This was something everyone was happy about, we placed on red got red in return and we enjoyed catching them. Gave us blue books, gave us some fun back. Now we place on red get no beam traces? Ya no one is excited about that, no more blue books.. crazy time.. first we have the adventures of losing our traces in registry, big fix that broke more things many times, then proficiency in trace charms is worded wrong. Now this, and again no one is happy. Is this just an attempt to get people to stop playing altogether? I mean this is the result and with so many starting to think that's the idea.
Hope this gets worked out so we can keep the red beam traces when placed on a red beam. These so called fixes is killing the excitement people had. Keeping the red beams would at least keep some of the excitement we had.
I live in a deadzone and play 99.9% by using the Trace Charm. I get plenty of page 1 fragments. What I hardly ever get is the rare or emergency foundables. Having the TV multiply the level of spawn I placed it on helped a lot. WB Games & Niantic left it the way it was long enough for it to become a part of the game. Why can't your team seem to successfully test features before rolling them out? Put the TC back the way it was. It made the game better!
"...you discover that it helps you find other, rarer Foundables nearby."
Based upon this, it is clear that the spawned foundables need to be at the level or higher than the spawn that is the target of the trace Charm. They do not all need to be the same, and that sounds like a legitimate bug. Spawning commons when an Emergency is targeted is a fundamental change of the power, and this would undoubtedly adjust how resources are spent by players.
I don't mind "rebalancing" changes made to the game.
I DO mind features THAT I HAVE PAID FOR BEING NERFED. Twice now. I have spent a lot of resources unlocking and buying those nodes, that I would NOT have spent if I had known these changes were coming.
Your "complimentary store pack" came nowhere near compensating for what was spent.
And now, you've done it again.
Why are you trying so hard to alienate your playerbase?
You really hate the players, don't you? And the only thing you hate more is getting our money? Because you really make sure your players hate you back and will spend their money on other things.
What's the point of making us to spend rare ressources on building a feature that is nerfed as soon as everybody spend their rare books?
First the wrong descriptions, then just **** from the charm.
Why not just a new starting screen with your butts in our faces and be done with it?
So I haven't had much chance to play yet today. If what I'm reading here ends up being true this sounds like I may end up quitting this game. The trace charm doesn't need to produce the same foundable, but it says it will produce rarer traces. Low foundables are not more rare than emergency.
Request is a bit too polite at this stage. Perhaps an organised 24 hour no-play/no-spend action sometime in the next week will help get the message across that they've royally stuffed up the trace charm and they need to rethink it. Particularly proficiency, but now also the trace spawns.
edited September 2020#4003 September, 2020, 11:04 pm.
This change to the trace charm gives reasons for disillusionment because the duplication I still admit now to lower traces this is poorly done, especially since there is a research to give superior traces.
Basically you started putting players to invest and now comes the regret because it was investing in vain.
Consider the trace charm better because it looks really bad now.
This is making fun of customers (players).
So there is no reason to want to use the charm and it was a really cool new facet.
The problem is that you have screwed up every single improvement to the game since day 1 and think you can bribe us with some cheap diagon alley gift basket. Well I for one will not be accepting your insulting bribe so you might as well take it back now. The current "corrections" that you have imposed on the trace charm would have been fine if we knew that going in, but we didn't, and you conned us into spending rsb and spell books that we normally wouldn't have spent. I suggest that you dug into your little database, figure out how many books were invested under false pretenses and reimburse them while keeping everything else exactly where it is. I'm not sure if you are aware yet, you Don't seem to catch on very well, but the SOS lessons are dead.... nobody is going to save and spend 50-100 DADA books on a worthless SOS node. You people need to start paying attention.
Share this exact comment on Twitter too. It's absolute garbage what they did and I too feel this directly affects us who live in suburban and rural areas; it was no bug and actually enabled us who live in those areas to keep up with the local urban people who have access to hundreds of traces we could never get in rural and suburban areas
I’ve commented elsewhere about the functionality problems so I’ll spare that diatribe here.
