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Scrap/rework faction voting in OPR

14 points · submitted Sep 2018 by u/Velasthur

To be honest, I can't help but feel this is an outdated mechanic of OPR, and that it either needs to be either reworked or removed completly. Why?

For starters, it'd help the smaller communities thrive, maybe even grow. How bummed out wouldn't you feel if you and a bunch of friends started playing Ingress and struggled to progress due to partial or complete lack of portals in your local area? This slow pacing alone could put off a lot of casual players, something Ingress may really need as the player base hasn't exactly been growing in the last few years. Oh well, let's ignore that for now and press ahead. Lets say you and your friends overcome that obstacle and reach level 10 or 12. But then comes the real blow - you have submitted portals and some of you have gotten access to OPR, see the suggestions and vote for them - but nothing happens. Tough luck, you got screwed! The most likely cause is an overall lack of reviewers or ones from the opposing team. So the sum of your efforts will remain stuck in limbo as there's nobody to help pull them through.

It feels like Niantic did not foresee these types of problems and thus made no contingency plan(s). But if Ingress is to grow and increase it's longevity it needs new blood. And issues such as this one certainly doesn't help people to stay interested and motivated to do so. If the faction vote mechanic won't be removed then it could perhaps at least become scalable depending on how many active players/reviewers there are in the area. I'm not saying the fate of portal candidates should be entrusted to one person alone in the most rural of areas, but at least implement something else than there is now.

Lets not also forget about the potential consequences of faction bias. I don't know the full scope of this, but I can imagine it certainly is a problem in some areas. Some people are just that petty, and there's no way of punishing them aside from them potentially getting a poor rating. But even that may be dodged if enough people share this twisted way of thinking. Removing or reducing the faction votes needed may not remedy this entirely, but could alleviate it somewhat.

I can understand this concept may have worked out initially and seemed cool out of a lore perspective, but from my experience with Ingress and OPR thus far it doesn't seem to work that well in practicality. But maybe I'm wrong? Please discuss.

39 comments · 75% upvoted · other discussions

comments

perringaiden 23 points · Sep 2018 · :ENLR16:

Considering that 50%+ of my reviews are from other regions far away from me, the idea that factional drought still causes delays is hard to fathom.

StoicThePariah 1 points · Sep 2018 · E12

It's always weird reading about others' experiences with Niantic products. About 90% of my reviews are from small towns in the surrounding area in my state, with the occasional Texas, Florida, Mexico, or Puerto Rico sub. Since the few players in the are are all on the PoGo Discord, I see the name of someone I personally know on a photosphere for about 75% of reviews that I do lol.

But I also live in an area where sub turnaround is 2-6 days so I think I'm just in a weird area for OPR.

Nihilons -6 points · Sep 2018

You still can use the Intel to see what faction is strong in the area

perringaiden 13 points · Sep 2018 · :ENLR16:

I live in LA. I'm reviewing stuff in North and South Carolina, and Virginia. Why would I care enough to check who owns portals?

And the point of the original post was to release portals in areas with only one faction. The point is that the argument is irrelevant now.

Velasthur [OP] -1 points · Sep 2018 · :enl16:

I don't know what the situation is like in LA but here it currently takes 2, almost 3 months to get an answer. It used to be 1-2 weeks. And then suddenly I can get several responses the same day, maybe because someone did a review marathon and happened to be on the right team. It's all speculation of course, but reviewer faction imbalance does seem like it could be an issue over here. Fortunately the same can't be said of faction bias.

bobelbritanico 5 points · Sep 2018 · E16

Whatever may causing problems it's pretty obviously no longer faction bias.

I have no idea about the area status of 95% of the portals I am reviewing which can be hundreds or even a couple of thousand miles away.

And I'm certainly not going to waste my time looking up the daily fielding status in order to decide my vote.

​

Velasthur [OP] 1 points · Sep 2018 · :enl16:

Neither would I to be honest. But it didn't feel like like a good idea to base my case on a single argument.

perringaiden 1 points · Sep 2018 · :ENLR16:

It takes that long here too. It's not about faction bias. People just aren't interested in the effort any more.

pr0n-clerk 1 points · Sep 2018 · :RESR10:

Went from 1-3 weeks to 1-3 months as well. Faction imbalance is 100% not the cause of this. Its a swarm of level 10 PoGo players churning out submissions and the new system that reviews your entire country.

