agree with some of the sentiment, a smaller limit such as 5 m or 10 m would be better. I don't think there should be no limit. Just because there is a UI for it in Ingress doesn't mean it's a good idea to increase the use of it. Any UI that makes the user carry out extra steps to perform an action should be used very sparingly, avoided if possible.
Perhaps there could be a higher threshold of positive agreements and ratings for acceptance of submissions that are within a certain radius.
I had a great number of infill portals to add. Now I am officially really disappointed with Niantic. 20m rules - just don't do it in the suburbs or the rural areas. We need more portals not less in the suburbs.
I don't want to play this stupid game anymore I was so excited to get more portals so I can do more fancy micro fielding locally.
I'm a SAHM and I don't own a car ... I am over it. Wayfarer was just awful this week. I don't want to be involved anymore. A girl needs her walkable 5 layer homogeneous field ... my dreams are ashes .... Going to just sojo for a few days then I see if I want to keep playing.
The relaxing of the 20 metre rule was refreshing to a stale game. Not a good call for my corner of the world.
I've come here to add my thoughts regarding the 20 metre rule, though admittedly most of what I'm wanting to say is the same as other agents in this thread.
There are many cool things in the world which happen to be within 20 metres of each other. When this rule wasn't in effect, people were submitting these things as they knew they would go live if accepted, and it made both gameplay and Wayfarer reviewing more interesting as a result.
I myself was inspired to submit a series of pieces of art, even knowing that only one of them would show up in my preferred Niantic game, because I thought it would be cool to see all of them on the Intel map/within Ingress and maybe even make a mission involving them in the future. I won't be able to do that now though, as I suspect only two of them (or three if I'm lucky) will appear in Ingress. The rest will be consigned to the depths of the Lightship database, and whilst Niantic might be able to utilise their data for non-gaming purposes, we as a player base will not get to see them.
I can understand that it's hard to see links on Portals which are in close proximity, but since Prime rolled out, interacting with such Portals has become much easier than it was in Redacted. So maybe the 20 metre rule does need re-evaluating?
Just a point, as people seem to think the UI for interacting with portals in proximity was an Ingress Prime feature:
The original Ingress scanner (or Scanner [REDACTED] later) had this feature. When Ingress Prime came out it didn't have the feature, but was definitely requested or wanted by many. It was only later that Prime gained the feature to disambiguate close portals.
The original Ingress scanner (or Scanner [REDACTED] later) had this feature. When Ingress Prime came out it didn't have the feature, but was definitely requested or wanted by many. It was only later that Prime gained the feature to disambiguate close portals.
We lobbied for this for some time during the beta, because it was in the classic client but not Prime, since PoGo didn't have it. I honestly don't know why they haven't backfilled it into PoGo too.
Yup! I think Prime came out of beta November 2018 (think this was version 2.12 or thereabouts), the "tap disambiguation" feature I've found in release notes for 2.18.1 in February 2019.
Still devo* about this. (Australian for devastated). Don't own a car single mum mad for microfielding stuck in the suburbs. If you had let me know I could have snuck in some playground and gazebos that are with 20m ... Like 60 in my area.
I've withdrawn my queue of wayspots from wayfarer. I'm not participating in that farse anymore. Evaluating whether to continue with Ingress that's how much the bad taste of wayfarer permeates. Been thinking of starting woodworking.
If agents are out schlepping around building your lightship database, they should at least get X amount of CMU, not BBs or frackers they may not be around to use.
@NianticBrian No one wants this rule. We're being denied excellent quality candidates because of arbitrary placement rules. Look at the disagreements on this thread alone.
Ironically, scanning while just walking in a straight line works far better than trying to actually scan most portals. Very few are 3d objects you can easily and readily walk around, and trying to scan flat objects like plaques fails frequently because the scan wants to see more GPS movement. So you either flail your phone around like an idiot, or scan the object and then scan walking away from it.