More pressingly I think is that the previous working of the trace charm (and I don’t assess that there would be anywhere near this level of discontent if the traces that spawned were at least the same severity as the original trace) also encouraged use of dark detectors and potions.
I couldn’t keep up with exstimulo potion brewing without using the golden cauldron (and even then... raising the question of outright buying pots) and that’s before I protected myself from frustration with dawdle draughts. Meanwhile, placing dark detectors to get an emergency trace that could then be charmed hugely encouraged the use of detectors which, again, can be bought with gold and can’t be kept up with through other free means. Speaking to some fellow players, all that prospective revenue stream is now gone.
Aside from the well-covered slap in the face to the player base, it seems the game staff have rather shot themselves in the foot here!
I’m level 55. Before the SOS training, I’d barely play enough to complete my daily tasks. But, not only did I start playing hours more everyday, I started spending money. I used the coins to rent The extra potion cauldron, and then queue a dozen or more potions, paying more coins to complete the potions immediately. Because of the exciting, increased game play, and increased rare traces, I was using dozens of potions a day. I was paying for the privilege, and loving it!
Now, the potency of the trace charm is no more effective than WALKING A BLOCK. Literally. It is less effective than using a single ‘Dark Detector.’ There’s no longer any reason for me to spend money to quickly brew potions for use on non-existent traces. :(
Please reconsider! The bonus traces revealed should be the same rarity or higher.
I would like to confirm what the trace charm should do.
If it A: is supposed to be used on a trace of rarity X, and then spawn multiple traces of rarity X-1 (or X if you posses the 'Knowledge Is Power' node from SOS Lessons) which are all the same, with the possibility of the traces being of rarity X (or X+1). If this is the case, it is understandable that the second spawn of the spelled trace be removed, as it is not included in the spell description. However, if this is the case, then the recent change where the revealed traces are of a random rarity make no sense, because then what is the point of the 'Knowledge is Power' node. Having multiple fragments of the same Emergency or Severe trace is understandably strong, however if one wanted to fix the diversity of such things, then having multiple different Emergency/Severe traces spawn, instead of multiple copies of the same trace would be a simple and understandable solution. The recent change spits on the effort and investment of players made to increase their SOS to use a mechanic to the fullest, and removes a mechanic that was universally loved by all the players of the game. It would make the trace charm a bastardized, weaker version of a trace detection potion, which I'm sure was not the goal.
If it is B: is supposed to be used on a trace of rarity X, and then spawn multiple traces of rarity <X (or <=X if the node 'Knowledge Is Power' from SOS is active) with the possibility of traces being <=X (or <=X+1) then why is the change being called a bug-fix? There was already a trace being duplicated, which is perfectly understandable to remove, like I mentioned above. However if the rest of the Trace Charm Mechanic was not working as intended, then how did it make it past testing?!?! It was blatantly obvious what it was doing and to call it anything else is straight us lying to your consumers.
I, and obviously many other people based upon the general outcry, are hugely disappointed with the loss of such a beloved mechanic, and would appreciate a response to address the issues I and others have raised.
I am extremely unhappy with the staff at Niantic working on WU lately. Ever since the debacle with the introduction of the prestiging images (which as a feature I think is great, it was just handled poorly) it's gone downhill fast. First, you say the proficiency of a TC works by increasing the fragments you get from the encounter and then publicly come out and say it's a typo. A typo that is the exact same in EVERY node. That's not a typo. A typo is a misspelling of a word or an accidental error, this was clearly multiple people not on the same page with how it was supposed to work or someone at Niantic not happy with the progress it allowed. So you took away something people spent tons of in game resources on and threw us a small "we're sorry" package that didn't even come close to comping resources spent.
Now, this? We spend resources to upgrade to get higher level traces when using a TC and you call the "clone" a bug? I'm calling ****. Now I get lowest level spawns after TC'ing an emergency foundable? I don't care if it spawns the exact same foundable or different ones, but they should remain being the same or higher level spawns.
