Another reason why I cannot wait for a comprehensive lightship map, or at least for Ingress to show all hidden wayspots on the submission screen like PGO does.
As I live in the Manchester area (@Shepeteksht-PGO sorry 😂) I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those points at Anfield are somewhere in the depths of the system waiting to be reviewed. I would think that there is a good chance that Liverpool is in the same blocked system as Manchester and that without upgrades it takes years to get a point through and it would only take a couple nearby to block them even getting to in voting status.
when you are submitting areas like this, it is a major blow having to wait 2 years or more, only to find that the long awaited new game content didn’t appear.
Most people who submit only submit a handful of POI. They are too busy and not interested in a higher level of involvement in wayfarer and why should they be.
Niantic want the data, but again there is a failure to understand what motivates players to provide data. The prize is having the POI to play with.
Once you learn the rules and learn to work with them you can make progress.
Believe me, I totally understand the frustration. I went from being interested (since I like travel and learning about points of interest) to highly disliking doing reviews now, because I get them from across the country or even further away (Mexico and Canada), but not locally, and nothing has changed on my game map in over 2 years. I did get one church added locally right with my first upgrade over two years ago, but that was dumb luck, I didn't know about the cells at the time. It's such a disappointment when you first learn about the invisible cells and that hundreds of players and hundreds of reviewers are literally wasting hours, because neither party can see the invisible arbitrary lines during submission or review. But worse, nominations sit for over two years unreviewed locally (in voting for 1.5+ years, appeals, 6+months). Also, while I understand the tenets of exploration, exercise and socialization... I'm bored out of my mind approving footbridges and trail markers, and to top it all - I just had another rejection in my own neighborhood. No reason given. Thought it was a sure thing. An earlier rejection was for "poor photo quality" in my neighborhood. I'm a hobby photographer, and my photo is fine, trust me. But I guess I wasted those upgrades. So..... yes, totally get the frustration... Oh, and funny enough, I recently saw a newly approved waypoint. It has NO photo at all, and NO description, it is essentially blank... I laughed and laughed.
That wayspot with no photo or description was likely added by Niantic themselves as part of a data import. They recently imported data from Courts of the World in preparation for their NBA game. They've also previously imported data from Foursquare in certain countries.
@Elijustrying-ING That was the reason I've created this post - for people to have a proper debate, how this system isn't working, but after seeing where we went and how toxic it got, I'd rather stick to what I have. Fella grassing me to mods, telling he'll report other stops, because somehow, after being there for 7/6 years, they've been "moved" to a wrong location, other making random assumptions. Lessons were learned here today. Made few mistakes while commenting myself as well, won't lie.
If every logical POI would be implemented in every single Niantic's game, that would motivate me to explore and nominate the hell out of every logical place. That would benefit, firstly, the game that I play and everyone else.
@The26thDoctor-PGO You'll never walk alone gates would be near a electric box with mural which is already in the game, so wouldn't stick in pogo.
I thought you wanted to improve gameplay? Surely the gates mentioned being added in to the games (whichever they go in to) would improve gameplay for someone?
To be fair @Shepeteksht-PGO You did start of by being pretty abrasive, I get its out of frustration and annoyance but It's not really surprising if people return that abrasiveness you started.
Niantic are not really a gaming company which is pretty evident from how their games function :)
To them Go, Ingress, Pikmin etc are just a skin on top of their real aim of mapping, VPS, AR, Lightship database I think.
Why doesn't a Niantic employee reply whenever a user is facing issues and help them, guide them properly?
For many of the people that are so vehement about Lightship, it's obvious that they don't care about the games where the wayspots are used because the game for them is Wayfarer, not the rest of apps/games that Niantic releases.
What's nominated in PoGo does benefit PoGo - thats a given. The "problem" is that your accepted nomination then has to be checked against the PoGo spacing rules. In this case, it does not meet the "PoGo only" criteria of "one Stop / Gym" per S17 cell, so it does not appear on the PoGo gameboard. As to why this rule is in place, thats down to massive abuse and explotiation of the spacing and stop location edit rules that used to happen on PoGo to create "Gym clusters" and the like - Niantic introduced the current rules a year or so ago to stop the abuse caused by some parts of the PoGo community.
As for Ingress, and Pimkin and every other game, now there is one central waypoint database which games look to for their own ingame POIs. If you want an equivalent spacing "rule" for Ingress, the 20m rule has the same effect. If I nominate a POI within 20 m of an existing portal, it might get accepted but will not appear in Ingress, but could appear in PoGo. Works both ways.
