What is Niantic doing to make better use of all POIs in the Lightship database?

AisforAndis-INGAisforAndis-ING Posts: 1,072 Ambassador
edited March 2022 in April AMA - 2022

The recent "fix" to the 20m rule in Ingress has inspired a lot of conversation about the usefulness of "lightship only" POIs as well of the general usefulness of most POIs in a general sense.

While not every POI will show up in every game, Niantic's typical response when a POI does not show up in a desired game is that "That POI may show up in future games". However, Pikmin Bloom, Niantic's most recent title, and Transformers Heavy Metal, their upcoming title, both use significantly less interactable Wayspots than their predecessors, including using even less POI than Pokemon GO. This does not bode well for the future of Niantic wayspots that are restricted due to often arbitrary density rules.

I have seen some suggestions on how to make Wayspots more useful, such as allowing all Lightship POIs to be useable for missions within Ingress, or to expand Pikmin Bloom's "postcard" system to other games. However these ideas generally have limited scope and don't truly highlight POI equally or in meaningful ways that most players will enjoy or appreciate.

The best suggestion I have seen is to adopt a system from the now-defunct Catan: World Explorers game, which every season rotated in and out which POIs are used, making every POI useful at some point. Rotating POI will allow all POI to be highlighted, and will also work to reduce abuse that specifically works to add POI to specific games. It would also allow those interested in things like scanning wayspots or improving wayspots via new photos or edits the opportunity to access those wayspots.

It doesn't seem like Niantic has any current plans to truly make better use out of their wayspots though. So what is Niantic doing to make better use of all POIs in the Lightship database?

Post edited by NianticTintino-ING on
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