I share the sentiments and opinions of the other players who are disappointed by the reinstatement of the 20 meter rule. However I’d like to point out another reason. In rural communities places with valid POI are often in smaller areas of town and often in closer clusters. This reversion or bug “fix” will deny agents in small rural communities opportunities to improve their game boards and grow their communities. It’s often hard to recruit new agents, and it’s exponentially more difficult to do it in small towns with very few portals. Denying them POI based on a rule that is arguably outdated also denies them a lot of aspects of the game like missions and banners as well as being able to lvl and gather more gear. A lot of small town agents are extraordinarily dedicated for these reasons and this just feels like a thumb in their eyes. I hope that Niantic listens to our opinions and see getting rid of the 20 meter rule unintentionally as a lucky accident that revealed how the player base feels and as an opportunity to grow their communities and player bases by getting rid of the 20 meter rule intentionally.
Like others, frustrations are back up. Nice quality communication through this process. Shut down sync for several days for "reasons" and then it's back and what was once allowed, is now gone. No warning, no communication. Just a classic case of Niantic doing what they need to do.
Definitely contemplating withdrawing about 30 pending nominations that would mostly be a waste of energy for all involved at this point... The lack of a distance "rule" definitely made nominating exciting again, exploring written off areas for other new possible wayspots. I added about 15 new portals/stops at a local park. The city had put up new signs and I never would have taken a look until the distance rule was changed. It's now a great place to walk the pup with a ton of portals and is my new place for community days in PoGo. I went to a similar place along the waterfront and found many new and interesting wayspots to add into the network, but those have been hung up in wayfarer for whatever reason, now, it's been too long and maybe 5 of the 20 I nominated there will ever make it into any current game.
I thought y'all were gonna work on your communication....
If i understand we need to be 7 agents and every agents uploading 1 portal scaning to get 1 Rare Battle Beacon. 1 agent cant complete with 7 portal scannings.
Comments
The missing 20m rule was pretty nice to have. It opened up room for ~75 new quality wayspots in my town with a huge part being art (stone sculptures). Walked around my town for hours to find new things to nominate only to have them now return back with nothing as they're still in queue or voting.
A few of those artworks got accepted due to upgrades. Now it looks annoying to me as a few are next to each other but the other 30 sculptures won't make it into the game again.
I don't think so, I thought immediately after the 7th scan would pop up but it's when the septicycle ends (Wed 16th at 18.00)
Could you not have let the player-base know this was happening up front? Many of us now have high quality subs in the system that we’ve wasted time researching and fuel on. I’ve had some really nice stuff accepted over the last week such as a parish church, historical information board and a war memorial, none of which will ever appear in Ingress now.
We have been able to get lots of artwork and murals etc accepted in many cities; now anyone who’s got this stuff in Voting may as well withdraw it if it’s within 20m
I thought we were meant to be in a new era of transparency with the players? We’ve gone right back to square one, with Niantic making drastic changes with absolutely no warning.
Really shameful behaviour once again; alienating players who’ve been submitting stuff from the Seer days.
Is anyone getting notifications in this update when kinetic completed?
Also yeah pretty sad to hear about the 20m rule 😟
I think it's pretty clear that Niantic has zero insight about their own community and POI database. Reverting the 20m rule is a huge blow to the players' motivation to submit and in turn review submissions.
Literally zero people asked for this 20 metre feature to be reverted back, and everyone realized that it allowed for several new quality POIs to be added to the grid, which made the entire process refreshing and fun like it hasn't been for years. I myself submitted dozens of new POI, and from the looks of it, so did several people above me.
Like I said , reviewing process became funnier and more rewarding, the submission process became less stressful ("will this portal be 1 milimiter inside the 20m radius???") and in turn promoted exploring new and old places alike for more landmarks that might have been overlooked due to the previous distance limitations. Isn't exploring ($$$) the main objective of these games?
I do believe everyone also experienced a severe reduction in fake POI locations, locations edits, and various other false contributions over the course of the last few weeks (which is in the best interest of both parties!), whichs begs the age old question: what is Niantic thinking? Not in the community experience, that's for sure.
Really bad move on Niantic. Since new wayspots were going into Ingress, within 20 metres, this has been fantastic from a Wayfarer perspective.
I and many others in the UK wayfarer community have had our passion for discovering new places reignited.
Since December, I have been able to add dozens of amazing points of interest to the network that would have otherwise not seen the light of day, this was why I started OPR and Wayfarer years ago.
