Two completely different games, or the destruction of the last drop of common sense.
I really love ingress, sometimes even too much. And for me there are two types of play. The first one is dearly loved by me, this is the Game with a capital letter. A great game that is famous for its rich story, innovations, videos, regular ingress reports from the battlefield... This is exactly the kind of ingress I see during in-game tutorials. Interesting, mysterious, and just pleasing to the eye. I saw the same ingress in the series. The struggle of corporations among themselves, the introduction of new technologies, the struggle of factions for a specific goal. Constant tense interaction between all participants in the plot process, and most importantly, a logical and meaningful struggle for a specific goal. Here is the ingress that I love and for which I am willing to pay.
Monetization is very well thought out here. Good useful things are sold in the store of this amazing game. There I bought 5 most useful keylockers, bought an interesting avatar for my profile. And a lot of souvenirs. I'm looking forward to the arrival of many new products. The events of this game are also interesting, and most importantly, they cannot be won by paying the company for the purchased goods! Medals in this game are given exclusively for achievements, and you have to earn them with your own work! Or you can buy them in honor of some memorable game event.
But there is another ingress that not only I do not like. This is a boring and dull game that absolutely no one makes sense to play. It has absolutely no purpose, it lacks a plot (instead of which there is only a set of nonsense that contradicts itself), there is no video with a plot, the gameplay of this game is terribly miserable, and unfortunately there is not that very main spirit of ingress that many players like so much. For example, there are no clear motives for the struggle between factions, since enlightenment will never again receive exogenous beings and the resistance has already achieved its goal and protected the world from exogenous invasion. There is also a problem with the battle of corporations - it does not exist at all. The introduction of new items is in style, here's something incomprehensible and strange for you, go and play.
Here's an example of beacons. A battle for the portal between two groups of agents. And why should we fight for this particular portal? Why do we gather around this portal and waste our resources on a dubious victory? Maybe it's somehow described by the plot? No. Maybe combat beacons have a clear and understandable purpose or function? Also no. Maybe their appearance was described by a plot in a separate video? No. Maybe at least one playable character explained the essence of this thing? Also no. It was the same with kinetic capsules and drones that appeared out of nowhere.
The introduction of new features should be discussed separately. Why do we need to scan portals? Can any of the developers or story characters explain why we need to scan portals? How will this help us in the fight against the enemy? Why should we spend our Internet traffic on something that has almost no effect on the gameplay of the game, and not get anything significant in return? Installing a beacon does not count, because this thing is still incomprehensible and useless to many agents. Or, for example, a social network from NIA, why do we need a duplicate of what we have already created in telegram, and what is separately duplicated in comms? The telegram chat system works in many cities much better than your social network. Alas.
Events in this version of ingress are stupid to the point of impossibility. The last two anomalies repeat one another both in mechanics and in the absence of a plot. And it's pay to win. Whose faction buys more beacons, that faction will win.
If we compare it with a clear and simple good old ingress that we love dearly... Which was a Strategy with a capital letter, was monolithically merged with the plot and in-game components... That's not the same anymore. The events here are dull and incomprehensible. When there was tessellation before, it was interesting. And now there are two absolutely identical anomalies one after another, with an incomprehensible purpose of anomalies and a complete lack of a coherent plot.
Dear developers, don't you think that something is wrong with the game? What do you think dear players?
In this version of the game, which disgusts me, everything is destroyed. There is no plot for more than a year, there are almost no innovations affecting the main component of the game. The game has become easier and more casual, as any very rare item can be made using a kinetic capsule. And the ability to create links under the fields generally killed the main mechanics of the game. Now it is pointless to seize territory or destroy huge enemy fields. And yet there is no main thing. The strategic and combat component that was before. There is no point in fighting for victory. There is no purpose. It's sad for me, comrades, they pissed off such a game.
Comments
well said - its sad we dont have a plot today , so for new players how do we make them stay ? just tell them draw triangles and scan portals ?
The day-to-day business is overriding the bigger material.
