4 ms·

As a long term Ingress player i am not surprised by this _at all_. Niantics management has proven itself again and again and again as being completely incompete

As a long term Ingress player i am not surprised by this _at all_. Niantics management has proven itself again and again and again as being completely incompetent at everything they do. (They even to manage to ban their own official event photographer after he had GPS problems while traveling to Paris). I used to be angry at them for ruining Ingress (one of the best games ever made) but nowadays I am just amazed at the level of sheer incompetence. They managed to learn _nothing_ from 4 years of Ingress and I think now it's time that the whole upper management is fired so that the company can start fresh.

lini 9y ago
The scale of this event is bigger than any Ingress anomaly until now. Also, all players seem to be concentrated into a smaller area than Ingress events, which further complicates things. I think the main issue they could not control today is that Verizon ran out of bandwidth and people simply couldn't connect. Another difference with Ingress events - the Go Fest is a closed venue with security and ticket validation at the gate. In Ingress, you usually validate your ticket beforehand and don't have to worry about queues in the hours before the actual event stats.
- grogenaut 9y ago
  Did they buy extra coverage for the event? I've been to football games and mardi gras and they don't have issues with coverage and that's a lot more than 20k people even if they're not all playing it should be similar unless PMG is really really bad with bandwidth.
  - NamTaf 9y ago
    They apparently had exactly 0 mobile cells. Anyone who's been asked has said they didn't notice any.
    - grogenaut 9y ago
      That seems like the most obvious thing you would do for an event like this. Are they really that bad?
  - puddintane 9y ago
    Bandwidth amount wise - really not that much. Looking at my history (pretty active player) I've used about 184 MB since June 24th (I am not as active on weekends so for the sake of this example I actually played 18 days out of the month averaged about the same per day). On average that means about 10.2 MB per day of playing (looking at the graph, however, I would say I used about 20 MB the day of the event as I was out for about twice as much time that day). I don't think that is considered a lot
CydeWeys 9y ago
I think that's overstating it a bit. I went to an Ingress anomaly in Brooklyn last summer and everything worked fine. It wasn't the smoothest run event ever, and they could have used more staff, but it was an enjoyable time. There's something different about what they were trying to do with Pokemon Go that made it suck. They don't have experience with these yet. And if someone made long distance travel plans, just getting your entry ticket refunded doesn't begin to make up for your loss.
- syntheticnature 9y ago
  As an Ingresser myself, I'd say there were two big sources of issues vs. your typical Ingress anomaly, and one that would happen in Ingress if it was a bit closer in popularity. First off, they had everything in one place. For those who haven't played Ingress to that point, anomalies in Ingress usually take place with a primary and two secondary locations in, roughly, Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and Europe. This means that people aren't usually traveling from far away (which probably would increase overall participation) but also that each site's numbers are lower. I figure overall anomaly attendance on a given anomaly weekend might well rival that of this event -- but they're spread out in geography and time. The second aspect is that Ingress has much more encouragement in-game of local organization. I understand quite well why Pokemon Go lacks in-game chat, but it saps local organization. Locals play an important, perhaps critical, role in Ingress event organization, and provide Niantic with free boots on the ground to figure things out. I know there is some local organization going on in Pokemon Go, but it's forced to be based on random encounters, and folks are still unsure whether to organize on team lines or just geographically. (With the current setup, I'd say geographically -- if there's anything to be learned from Ingress, it's to tamp down factionalism.) The last thing, the one that I think would hurt Ingress equally? It seems there wasn't a limit on ticket sales. In Ingress some special extra-value packs that get you extra tchotchkes both virtual and physical exist, but the base 'free' ticket is unlimited. Similarly, here. They probably wanted to avoid any chance of scalping or the like, but imagine if they limited it to, say, a quarter the attendance?
FreakyT 9y ago
I realize this statement probably won't go over well here, but Niantic's behavior strikes me as the kind of thing that happens when a company is entirely run by software engineers who refuse to accept relevant advice from anyone who isn't a software engineer. There are people who understand event planning, there are people who understand how to build F2P mobile games, and I get the impression that exactly zero of these people were consulted, or, if they were, their advice was immediately ignored.
- quasse 9y ago
  If that were the case you would hope they would at least be good at software engineering, but all evidence points to that being completely false.
- awalton 9y ago
  Anyone who's played Pokemon Go or Ingress can refute this; their UI design is abysmal at the very best, the game suffers a million bugs and patches introduce at least as many as they fix, etc. A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production... No, I'd argue Niantic may originally have been engineering driven, but once Ruthless cut them from Alphabet, they went straight for the greed play, developed with an IP that would sell billions with next to no effort, and are now tightening the screws on the player-base with Pay-to-Win gym tickets and events requiring as many Lures and Incenses as you can buy to continue extracting income.
  - FreakyT 9y ago
    > A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production UI developers? Testing? You have apparently worked with very different software engineers than I have! Most I've worked with have followed the "if users don't understand the UI it's their fault" UI design philosophy, and all testing is handled in production because no one wants to put emphasis on testing when they could be working on the next feature.
davidmurdoch 9y ago
I'm making a massive location-based game myself right now (currently have 140 million POIs in the USA alone) and have been studying how Niantic is making decisions for about 9 months now. It's pretty crazy how poorly they treat every misstep they make, though I think they did a good job quickly giving refunds, rewards, etc after this one, as well as a decent sounding apology. Of course, they should have been better prepared for the event, but they did seem to do better at the cleanup this time. So... baby steps?

