This whole concept requires the massive assumption that Niantic cares to put a stop to the cheating. Their general inaction against various forms of in-game cheating and Wayfarer cheating suggests that this is almost completely irrelevant to them.
I mean, I hope the only action NIA is taking is banning the wayfarers from their games for such blatant abuse. If they are coming back then either they have quite a lot of high level accounts or they are not getting permanently banned.
Many people in this forum spend much more time and energy in Wayfarer than most of the Niantic's staff. They see wayfarer as some kind of sacred database with perfect PoI, and then Niantic says:
Hey, look at foursquare, that's a lot of PoI!,
Dog waste bins? of course!
Abuse?, you bad boy, don't do it again please.
and the show goes on because people can't stop reviewing...
So I only keep noticing this case of abuse because I live right next door, and had populated the college next door with stops pretty much all by myself. So When I go there or open then intel map to check on things I keep seeing this repeat offender abusing the system over and over again... Very annoying that nothing is being done clearly to penalize this person.
IDK how it would be accomplished but those who are basically vandalizing the Niantic map need to be banned from contributing in any way.
@jaimelee81-PGO As was pointed out by @Eneeoh-PGO I was actually womansplaining. (Amusing sidebar: my team of SREs is currently four women and two men. The three engineers with the most seniority are all women.)
Root cause analysis by itself isn't all that special, although a lot of people and companies don't do it, or don't do it very well. What I was actually explaining was the culture of operational excellence, and I just took a brief walk through RCA so people would have a fresh, easily-understood example in their heads. Clearly Niantic does not have this culture of operational excellence.
Hi @Hosette-ING - thank you for your detailed feedback and advice once again. Envious of where you are working and all the experience you must be bringing to your team. If you are interested, know that we are hiring :)
We do have these practices in place, and have solutions designed looking at the large systematic problems. We've done the research and design. But at the end of the day, you need humans to execute on solutions, right? Since you are aware of startup culture, I'm sure you can appreciate that we are doing our best with the resources that we have.
@patsufredo-PGO - the fact is multi-accounters are still people with rights to privacy, and we are very serious about that. @NianticGiffard has said exactly the right thing. I am constantly surfacing the multi-account issues with our Trust & Safety team as are the game teams. We know there's more work to do here.
@NianticDanbocat are you aware that the go to for "action taken" is to lockout abusers from wayfarer... Even though a lot of the abusers never use wayfarer... And are still able to nominate abuse?
I don't mean to be rude here, but you're telling me a BILLION DOLLAR company has the resources of a recently built start up?
This just confirms one of two things: Either Niantic doesn't hire people for understaffed departments, or they are actively hiring but the offer is on the low side so no one actually applies.
Guess what both these statements confirm? Niantic is greedy and doesn't give a damn about anything but $$$.
I would love you to prove me wrong or enlighten me further on how things are ran there, because the math just isn't adding up.
This is BY FAR the most constructive feedback anyone could give Niantic. I'd pin this post on these boards and would upvote 10k times if it was possible.
So, exactly what i said: A billion dollar business with a startup-like core. This again concludes that Niantic doesn't care about quality as much as they do $$$.
@NianticDanbocat care to prove me wrong or enlighten me on what i'm misunderstanding? Or are my claims correct?
@NianticDanbocat, thank you for your thoughtful response. I think you know this, but I want to be very clear that I am attempting to provide constructive criticism to the company, and everything I'm saying is done with that spirit. There's a lot of "U SUXXXX!!1!" discussion on forums and I don't find that type of dialog interesting or useful.
You wrote:
We do have these practices in place, and have solutions designed looking at the large systematic problems. We've done the research and design. But at the end of the day, you need humans to execute on solutions, right? Since you are aware of startup culture, I'm sure you can appreciate that we are doing our best with the resources that we have.
Here is what I see from the outside: Players report the same set of problems over and over, for years. Niantic responds to each one by mopping up the details of that particular report, sometimes incompletely. It happens again. Niantic mops again. The underlying problem never seems to be solved, since there is a never-ending stream of similar reports. If I sincerely believed that the company was doing the best with the resources that they have I wouldn't have posted the message that I did. I believe Niantic can do better.
