You could identify playgrounds that do not have a Wayspot yet - and go nominate something else near them. A statue, pergola, plaque, something. Then if the playground ever is nominated, it might not show up in your game. Or if it does, you’ll have something else to play instead.
Also, if you play PokemonGo, you could add pictures to wayspots that are not playgrounds - so they’ll be more likely to be chosen as gyms.
EDIT to add @xLilPoundcake 's suggestion to edit descriptions to make them more interesting. Maybe the apartment block (whatever owns the playground) has an interesting story that visitors would enjoy reading. The apartment won’t qualify by itself. Or the road that it’s on. Something. How to fight the majority opinion? - #48 by xLilPoundcake
I think this would be the basis for an excellent question!
What are the issues, problems, or concerns that Niantic is attempting to address through the Wayfarer Ambassador Program? Are there specific, flagged topics that are identified as NDA-material, or is it more like Fight Club?
What would be problematic if we were all permitted to spectate/listen-in on some of the ambassador meetings? Why is there a need for a Non-Disclosure Agreement?
It’s funny to me that your argument is “wayspots should be interesting things to find” and your imagined opponents are the ambassadors. Compared to any random subset of folks involved, they’re much much more likely to agree with you on this.
The situation regarding playgrounds seems to be somewhat different than perhaps most of us are used to, but it sounds to me that if they are all built alongside large blocks of housing that they probably are great places for socialization for those who live nearby.
@DenialN1 I’m going to make several assumptions here, please forgive me if I’m incorrect on any of them. I going to assume that you are fairly new to the forum, because the ambassadors are not your enemy. In fact they are your biggest advocate.
Just because they are under NDA doesn’t mean they are a rubber stamp on anything Niantic says or does. If you follow posts here on the forum, you’ll see they take on Niantic on issue and topics they are passionate about.
I’m also going to assume that you are very picky in your voting and reviewing history. Many people here are 100% in favor of playgrounds. I personally think they fit 2 of 3 criteria and I could argue for the third.
In each country around the world there are POI’s that are more common than others. I live in the Southern USA and there are Baptist and Methodist churches EVERYWHERE. Like on every other corner. If you are a player here you know and understand that you’re going to see them in any of the Niantic games. Because they fit the criteria and players can nominate them.
Your idea of unnecessary is very different from mine. I think a full and robust map is a healthy thing for Ingress, Pokemon Go and any other game that uses the Geospacial Map now or in the future. If your argument was players were populating the map with ineligible POI’s. I could get behind your movement. But I can’t fathom someone saying “There are too many eligible POI’s on the map”
You are free to nominate anything you see, and that’s actually encouraged. It may not show in the game of your choice, but it can be nominated for inclusion.
During my time in this community and on this forum, I have been challenged to look at things a different way and see others views and opinions by you guessed it. Some of the Ambassadors! (They know who they are…)
We all have to remember, this is not a game for one of us. It’s a game for us all. Just because you don’t think a playground is interesting doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t get excited when they find a new one they haven’t encountered yet.
I happen to share your perspective. I prefer portals that teach me something or entertain me. I like exploring. I like walking for Ingress. Playgrounds are at least social and have people around them even if they do call the police on the old guy walking in circles with his phone out. And some playgrounds are kinda fun to look at.
Don’t get me started about picnic tables. Or gyms. Or those horribly expensive, obviously political pork, exercise “stations” around some parks that nobody ever uses and aren’t maintained. Baseball diamonds are horrible. Basketball courts are worse. Nothing interesting there. Nothing pretty.
I’m also not so hot on bars and taverns. Seems to me those are adult locations.
But… I like having portals. I like having clusters of portals. So if I can get four or five portals all within reach of one parking spot by submitting the church, it’s playground, it’s baseball diamond, it’s big cross, it’s garden, it’s picnic area, and it’s basketball courts, then I’ll submit them all. Separately. Boring, true. Not much to explore, granted… aside from a good place to frack & farm.
The really interesting things around here, and there are many, gates, mail boxes, sculptures, neighborhood signs, etc, are all on private property. shrug.
I’m not the OP but I think their request was completely reasonable and I totally understand it. I also think they’ve explained themselves well.
Ambassadors are privy to information that the rest of us do not have. They also have hidden goals of which the rest of us are not aware. I think it’s reasonable to ask for opinions from people who are not influenced in this way.
Yes, it’s a public forum. But if someone had asked, say, for women’s opinions… would it not have been inappropriate for men to dominate the discussion? I see this as no different.
There is, of course, no obligation to respect the request. Respecting it is simply a curtesy.
I don’t know how long you have been around Ingress (I’m assuming Ingress is the game you okay as you are referring to PoI as Portals) so I don’t know how far back you have kept with the criteria for new portals to be added.