lini 9y ago

The scale of this event is bigger than any Ingress anomaly until now. Also, all players seem to be concentrated into a smaller area than Ingress events, which further complicates things. I think the main issue they could not control today is that Verizon ran out of bandwidth and people simply couldn't connect. Another difference with Ingress events - the Go Fest is a closed venue with security and ticket validation at the gate. In Ingress, you usually validate your ticket beforehand and don't have to worry about queues in the hours before the actual event stats.

grogenaut 9y ago
Did they buy extra coverage for the event? I've been to football games and mardi gras and they don't have issues with coverage and that's a lot more than 20k people even if they're not all playing it should be similar unless PMG is really really bad with bandwidth.
- NamTaf 9y ago
  They apparently had exactly 0 mobile cells. Anyone who's been asked has said they didn't notice any.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    That seems like the most obvious thing you would do for an event like this. Are they really that bad?
- puddintane 9y ago
  Bandwidth amount wise - really not that much. Looking at my history (pretty active player) I've used about 184 MB since June 24th (I am not as active on weekends so for the sake of this example I actually played 18 days out of the month averaged about the same per day). On average that means about 10.2 MB per day of playing (looking at the graph, however, I would say I used about 20 MB the day of the event as I was out for about twice as much time that day). I don't think that is considered a lot

CydeWeys 9y ago

I think that's overstating it a bit. I went to an Ingress anomaly in Brooklyn last summer and everything worked fine. It wasn't the smoothest run event ever, and they could have used more staff, but it was an enjoyable time. There's something different about what they were trying to do with Pokemon Go that made it suck. They don't have experience with these yet. And if someone made long distance travel plans, just getting your entry ticket refunded doesn't begin to make up for your loss.

syntheticnature 9y ago
As an Ingresser myself, I'd say there were two big sources of issues vs. your typical Ingress anomaly, and one that would happen in Ingress if it was a bit closer in popularity. First off, they had everything in one place. For those who haven't played Ingress to that point, anomalies in Ingress usually take place with a primary and two secondary locations in, roughly, Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and Europe. This means that people aren't usually traveling from far away (which probably would increase overall participation) but also that each site's numbers are lower. I figure overall anomaly attendance on a given anomaly weekend might well rival that of this event -- but they're spread out in geography and time. The second aspect is that Ingress has much more encouragement in-game of local organization. I understand quite well why Pokemon Go lacks in-game chat, but it saps local organization. Locals play an important, perhaps critical, role in Ingress event organization, and provide Niantic with free boots on the ground to figure things out. I know there is some local organization going on in Pokemon Go, but it's forced to be based on random encounters, and folks are still unsure whether to organize on team lines or just geographically. (With the current setup, I'd say geographically -- if there's anything to be learned from Ingress, it's to tamp down factionalism.) The last thing, the one that I think would hurt Ingress equally? It seems there wasn't a limit on ticket sales. In Ingress some special extra-value packs that get you extra tchotchkes both virtual and physical exist, but the base 'free' ticket is unlimited. Similarly, here. They probably wanted to avoid any chance of scalping or the like, but imagine if they limited it to, say, a quarter the attendance?

FreakyT 9y ago

I realize this statement probably won't go over well here, but Niantic's behavior strikes me as the kind of thing that happens when a company is entirely run by software engineers who refuse to accept relevant advice from anyone who isn't a software engineer. There are people who understand event planning, there are people who understand how to build F2P mobile games, and I get the impression that exactly zero of these people were consulted, or, if they were, their advice was immediately ignored.

quasse 9y ago
If that were the case you would hope they would at least be good at software engineering, but all evidence points to that being completely false.
awalton 9y ago
Anyone who's played Pokemon Go or Ingress can refute this; their UI design is abysmal at the very best, the game suffers a million bugs and patches introduce at least as many as they fix, etc. A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production... No, I'd argue Niantic may originally have been engineering driven, but once Ruthless cut them from Alphabet, they went straight for the greed play, developed with an IP that would sell billions with next to no effort, and are now tightening the screws on the player-base with Pay-to-Win gym tickets and events requiring as many Lures and Incenses as you can buy to continue extracting income.
- FreakyT 9y ago
  > A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production UI developers? Testing? You have apparently worked with very different software engineers than I have! Most I've worked with have followed the "if users don't understand the UI it's their fault" UI design philosophy, and all testing is handled in production because no one wants to put emphasis on testing when they could be working on the next feature.

davidmurdoch 9y ago

I'm making a massive location-based game myself right now (currently have 140 million POIs in the USA alone) and have been studying how Niantic is making decisions for about 9 months now. It's pretty crazy how poorly they treat every misstep they make, though I think they did a good job quickly giving refunds, rewards, etc after this one, as well as a decent sounding apology. Of course, they should have been better prepared for the event, but they did seem to do better at the cleanup this time. So... baby steps?