You are correct that it takes humans to execute solutions. However, it also takes humans to operate mops. Niantic no longer qualifies as a startup, though it certainly seems to have retained at least some of it's startup culture-- the last paragraph of my message addressed exactly that. Some years ago I participated in a small brainstorming meeting with Niantic employees about a different set of user-impacting issues that the company was facing. (I'm being deliberately vague.) My takeaway from that meeting was that Niantic was only interested in technology-based systemic solutions, and that they would reject anything that required them to invest manpower in manual cleanup work. This seemed smart to me-- technical solutions scale efficiently with growth while labor-based ones have a fairly linear growth curve. Again, looking from the outside, it seems that Niantic has reversed course and they are willing to throw a lot of money at people with mops. I'm quite aware that there is anti-abuse technology in place that users never see and probably a lot of stuff is caught by those mechanisms. My argument is that the balance needs to shift more to technical solutions, and that this would probably increase Niantic's profits over the long run. It would also improve the customer experience.
Some years ago I worked at a startup (my only single-digit employee number) whose product ended up being wildly popular among my friends-- it was exhilarating to see the thing I helped build become so central to people's lives. Over time I watched the company make numerous decisions that were... not customer-friendly. When I left the company I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders, and I thought about whether I would ever be willing to pay the emotional cost for a job like that again. I would, but only for $X above my previous year's income. I set the price high enough that I doubt any company would be willing to pay it. While I love Niantic's products and the commute to Niantic HQ would be a short walk followed by a lovely ferry ride across the bay I'm quite certain that Niantic can't afford me. Having said that, I'm always happy to brainstorm with you or anyone else if you're in the bay area, and my price for chatting over coffee is far more affordable-- one beverage from Blue Bottle. It'll be a froufrou one, though, 'cause I'm not cheap. (-:
@Hosette-ING thanks for womansplaining 😅 again your point of view. I tend to womansplain too and have to catch myself! I hear you.What I meant is that the WF (wayfarer) team is like a startup within the company. We don't always get the investment we want against all the other product tracks, so we have to stay a bit scrappy. It's just an outcome of us growing very quickly, which I know I don't have to explain to you :) - Anyway, I believe we can do better too, and we will. BTW, when you say players report the same problem over and over, are you referring to the games and WF or just WF?
@URWhatUKnow-ING - usually when you start a sentence with "I'm not trying to be rude" it is usually then read as being rude. 🤷But I accept your frustration. I think gaming company that cares only about $$$ would be shipping lottery games, no?
We're actually trying to do something different here. Farmville isn't a model we're trying to mimic :) The company's mission is to deliver both a platform and publish games that bring joy to your everyday and help you interact with the real-world and make new friends in a fun and healthy way - I hope your experiences with Ingress and/or PGO has done so overall. When we hire, we are really attracted to folks who believe deeply in our vision and mission and realize that we're trying to do something different here. And if that's mutual, then there's usually a match ♥️.
I was genuinely just trying to understand why the math doesn't add up when it comes to Niantic and your statements on the current state of the team.
It's purely illogical to be cutting down on an already understaffed team, even when most of the WF work is freely outsourced to the community. Funds is something that Niantic doesn't lack, so it's either actual blissful ignorance from upper management, or it' s intentional foul play to increase revenue by cutting down on human labor costs. I just want to know which side of the coin it is, to further develop my rationale.
While this is definitively possible, a quick glance at GlassDoor shows Niantic as a company that pays above median salaries, while also providing good option plans for their employees. Even minimum wage call centers are packed go the brim with applicants and workers. How is it possible then that the exact opposite side of the coin (Well paying, employee-friendly company) is seemingly lacking people and reducing their team?
This is the math that doesn't add up, and some deception is at hand. This is why i asked @NianticDanbocat these precise questions, so we can get some clarity and insight on what's really happening. Given that she (Going to assume it's a she by her own admission of womansplaining, correct me if i'm wrong) is the most transparent and "human" moderator we have, this could be a good way of understanding the outlying flaws on Niantic, and perhaps provide insight akin to @Hosette-ING that can be passed along in order to improve the current situation.
I think gaming company that cares only about $$$ would be shipping lottery games, no?
Gotta be honest, Pokemon Go is very much a lottery game. The focus of the game's monetization is playing the raid/egg lotteries trying to get perfect IVs, shinies, and rare hatches. The entire concepts, of shiny hunting, lucky pokemon, and just trying to find good IVs is entirely luck based and is basically playing a lottery over and over and over again.
I forgot to specifically call out the fact that two mechanics of the game are literally called LUCKY TRADES and LUCKY FRIENDS and basically every announcement that Nantic makes about Pokemon Go events includes the phrase "If you're lucky, you may encounter a shiny!"
Niantic absolutely makes lottery based games. There is no earning shinies or good IVs. It could be your first hatch or your millionth. It is a lottery.