Niantic obviously does not care about the game play or being remotely honest with users. They say, "oh you think that mess up was bad? Just you wait..." Does anyone even look over updated before they're released???
I swear, if I get ingredients for a ton for trace detection + spell energy as an "apology" I'm going to loose it. Quit throwing "gifts" at us instead of fixing and preventing errors.
This change to the trace charm gives reasons for disillusionment because the duplication I still admit now to lower traces this is poorly done, especially since there is a research to give superior traces. Basically you started putting players to invest and now comes the regret because it was investing in vain. Consider the trace charm better because it looks really bad now. This is making fun of customers (players). So there is no reason to want to use the charm and it was a really cool new facet.
edited September 2020#5003 September, 2020, 11:11 pm.
We need clarification if the rarity of the spawned traces is correct. Shouldn't they be the same as the original trace it is cast on with a chance for some of them to be higher with "knowledge is power"? Why is only one higher/the same and everything else common spawns?
The previous working of the trace charm also encouraged use of dark detectors and potions.
I could not keep up with potion brewing without using the golden cauldron (and even then... raising the question of outright buying potions). Meanwhile, dark detectors were popular to get an emergency trace that could then be charmed, And again, these can be bought with gold not kept up with through other free means. Speaking to some fellow players, all that prospective revenue stream is now gone.
Aside from the well-covered slap in the face to the player base, it seems the game staff have rather shot themselves in the foot here!
I doubt there would be anywhere near this level of discontent if the traces that spawned were at least the same severity as the original trace and that would be a clear way to recover the lost ground in prospective income.
This was much better reasoned but as the forum won’t even post that comment, use of dark detectors and potions (purchaseable with real money) was strongly encouraged by previous TC working. That’s gone now which makes this seem a curious decision!
This change has made me so sad. I loved the feature as it was. It was so much fun to see all these high level traces pop up and know I'd get lots of field guides. Please bring the feature the way you had it.
The defective trace charm was the only thing that made it worth using, for the duplicate traces...With this new fix for them there is no point in using them now. We kindly request you put the trace charm back so the game will continue to stay fun for us high level players.
I can understand limiting fragments (really even 3 when it's spawning all the same traces is too much), but calling that a "bug" was tenuous at best. Call it what it was, a balance fix. I can understand making the spawned traces not all be the same, though again, it's not really a "bug," but a balance fix.
However, based on the way things are written in-game, there's ZERO reason to believe spawned traces should be lower level than the original. They should all be the same level as the original or higher with the proper node. And if you call this a "bug fix," it's the most disingenuous use of that term yet. If you're not going to roll this back, call it what it is: a massive nerf. Okay. "balance fix."
But if that's what you're going to do, you absolutely need to just suck it up and give all players a full refund of what they've spent on the SOS tree (it shouldn't be hard) so they can choose different paths based on how you NOW want things to work. A couple of books and some ingredients, no matter how rare, is insufficient.
Make no mistake, Niantic. You're probably going to lose players over this no matter what you do. If you can't have things working close to how they should be before releasing them, don't release them. Minor balance tweaks can be necessary, but none of what you've done to the Trace Charm since it has released has been minor.
As mentioned earlier by others, this change renders the inclusion of the Trace Charm - one of the best (if not the best) new inclusions in the game - completely pointless. There's no difference now between using a Trace Charm and taking a short walk around the block with a Tonic for Traces potion active.
The wording of all the SOS Training in-game information indicates that the Trace Charm was working EXACTLY as it was supposed to. I expect that wording will be walked back and tweaked to reflect this nerf.
This is a very poor decision, and has definitely removed one of the best and most enjoyable aspects of the game. Disappointing.
