Ingress AMA Archive
20 Jan 2018 (Brisbane NL 1331 Meetup)
Q1: With the move to ingress prime and with pogo being big, we've seen some engineering faults... Are we going to do any dev insights for Ingress like we did for pogo?
A1: Yes, don't know when but it is on Krug's roadmap
Q2: planning to buy any kangaroo meat to make lasagne with?
A2: No
Q3: having a good time?
A3: Yes, except the sunburn, thanks to the POCs
Q4: has niantic been thinking about removing the ap increase for glyphing to stop spoofers from levelling?
A4: I don't have a specific answer but we have had conversations about it. We can see if you've gained ap by only glyphing and that's how you've levelled up. Don't know if we'll do it but it's something we've discussed.
Q5: round 2 of vanguards any time soon?
A5: Maybe towards the end of 2018, their role is to be used as sounding boards for niantic. Led to creation of programs that you have benefited from. I want to get a more diverse set of vanguards both by level and by geographical location. Yes, probably late 2018 as we get ingress prime done and other projects
Q6: For a long time the ANZ area has felt isolated, now that you've been here would niantic be looking to have more of a presence here?
A6: My dream is to have community managers all over the place as regional community managers. We've hired a Japan community manager and hiring in Europe, but yes, it's something we want.
Q7: some concern with ingress prime that it looks like it may be more data heavy, there's concern about it as Australian areas have comms challenged areas.
A7: I don't know but it uses unity which is more efficient for those things. My instinct is that it's not going to be more taxing than what we've got now. From a connection standpoint I don't know whether images will be compressed, or you'll have an option to turn off the sparkly new features.
Q8: Any plans to make first Saturday a tiered badge?
A8: Had conversations about that, is on my wish-list along with things like GORUCK. We want to double down on fs in 2018, it's a goal of mine to make them bigger and more supported. It's ultimately not up to me but I will keep advocating for it.
Q9: a Mulligan system for missions where you can't complete the mission due to construction, etc
A9: A good solution would be the ability to reorder missions. When we come out with ingress prime, the aim will be feature parity before new features. Another ask of mine is to reorder capsules. I think there's going to be some new key organisation mechanics I'm told are coming which might be there at launch.
Q10: has there been a conversation about ways to improve training for new players
A10: Absolutely, it is going to be there at the launch of in grass prime and it's going to make it easier to understand the game because we know there's a high barrier to entry and we want to fix that
Q11: could we have the local community as a directory for people to join?
A11: Yes, I'd like to update the directory that lets local POCs list communities, with links in-app.
Q12: there was a hashed answer to a question about whether L16 players would ever be able to deploy two L8 resonators?
A12: It was something to do with the fifth year anniversary.
Q13: worst two days of the game were when I've lost my guardians, it hurts and can we do something about it?
A13: We've had lots of conversations, we don't have an outcome but we've talked about retiring it, making it cumulative, etc.
Q14: have we talked about just removing the badge?
A14: There are counter arguments to it, the vanguards have weighed in, I would like the way it is now removed but some way to reward holding a portal like the gym mechanic.
Q15: if guardian is removed, it should be retired and not deleted.
A15: If we were to remove it, do we award it to people with 140 days, etc?
Q16: anomalies, shards?
A16: I can't give you details, but when we release information about it, you will know for a very long time in advance, not just one quarter. Ideally we'd give you a year, a year and a half. There'll be something soon ™
Q17: with mission days and people planning them, when cities decide they want some and they'll take two months to plan them, sometimes it may be announced just two weeks in advance.
A17: it requires working with local governments and getting tourism board approval. Ideally we would give you a pending list. I'll write it down. We're at the mercy of being able to use those official channels and sometimes it's 90 days, sometimes it's 48 hours. There'll be a form and better feedback.
Q18: has it been discussed to scale inventory space by level.
A18: I don't think we've done enough investigation to see how it would affect the economy. Remember zip car and when you would redeem 40000 items and the game wouldn't load. Once prime is stabilised they will take a look at that.
Q19: You've stopped just short of giving an official stance on iitc, but there's a difference between that and things like ingressmosaik and riot and drunken frog, from a community standpoint some of these tools help and some are harmful when it comes to tracking location and all that. Is there any intent to reword the terms to make it clearer what is and isn't permitted? There's a lot of equivocation about iitc and other tools.
A19: We are looking at redoing the terms of service. One of the things I'm advocating for is that - we can't enumerate all things that are permitted and aren't, - licensing or endorsing things like ingreasmosaik and iitc, ways that we can make things more apparent that some things are more okay to use. We used specific language for a reason like "negatively impacts the community". We recognise the value of these tools so the question is how do we avoid liability with people using things like player tracker, but still recognise the positive effects of some tools. Time will tell and we need lawyers to sign off.
Q20: Friends telling me about the stats competition for the NL-1331, the research competition.
A20: Not part of this tour.
Q21: I take a 16 km walk in the woods and don't get credited, are you looking at getting us stats for when you don't take actions. For remote portals we don't get trekker Stat, can we fix this?
A21: I don't know but I'll write it down to see if we can fix this.
Q22: Nexband fell through
A22: I've been trying to find out about this but haven't gotten an answer about it. I can't talk about the unofficial one. We're researching a lot of things, vr, AR, wearables.
Q23: in terms of machine vision stuff at niantic, would we expect things in 1 or 5 years?
A23: I have no idea how to answer that question. We have people working on it. Machine learning as well machine vision.
Q24: have you ever dyed your hair with glitter?
A24: I don't know if I want to do that. (they pit glitter in his beard)
Q25: When will ingress prime be coming out?
A25: I would be fired if I told you that, especially as it's being recorded. It'll definitely be 2018. I did say 2017 but that's what I was told at the time. We have an internal goal, it'll be soon ™