A big problem with making profits with lotto games is that straight-forward gambling is usually age-gated and subject to much more stringent regulations than regulations for video games with chance elements and micro-transactions. So a company can very much make more money a lot more easily by obscuring the straight-up gambling elements with colorful gameplay. In fact, there's a lot of debate about regulation regarding things like loot box mechanics being aimed at children because of the similarities to gambling. Not to mention 3rd parties taking advantage of these loot box mechanics to try and push 3rd party gambling sites using in-game rewards in place of currency, and then cashing out the in-game rewards. Such as the CSGO Shuffle scandal where a youtube streamer popular with minors pushed content featuring one of these 3rd party loot gambing sites that he owned, with rigged results in his videos to make his gambling site seem appealing.
It does depend on which of Niantic's various games however. Ingress has very little of these loot box mechanics where as Pokemon GO is very VERY loot box mechanic heavy, as @AisforAndis-ING pointed out.
I understand the point @NianticDanbocat was trying to make, but I think the argument is rather faulty. I think a better argument about Niantic's mission would be investing a lot of money and resources into things like Lightship, the AR DevKit, and continuing to build features that get people to interact in person. There things, that while would still net them money in the long run, is certainly not the most profitable way to invest their money compared to other things they could implement. But it does line up with what their mission has been since the early days of Ingress.
But yeah, making straight-up lotto games has not been the best way to get $$$ from customers using gambling elements for a long, long time.
@NianticDanbocat I was specifically talking about Wayfarer in this discussion but it's not just Wayfarer. Head over to the Ingress forum and look at the long history of complaints about the game lagging, for example. And yes, I understand underfunded teams. If I was making the pitch for more funding I would argue that the wayspot database is one of Niantic's crown jewels and that the quality of the data is currently degraded and is probably on a downward trajectory. I would argue that this is database is core infrastructure for all Niantic games and thus an investment in Wayfarer is something that improves the quality of all games, current and future.
@URWhatUKnow-ING I may be able to explain the discrepancy. Every company in silicon valley is hiring and the pool of engineers is smaller than the number of openings. Everybody I know is getting bombarded by recruiters
Comments
Thanks for mansplaining root cause analysis lol
SOMEBODY had to do it! (womansplaining in this case)
Poor Giffard doesn’t get good support from management. Noantics treats Wayfarer as an orphanarium, though it’s the goose that lays their golden eggs.
I mean, I hope the only action NIA is taking is banning the wayfarers from their games for such blatant abuse. If they are coming back then either they have quite a lot of high level accounts or they are not getting permanently banned.
Many people in this forum spend much more time and energy in Wayfarer than most of the Niantic's staff. They see wayfarer as some kind of sacred database with perfect PoI, and then Niantic says:
and the show goes on because people can't stop reviewing...
So I only keep noticing this case of abuse because I live right next door, and had populated the college next door with stops pretty much all by myself. So When I go there or open then intel map to check on things I keep seeing this repeat offender abusing the system over and over again... Very annoying that nothing is being done clearly to penalize this person.
IDK how it would be accomplished but those who are basically vandalizing the Niantic map need to be banned from contributing in any way.
@jaimelee81-PGO As was pointed out by @Eneeoh-PGO I was actually womansplaining. (Amusing sidebar: my team of SREs is currently four women and two men. The three engineers with the most seniority are all women.)
Root cause analysis by itself isn't all that special, although a lot of people and companies don't do it, or don't do it very well. What I was actually explaining was the culture of operational excellence, and I just took a brief walk through RCA so people would have a fresh, easily-understood example in their heads. Clearly Niantic does not have this culture of operational excellence.
Hi @Hosette-ING - thank you for your detailed feedback and advice once again. Envious of where you are working and all the experience you must be bringing to your team. If you are interested, know that we are hiring :)
We do have these practices in place, and have solutions designed looking at the large systematic problems. We've done the research and design. But at the end of the day, you need humans to execute on solutions, right? Since you are aware of startup culture, I'm sure you can appreciate that we are doing our best with the resources that we have.
@patsufredo-PGO - the fact is multi-accounters are still people with rights to privacy, and we are very serious about that. @NianticGiffard has said exactly the right thing. I am constantly surfacing the multi-account issues with our Trust & Safety team as are the game teams. We know there's more work to do here.
@NianticDanbocat are you aware that the go to for "action taken" is to lockout abusers from wayfarer... Even though a lot of the abusers never use wayfarer... And are still able to nominate abuse?
I don't mean to be rude here, but you're telling me a BILLION DOLLAR company has the resources of a recently built start up?
