Portal Decay
GodZillaz88-ING
Posts: 27 ✭✭
This may be something more suited for an AMA but just putting it out here.
Has Niantic ever considered having portal decay in the game?
There are TONS of waypoints in game that are (quite honestly) ridiculous and obvious no players go there (well except maybe a spoofer)
Why not have a Waypoint get deleted in game if no one interacts with it over an extended period of time? (180 days enough? If noone captures the portal or spins the Pokestop in 6 months really why are we keeping it in game?)
Comments
What would be the benefit of this? There’s plenty of waypoints that may not be in reach for many players of Pokémon GO, but serve as great middle points for moving your Drone around in Ingress. Do you have any examples of the TONS of waypoints you mentioned?
Deleting POIs would be stupid. Every POi might be important and a great anchor for a BIG field. If you check the Intel, a POI like this one can be super nice
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=-77.846107,166.66069&z=17&pll=-77.846107,166.66069
Late response; but at least if drone is there then you are interacting with it
My original comment is to decay out portals that noone ever uses (and we both know there are tons of them)
Not sure what the harm is in having less active portals in more remote areas. Especially if people would have to go to the effort of renominating them again in the future if they encounter the removed point of interest.
Also seems that there are bigger fish to fry instead of this.
What's the point? If they are valid Wayspots, they should remain. Just because no one interact with them now doesn't mean that no one will interact with them in the future.
A better suggestion might be, if a wayspot hasn't been interacted with in X amount of time, have it be reviewed. Maybe not in our wayfarer review section... But in app? Hey, you're near this is it still there? Or maybe on the website. That would be a better idea... Straight up making wayspots delete themselves would be terrible.
I don't know, I think it's interesting to have a small in-game indicator about something interesting that used to be somewhere, which is still playable. Doesn't really matter how long it goes without interaction, someday, some player is going to travel through and would probably appreciate a waypoint to help play. Once in the game, always in the game! Removing playable things doesn't really improve gameplay.
I love coming across Pokéstops in the middle of the forest on a hike. I love sending gifts to my friends from obscure places. I also love nominating stuff in the middle of nowhere, so that others could stumble across them one day and enjoy them.
I don't care if they're never interacted with. If they're legit, they should stay.
That would make no sense at all. First it takes forever for waypoints to get approved in big cities let alone areas that have no reviewers. Because players haven't accessed it does not meet it shouldn't be a waypoint or in this case a portal. The whole premise of Niantics waypoints is to get people out to unique areas. I can't tell you how many times I look at intel, try to figure out how to get to a point I've never been to before and then I research to see if I can get access by internet search and asking around in my communities. Back on Redacted I used to love having the app open while on a road trip and seeing a vector on a nearby portal. I would then go to find it and if I didn't have service there I didn't care because it took me to a new place that has some sort of point of interest. I've found many ghost towns that have not been captured in a while or at all. I fully disagree with this. It would ruin the adventure for those who like to find areas of interest via Intel.
Maybe it would make more sense in the other direction, pokestops that are continuously used become depleted if there's another "hidden wayspot" in the same S2 cell and they switch visibility. At the very least it would create a little bit of chaos.
That's interesting, but I'm not sure it works for Ingress, and as a Pokemon player, we rely on Pokestops as literal real world permanent waypoints to coordinate PoGo groups. There's no need or helpfulness to them being chaotic. Might be a cool concept for a Team Rocket takeover event, though, if players are going to be expecting chaos ... as long as it goes back to normal.
Frankly though, just let all hidden stops be visible. There's no reason to keep them out of the game, especially if the basic premise is to allow people to discover their surroundings. But I wouldn't remove things just for the sake of removing them.