Social features and other improvements
EchoesEcho
Posts: 25 ✭✭
Please add some social features for this game as interaction with other players is almost nonexistent except for cooperation during wizard challenges. Even if you plant a seed or contribute energy to help it grow, no one can even tell who planted it or who contributed. Playing this game feels like a single player game for the most part when you have a a friends list full of friends that mostly goes unused. Suggestion for social features would be things like potion brewing or spell casting competitions, or player vs player duels, or things like the tri-wizard tournament. If you look at the content from the Harry Potter series, there is so much untapped potential for this game. You could even give us pets that we can raise (for example, like Harry's Hedwig) that we could find, earn, or buy. Although this isn't necessarily a social feature, people like to customize, collect, compare, and compete which are social activities. For player vs player duels, you could use something like a rock/paper/scissors mechanic, or if you want something more complex, you could use an offense/defense/counter system using the existing spells used for traces.
Also, more variety would be nice when returning traces of different types, as returning traces becomes monotonous very quickly. Maybe some of the rare traces or certain categories of traces could be returned using small puzzles or mini-games, or the variety of spells could be increased. Even a mechanic where an occasional slight variation is needed during spell casting after we rank up or prestige categories can make things more interesting.
Other improvements:
1) Showing spell energy on map view so you don't have to go into suitcase->vault to check current spell energy or click on a slow loading trace and run away to see in you have to refill.
2) Time to join teams on wizard challenges are too short as often people with laggy phones or phones with bad reception fail to join, making them battle individually even when tapping on same chamber and then scrolling through a long list of runes. Better matchmaking is needed or slightly longer join window. Better sorting of runes or the ability to filter runes by level or type would help.
3) Map features in some areas I hope would be re-balanced as some areas only inns or greenhouses, or just fortresses without inns. Or perhaps spell energy can be slightly re-balanced, or ability to buy or brew spell energy potions would be nice because you run out of spell energy during a return of trace or wizard battle.
Comments
1) agreed
2) I feel it currently is a good balance between giving teams the time to group up and allowing Solo-players to get through it quickly.
3) POI density is an issue but it will be improved slowly over time. Players of the other 2 Niantic games can suggest new POI and I imagine that a similar feature will be added to WU sooner or later. (disclaimer, the suggestions are voted on by players - so no use to complain about it to niantic) As for the logic that turns POI into inn/greenhouse/fortress - that seems a little off in some areas.
@Lucoire I just mentioned it because some people were having trouble trying to join a team and missing out and having to solo instead. If the slightly extended time to join poses a problem to solo players, an option to start immediately with the members/member present can also be added easily to work around that. I sometimes play Pokemon Go in some rural areas in the high desert with horrible data connection, so it would also help in those circumstances as well.
One thing should be given priority to ease the feeling of loneliness when playing this game:
LET US SEE OTHER PLAYERS ON THE MAP!
A lot of that sounds cool. I would also like to see as social features being able to see your friends' ministry ID picture and send them gifts.
Send gifts sounds good. And maybe sell potions and ingredients or exchange fragments that are left over. That would make it more interesting to have friends.
@Violentology Seeing other players on the map is just a setup for stalking (something that has happened A LOT in previous Niantic games), so they'll probably NEVER EVER going to implement that again because it's a mess from a data-security perspective.
@Lucoire That's a weak excuse to a feature that could be controlled in many ways. Firstly by only allowing the option to adults, and secondly making it a timed, opt-in feature.
This way you can activate it when looking for other players around a fortress for instance. And players could then do Direct friend requests from the map, as well as direct Challenge invites. The Show Me On Map feature could then automatically time out after 15 minutes.
Just because they made mistakes implementing things in their first game, is Not a valid excuse to never try to offer those features again.
I hear that same excuse about chat. They used a very basic IRC chat in Ingress. It simply wasn't built from the ground up for the kind of controls and filters it ended up needing. Other developers have implemented chat in games and were still able to keep their younger players safe, and allow their adult players to speak. It took thought, and layered control systems. But it was done, and done well in several games.
Niantic failing at implementation of a feature simply means they need to go about it in a different way. If it's a feature Most players want, or expect, Niantic can't just try once, have a bad experience, and decide to just never offer that feature in one of their products again.
That's Part of being a developer. Learning from mistakes, making corrections through iteration until perfection.
It's Not giving up because your first, rushed attempt failed.
And their users shouldn't be so quick to give them that "They Tried Once" excuse over and over. It's just a little too pathetic for a world class developer. It's actually too pathetic for an Indy dev team of 5 guys. For Niantic, with all the money PokéMon brought in, it's complete ****.