This just confirms one of two things: Either Niantic doesn't hire people for understaffed departments, or they are actively hiring but the offer is on the low side so no one actually applies.
Guess what both these statements confirm? Niantic is greedy and doesn't give a damn about anything but $$$.
I would love you to prove me wrong or enlighten me further on how things are ran there, because the math just isn't adding up.
This is BY FAR the most constructive feedback anyone could give Niantic. I'd pin this post on these boards and would upvote 10k times if it was possible.
Hmm - @NianticHosette has a nice ring to it...... :-)
Startup culture. Not a startup. It just means the company expects you to work long, inconsistent hours with low pay. But the fridge has beer!
So, exactly what i said: A billion dollar business with a startup-like core. This again concludes that Niantic doesn't care about quality as much as they do $$$.
@NianticDanbocat care to prove me wrong or enlighten me on what i'm misunderstanding? Or are my claims correct?
@NianticDanbocat, thank you for your thoughtful response. I think you know this, but I want to be very clear that I am attempting to provide constructive criticism to the company, and everything I'm saying is done with that spirit. There's a lot of "U SUXXXX!!1!" discussion on forums and I don't find that type of dialog interesting or useful.
You wrote:
We do have these practices in place, and have solutions designed looking at the large systematic problems. We've done the research and design. But at the end of the day, you need humans to execute on solutions, right? Since you are aware of startup culture, I'm sure you can appreciate that we are doing our best with the resources that we have.
Here is what I see from the outside: Players report the same set of problems over and over, for years. Niantic responds to each one by mopping up the details of that particular report, sometimes incompletely. It happens again. Niantic mops again. The underlying problem never seems to be solved, since there is a never-ending stream of similar reports. If I sincerely believed that the company was doing the best with the resources that they have I wouldn't have posted the message that I did. I believe Niantic can do better.
You are correct that it takes humans to execute solutions. However, it also takes humans to operate mops. Niantic no longer qualifies as a startup, though it certainly seems to have retained at least some of it's startup culture-- the last paragraph of my message addressed exactly that. Some years ago I participated in a small brainstorming meeting with Niantic employees about a different set of user-impacting issues that the company was facing. (I'm being deliberately vague.) My takeaway from that meeting was that Niantic was only interested in technology-based systemic solutions, and that they would reject anything that required them to invest manpower in manual cleanup work. This seemed smart to me-- technical solutions scale efficiently with growth while labor-based ones have a fairly linear growth curve. Again, looking from the outside, it seems that Niantic has reversed course and they are willing to throw a lot of money at people with mops. I'm quite aware that there is anti-abuse technology in place that users never see and probably a lot of stuff is caught by those mechanisms. My argument is that the balance needs to shift more to technical solutions, and that this would probably increase Niantic's profits over the long run. It would also improve the customer experience.
Some years ago I worked at a startup (my only single-digit employee number) whose product ended up being wildly popular among my friends-- it was exhilarating to see the thing I helped build become so central to people's lives. Over time I watched the company make numerous decisions that were... not customer-friendly. When I left the company I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders, and I thought about whether I would ever be willing to pay the emotional cost for a job like that again. I would, but only for $X above my previous year's income. I set the price high enough that I doubt any company would be willing to pay it. While I love Niantic's products and the commute to Niantic HQ would be a short walk followed by a lovely ferry ride across the bay I'm quite certain that Niantic can't afford me. Having said that, I'm always happy to brainstorm with you or anyone else if you're in the bay area, and my price for chatting over coffee is far more affordable-- one beverage from Blue Bottle. It'll be a froufrou one, though, 'cause I'm not cheap. (-:
@Hosette-ING thanks for womansplaining 😅 again your point of view. I tend to womansplain too and have to catch myself! I hear you.What I meant is that the WF (wayfarer) team is like a startup within the company. We don't always get the investment we want against all the other product tracks, so we have to stay a bit scrappy. It's just an outcome of us growing very quickly, which I know I don't have to explain to you :) - Anyway, I believe we can do better too, and we will. BTW, when you say players report the same problem over and over, are you referring to the games and WF or just WF?
@URWhatUKnow-ING - usually when you start a sentence with "I'm not trying to be rude" it is usually then read as being rude. 🤷But I accept your frustration. I think gaming company that cares only about $$$ would be shipping lottery games, no?
We're actually trying to do something different here. Farmville isn't a model we're trying to mimic :) The company's mission is to deliver both a platform and publish games that bring joy to your everyday and help you interact with the real-world and make new friends in a fun and healthy way - I hope your experiences with Ingress and/or PGO has done so overall. When we hire, we are really attracted to folks who believe deeply in our vision and mission and realize that we're trying to do something different here. And if that's mutual, then there's usually a match ♥️.
