Would you be for or against a system across Niantic games where the gameboard changed each season?

PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,119 Ambassador

Would you be for or against a system across Niantic games where the gameboard changed each season?

We have a thread here;

about how to incentivize Wayfarer and a lot of it seems to come down to that people want the things they submit to appear in the games they play.

We know that with the re-introduction of the 20m rule on Ingress, and the cell rules on Pokémon GO mean that sometimes a nomination only goes into the Lightship database and doesn’t appear in any current games.

Catan: World Explorers was a really fun game and it’s a shame that most of the world didn’t get to give it a go. Catan would close down for a few minutes and not be accessible at the end of each “season”.

When the new one started, the gameboard would be “reset” and you would have new POI pulled from the database appearing. You may get some of the same, and if you only had a few in your local area, you wouldn’t get much variance. However for those in denser areas, you’d get a new map of POI every month essentially.

Ingress has their Anomaly seasons - https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/18786/kythera-phase-1/p1 and Pokémon GO has their themed seasons - https://pokemongolive.com/seasons/alola/?utm_source=butterbar&utm_medium=learn_more&utm_campaign=seasonofalola&hl=en

If these two games (as the ones that all Wayfarers come from) did a similar thing and changed their gameboard each season (probably once a quarter), would that be an incentive to you, as a Wayfarer? To know that your nominations could appear in the game(s) you play next season, even if you don’t currently see them? Or would you not want to see this happen as it would disrupt some fields or kick you out of that gym you’ve been in for 100+ days?

Just a simple for or against, or on the fence/undecided. Anonymous so only comment if you want to, otherwise, vote and move on!

Would you be for or against a system across Niantic games where the gameboard changed each season? 60 votes

For
31% 19 votes
Against
61% 37 votes
Undecided
6% 4 votes
«1

Comments

  • PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,119 Ambassador

    For me, this would incentivize me to submit items that were only Lightship (for now) and it would be great to know I could add photos and make edits to other items as they appear in game.

    It would also help to make the “gym walkaround” during Raid Days and such less stale from a game perspective, as it would be different POI as gyms.

  • YouLostAStar-INGYouLostAStar-ING Posts: 280 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I voted Yes. I believe it would help show people who aren’t involved in Reviewing what other locations are already in lightship.

    it would provide more reason to submit candidates that can’t go live in any game due to proximity reasons

  • Duiomar-PGODuiomar-PGO Posts: 458 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Sure why not. It would be nice to have new gyms to rank up in locally. I assume that it would only switch up stops blocking other stops from appearing so it shouldn't hurt.

  • Gazzas89-PGOGazzas89-PGO Posts: 2,619 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm sayi g for, with a caveat, only if a lightship only waypoint is being blocked by another one for ingress, and only if there's another waypoint that can be a stop (but not gym) in a cell, so that the amount won't change

  • Stephyypooke-INGStephyypooke-ING Posts: 506 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think the idea is that the density rules in each game would stay the same so if there are no extra non-pogo poi, the only possible changes would be which pois are gyms that season. Then if there were extra poi, they could possibly come live in pogo for a season.

  • PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,119 Ambassador

    I would disagree. Waypoints are meant to reflect the real world, and change & move along with it. Not always stay the same, otherwise we wouldn’t have any new or removed Wayspots at all.

    There’s a separate thread for rural/remote areas but I can see how there’s some overlap with this.

    If your area didn’t have anything else in a cell to switch with, it just wouldn’t switch. But then you could nominate things within 20m of other existing Wayspots to get something different in your game(s) the following season.

  • Stephyypooke-INGStephyypooke-ING Posts: 506 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I am undecided. If a portal in ingress disappeared for a season, would it come back still fully deployed on or neutral? If some of the main anchors came back neutral, a lot of ingress players would not like that. I do think a challenge with getting new agents to play ingress are permanent bafs and this suggestion would help that. But now that we’re able to make short links under fields, it might not be as big of a problem anymore.

  • AisforAndis-INGAisforAndis-ING Posts: 1,072 Ambassador

    I am very strongly in favor of this idea. It has great benefits for making all POI usable and would disincentivize several forms of abuse.