I concur - as a Pokemon Go-primary player at first, who took up Ingress when nominations became available there, I did a lot of research before making my first nomination to see the process and best practices. The spacing rules for what Pokemon Go extracts from Lightship now are exactly the same as when the Ingress Intel map was primary, and likely before any nominations were possible. These spacing rules allow the large Pogo objects like gyms and Pokestops to fit cleanly onto the map without overcrowding, while still allowing space to fulfill the game's purpose - catching all the things on the ground that appear in between those static structures. This is how the game was designed, not a response to abuse.
The abuse response was around editing to move POI together. So they created a waypoint got it as a gym, moved into to the cluster. So you now had a strong of cells packed with many pokestops gyms. This was because they exploited the fact that once created as a gym or stop it maintained that status.
You would have thought it easy to run a program to check for exceptionally high density and then investigate….or the main ones are well known anyway.
So they changed it so that each time it syncs the poi don’t keep the previous status what the and it recalcalculates the cell according to the base rules.
To be fair, even if the submission doesn't show up as a PokeStop, you still get increased spawns, so it's at least some benefit.
The reason Niantic doesn't share cell rules publicly and wants an "accurate" map is because they are an AR company, not a gaming company. Your misplaced POI could result in a PokeStop, but in Niantic's eyes, it's resulting in less profit due to the map not being accurate when they eventually sell it.
So, getting new POIs in games is only a "carrot" on top of the "stick", this stick being doing Niantic's job, for FREE. Admittedly, there is a lot of pro-bono things in the world, but saving a greedy, soulless and radio silent company some dollars on mapping so they can eventually make more dollars when they sell the fruits of your labor ain't working pro-bono, it' s working pro-bucho.
You want changes and better communication from Niantic? Stop doing their job. They've already ridiculed the community with their massive 4Square imports (Which they then tell YOU, the end user, to fix if it's wrong).
Listen, for the most part, I only care about Pokemon GO as well. Though I have recently started playing Ingress, I don't nominate Ingress only POI (yet).
I totally agree that the system is frustrating because Niantic does not educate us about how it all works. But the community has gone to great lengths to educate ourselves and others about how the cell system works (1 POI per L17 cell and how many POI in an L14 to get gyms). You continuing to nominate while being intentionally ignorant of the rules is, quite frankly, your own fault.
You're like the kid in that cartoon that pushes on the door that is clearly labeled "PULL" hoping that the door will open up because you think a PULL door is stupid. Learn how to work within the system and your frustration will drop down to a manageable level. It will never go away completely because you're still going to waste upgrades on things that the voting public doesn't understand and votes wrongly for. But eventually you will learn what things you should and shouldn't upgrade as well.
Do I wish it was easier and we didn't have to jump through all these hoops? Absolutely! But it is what it is and it technically IS workable.
Here's a list of how Niantic and other players demotivate me with reviews and nominations:
Go out to reserves and national parks to explore hard to reach areas, only to be booted off the gyms a couple of days later at 2am because they're some spoofers' coin gyms.
Pointless edits get through the system too easily - some one/people at my local decided it's a good idea to go rename every playground to what Google Maps calls it, nevermind the fact that it may have a cool name to begin with, or its name matched what OSM says. Then there are the people who go make incorrect location edits to put something into a free cell, or simply because a pokestop is too close to another pokestop which makes it hard to tap on it to spin.
Mass produced concrete foot bridges going across every road and drain makes it through easily, just because it's a foot bridge
Don't get me started on survey markers in the gutter or in someone's driveway
It doesn't increase spawns. It should, and it used to, but Niantic no longer updates that. It's probably not going to get fixed now that the spiral around the drain is beginning.
In all honesty, I get where OP is coming from, I also only submit Wayspots for Pokemon Go purposes. Nothing against the other games, but I don't play, and I'm not doing literal unpaid labor to build a POI database full of stuff I can't even use in my own game.
That being said: OP. I say this with care, as I feel where you're coming from; but use the Intel Map, use Pogomap to see the cells. It will make your life so much easier just being able to see empty cells you can submit in.
Wasn't aware of that actually. Apologies for the misinformation, it used to work like that. So, yeah, a POI not showing up on PoGo is now theoretically useless :/
I have added a few portal only wayspots in a park hoping someday they will spawn something in pogo. Ingress players will have the best part, all pokestops added will be portals too. I made sure of that. Lately I just sub stuff that is too good to not at least be a porta. I see in intel map and it feels nice seeing it in use. I don't care about lightship much to go out of my away for that.
