Everything wrong with Wayfarer

WiIdType-PGOWiIdType-PGO Posts: 58 ✭✭✭

1.      Unrewarding

It’s already been said many times- using Wayfarer is like doing free labor for Niantic. Some might say the wayspots that get accepted are the rewards for that work – but, making the game more accessible is not the player’s job. Why should anyone work for hours, days and even weeks just to make the game playable in their area, while not being paid to do so? As a customer, I accept the developer to do so if they want to keep me.

This hard work is not being rewarded by any type of in-game currency which keeps players away from using it as making it hard to maintain the existing userbase over time – once the few wayspots you wanted get accepted, there is no reason to keep using the system.  


2.      Punishing

Not only the system is not rewarding the users, it is actually doing everything it can to punish and turn them away. Cooldowns for hours for experienced reviewers who have seen enough playgrounds and gazebos for a lifetime and don’t need full 3 minutes to evaluate them. This is just absurd.

And let’s not forget the ridiculous rejection reasons making all the work you put into the system go to waste and forces you to repeat it. Very unpleasant experience that drives people away from reviewing, as upgrading nominations might actually expose them more to this risk.


3.      Long times

Partly due to the reasons mentioned above the loyal userbase has dwindled significantly in the past year since the launch of the Wayfarer systems. Where nominations used to take weeks to reach a decision now has turned into months, while in larger metropolitans the months have turned into years. Why should anyone put so much effort into a system that is so slow to show results? Some may not be playing anymore or living in a different area after all that time.


4.      Prone to abuse

It’s enough to take a quick look around the forums to see how much the system is being abused. That is probably only the tip of the iceberg. There are probably thousands of fake wayspots and even more incorrectly located wayspots.


5.      Terrible system

I have no other way to describe the reviewing system other than just “bad”. The 1-5 stars ratings need to go and be replaced by Yes/No questions (What is even a 3-stars safe access?)

The eligibility criteria are confusing and not elaborative enough to help in deciding on many cases.

It’s not for no reason that most people are using add-on and plugins to make the reviewing process feel a little less agonizing.


After over 17,000 reviews I have stopped reviewing completely several months ago, and you should probably too, until a complete rework is done.

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Comments

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The Whole Wayfarer System needs to be scrapped. Just close down the ability to submit things and let people

    work off the backlog that has been the lenght of the chinese wall.

    i could go on and write hours what is wrong with the system, but i wont bore you. @NianticJohn knows what is wrong.

  • GearGlider-INGGearGlider-ING Posts: 1,335 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Abuse is already very prevalent though because the only people reviewing are the people who either like to review or people who do it to abuse. If you offer in-game rewards, the people who want the rewards will want to learn how to review properly for agreements so that they can get the rewards.

  • DerWelfe2205-PGODerWelfe2205-PGO Posts: 374 ✭✭✭✭

    Niantic could also at any point add more honeypots to catch bad reviewers. In my opinion anywhere between 1-5% of reviews should be honeypots. That would of course require some manual labour from Niantic so it's unlikely to happen.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I started a thread in the Bug section, and NianticCasey promised to look into it.

    It just cannot be that i submit something in a Area that basicly has no Ingame Structure with POI, and then the people there have to wait 1+ years for a wayspot to go live - just because it is in a slow S2-LVL9 cell (there are some bigger cities at the borders that have alot POI).

    There needs to be a solution now, and not in 4 month. Players are furious they have to drive 40km during Covid Restrictions.

  • DerWelfe2205-PGODerWelfe2205-PGO Posts: 374 ✭✭✭✭

    Honestly surprised people still feel like that. For me it used to be fun but now it's just digging through trash submissions. (at least in my area)

  • Gendgi-PGOGendgi-PGO Posts: 3,534 Ambassador

    Hopefully CAs can be given a direct line to the abuse team to help understand what Niantic themselves consider abuse. Clearly the abuse I've reported (malicious location edits to oversaturate cells, requests to choose a referee location, and adding erroneous photos to swap the purpose of a Portal so they can move it and create "duplicates") don't really count as abuse, since my reports have ignored despite bringing it up multiple times.

  • GearGlider-INGGearGlider-ING Posts: 1,335 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021

    Yeah, I do hope they implement some kind of CA program. It seems like a "This is everything wrong with wayfarer" thread gets posted at least every week and it would be nice if there's was a group that could help Niantic filter through the good and bad criticisms, and help submitters/reviewers understand what's abuse and how to report it.

  • Gendgi-PGOGendgi-PGO Posts: 3,534 Ambassador

    "10 things wrong with Wayfarer (and 3 things we love) - you won't believe #3!"

  • KetaSkooter-INGKetaSkooter-ING Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    The "slow cell" experience explanation is being skewed. Niantic's system is constructed to help low density areas gain points of interest faster, thats a fact. The main issue is each nomination needs an estimated 50 reviewers to look at it which is 17-60 min of reviewer hours. Thinking about it another way is an active reviewer can reasonably gain 1-2 upgrades a week. So they contributed probably about 150 reviews per upgrade or 3-6 fully processed nominations of effort. Meanwhile they submitted 7 new nominations. This is a runaway situation and a slower mirror of what happened in Ingress prior to submissions being shut down in 2015. Niantic needs to add effort or disincentive to submitting or reduce submissions to help the situation out.

  • DerWelfe2205-PGODerWelfe2205-PGO Posts: 374 ✭✭✭✭

    The algorithm that defines what a "low density area" is is completely broken because the cells that are being used are way too large.

    Also there are a lot of reviewers who earn 5+ upgrades a week.

  • Aeryle88-PGOAeryle88-PGO Posts: 440 ✭✭✭

    Or they can make the reviewing system faster.

    They can also improve the whole system to reduce the number of false rejections witch will likely be proposed again...

    They can drasticly reduce the number of submission by simply lock submissions in high density area (the time the queue decrease)

    They can also change the system to make the reviewing more gratefull. (because being look to "poor" and have no real use of upgrades (or have many reject when a nomination is upgraded) is not motivating)

  • KetaSkooter-INGKetaSkooter-ING Posts: 177 ✭✭✭

    For every reviewer that does that much there's a reviewer that does no reviews while both are submitting.

    Even if the area size was decreased it'd be the same situation there's a deficit of reviewer activity compared to submitting activity. More players view reviewing as unrewarding than rewarding and the deficit continues to grow.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    i wonder what people hit "disagree" here? there is nothing to disagree.

  • iSd3d-PGOiSd3d-PGO Posts: 17 ✭✭

    thats EXACTLY what I said. You cant just unlock rewards and then stop caring at all. They make BILLIONS per year, triple the mods, tenfold the mods, there is enough money to pay for them for the next 10 years or so, BILLIONS. Stop just milking the game and dont invest in it. How many mods are in here, 5? For how many reviewers? Why? Start spending money.


    Once you have enough mods to personally check wayfarers (lol, 1 would be enough for a start, start from the top, sorted by reviews) you can start giving the best of the best money or at least ingame stuff. dont want the money? donate it.

    also, dont forget to swing your banhammer and start banning exactly these peaope: scammers, abusers, fakers, spoofers, just delete their account so they lose everything and start faking in other games.


    There are no problems in the whole world you cant solve by throwing money at it.

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