Others who share my enthusiasm, have driven hundreds of miles, spending days just visiting new places, just to be able to add amazing places in our world to YOUR network, Niantic, for everyone to enjoy.
If I’m not mistaken, this is your aim? Promoting exercise, exploration and being social with others. It feels like a kick in the teeth to have put in all this effort for the rug to have been pulled out from underneath.
In the queue and voting, I have over 30 candidates - great and genuine points of interest: pubs, historic buildings, mile markers, sculptures, education boards - all that would just get added to your network, but with no benefit to Ingress.
As others have said, the lack of communication is on of Niantic’s shortcomings. We’re supposed to in a new age, where break downs of communication were a thing of the past, but here we are.
This is probably going to fall on deaf ears, but this was a bad decision. A very bad one.
Hopefully, myself and others expressing our views constructively may help this decision to be reversed, but this very anti-community decision has lost a great deal of good-will from the Wayfarer community- the very people who Niantic owes its network and successes to.
PS - this isn’t directed specifically to Thia, just replying to your comment.
Me parece bien, que salgan los portales aceptados que estaban saliendo :)
Lol, all this over a bug being fixed ...
But, I do agree with some of the sentiment, a smaller limit such as 5 m or 10 m would be better. I don't think there should be no limit. Just because there is a UI for it in Ingress doesn't mean it's a good idea to increase the use of it. Any UI that makes the user carry out extra steps to perform an action should be used very sparingly, avoided if possible.
Perhaps there could be a higher threshold of positive agreements and ratings for acceptance of submissions that are within a certain radius.
I read this again and it was on my fault. I'm so sorry because I tagged you @NianticThia.
It says that you are able to schedule a rare battle beacon after the septicycle ends.
I am very sorry.
With the 20 meter rule gone, I was able to LIVE 13wayspot.
There were 10 spots that I was going to take pictures and nominate for once the snow is gone, but I gave up.
I wish this decision had been made a month later.
Ouch what awful news.
I had a great number of infill portals to add. Now I am officially really disappointed with Niantic. 20m rules - just don't do it in the suburbs or the rural areas. We need more portals not less in the suburbs.
I don't want to play this stupid game anymore I was so excited to get more portals so I can do more fancy micro fielding locally.
I'm a SAHM and I don't own a car ... I am over it. Wayfarer was just awful this week. I don't want to be involved anymore. A girl needs her walkable 5 layer homogeneous field ... my dreams are ashes .... Going to just sojo for a few days then I see if I want to keep playing.
The relaxing of the 20 metre rule was refreshing to a stale game. Not a good call for my corner of the world.
Have you ever considered lowering the rule to 15 or 10 meter?
I've come here to add my thoughts regarding the 20 metre rule, though admittedly most of what I'm wanting to say is the same as other agents in this thread.
There are many cool things in the world which happen to be within 20 metres of each other. When this rule wasn't in effect, people were submitting these things as they knew they would go live if accepted, and it made both gameplay and Wayfarer reviewing more interesting as a result.
I myself was inspired to submit a series of pieces of art, even knowing that only one of them would show up in my preferred Niantic game, because I thought it would be cool to see all of them on the Intel map/within Ingress and maybe even make a mission involving them in the future. I won't be able to do that now though, as I suspect only two of them (or three if I'm lucky) will appear in Ingress. The rest will be consigned to the depths of the Lightship database, and whilst Niantic might be able to utilise their data for non-gaming purposes, we as a player base will not get to see them.
I can understand that it's hard to see links on Portals which are in close proximity, but since Prime rolled out, interacting with such Portals has become much easier than it was in Redacted. So maybe the 20 metre rule does need re-evaluating?
Just a point, as people seem to think the UI for interacting with portals in proximity was an Ingress Prime feature:
The original Ingress scanner (or Scanner [REDACTED] later) had this feature. When Ingress Prime came out it didn't have the feature, but was definitely requested or wanted by many. It was only later that Prime gained the feature to disambiguate close portals.
2.90.1 has nothing to do with the 20m rule by the way.
Probably need to make it's own thread here or in the Wayfarer forum.
