Niantic is the company who’s tech enables Pokemon Go, and the forthcoming Harry Potter augmented reality game Wizards United. Their own game, their most successful bit of intellectual property, is Ingress.
The Ingress Anime is finally due out on Netflix, but the game itself feels like it faces a cliff. Scanner Redacted will end in September.
Niantic has to change its server technology as the original platform uses components that will soon be out of date and their solution to this is Ingress Prime. Ingress Prime is not just a server change but a re-imagined mobile app. It looks different from the original Ingress, and it takes some getting used to, and not everyone likes it.
To cushion the change, Niantic has kept a version of the old game available for current players. This app is called Scanner Redacted, and it lets Ingress agents continue with the old interface. The intent was good, to soften the impact of Prime’s shift, but it’s allowed players to directly compare the two apps, and for many, right now, Prime is the inferior experience.
Niantic has always been clear; when Prime reaches feature parity with Scanner Redacted, then the old app would close. That’s to say; when it is possible to do everything in Prime (such as Portal submissions) that agents can do in the last version of the old Ingress, then Prime would become compulsory.
Andrew Krug, Ingress’ community manager, announced that Scanner Redacted would close at the end of September while at the after party for the Tokyo anomaly. The news has been shared on Telegram and Discord by the hyperconnected and well-organised Ingress player factions, but an official announcement is, at the time of writing, yet to appear on Niantic’s social media.
Niantic now has to woo a stubborn player base to change to Prime or risk losing them forever. In some ways, the Ingress player base is made up of gamers who do well with routines and patterns, and of players who like to restore their environment to how it should be in their eyes. It’s not a surprise that some of these players are change adverse. A whole half of the game, the Resistance faction, is about opposing change.
It seems likely that some old players will quit the game with the removal of Scanner Redacted.
However, the Ingress Anime will introduce the concept to a whole new generation, and a new wave of agents may pick up the scanner.
Niantic promises more goodies once Prime becomes the new and only way to play. There’s a new anti-cheat system coming, which Ingress desperately needs, and a whole new series of Anomaly battles. Anomalies are city wars, which players travel from all over the world to take part in and help determine the ever-evolving story of the transmedia Ingress project.
Previously, in an AMA on Google+, Krug shared some ideas Niantic were considering for Prime;
There are a number of ideas we’ve chatted about in brainstorming sessions that include timed group challenges, daily/monthly/special quests, raids, crafting, random cooperative challenges requiring both factions, adventures via an instanced experience, adventures via an AR/VR experience, etc. While some ideas are being explored more than others, not much will be implemented until Ingress is on the Niantic Real World Platform aka the new servers. “
What do you think? Sound off in the comment section below.
I’m 74 started playing Ingress 4 years ago. I love it but I don’t like Prime. At my age it’s hard to relate to Prime colors very hard to read. I never liked video games and Prime is to much like that for me. Ingress has given me and my husband a way to travel and look for portals we never knew about. Can’t see either of us learning Prime. I really don’t want to but when Ingress goes away so will I.
That’s a shame and I don’t think you’ll be the only player who does the same thing. Sadly, Niantic didn’t own all the technology used on old Ingress and it’s been shut down. They had to change (albeit they didn’t need to change Prime and its shades of blue).
I started playing the game almost when it came out. Despite giving prime a try I simply don’t like the new graphics. I did eventually get used to the other changes but only kept playing the game because of Redacted. I loved and supported all the changes up until the new graphics but will not be now that Redacted is gone.
Bring back redacted or change prime to megatron!!!!!!
Prime refusing to run on rooted phones is lazy engineering and a deal-breaker to many.
99% sure that is an anti-cheating mechanism, not laziness.
Redacted goes I go. I am not alone in my area in this. Already have ;ost about half our players just because it will be mandatory.
Power consumption and data usage is FAR to high.
Soon to be a ghost town with a few car only agents holding on for a few months out of stubbornness.
I’m hearing stories like this a lot and it’s a shame. I’m not saying Niantic haven’t made mistakes but it’s worth keeping in mind that they’ve also been forced to do this. The technology that old Ingress runs on is being taken away and not by them. Ingress Prime uses Unity, which is tried and tested and PokeGo uses.
Of course, we’re comparing Redacted at its best (its final evolution) to Prime at its worst (that launch version! irk) but none of that matters. If it’s no longer fun then people like you will simply stop playing.