It's interesting how differently people approach this.
I've submitted things in five different countries, on three different continents, and all over the United States. I've never been back to many of the non-local ones and probably never will, and that's perfectly OK with me. I submit things because I think they're interesting and worthy of being wayspots, not because I selfishly want them for my own use.
I have one voting in France at this very moment that I'm unlikely to ever see again, but a few days ago I spent the night in an airport because of a nutso connecting flight. I woke up and, half-awake, made my way over to my departure terminal. As I got there something caught my eye, and I did a groggy double when I saw a gorgeous art installation. I looked at my phone to get the unique capture and realized that it wasn't a portal. I submitted it immediately, and even found a proper French title for it despite my not speaking the language. I'll probably never see that wayspot again (assuming it gets accepted, and it should) because I rarely fly to or through France but that's perfectly OK with me. I've contributed something that other people will use and enjoy.
I've nominated things I've seen that I thought were interesting that will only appear in Ingress, that doesn't stop me thinking it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable for Go players to only want things for the game they play.
Having said that, there are things that reduce my motivation:
All of the complete garbage wayspots in the queue. I don't care how much you want a couch stop... the streetlight in front of your house doesn't qualify, and you shouldn't waste reviewers' time with it.
The rampant cheating, people submitting and reviewing on multiple accounts, and local cabals colluding to make their own rules.
Fakes, so freaking many fakes. I've personally hunted down and had dozens of fakes removed, but they keep appearing.
Niantic's inability to communicate criteria and rules to people in a way that's easy for them to consume and understand.
I probably have a lifetime supply of upgrades accumulated right now but I keep reviewing because I enjoy the virtual tourism aspect of it. I like seeing things in different places, and right now my home, bonus, and local play area are on different continents. The endless stream of fakes and coal make me far less inclined to keep reviewing.
@The26thDoctor-PGO I have no problem with people choosing not to submit things that won't appear in their preferred game(s). I think it's perfectly reasonable to be a bit bummed when something you submit doesn't make it into your preferred game(s). I think it crosses over into selfishness when you call players of other games "trash and they're not even worth mentioning" and then threaten to take your submission and reviewing marbles and go home because one thing you submitted didn't make it into your preferred game(s). (That's "you" in the abstract, not you @The26thDoctor-PGO specifically.)
Comments
Just realised they might already exist and IITC isn't showing them.
Another reason why I cannot wait for a comprehensive lightship map, or at least for Ingress to show all hidden wayspots on the submission screen like PGO does.
As I live in the Manchester area (@Shepeteksht-PGO sorry 😂) I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those points at Anfield are somewhere in the depths of the system waiting to be reviewed. I would think that there is a good chance that Liverpool is in the same blocked system as Manchester and that without upgrades it takes years to get a point through and it would only take a couple nearby to block them even getting to in voting status.
when you are submitting areas like this, it is a major blow having to wait 2 years or more, only to find that the long awaited new game content didn’t appear.
Most people who submit only submit a handful of POI. They are too busy and not interested in a higher level of involvement in wayfarer and why should they be.
Niantic want the data, but again there is a failure to understand what motivates players to provide data. The prize is having the POI to play with.
Once you learn the rules and learn to work with them you can make progress.
Believe me, I totally understand the frustration. I went from being interested (since I like travel and learning about points of interest) to highly disliking doing reviews now, because I get them from across the country or even further away (Mexico and Canada), but not locally, and nothing has changed on my game map in over 2 years. I did get one church added locally right with my first upgrade over two years ago, but that was dumb luck, I didn't know about the cells at the time. It's such a disappointment when you first learn about the invisible cells and that hundreds of players and hundreds of reviewers are literally wasting hours, because neither party can see the invisible arbitrary lines during submission or review. But worse, nominations sit for over two years unreviewed locally (in voting for 1.5+ years, appeals, 6+months). Also, while I understand the tenets of exploration, exercise and socialization... I'm bored out of my mind approving footbridges and trail markers, and to top it all - I just had another rejection in my own neighborhood. No reason given. Thought it was a sure thing. An earlier rejection was for "poor photo quality" in my neighborhood. I'm a hobby photographer, and my photo is fine, trust me. But I guess I wasted those upgrades. So..... yes, totally get the frustration... Oh, and funny enough, I recently saw a newly approved waypoint. It has NO photo at all, and NO description, it is essentially blank... I laughed and laughed.
That wayspot with no photo or description was likely added by Niantic themselves as part of a data import. They recently imported data from Courts of the World in preparation for their NBA game. They've also previously imported data from Foursquare in certain countries.