Comments
This was something everyone was happy about, we placed on red got red in return and we enjoyed catching them. Gave us blue books, gave us some fun back. Now we place on red get no beam traces? Ya no one is excited about that, no more blue books.. crazy time.. first we have the adventures of losing our traces in registry, big fix that broke more things many times, then proficiency in trace charms is worded wrong. Now this, and again no one is happy. Is this just an attempt to get people to stop playing altogether? I mean this is the result and with so many starting to think that's the idea.
Hope this gets worked out so we can keep the red beam traces when placed on a red beam. These so called fixes is killing the excitement people had. Keeping the red beams would at least keep some of the excitement we had.
I want my books back.
I live in a deadzone and play 99.9% by using the Trace Charm. I get plenty of page 1 fragments. What I hardly ever get is the rare or emergency foundables. Having the TV multiply the level of spawn I placed it on helped a lot. WB Games & Niantic left it the way it was long enough for it to become a part of the game. Why can't your team seem to successfully test features before rolling them out? Put the TC back the way it was. It made the game better!
From "Knowledge is Power" -
"...you discover that it helps you find other, rarer Foundables nearby."
Based upon this, it is clear that the spawned foundables need to be at the level or higher than the spawn that is the target of the trace Charm. They do not all need to be the same, and that sounds like a legitimate bug. Spawning commons when an Emergency is targeted is a fundamental change of the power, and this would undoubtedly adjust how resources are spent by players.
This is the issue that I have.
Niantic:
I don't mind "rebalancing" changes made to the game.
I DO mind features THAT I HAVE PAID FOR BEING NERFED. Twice now. I have spent a lot of resources unlocking and buying those nodes, that I would NOT have spent if I had known these changes were coming.
Your "complimentary store pack" came nowhere near compensating for what was spent.
And now, you've done it again.
Why are you trying so hard to alienate your playerbase?
You really hate the players, don't you? And the only thing you hate more is getting our money? Because you really make sure your players hate you back and will spend their money on other things.
What's the point of making us to spend rare ressources on building a feature that is nerfed as soon as everybody spend their rare books?
First the wrong descriptions, then just **** from the charm.
Why not just a new starting screen with your butts in our faces and be done with it?
So I haven't had much chance to play yet today. If what I'm reading here ends up being true this sounds like I may end up quitting this game. The trace charm doesn't need to produce the same foundable, but it says it will produce rarer traces. Low foundables are not more rare than emergency.
Request is a bit too polite at this stage. Perhaps an organised 24 hour no-play/no-spend action sometime in the next week will help get the message across that they've royally stuffed up the trace charm and they need to rethink it. Particularly proficiency, but now also the trace spawns.
The problem is that you have screwed up every single improvement to the game since day 1 and think you can bribe us with some cheap diagon alley gift basket. Well I for one will not be accepting your insulting bribe so you might as well take it back now. The current "corrections" that you have imposed on the trace charm would have been fine if we knew that going in, but we didn't, and you conned us into spending rsb and spell books that we normally wouldn't have spent. I suggest that you dug into your little database, figure out how many books were invested under false pretenses and reimburse them while keeping everything else exactly where it is. I'm not sure if you are aware yet, you Don't seem to catch on very well, but the SOS lessons are dead.... nobody is going to save and spend 50-100 DADA books on a worthless SOS node. You people need to start paying attention.
Share this exact comment on Twitter too. It's absolute garbage what they did and I too feel this directly affects us who live in suburban and rural areas; it was no bug and actually enabled us who live in those areas to keep up with the local urban people who have access to hundreds of traces we could never get in rural and suburban areas
WU: "Sorry about this issue: 2 DaDas + 5 ditany for everyone"
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............
I’ve commented elsewhere about the functionality problems so I’ll spare that diatribe here.
More pressingly I think is that the previous working of the trace charm (and I don’t assess that there would be anywhere near this level of discontent if the traces that spawned were at least the same severity as the original trace) also encouraged use of dark detectors and potions.