The original Ingress scanner (or Scanner [REDACTED] later) had this feature. When Ingress Prime came out it didn't have the feature, but was definitely requested or wanted by many. It was only later that Prime gained the feature to disambiguate close portals.
We lobbied for this for some time during the beta, because it was in the classic client but not Prime, since PoGo didn't have it. I honestly don't know why they haven't backfilled it into PoGo too.
There is one here;
Yup! I think Prime came out of beta November 2018 (think this was version 2.12 or thereabouts), the "tap disambiguation" feature I've found in release notes for 2.18.1 in February 2019.
Still devo* about this. (Australian for devastated). Don't own a car single mum mad for microfielding stuck in the suburbs. If you had let me know I could have snuck in some playground and gazebos that are with 20m ... Like 60 in my area.
Done that in the Wayfarer forum
I've withdrawn my queue of wayspots from wayfarer. I'm not participating in that farse anymore. Evaluating whether to continue with Ingress that's how much the bad taste of wayfarer permeates. Been thinking of starting woodworking.
I still think scanning should be paid in CMU.
If agents are out schlepping around building your lightship database, they should at least get X amount of CMU, not BBs or frackers they may not be around to use.
Read the room, Niantic.
@NianticBrian No one wants this rule. We're being denied excellent quality candidates because of arbitrary placement rules. Look at the disagreements on this thread alone.
Ironically, scanning while just walking in a straight line works far better than trying to actually scan most portals. Very few are 3d objects you can easily and readily walk around, and trying to scan flat objects like plaques fails frequently because the scan wants to see more GPS movement. So you either flail your phone around like an idiot, or scan the object and then scan walking away from it.
Also just want to point out that I just queued up over a dozen submissions, which will now all get rejected because they'll be "too close".
Useless, stupid rule that is making the game worse. Get rid of it.
I share the sentiments and opinions of the other players who are disappointed by the reinstatement of the 20 meter rule. However I’d like to point out another reason. In rural communities places with valid POI are often in smaller areas of town and often in closer clusters. This reversion or bug “fix” will deny agents in small rural communities opportunities to improve their game boards and grow their communities. It’s often hard to recruit new agents, and it’s exponentially more difficult to do it in small towns with very few portals. Denying them POI based on a rule that is arguably outdated also denies them a lot of aspects of the game like missions and banners as well as being able to lvl and gather more gear. A lot of small town agents are extraordinarily dedicated for these reasons and this just feels like a thumb in their eyes. I hope that Niantic listens to our opinions and see getting rid of the 20 meter rule unintentionally as a lucky accident that revealed how the player base feels and as an opportunity to grow their communities and player bases by getting rid of the 20 meter rule intentionally.
Still doesn't matter, there is only 3 players in my city who even bother with scanning.
And
With each scan being up to 100MB in size, no way is anyone going to waste their monthly data of up to 1.3GB of scan data for a fracker
Like others, frustrations are back up. Nice quality communication through this process. Shut down sync for several days for "reasons" and then it's back and what was once allowed, is now gone. No warning, no communication. Just a classic case of Niantic doing what they need to do.
Definitely contemplating withdrawing about 30 pending nominations that would mostly be a waste of energy for all involved at this point... The lack of a distance "rule" definitely made nominating exciting again, exploring written off areas for other new possible wayspots. I added about 15 new portals/stops at a local park. The city had put up new signs and I never would have taken a look until the distance rule was changed. It's now a great place to walk the pup with a ton of portals and is my new place for community days in PoGo. I went to a similar place along the waterfront and found many new and interesting wayspots to add into the network, but those have been hung up in wayfarer for whatever reason, now, it's been too long and maybe 5 of the 20 I nominated there will ever make it into any current game.
I thought y'all were gonna work on your communication....
If i understand we need to be 7 agents and every agents uploading 1 portal scaning to get 1 Rare Battle Beacon. 1 agent cant complete with 7 portal scannings.
It is corret?
@NianticBrian @NianticThia
My monthly download+upload is 500GB. Most US unlimited plans top out at either 26GB or 50GB.
And more importantly, it's community scans, so people can share the effort around.