Weird MD Lite population criteria
Niantic told us recently that there will be MD Lite program for those cities:
- with population of 2,500 or less, and
- never hosted Mission Day before
I believe there are very few cities with population of 2,500 or less.
Can it be a typo of 250,000 or something?
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a city with population of 2.500 is more like a small village to me...
10k or 25k would be much more sense.....
Then you also have issues where certain places are more then just what could be reasonably classified as a city.
Presenting LGA's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_Queensland_by_population#Local_Government_Areas_by_population
This is the legal "local council" for an area, while some fit the bill of covering what could be a regular city, many cover large swathes of land and several small towns. So if I engaged with the tourism arm, might be a bit weird.
This is Blackall Tambo Region LGA. It covers 2 distince towns of Blackall (17 portals, could submit another 50ish) and Tambo (43 portals could submit maybe 20 more). It's about an hour on the highway between them with nothing in the middle.
Yes please, set the upper limit to at least 20-25k.
A population of 2500 is a small village with about 10 Portals and nothing near as a valid candidate for one. Especially in areas where the official population is only available for a community consisting of more than one village/city.
The only cities I can think of managing 6 missions regarding portals in my area have something between 9k and 20k of population.
very few cities
MD Lite is not meant for "cities". That would just be a standard Mission Day.
MD Lite is for communities where there aren't thousands of people, but they still want to participate, and it's too far to drive to a big city Mission Day. Think inland Australia, rural America, parts of Africa and South America.
It's unfortunate that a lot of towns that are "too big" for a MD Lite and "too small" for a regular MD will be left out altogether.
Population standard of 2500 in MD Lite.
It would be good to clarify whether this is only a municipal unit or whether it can be a specific area within a municipality.
I live in Japan, where many municipalities were merged about 15 years ago to improve administrative efficiency.
As a result, there are many localities with less than 2,500 people, in terms of the old municipal area, but most of them have more than 2,500 due to consolidation.
If the old municipal units also meet the criteria, it would be possible to hold mission days in more localities.
@NianticBrian @NianticThia
The example MD Lite is Marfa TX, which has a population of 1974. However Villages in the Netherlands with <2500 inhabitants will not have nearly enough portals for 2 missions, let alone 6. :D
I talked to Hilda at Go Fest in Berlin yesterday and asked specifically about that. If you have enough locations that are interesting for outsiders (read: at least 6, stuff like restaurants, monuments, museums etc.), Niantic will work with you to bring (temporary) portals for the Misson Day online so the 6 missions can be reached.
That is hard for my village with 300k inhabitants. If a village has less than 2500 inhabitants in the Netherlands, these criteria will not be met, almost all of the time.
In that case it's even harder to go there.
If a MD would be held in a village of less than 2.5k people here in Germany and maybe 200 people arrive at a specific day, this would start a lot of discussions with officials (i.e. police).
If the community only has 6 portals and no candidates for more, what sense does it make to have a MD there? As stated earlier, this may prove a problem.
I also find more small towns to hold a MD nice and there are a lot of these around, which also have something to look at. But these towns usually go between 6k to 25k in population.
Communities with less than 2.5k have a church and a war memorial and most likely nothing else, but playgrounds.
Interesting topic.
So does that mean that if the total number of portals required for a mission day is less than 36, Niantic will temporarily make temporary portals appear so that a mission day light can be established?
That's how I understood it, at least.
thx!
Just came to the forums to ask exactly this question, thank you for starting the topic.
2500 seems very low, i thought it would be a typo of maybe less than 25.000.
Because all small villages i know with a population under 2500 people only got like one church, three fountains, a war monument, a big cross and like 3 playgrounds. Maybe some ruins, a castle or an educational trail nearby - if you're lucky.
The cities with less than 25.000 inhabitants will struggle with 18 quality missions over here and a Mission Day lite would have been perfect for these places.
Plus: small villages with a population of 2500 or less would still qualify, if the requirements are lifted to 25.000 😉
I'd love to organize one in Switzerland, but all villages or towns nearby i would select today has either:
That's (accidentally?) very insightful. If the 2500-inhabitant threshold remains in place, Marfa is the textbook example of how a town that small gets enough wayspots for a Mission Day Lite. It's got a higher-than-average wayspot-to-person ratio, and looking at Marfa's Wikipedia entry, I can see a few reasons that might be true:
So, instead of thinking of Mission Day Lite as a reason for every town to have a mission day, maybe we have to acknowledge it's only for the "above average small towns" -- the ones with unique tourist attractions, the ones with lesser known history, etc. It's going to be for places like Old West boomtowns that stopped booming, New England villages that had one Revolutionary War battle no else remembers, Midwest towns that had an early auto company everyone else forgot about after GM bought it out, and things like that.
If anyone readiing this thinks they live in unappreciated above-average small town, start digging for history you can put on the map. Use the Mission Creator to see if there are Field Trip Waypoints you don't know about. Contact your local historical society. Search Wikipedia and Google Books for mentions of your town. Research any historical person or event already mentioned on existing portals (in case there are other locations related to that person/event that haven't become portals yet). Even if you don't find enough for Mission Day Lite, you'll probably end up adding some good portals, and maybe find enough to add a non-MD mission or two for your town.
@NianticBrian @NianticThia
I am very interested in this Mission Day Lite.
So let me clear up a few things.
My questions are as follows, could you please answer them?
(1) Is the unit of locality a municipality or a settlement within a municipality?
For example, is it possible to have a Mission Day Lite that shines a light on a particular settlement with a population of 600 people in a town with a total of 20000 people?
Or is the population only on a municipal basis, and as a town with a population of 20,000 we need to hold a regular mission day with a minimum of 18 missions?
(2) Is a population of less than 2,500 a rough guide? Or is it an absolute requirement?
As one would expect, a population of 5 or 10 times would fall outside of this requirement, but would less than 3,000 be acceptable? It would be nice to have a certain guideline.
(3) If there are 6 portals that are interesting to outside citizens, is it correct to assume that if there are less than 36 portals including other portals, temporary portals can appear on the same day and live missions can be performed?
It's also a key location to the game's lore. An aerial will always point you to a glyph.
It's weird because John Hanke's hometown is an exception to his definition.
@NianticBrian @NianticThia
It will soon be a month since I asked the question.
We would appreciate it if you could clear up our questions as we consider holding mission days in the future.
If I may add one thing, it would be great if the population criteria could be more finely graded, with three levels: Lite, Middle, and Normal.
For example, a town of 10,000 inhabitants with very interesting places of interest currently requires a minimum of 18 missions to be created, which is currently difficult to achieve under Niantic's POI requirements.
However, if we add a Middle to the list with a total of 12 missions, the number of possible locations will increase.
And it will lead us to interesting places.
We would appreciate it if you could take this into consideration as well, even after Mission Day Lite has achieved a certain level of success.