I couldn’t keep up with exstimulo potion brewing without using the golden cauldron (and even then... raising the question of outright buying pots) and that’s before I protected myself from frustration with dawdle draughts. Meanwhile, placing dark detectors to get an emergency trace that could then be charmed hugely encouraged the use of detectors which, again, can be bought with gold and can’t be kept up with through other free means. Speaking to some fellow players, all that prospective revenue stream is now gone.
Aside from the well-covered slap in the face to the player base, it seems the game staff have rather shot themselves in the foot here!
I’m level 55. Before the SOS training, I’d barely play enough to complete my daily tasks. But, not only did I start playing hours more everyday, I started spending money. I used the coins to rent The extra potion cauldron, and then queue a dozen or more potions, paying more coins to complete the potions immediately. Because of the exciting, increased game play, and increased rare traces, I was using dozens of potions a day. I was paying for the privilege, and loving it!
Now, the potency of the trace charm is no more effective than WALKING A BLOCK. Literally. It is less effective than using a single ‘Dark Detector.’ There’s no longer any reason for me to spend money to quickly brew potions for use on non-existent traces. :(
Please reconsider! The bonus traces revealed should be the same rarity or higher.
@hpwulola @HPWUrobert @HPWUblue
I would like to confirm what the trace charm should do.
If it A: is supposed to be used on a trace of rarity X, and then spawn multiple traces of rarity X-1 (or X if you posses the 'Knowledge Is Power' node from SOS Lessons) which are all the same, with the possibility of the traces being of rarity X (or X+1). If this is the case, it is understandable that the second spawn of the spelled trace be removed, as it is not included in the spell description. However, if this is the case, then the recent change where the revealed traces are of a random rarity make no sense, because then what is the point of the 'Knowledge is Power' node. Having multiple fragments of the same Emergency or Severe trace is understandably strong, however if one wanted to fix the diversity of such things, then having multiple different Emergency/Severe traces spawn, instead of multiple copies of the same trace would be a simple and understandable solution. The recent change spits on the effort and investment of players made to increase their SOS to use a mechanic to the fullest, and removes a mechanic that was universally loved by all the players of the game. It would make the trace charm a bastardized, weaker version of a trace detection potion, which I'm sure was not the goal.
If it is B: is supposed to be used on a trace of rarity X, and then spawn multiple traces of rarity <X (or <=X if the node 'Knowledge Is Power' from SOS is active) with the possibility of traces being <=X (or <=X+1) then why is the change being called a bug-fix? There was already a trace being duplicated, which is perfectly understandable to remove, like I mentioned above. However if the rest of the Trace Charm Mechanic was not working as intended, then how did it make it past testing?!?! It was blatantly obvious what it was doing and to call it anything else is straight us lying to your consumers.
I, and obviously many other people based upon the general outcry, are hugely disappointed with the loss of such a beloved mechanic, and would appreciate a response to address the issues I and others have raised.
My comment seems to be too valid to be allowed to post it!
I am extremely unhappy with the staff at Niantic working on WU lately. Ever since the debacle with the introduction of the prestiging images (which as a feature I think is great, it was just handled poorly) it's gone downhill fast. First, you say the proficiency of a TC works by increasing the fragments you get from the encounter and then publicly come out and say it's a typo. A typo that is the exact same in EVERY node. That's not a typo. A typo is a misspelling of a word or an accidental error, this was clearly multiple people not on the same page with how it was supposed to work or someone at Niantic not happy with the progress it allowed. So you took away something people spent tons of in game resources on and threw us a small "we're sorry" package that didn't even come close to comping resources spent.
Now, this? We spend resources to upgrade to get higher level traces when using a TC and you call the "clone" a bug? I'm calling ****. Now I get lowest level spawns after TC'ing an emergency foundable? I don't care if it spawns the exact same foundable or different ones, but they should remain being the same or higher level spawns.
Niantic obviously does not care about the game play or being remotely honest with users. They say, "oh you think that mess up was bad? Just you wait..." Does anyone even look over updated before they're released???
