Wayfarer and the Return of Live Events
So Niantic posted an update about the return of live events to their games. Though one of their products not mentioned in the post is Niantic Wayfarer.
Since Wayfarer is mostly done on a screen with your location mostly not mattering, why would they live in-person events? But I think that's missing a prime opportunity.
Before the pandemic, whenever there was an Live Ingress Event (the ones bigger than IFS) that brought people to a city, there would always be an uptick of submissions in that city by Agents and you'd end up reviewing quite a bit of new local submissions in OPR. Pokemon GO never really had that happen since the release of global submitting/reviewing released right before the pandemic and the postponement of Live Events.
But now that live events are coming back, there's going to be a lot more submissions in the event areas (and a lot of possible duplicates as many people may submit the same objects or submit wayspots not visible in their game) and I think this would be a great opportunity for Wayfarer to have some events based around them. At very large events like Go Fests or Safari Zones, there could be a corresponding wayfarer where getting a certain number of new Wayspots or even just evaluating and clearing the queue of the area would reward players with an event-themed bonus. Or have a Wayfarer booth/tent at the events with pamphlets with whatever educational material Wayfarer pumps out in the next upcoming months or wayfarer-based rewards for checking in with the booth (and encourage people the check out the site).
While I suspect that the Niantic Wayfarer team doesn't have anything planned for participating in Live Events, I hope that they're considering possible ways to get wayfarer involved with it.
Comments
Maybe they will actually livestream them reviewing Pokestops.
Pre Wayfarer, there were some ingress events that had "Live OPR". I never witnessed it, but it sounded like you could get your submissions reviewed on site by a Niantic employee.
I recall a Live OPR somewhere. It was heavily documented and advertised on Google+. Yeah, the platform that's completely gone and they also talked about certain things and what annoyed Niantic staff most (i.e. people submitting body parts, their dog, and other things)/
In my June score submission for IFS, I entered in a plea for the return of live events. At least for the return of a restocking portal option, so we could gather as a group and give out prizes and have a drink and food with our fellow agents. I've used OPR Agreements stat as my bonus a few times, but as event host I was ineligible to win....and most others ended up tied with zero.
I forgot about OPR Live
Looks like it's called Wayfarer Live now
And someone describes it here
There's even an Ingress Medal for it
I think it would be great to see it return, though it would possibly a rude shock to some.
I didn’t realise OPR/Wayfarer Live was still a thing now.
I suppose it could work again but would be a bit weird.