  • Nadiwereb-PGONadiwereb-PGO Posts: 1,119 ✭✭✭✭✭

    My primary goal in PoGo right now is to get all gyms to gold in my area. If they got randomly reassigned every 3 months, it would **** one of the main goals of the game for me. So I would definitely be against it if Gyms changed randomly every 3 months.

    I wouldn't mind the stops being changed regularly, though. That would be a nice little quirk.

  • PkmnTrainerJ-INGPkmnTrainerJ-ING Posts: 5,119 Ambassador

    I guess the counter to that would be that you could get more Gold Gyms as you’d eventually be able to earn it on every Wayspot in the area (in theory) when the seasons changed and they switched around.

  • Scallyj-INGScallyj-ING Posts: 16 ✭✭✭

    I feel generally including points of interest in Lightship, to other games would solve many issues. I realize the cells in Go prevents crowding; however for that platform, most Trainers would be ecstatic over more stops regardless of the appearance. As for Ingress, the 20 meter rule is irrelevant, portals are narrow, and I personally would be inclined to add more, without the rule. I theorize, that location edits would significantly decline without the cell system, and would make scanning a lot easier for me, I am finding that locations are not always accurate, and I have to press scan and walk sometimes 30 feet, to the correct location to scan and load into Lightship, just my humble opinion

  • 24601LM-ING24601LM-ING Posts: 54 ✭✭✭

    I voted "no" because I think that rotating the gyms every month or couple of months is a horrible idea. While I would personally love to have "new gold gym badge" fodder, there are some players who get incredibly possessive of particular gyms and that can lead to unnecessary tension. Not to mention that every time we get a new gym, we immediately get invaded by spoofers wanting to add it to their collection. Though that might be less of an issue if every gym everywhere switched.

    I am not, on the other hand, opposed to the idea of rotating pokestops as long as the total number of stops is not changed. In all honesty, though, rural areas would benefit much more from just shrinking the cell size from S17 to S18 and letting more pokestops show up all the time.

    I don't think that portal rotation makes much of any sense in Ingress - though Ingress has almost everything already anyway (and I would not want to see the distance limits increased just to create the opportunity for rotation because I am a microfielder at heart).

  • cyndiepooh-INGcyndiepooh-ING Posts: 1,317 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2022

    This would be a database nightmare for our local Pokemon Discord group. We do not use scanning devices to locate research or raids, as we see those as against the terms of service. Instead, we maintain a database of known gyms and stops with the gps coordinates, so people can find their way to meet up at raids or pick up some good research someone found. It's hard enough keeping it current as it is.

    This would also be weird for Ingress Missions, if the Portals weren't Portals anymore. If they just drop from the mission, fine, you can do it with the remaining ones and have less to do. But if all the Portals in the mission change, how could it be done at all? (Others have mentioned the issues with anchors and drones.)

  • holdthebeer-INGholdthebeer-ING Posts: 199 ✭✭✭✭

    It worked* in Catan (kinda worked, it was not released) because clean board every season was part of the game. Other games do not have real seasons, do not cleanup everything, and I don't think it would be good/welcomed change. Lost drones, lost farmed keys and anchors was already mentioned. Now imagine you walk a mission banner, and some portals disappeared, and the mission cannot be finished?

  • cyndiepooh-INGcyndiepooh-ING Posts: 1,317 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Oh and those power-ups for Pokemon Go. I don't do them but someone with a level 3 stop or gym is going to be pretty upset if it goes away!

  • HankWolfman-PGOHankWolfman-PGO Posts: 4,845 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I can understand the appeal of rotating in Lightship only wayspots, and it's not necessarily a bad idea. I'm still generally against it though.

    My reasoning is that since I reached level 40 (and then level 50) in Pokémon Go, one of my main objectives has been to try to get every single gym badge in both my town and my neighbouring town to gold level. This is quite a challenge for someone who does not drive or even own a bicycle. It's also a challenge when gyms constantly get taken over by spoofers (which only makes me more intent on getting it done so I don't have to deal with them any more). I personally wouldn't like the gyms to get rotated out whilst I'm still working on them, as it would irritate me having several silver badges I can't do anything with, and I know I'm not the only one in my local community who is going for this goal either.