@Elijustrying-ING That was the reason I've created this post - for people to have a proper debate, how this system isn't working, but after seeing where we went and how toxic it got, I'd rather stick to what I have. Fella grassing me to mods, telling he'll report other stops, because somehow, after being there for 7/6 years, they've been "moved" to a wrong location, other making random assumptions. Lessons were learned here today. Made few mistakes while commenting myself as well, won't lie.
If every logical POI would be implemented in every single Niantic's game, that would motivate me to explore and nominate the hell out of every logical place. That would benefit, firstly, the game that I play and everyone else.
@The26thDoctor-PGO You'll never walk alone gates would be near a electric box with mural which is already in the game, so wouldn't stick in pogo.
I thought you wanted to improve gameplay? Surely the gates mentioned being added in to the games (whichever they go in to) would improve gameplay for someone?
Which one? I can only see the Shankly on Socialism Wayspot.
To be fair @Shepeteksht-PGO You did start of by being pretty abrasive, I get its out of frustration and annoyance but It's not really surprising if people return that abrasiveness you started.
Niantic are not really a gaming company which is pretty evident from how their games function :)
To them Go, Ingress, Pikmin etc are just a skin on top of their real aim of mapping, VPS, AR, Lightship database I think.
And why other people stand up to defend Niantic?
Why doesn't a Niantic employee reply whenever a user is facing issues and help them, guide them properly?
For many of the people that are so vehement about Lightship, it's obvious that they don't care about the games where the wayspots are used because the game for them is Wayfarer, not the rest of apps/games that Niantic releases.
I don't think anyone is defending Niantic's decisions on being open about how the various games work in relation to poi placement.
Some people don't seem to mind them while others think they are pointless.
What's nominated in PoGo does benefit PoGo - thats a given. The "problem" is that your accepted nomination then has to be checked against the PoGo spacing rules. In this case, it does not meet the "PoGo only" criteria of "one Stop / Gym" per S17 cell, so it does not appear on the PoGo gameboard. As to why this rule is in place, thats down to massive abuse and explotiation of the spacing and stop location edit rules that used to happen on PoGo to create "Gym clusters" and the like - Niantic introduced the current rules a year or so ago to stop the abuse caused by some parts of the PoGo community.
As for Ingress, and Pimkin and every other game, now there is one central waypoint database which games look to for their own ingame POIs. If you want an equivalent spacing "rule" for Ingress, the 20m rule has the same effect. If I nominate a POI within 20 m of an existing portal, it might get accepted but will not appear in Ingress, but could appear in PoGo. Works both ways.
Are you sure?
Go players have been able to submit since Nov 2019.
S2 cells and their rules for Go existed before that.
I concur - as a Pokemon Go-primary player at first, who took up Ingress when nominations became available there, I did a lot of research before making my first nomination to see the process and best practices. The spacing rules for what Pokemon Go extracts from Lightship now are exactly the same as when the Ingress Intel map was primary, and likely before any nominations were possible. These spacing rules allow the large Pogo objects like gyms and Pokestops to fit cleanly onto the map without overcrowding, while still allowing space to fulfill the game's purpose - catching all the things on the ground that appear in between those static structures. This is how the game was designed, not a response to abuse.
I thought so but wasn't sure if the memory was cheating. I remember S2 level 13 cell shenanigans with ex raids in 2017ish maybe....
The abuse response was around editing to move POI together. So they created a waypoint got it as a gym, moved into to the cluster. So you now had a strong of cells packed with many pokestops gyms. This was because they exploited the fact that once created as a gym or stop it maintained that status.
You would have thought it easy to run a program to check for exceptionally high density and then investigate….or the main ones are well known anyway.
So they changed it so that each time it syncs the poi don’t keep the previous status what the and it recalcalculates the cell according to the base rules.
To be fair, even if the submission doesn't show up as a PokeStop, you still get increased spawns, so it's at least some benefit.
The reason Niantic doesn't share cell rules publicly and wants an "accurate" map is because they are an AR company, not a gaming company. Your misplaced POI could result in a PokeStop, but in Niantic's eyes, it's resulting in less profit due to the map not being accurate when they eventually sell it.
So, getting new POIs in games is only a "carrot" on top of the "stick", this stick being doing Niantic's job, for FREE. Admittedly, there is a lot of pro-bono things in the world, but saving a greedy, soulless and radio silent company some dollars on mapping so they can eventually make more dollars when they sell the fruits of your labor ain't working pro-bono, it' s working pro-bucho.
