Social Profile Rewards Feedback

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

In the Sept. 2021 AMA, we had this question answered:

10. Is there any information you can provide about incentivizing players to join or be more engaged with Niantic Wayfarer outside of medal tiers and country-specific events? Stuff like in this thread or more frivolous things like cosmetic rewards for wayfarer/niantic social profiles that you can show off?


a. This one is exciting! We’ve already been thinking of different ways of making the community more engaging. Some of the ideas we’ve thought about are having events focused more on the spirit of exploration, explorer highlights, etc. All with the intention of making the community more fun. This also goes for our events, Wayfarer Challenges, etc. Shout out to those of you who have already made your suggestions. When it comes to social profile rewards, what kind of rewards would excite you?

I figured having a feedback thread about social profile rewards and community engagement suggestions. A thread where instead of focusing on the usual suggestions (like events rewards, upgrades, tangible in game rewards, etc) we could focus on feedback about the social aspect of wayfarer.

So here's some of my thoughts:

  • Team Competitive Reviewing

A favorite of mine to mention is to bring back the competitive aspect like the ENL vs RES agreement acount back in OPR. You could view different leader boards based on different teams from the various games connected to your Niantic Social account. This could have the benefit of when the competition cycle is over, results could be posted to big social media spaces to show winners and encourage the losing sides to review more for the next cycle.

Another spin is to have competitions like Splatoon's Splatfests, where you choose a team based on some opinion (like Ketchup vs Mayo). Would encourage people to review to get their favorite choice to win, results posted to social media, get people engaged, etc etc.

  • Local Leaderboard

Another idea from Ingress, a local leaderboard of people in your area who reviewed the most this cycle. Would encourage people in their local area to review more to try and get on the leaderboard, and show it off in local Niantic gaming groups when they do. This in turn could get other people in on reviewing to try and get on the leaderboard to show off to others. Or encourage people in their area to keep reviewing more to beat their reviewing rivals.

  • Wayfarer Profile Medals/Badges

People love to show off their medals from their Ingress and PoGO profiles all the time. Why not give the same to Wayfarer. You can have tiered badges for participating in certain types of recurring events, special medals for participation in one-time events, medals for number of bonus location resets, number of different states/countries you've reviewed in, etc.

  • Ways to show off customizable Wayfarer Profile stuff

While screenshotting and sharing your rating, badges, etc is fun, what's really fun is being able to show off these things to people who didn't ask. Similar to avatar costume options and buddy pokemon in PoGO, or titles and badges in HPWU, being able to have a profile someone can click on and see to view all these goodies would encourage people to collect them and be active in Wayfarer spaces to show them off. Say for example, if there was a local leaderboard you placed on: If you were given the option to show off some cool unlockables like an avatar, medal, symbols representing the games you play/teams you're on, etc for other to see, it would encourage people to show off their team pride, or their own pride by showing the cool new unlockables you have to your local community. I know on reddit, it's very popular to include a flair of your in-game team next to your username.

  • Integrating Wayfarer unlockables into existing Niantic properties or on the Forum

This is probably the hardest for the wayfarer team to do, but outside of the current Wayfarer/Recon medals in the game, having some kind of other cosmetic reward in Niantic games to show off wayfarer stuff would be awesome. Like wayfarer-related clothing in Pokemon GO that could be free to advertise wayfarer, or special clothing that can only be unlocked/purchased when you reach a certain tier in the wayfarer badge. Similarly for Ingress, a scanner avatar that is unlocked when you reach a certain recon badge tier.

Having unlockables on the forum tied to your wayfarer profile would also be encouraging, though IDK if Vanilla forums would allow something like that.


That's ideas I have for now. Anyone else have any input about possible ideas for wayfarer social profile rewards?

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