Wayfarer Update: Nia Response Request
Gendgi-PGO
Posts: 3,277 Ambassador
Good day.
I appreciate that we are in a bit of a transition period with communications. However, considering the topic of this post, I, as well as my fellow Explorers, would really appreciate feedback or recognition sooner than later.
About a week ago, we were informed about upcoming updates to the Wayfarer platform in two posts with slightly different and, no offence, unclear and incomplete communication. We were told updates would include cryptic things like "upgrades we are making to the backend" and "tackling tech debt." While we certainly don't need to (and shouldn't) know every change that happens, significant modifications should be made clear to us, the user, especially if it includes things we believe may be bugs that are actually "working as intended."
I understand more changes may be coming, however right now has been a very stressful time for many reviewers (and submitters) who feel that things like the new maps interface while reviewing is a substantial set back and makes it a more difficult process than it should be. Especially since verbiage on the update also said "the look and feel will be the same," which is definitely not accurate.
It's now been a week without any response from Niantic about the many issues that have been brought up. What I would like is a simple acknowledgement this week about the bugs being posted and what current features are considered final or if we can expect actual improvements rather than setbacks to the system going forward.
Pros and Cons of the updates have been discussed in length https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21587/updates-on-your-wayfarer-and-pokemon-go-experience-discussion-thread and https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21677/wayfarer-looks-different-now
I believe this is a list of what the users believe are bugs that have yet to be acknowledged:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21687/location-edits-zooming-too-far-out
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21664/wayfarer-streetview-bug-in-new-wayfarer
Please, start the trend for forward communication so every update doesn't need to begin with "sorry for the silence on the matter."
@AnsonNIA-PGO @NianticGiffard @NianticTintino
Thanks for reading and the Wayfarer Explorers look forward to an open line of communication.
Comments
I couldn't agree more with this post. It's quite appalling the lack of any response to what is essentially in many Wayfarer's opinion a botched update.
Just to compare, look at Twitter's response when it made a couple small UI changes about a week ago. Twitter users were immediately complaining about eye strain and headaches due to the UI changes. Twitter responded very quickly acknowledging user complaints and even reverted the changes.
News article for reference: https://interestingengineering.com/twitter-reverts-design-changes-due-to-eye-strain-and-headache
Now compare that swift response and action by Twitter to the lack of any response, even acknowledgement from Niantic, to the complaints here regarding the numerous bugs that currently make Wayfarer incredibly unpleasant to use.
The lack of timely, and proper communication, along with resolution of issues seems to be a recurring issue with Wayfarer. This is not the first time changes have been made that negatively impacted Wayfarer. However this is probably the worst update the Wayfarer team has ever implemented. Couple that with the absolute appalling lack of any response regarding these issue and it is unacceptable.
Wayfarers do a lot of free labor, and situations like this just make me feel like we are being taken advantage of and are nothing more than guinea pigs time and again.
What would a proper reaction have been? The team should have responded within 48 hours acknowledging the issues, and immediately reverted the update so it could be fixed. This update clearly was not ready to be released. And still should be reverted while it is fixed.
Personally I have zero interest in reviewing or nominating with the Wayfarer site being so broken. The lack of any meaningful response merely reinforces my belief that Niantic could care less about Wayfarers.
Again Niantic implements changes without presenting a previous version, now we have to use the platform full of bugs and we have almost no answers about the solution of the problems.
It's sad to see how Niantic wastes the potential of this platform.
Other game companies have a big application procedure, so that you can be a alpha/beta tester.
Niantic is nice. For them evryone is a beta tester!
If people are reviewing then it's not broken to the point where it needs to be fixed so working as intended unfortunately.
I also am finding it hard to believe we haven't had a single word in response yet. There have been a half dozen posts with dozens of comments in reply here, most active reviewers I talk to simply aren't reviewing at all right now. Obviously Niantic has the metrics we'll never see but I can't imagine things look good right now.
Personally I will no longer review until I can again use my keyboard rather than the mouse to click 8+ points on a screen. Maybe this means W+ or some replacement tool, maybe it means Niantic actually adds a few basic features that should have been included from day 1 who knows.
I tried to have some optimism about things on the first day this site update launched but a week later that's mostly gone. Hopefully things turn around and I can still reach my goal of 100k reviews some day but for now I will not be reviewing.
i think we need a Letter of the Community, just like Zoe did.
Maybe the spearheads of wayfarer could sit together and work something out? Maybe we should also demand more (or at least, demand anything, because, well we do not get anything besides a cr-update).
Maybe a Letter of the Community, this could lead to a get-together with the Wayfarer Team via Skype or smth else.
And theres always the possibility that we could all lay down or work until we get a product that isnt broken?
Dear niantic
Stop breaking everything, get beta testers, listen to your player base/reviewers.
Yours sincerely, every player and reviewer
the problem is rather that there is noone left to fix it. new personal has ???
But enough of the reviewers won't quit so it will just be complaining so feel free to not do anything.
the world wouldnt have changed. people standing up and saying "Enough! We need a change!" is what we need
I would just like to know if all of the new aspects of Wayfarer are intended changes or if any of them are bugs that are being worked on.
Was it intended for us to not see already accepted pois on the satellite map? Etc.
I am definitely reviewing less. I am checking in on Wayfarer to see if I have had any movement on my nominations that were previously submitted, and will maybe review a few nominations, but the new Wayfarer interface is just too unpleasant, so I give up after a few minutes. Streetview in the Location Accuracy box fails to load over 50% of the time, the automatic scrolling down remains annoying, etc. The "feel" is different without making any meaningful positive changes to the reviewing experience, making me wonder what the point was.