  • holdthebeer-INGholdthebeer-ING Posts: 199 ✭✭✭✭

    Also pokemon trainers are already confused when accepted wayspots do not appear on the map. It will be even more confusing when wayspots start to disappear. Like, hundred posts asking what happened to my pokestop give it back now!

    So the rotation might work for catan or pikmen, but I can't see Niantic doing it in other games, honestly.

  • Ochemist-INGOchemist-ING Posts: 355 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I’d be possibly interested in this for PoGo (I don’t care about gold gyms, personally).

    I don’t think it would be appropriate for Ingress for many reasons already mentioned:

    * It would wreak havoc on missions.

    * What would happen to keys collected for portals that are cycled out? It would be a shame to lose strategic or souvenir keys that would be hard or impossible to get back when the corresponding portals cycled back in.

    * Changing the game board while people were in the middle of fielding, say, would be disruptive and unfair.

    I’d rather see a 10 m rule in Ingress instead.

    In either game, the net result would be fewer active Wayspots starting at the second cycle, as legacy portals/pokethings that violate proximity rules would not return.

  • Shilfiell-INGShilfiell-ING Posts: 1,559 Ambassador

    I didn't even THINK about Missions. That's a total deal-breaker for me, as I'm ages away from getting that Second Sunday badge Onyx. People put a ton of work into creating those missions and into Bannergress functionality.

    I guess the counter to that would be that you could get more Gold Gyms as you’d eventually be able to earn it on every Wayspot in the area (in theory) when the seasons changed and they switched around.

    Not on a heavily outnumbered minority team, I wouldn't. Trust me on this.

  • RU001-INGRU001-ING Posts: 61 ✭✭

    This would cause extreme out roar from trainers, Gyms would become stops & fields broken. Recipe for disaster this is lol

  • Elijustrying-INGElijustrying-ING Posts: 5,482 Ambassador

    it is a marginally appropriate discussion as the standard response is that it is up to each games developers decide how to use the database…… but let’s go with it.

    It would not increase the number of POI I would submit.

    Where I am, there are actually a small percentage of approved points in the same S2 Level 17 cell or less than 20m (finding those is not necessarily easy). These tend to be in the very centre of town as that is where there are a lot of interesting things. So a small geographic area. So I don’t see the point of a big change that in reality would only play out in a small area.

    if somehow it was more wide reaching it would cause all sorts bad feeling. For example a Gold gym is not just about collecting but you get slightly more rewards. I know plenty of places where some of the possible gym sites would end up with less in person raids or inaccessible to a range of players.

    would you bother to take down a field (investment of resources) before one of theses changes which could just obliterate, and spoofers would be ready to easily take over again.

    The high density areas of POI are also typically areas of slow review times so if there was any uptick it could take years.

  • patsufredo-PGOpatsufredo-PGO Posts: 4,213 ✭✭✭✭✭

    However gold gym badges exist. If this ever announced, almost every GO players would against and again throwing same arguments over and over in Twitter:

    "@NianticLabs @JohnHanke doesn't care about dis@bled players!1!1"

  • MargariteDVille-INGMargariteDVille-ING Posts: 2,846 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Not changing wayspots by seasons.

    Not removing existing Portals, PokeStops, or Gyms.

    BUT, how about adding wayspots for events? For example, extra stops and portals could be added from Lightship to host cities for Community Day and Mission Day. Or globally for a global event, over a weekend or something.

    (Caveat: These sometimes-shown portals would need to be marked and filter-able on the Mission Creator tool. Maybe require missions to have all-temporary, or no-temporary, portals. Also, the Intel mission filter should only show all-temporary missions on days when they're active.)

  • X0bai-PGOX0bai-PGO Posts: 1,667 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Actually, it could give you new gyms to get gold badges for, so it would improve the part of the game you’re working on right now.

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