You want changes and better communication from Niantic? Stop doing their job. They've already ridiculed the community with their massive 4Square imports (Which they then tell YOU, the end user, to fix if it's wrong).
Listen, for the most part, I only care about Pokemon GO as well. Though I have recently started playing Ingress, I don't nominate Ingress only POI (yet).
I totally agree that the system is frustrating because Niantic does not educate us about how it all works. But the community has gone to great lengths to educate ourselves and others about how the cell system works (1 POI per L17 cell and how many POI in an L14 to get gyms). You continuing to nominate while being intentionally ignorant of the rules is, quite frankly, your own fault.
You're like the kid in that cartoon that pushes on the door that is clearly labeled "PULL" hoping that the door will open up because you think a PULL door is stupid. Learn how to work within the system and your frustration will drop down to a manageable level. It will never go away completely because you're still going to waste upgrades on things that the voting public doesn't understand and votes wrongly for. But eventually you will learn what things you should and shouldn't upgrade as well.
Do I wish it was easier and we didn't have to jump through all these hoops? Absolutely! But it is what it is and it technically IS workable.
Here's a list of how Niantic and other players demotivate me with reviews and nominations:
Mass produced concrete foot bridges going across every road and drain makes it through easily, just because it's a foot bridge
Don't get me started on survey markers in the gutter or in someone's driveway
Latest face palm one near me, the fifth in the last three weeks that I'm not sure how they snuck through.
This isn't actually the poi picture but it does have school in the title.
It doesn't increase spawns. It should, and it used to, but Niantic no longer updates that. It's probably not going to get fixed now that the spiral around the drain is beginning.
In all honesty, I get where OP is coming from, I also only submit Wayspots for Pokemon Go purposes. Nothing against the other games, but I don't play, and I'm not doing literal unpaid labor to build a POI database full of stuff I can't even use in my own game.
That being said: OP. I say this with care, as I feel where you're coming from; but use the Intel Map, use Pogomap to see the cells. It will make your life so much easier just being able to see empty cells you can submit in.
Something from one of the commenters here seems so familiar...
Now that @NianticGiffard no longer here it looks like you can spread your hatred against Niantic here again, ain't ya?
?
Wasn't aware of that actually. Apologies for the misinformation, it used to work like that. So, yeah, a POI not showing up on PoGo is now theoretically useless :/
I have added a few portal only wayspots in a park hoping someday they will spawn something in pogo. Ingress players will have the best part, all pokestops added will be portals too. I made sure of that. Lately I just sub stuff that is too good to not at least be a porta. I see in intel map and it feels nice seeing it in use. I don't care about lightship much to go out of my away for that.
It's interesting how differently people approach this.
I've submitted things in five different countries, on three different continents, and all over the United States. I've never been back to many of the non-local ones and probably never will, and that's perfectly OK with me. I submit things because I think they're interesting and worthy of being wayspots, not because I selfishly want them for my own use.
I have one voting in France at this very moment that I'm unlikely to ever see again, but a few days ago I spent the night in an airport because of a nutso connecting flight. I woke up and, half-awake, made my way over to my departure terminal. As I got there something caught my eye, and I did a groggy double when I saw a gorgeous art installation. I looked at my phone to get the unique capture and realized that it wasn't a portal. I submitted it immediately, and even found a proper French title for it despite my not speaking the language. I'll probably never see that wayspot again (assuming it gets accepted, and it should) because I rarely fly to or through France but that's perfectly OK with me. I've contributed something that other people will use and enjoy.
You being selfless doesn't make others selfish :)
I've nominated things I've seen that I thought were interesting that will only appear in Ingress, that doesn't stop me thinking it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable for Go players to only want things for the game they play.
Having said that, there are things that reduce my motivation:
I probably have a lifetime supply of upgrades accumulated right now but I keep reviewing because I enjoy the virtual tourism aspect of it. I like seeing things in different places, and right now my home, bonus, and local play area are on different continents. The endless stream of fakes and coal make me far less inclined to keep reviewing.
@The26thDoctor-PGO I have no problem with people choosing not to submit things that won't appear in their preferred game(s). I think it's perfectly reasonable to be a bit bummed when something you submit doesn't make it into your preferred game(s). I think it crosses over into selfishness when you call players of other games "trash and they're not even worth mentioning" and then threaten to take your submission and reviewing marbles and go home because one thing you submitted didn't make it into your preferred game(s). (That's "you" in the abstract, not you @The26thDoctor-PGO specifically.)