With submissions disabled, I was hoping that there would be progress made on the backlog, but the change for reviewers has made reviewing more unpleasant, defeating that possibility.
This in particular is a significant hindrance to reviewing for me. I use the satellite map in conjunction with the "check for duplicates", it's really difficult to get a good sense of whether similar playgrounds, fields, etc are truly duplicates or not without the satellite view.
My "letter" was partly a joke.
I think most people have stopped reviewing though, like, there's no way the same amount are still reviewing, might be lucky if 15 to 20% are still reviewing and even they probably will be doing less than they were
To be honest, my reviewing may have increased this week. I traveled to a hyper-rural area of the Northern Rockies of USA. I flooded a small town with 21 nominations, so I feel it's my duty to burn through as much of the area backlog as I can.
However, my reviewing going forward once my nominations begin to be approved will greatly be determined by Niantic's responses and actions over the next few days.
someone on this forum informed me that the update had turned on scrolling in the settings - i hadn't looked there since i hadn't touched them but i was able to turn off that unpleasantness at least
The once again the lack of communication from Niantic is annoying and disappointing. I am sorry that I have to say it out loud but it needed said again. All we as a community have really ever wanted was you Niantic to actually talk to us. We use these systems and games yet it feels like our impute is not wanted or even read. I personally would be thrilled to just hear, "we are looking into this and will let you know by such and such date". The problem with that is Niantic can't seem to get back to us by a set date it takes the community asking "what is going on?". I genuinely do not understand how a company can implement such big changes, to not only the back end of a system but to the user experience and then go radio silent when the community tells you something is wrong. We all understand that there is information you can't give us and that is understandable and expected. What is not understandable is the fact that as a community we keep needing to create this type of post. You would think that if something like this keeps happening a message would be sent that we would like some acknowledgement. How hard is it to respect the people that are contributing to this process, because that is what this is starting to feel like. A lack of respect.
It was fine as it was. Okay, yes, i was using Wayfarer+ , such a big QOL improvement on the previous default view of the reviewing process. Now it seems that has be pushed out and is imcompatible with this new "setup". The new setup is worse than the previous version! 🙈 Just Roll it back and TEST your new stuff before rolling it out.... And yes i still have no idea when nominating will be turned on again. Ive driven past several GEMS recently and ive no been able to stop and nominate! :(
21?!
14 from Ingress and 7 from Pokemon Go.
Completely agree!! While reviewing does benefit everyone in the community who access the new waypoints by way of various Niantic games, the biggest benefactor is Niantic with their ever growing and evolving database of POIs. It’s enough to use us as free labor, but to Continuously make the process more difficult and unpleasant while turning a blind eye to our pleas for answers is just maddening.
Due to life circumstances, I’ve been unable to review substantially for many months and finally found myself once again able to devote a bit of time to it. I always enjoyed it because it’s a bit like getting to sitesee from the comfort of home, but the new changes are atrocious! I no longer am confident of tricky duplicates, there’s no longer a concept of scale, location edits are an absolute nightmare, etc etc. If the system remains this awkward and difficult to use, it’s simply no longer worth the time and effort. This hurts EVERYBODY. And much of this could be abated by a simple post to let us know what’s going on. “Sorry for the temporary hiccup, we’re aware and are actively searching for a solution. Thanks for your patience!” That’s are all we really want!! (I mean, we DO also want the eventual fix, not just empty words.) But to ignore the blatant issues is just mind numbing!
How dare you build such an amazing community and then just ignore it!!
I stopped contributing to wayfarer a couple months ago. Niantic gave up and I don't see why anyone would still expect anything from them.
Long-time lurker, first-time caller. Just popping in to add the fact that I've stopped reviewing due to the inability to submit and the increased difficulty to review. I was willing to do some free work for Niantic because there was some nominal benefit to me: improving the game experience for myself and my local community. The Wayfarer upgrades make me more averse to reviewing with the buggy new system. That, combined with not having any more local nominations to upgrade, means that I've lost any motivation to add value to the Wayfarer database. Now I just check in occasionally to make sure that upgrades from new agreements (courtesy of reviews from weeks or months ago) are applied where I desire.
The HTML base had fewer issues than the current new methods appear to. I may be entirely incorrect about this, but how would I know with no communication? Revert to that, patch the minor bugs, and help us help you.
You people are surprised?
Normally, I would have said to reach out to in-game Support, but when I recently attempted to get an answer recently on one of the bugs, they basically evaded answering my question. And while I was interacting with different people.
So it appears they are deliberately ignoring the situation. There hasn't been a response in this forum yet from them. And don't forget Niantic ignored the people who spearheaded the HearUsNiantic efforts until they were finally pressured to do so.
So at this point, if Niantic doesn't care about addressing the situation, I'm going to go on another hiatus in nominating and reviewing because the effort is not worth the hassle and frustration.
I used to encourage other players in the community to nominate and review, but I am now avoiding doing that as well because I can't recommend people to do so any more due to the experience they would go through
Let's not forget the mountains of evidence provided by people who did not receive Russian upgrades+rewards despite providing evidence, only to be told that their evidence was fake news lmao
@NianticTintino just wondering if you've had a chance to read this or any of that other outstanding bug reports & issues we've been bringing up over the last few weeks.
Thanks for sharing your viewpoint everyone and sorry for the lack of communication.
Just to let you folks know we are actively working on reconciling this issue and you might soon notice an announcement from us regarding this.
Good to see that the threads have been read at least. Is that Soon for regular folks for the usual Niantic “Soon™️“?
Still able to submit nominations through Ingress. Why would Ingress still be available when its part of the same system?