Nia should have put their efforts into re-engineering “redacted”(the original game) rather than the redesign that many players do not like, regardless of the change of servers (which is, frankly, a crap excuse). I hate Prime with a passion (it’s just not usable (visually)) and will be in the band of previously loyal agents who will abandon the game once redacted goes (I now have all the badgers I’ll every get so I’ve nothing left to play for in the new iteration). Smoke me a kipper, I’ll [not] be back for breakfast.
Fixed by proving a ‘redacted’ skin for Prime, right? In fact, a new commercial area for Niantic. Give us ‘redacted’ a free skin and sells us others optionally.
It would be unfair to compare Prime Day 1 or Day 200 to mature Redacted software if Prime was a totally new and different game, where the developers were at the bottom of the learning curve inventing the AR concept all over again, but it is not. Niantic should have been able to take all of the institutional knowledge that was acquired over years of building Ingress 1.0 and leverage that to make Prime comparable with Redacted from the very beginning. So it is a fair comparison, especially since they were offering Prime as a full replacement for Redacted. In… Read more »
It is stupid explaining that technology is gone. So why Noantic don’t want to use Unity to build UI like in redacted? I think that they don’t want people that give them all this data for Pokémon or WizardUnite anymore. It’s to expensive.
Ingress is a game based on building fields for your faction, and taking down fields of the opposite faction. That’s what I love about the game, and also I love exploring new areas and POIs that I didn’t know about before. I love the bright colours of what is now called ‘Scanner Redacted’. They call out to you to get active and play. That is Ingress to me. I’m a level 14 (almost 15) casual player (I came to the game when I read that the makers of Pokemon Go also had another game). When Prime was launched, I was… Read more »
Do you know they’ve introduced a contrast slider in the settings so you can make the game lighter if you want?
Beyond the Prime scanner itself, Ingress also appears to be moving away from a battle between factions towards cross-faction cooperation, and that is also driving away old players, or at least lessening their engagement. Teaming with the other faction in a global contest against outside forces like Nemesis that don’t actually exist in the game, i.e., Nemesis doesn’t own portals or fields I can smash, doesn’t have the same appeal or sense of urgency as the local battle between factions. It is a dramatic departure from what Ingress used to be, which was always RES vs. ENL. There are many… Read more »
Have old players ever paid attention to plot devices like Nemesis?
No. I was in Chicago for Abaddon Prime and had zero idea what Nemesis was or what it was about… and I still don’t.
¯(ツ)/¯
Spot on! I’m one of the last hypercompetetive players in my region… we’re a dying breed😅
They have some big bugs to fix before 9/30. I get “Unable to deploy”, “Server communication error” and my favorite, a blank error message, when I try to play Prime. I just switch to Redacted and play with that client instead. This happens if the game is placed into the background for any length of time, i.e. you lock your phone or bring up Google Maps or Spotify or whatever, while you are driving to work or home or to the store. Once you bring it back into the foreground, the app is completely useless for several minutes, even if… Read more »
Ive played ingress since the start of year 2 and had a lot of fun with it. I tried prime in the area im going to be moving to and the link preview was missing and i couldnt even make a simple layered field in a park. On top of that the battery drain! We already have to play with ankers, and battery packs, what do we need now a portable nuclear reactor? Let me tell you, there is not one person that plays or played ingress for the graphics. Whats important is a fast reactive and responsive interface, making… Read more »
I liked ingress for many years, played it for fun and meet a lot of people, enjoined searching never visited Portals and explore the country. I have seen a lot of Pokemon Players at some Portals (if they wipe always to the top of the Phones they play Pokemon) and i loved the Community. When Prime was coming out and Long Time Portal Medal was gone i was shocked, most of the fun was gone. Anti Cheat Engine is important for the Game because i have seen a lot of Players using Bugs and Cheats, but why the hell is… Read more »
I foresee a future where you can get skins for Prime. I think the market research is doing itself for Niantic and that once Prime is stable/parity with Redacted (and hopefully a bit faster) they can work on this sort of thing.
Started long time ago, 7 or so years, and it was fun. Prime is a fail big time on both the interaction side and the visual representation so for me that is the end of this journey of 7 years.
I do wish they’d wrap the Redacted interface around the Prime API. Prime is slower than redacted, freezes frequently, and certain parts of the game is unplayable, IE glyphing and bursting. Have they even tried to select 1 resonator for recharging? The inventory management, fails a UI usability test, I cannot see or select from all inventory categories at once (can with Redacted), and with all the flashy-ghost like inventory animation I can’t tell the difference between the colour of my Key Capsules. I hope the large base of agents leaving after redacted shutdown makes Niantic take notice and rethink… Read more »