Not to sound like an old curmudgeon
When Niantic asked for new portal nominations in the days of Old they mainly wanted
public art (Statues, Murals, etc)
Places of history (information boards on history, other educational plaulques)
Places that connected people (post offices, libraries etc)
And places of worship (nods to the otherworldly)
That was really about it.
They have slowly expanded what they want as a PoI as they came upon the need for more places to interact with their games because of the enormous popularity of Pokémon Go.
Because of that game it inspired other like games to come along and they would take Niantics idea for PoGo and solve some of the issues by just auto generating places in the virtual area randomly all over. Or take data from Google maps or other sources to populate the games. At least with Niantic they have tried to keep to their original mission that what you interact with is an actual place on the map. Get you up and moving.
I have submitted hundreds of playgrounds, sports courts, picnic shelters in neighborhood parks most of which I probably will never regularly interact with all because I want to see the playfields grow. It’s exciting when you see something that you have created in one of these games be used. For many it’s just a place to gather supplies for what ever game they play but there are those out there who actually take the time to look at the pictures and read the descriptions (if there is one) and understand a bit more about their local community. Even if it’s just a “Playground for the residents and guests of the apartment complex”
Never thought I’d see the day when I saw someone advocate for fewer playground wayspots.
I’m here because I love pogo. I’m sure most of use here love (or at least loved) one of the niantic games. Playgrounds are eligible by the rules niantic gives us. They also make the games more accessible to play and more fun. I’m 100% a player-first game-first kind of wayfarer. If it is player friendly, I’m all for it.
I’m also of the opinion that all parks should be absolutely packed with wayspots. Like, they should come with a pre-made grid of wayspots. Proximity rules should be ignored in park. (again, these are just ideas and opinions). Parks are what get me outside walking. Parks get my community to get out of their cars and actually coordinate for gigantamax raids rather than just randomly battling from inside cars. Trying to take away playgrounds is mind blowing to me.
Yes, I’ve been around that long. I started shortly after the ios app was released.
The character of the game has definitely changed since people started looking to place pogo spots. It used to be fun to explore and to walk around places with nice art and interesting things, four laps, typically.
Now what we have are playground after baseball diamond after basketball hoop. Yawn.
What I really loved were cemeteries. I learned a lot in those.
There was a point in time when San Francisco decided their real estate was too expensive and evicted all of the cemeteries. They were nearly all moved from San Francisco to South San Francisco which currently boasts more dead people than living ones. They sell t-shirts about it. Now that’s a fabulous place to walk around and ingress. It’s quiet. It’s pretty. Any other (living) people you run into are well behaved. Takes days to cover it all and that’s a LOT of portals.
I tried both pogo and harry potter. Never got very far into them. Haven’t tried the new ones yet.
Funny thing about cemeteries, people are nearly always willing to explain to you, politely, what they consider to be respectful visiting. Some are locked. Some have posted opening hours. Some have clear walkways. Others you just drive until you walk wherever. The owners/caretakers are nearly always listed publicly. There are public databases of these things. And there are reasons to walk around and take pictures.
No one has ever called the police on me for ingressing in a cemetery.
The few that are not open, “private” ones, are a totally different story. But they tend to be small, frequently unmarked, and often hidden. I have relatives in one of those.
This is more from a pogo stand point but, recently one of the parks in my city got a major update. It’s a simple city park, small but used by the community. I went out to check out the new features and it only had about 3 POIs. One was an EX gym. I built out the rest of the park, with swingsets, jungle gyms etc as POIs. Now it has two EX gyms and about 10 POIs. In my local pogo group and Ingress group, I had a lot of great feedback about having a place to go to play the game, some never been there and was excited to check out.
So while swingsets/football fields are not the most exciting POIs, a public park is always a great place to play and host meetups. Tho, I do take my time in taking photos of kinda boring things so they look as cool as they can be.
I kinda get how playgrounds are boring portals–but they are great if you’re doing a first saturday–I like using a park for hosting FS and those portals in the park for the puzzle.
Not this old complaint again. Some of the least interesting Wayspots I know about are grandfathered Ingress portals. All the baseball fields at our biggest park were in game when I began playing Pokemon Go, when only Ingress players could submit.
I despise cemetery nominations. I won’t risk intruding on someone’s grief to play a game. Our Pokemon Go raid leader won’t take the group to cemeteries.
If you only want “interesting” game locations, then find and submit them. The nominations I have seen you post about for help with here seem to fall into the categories you dissed.
I think its a really good point to submit things youre personally interested in and skip things you think are boring/not good options. If someone else feels passionate about them then they can submit them, and if the community agree then it gets accepted too, but no one had to submit anything that they dislike
Can’t. Or rather, it wouldn’t matter if I did. They’re not allowed anymore. If I want to get more portals then my only choice is to submit the things I’m dissing.
At least, my current acceptance to rejection rate is way up. So apparently I am learning how the kool-aid works around here.
Please give an example of something that is extremely interesting that used to be but isn’t allowed anymore. In my experience, this statement is false.