How can bigger more macro events be integrated into the day-to-day put down or put up fields?
That is what needs to happen.
You guys are gigantically overestimating how important the details of the Ingress story are to most players. If I polled my locals (including those who play more than me), I bet none of them remember or care about the outcome of Osiris. To them, the storyline is still the "Resistance versus aliens" story of the tutorial.
Also, those are the people who buy holiday medals.
I've always been one of the people who says, "Wait, what? Ingress has a storyline?!" Yes, I remember the Ingress Reports and oh-so-very-earnest storyline videos that got pushed to us regularly, but then I went off and built stuff and smashed stuff and didn't think about them again. The whole storyline felt like something bolted onto the side because people thought there should be one.
Certainly there are people who find/found the storyline meaningful or motivating, but I'm one of the people that @XK150 talks about... the details of a storyline are unimportant to me.
I’ve never cared too much for the story but I think portal scanning is a pointless activity for players that Niantic are encouraging for their own benefit. Anyone who is doing it should recognise that they are drones.
Battle beacons I hate too because they are a simpler form of battle and compulsive players just feed their own compulsion using them to repeatedly perform the same activity while draining their wallet.
Couple of questions:
Ingress started as a free game funded by Google. They broke off into a private company, and Ingress was a free game funded for 6 years so far, by Pokemon Go.
Scanning is a method of offsetting the cost of Ingress because we aren't giving them enough money to justify the game otherwise. Core has likely helped, and I don't know the numbers there these days, but when you're talking $2-3 million a year just on salaries you're talking about 50,000 Core members needed just to cover the employee costs each year. I'd question if there's 50,000 players these days.
So scanning isn't "Drone work" as much as a way to justify continuing to have Ingress to play.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
@Perringaiden I subscribe to CORE. Like many others, I’ve submitted and reviewed heaps of portals, which Niantic have used to make massive bank from for Pokémon Go.
I try to minimise real dollars spent on the game that I wouldn’t spend for other reasons.
It is Niantic’s responsibility to properly account for the value of the assets Ingress players created for them to earn from across their other games.
Destroying Ingress to chase $ is short-sighted imo. Letting Pokemon players submit POI has been a disaster for quality, and if Niantic decides Ingressers aren’t of value, I think they will suffer for it.
Niantic should concentrate on making Ingress fun and meaningful to play and everything else will work itself out.
While I agree the 'best' option is to make Ingress a growing product again through good design, it also needs to be properly monetized which is something the playerbase is always pushing back against, even when it comes to the event medals in the store. Ingress players spend thousands a year on Ingress, and then complain when Niantic charges $3 for a medal.
Scanning is seen as a middle ground of time not money, that Niantic can then leverage into money.
If we want them to focus more on the game and less on what the game can do for other games in the Niantic stable, we need to stop attacking every attempt to monetize, and instead help direct them to what we're happy to pay for.
For my part, I want R8s back in the store because they represent minimal 'power game' for urban players, but a game changer for solo or rural players who rarely even see P7s let alone a P8.
Sorry, but even this buggy forum does not allow you to add text normally, so I will add it with 3 pictures.
And let the administrator forgive me if I wrote something wrong, I translated through Google translator.
Many of the questions these "new players" are asking, are the product of indoctrination in badly designed heavily monetized games. Power differentials are only required to generate a need to buy the upgrades. To pay for power.
One of Ingress' strengths, once you get past the initial levels, is that power is in the skill and activity of the players and the team, not the ability to pay for power, or the time-in-theater. Just because you're an eight-times recursed player doesn't mean a Level 9 has any significantly reduced power.
It's all down to skill and activity which is a good thing.
Skill is becoming less important though due to changes being made by Niantic :(
Skill in fielding, glyph hacking especially.
Combat skills are declining with COVID stopping live events though perhaps Battle Beacons are addressing this a bit.
(This really showed itself when we had 4 experienced anomaly players beat 7 enemy players for control of a BB mostly due to better learned combat techniques).