I swear, if I get ingredients for a ton for trace detection + spell energy as an "apology" I'm going to loose it. Quit throwing "gifts" at us instead of fixing and preventing errors.
This change to the trace charm gives reasons for disillusionment because the duplication I still admit now to lower traces this is poorly done, especially since there is a research to give superior traces. Basically you started putting players to invest and now comes the regret because it was investing in vain. Consider the trace charm better because it looks really bad now. This is making fun of customers (players). So there is no reason to want to use the charm and it was a really cool new facet.
We need clarification if the rarity of the spawned traces is correct. Shouldn't they be the same as the original trace it is cast on with a chance for some of them to be higher with "knowledge is power"? Why is only one higher/the same and everything else common spawns?
Trying again...
The previous working of the trace charm also encouraged use of dark detectors and potions.
I could not keep up with potion brewing without using the golden cauldron (and even then... raising the question of outright buying potions). Meanwhile, dark detectors were popular to get an emergency trace that could then be charmed, And again, these can be bought with gold not kept up with through other free means. Speaking to some fellow players, all that prospective revenue stream is now gone.
Aside from the well-covered slap in the face to the player base, it seems the game staff have rather shot themselves in the foot here!
I doubt there would be anywhere near this level of discontent if the traces that spawned were at least the same severity as the original trace and that would be a clear way to recover the lost ground in prospective income.
This was much better reasoned but as the forum won’t even post that comment, use of dark detectors and potions (purchaseable with real money) was strongly encouraged by previous TC working. That’s gone now which makes this seem a curious decision!
This charm is one of the only reasons I've been able to prestige pages and advance in the SOS tasks and lessons. Please keep it the way it was before
This change has made me so sad. I loved the feature as it was. It was so much fun to see all these high level traces pop up and know I'd get lots of field guides. Please bring the feature the way you had it.
The defective trace charm was the only thing that made it worth using, for the duplicate traces...With this new fix for them there is no point in using them now. We kindly request you put the trace charm back so the game will continue to stay fun for us high level players.
I can understand limiting fragments (really even 3 when it's spawning all the same traces is too much), but calling that a "bug" was tenuous at best. Call it what it was, a balance fix. I can understand making the spawned traces not all be the same, though again, it's not really a "bug," but a balance fix.
However, based on the way things are written in-game, there's ZERO reason to believe spawned traces should be lower level than the original. They should all be the same level as the original or higher with the proper node. And if you call this a "bug fix," it's the most disingenuous use of that term yet. If you're not going to roll this back, call it what it is: a massive nerf. Okay. "balance fix."
But if that's what you're going to do, you absolutely need to just suck it up and give all players a full refund of what they've spent on the SOS tree (it shouldn't be hard) so they can choose different paths based on how you NOW want things to work. A couple of books and some ingredients, no matter how rare, is insufficient.
Make no mistake, Niantic. You're probably going to lose players over this no matter what you do. If you can't have things working close to how they should be before releasing them, don't release them. Minor balance tweaks can be necessary, but none of what you've done to the Trace Charm since it has released has been minor.
As mentioned earlier by others, this change renders the inclusion of the Trace Charm - one of the best (if not the best) new inclusions in the game - completely pointless. There's no difference now between using a Trace Charm and taking a short walk around the block with a Tonic for Traces potion active.
The wording of all the SOS Training in-game information indicates that the Trace Charm was working EXACTLY as it was supposed to. I expect that wording will be walked back and tweaked to reflect this nerf.
This is a very poor decision, and has definitely removed one of the best and most enjoyable aspects of the game. Disappointing.
Please don't change something that isn't broken.
Please return the trace charm to it's previous function. This 'fix' is inappropriate and was poorly communicated to players
Omg im pissed. Between that and the lie about the fragments. I spent valuable resources.
If we spent resources based on false information they should honour that.
What a kick in the face.
Please please please please reconsider this. Tbh this makes playing the game worth it and not a dead-end feeling endless slog.