Womansplain? So she/her?
I was genuinely just trying to understand why the math doesn't add up when it comes to Niantic and your statements on the current state of the team.
It's purely illogical to be cutting down on an already understaffed team, even when most of the WF work is freely outsourced to the community. Funds is something that Niantic doesn't lack, so it's either actual blissful ignorance from upper management, or it' s intentional foul play to increase revenue by cutting down on human labor costs. I just want to know which side of the coin it is, to further develop my rationale.
Could be shortages in the workforce as well. I don't think it's fair just to assume the worst all the time.
While this is definitively possible, a quick glance at GlassDoor shows Niantic as a company that pays above median salaries, while also providing good option plans for their employees. Even minimum wage call centers are packed go the brim with applicants and workers. How is it possible then that the exact opposite side of the coin (Well paying, employee-friendly company) is seemingly lacking people and reducing their team?
This is the math that doesn't add up, and some deception is at hand. This is why i asked @NianticDanbocat these precise questions, so we can get some clarity and insight on what's really happening. Given that she (Going to assume it's a she by her own admission of womansplaining, correct me if i'm wrong) is the most transparent and "human" moderator we have, this could be a good way of understanding the outlying flaws on Niantic, and perhaps provide insight akin to @Hosette-ING that can be passed along in order to improve the current situation.
@NianticDanbocat
I think gaming company that cares only about $$$ would be shipping lottery games, no?
Gotta be honest, Pokemon Go is very much a lottery game. The focus of the game's monetization is playing the raid/egg lotteries trying to get perfect IVs, shinies, and rare hatches. The entire concepts, of shiny hunting, lucky pokemon, and just trying to find good IVs is entirely luck based and is basically playing a lottery over and over and over again.
I forgot to specifically call out the fact that two mechanics of the game are literally called LUCKY TRADES and LUCKY FRIENDS and basically every announcement that Nantic makes about Pokemon Go events includes the phrase "If you're lucky, you may encounter a shiny!"
Niantic absolutely makes lottery based games. There is no earning shinies or good IVs. It could be your first hatch or your millionth. It is a lottery.
A big problem with making profits with lotto games is that straight-forward gambling is usually age-gated and subject to much more stringent regulations than regulations for video games with chance elements and micro-transactions. So a company can very much make more money a lot more easily by obscuring the straight-up gambling elements with colorful gameplay. In fact, there's a lot of debate about regulation regarding things like loot box mechanics being aimed at children because of the similarities to gambling. Not to mention 3rd parties taking advantage of these loot box mechanics to try and push 3rd party gambling sites using in-game rewards in place of currency, and then cashing out the in-game rewards. Such as the CSGO Shuffle scandal where a youtube streamer popular with minors pushed content featuring one of these 3rd party loot gambing sites that he owned, with rigged results in his videos to make his gambling site seem appealing.
It does depend on which of Niantic's various games however. Ingress has very little of these loot box mechanics where as Pokemon GO is very VERY loot box mechanic heavy, as @AisforAndis-ING pointed out.
I understand the point @NianticDanbocat was trying to make, but I think the argument is rather faulty. I think a better argument about Niantic's mission would be investing a lot of money and resources into things like Lightship, the AR DevKit, and continuing to build features that get people to interact in person. There things, that while would still net them money in the long run, is certainly not the most profitable way to invest their money compared to other things they could implement. But it does line up with what their mission has been since the early days of Ingress.
But yeah, making straight-up lotto games has not been the best way to get $$$ from customers using gambling elements for a long, long time.
Troll in the chat
@NianticDanbocat I was specifically talking about Wayfarer in this discussion but it's not just Wayfarer. Head over to the Ingress forum and look at the long history of complaints about the game lagging, for example. And yes, I understand underfunded teams. If I was making the pitch for more funding I would argue that the wayspot database is one of Niantic's crown jewels and that the quality of the data is currently degraded and is probably on a downward trajectory. I would argue that this is database is core infrastructure for all Niantic games and thus an investment in Wayfarer is something that improves the quality of all games, current and future.
@URWhatUKnow-ING I may be able to explain the discrepancy. Every company in silicon valley is hiring and the pool of engineers is smaller than the number of openings. Everybody I know is getting bombarded by recruiters
Hi everyone! Based on the content of the discussion, I will be closing it for future comments. I appreciate your understanding.