[deleted] -2 points · Sep 2018

[deleted]

perringaiden 3 points · Sep 2018 · :ENLR16:

Or not.

Raccoonpuncher 6 points · Sep 2018

You can, but is that common? You'd be adding to the time it takes to review, you'd probably get a low rating due to not reviewing on portal quality, and there's no guarantee that 30 seconds of looking at Intel will tell you the dominant faction. It sounds like a lot of effort for the slight possibility of making things harder for someone who may or may not be your opponent.

Nihilons 1 points · Sep 2018

That's the question, is it common..?

Mirror_Sybok 3 points · Oct 2018

It feels like Niantic did not foresee these types of problems and thus made no contingency plan(s).

I see that you're new to Niantic games. Welcome.

brentcopeland 4 points · Sep 2018 · E15

seems like a group of locals could just vote in any portal they wanted even if it didn't belong? Easier to create couch portals at work and home. As much as the cross faction votes may suck, it would suck worse if those same jerks could just vote in whatever they wanted. I do agree the system could use some reworking. A bit more of opening up the post submission details. See your submissions, the comments and where it is in the process.

RustyOrangeDog 6 points · Sep 2018 · :RESR16:

They will have no choice but to remove the faction input once OPR becomes OPOIR and includes pogo players. In the end I would wager many hard core reviewers are pogo players now anyway.

The submission flood is coming and OPR needs to expand exponentially before that happens.

Chemistryset8 4 points · Sep 2018

Yeah all the hard core lvl 15 and 16 pure ingressers in my area typically have less than 10 approvals and less than 200 agreements, it's the pogo players that crossed in the last year that have 100+ approvals and 3000+ agreements.

babo2 2 points · Sep 2018

On top of that many if not most agents these days are robots playing merely so they can get OPR status.

Cgss13 3 points · Sep 2018

I agree. Except from a rework of the system, they can use the existing but make some part of the process more automated. For example, churches and libraries are accepted so an algorithm can check the maps and if it finds them instant acceptance. Or something like that. And such an algorithm can be also used to reduce the backlog a bit.

pr0n-clerk 2 points · Sep 2018 · :RESR10:

Take a picture of a random church, place the marker at my house, put in a google maps edit to call it Church of the Jesus. Be way easier to game the system with automation.

Cgss13 1 points · Sep 2018

I think that a Google maps edit has to be approved before going live.

weveran 1 points · Oct 2018 · :ENLR16:

It is extremely easy to get a Google maps edit approved. :)

Cgss13 1 points · Oct 2018

I don't know that. Are you sure?

weveran 1 points · Oct 2018 · :ENLR16:

I do edits all the time to correct locations, remove old/closed locations, and make new ones. I always get an approval email minutes later.

mortuus82 1 points · Sep 2018 · R16

atleast now if u 1 star u must specify and chose what reason, perhaps this will solve faction problem that downvoted before even legit portals like playgrounds etc ??

Velasthur [OP] 3 points · Sep 2018 · :enl16:

Some people in OPR X-faction chat group I'm in said they'd just 2-star instead. So there are ways to get around that too.

SpiderWolve 3 points · Sep 2018

Except that's not a denial. It's an accept.

Velasthur [OP] 2 points · Sep 2018 · :enl16:

I find it hard to wrap my head around that. If something gets a 2/5 in a review it wouldn't be considered that good no? Not an outright reject no but still.

deadlylemons 1 points · Sep 2018

This is where having a three star system could have made more sense to stop that kind of behaviour

Eg

1 = no 2 = acceptable but may depend on other criteria) 3 = fantastic

AltyGrae 1 points · Sep 2018

Okay, noob question: How can you tell which faction submitted a potential portal? I have no idea which faction submitted any portal I’ve reviewed. Very, make that extremely, rarely do I get to review a portal in an area I am familiar with. So why do you think factions have anything to do with approving a portal?

The_Possum 4 points · Sep 2018 · :res14:

Every single photosphere uploaded is keyed to a public Google profile/account. Once one gets accepted you now know which Google account goes with which ingress account. Future submissions with photospheres can be correlated to past submissions with photospheres, and therefore to a specific ingress account.

Iceland260 3 points · Sep 2018 · :enl15:

It has been mentioned in the AMAs or somewhere that reviewers from both factions must in be involved to some unknown extent in order for OPR decisions to be completed. OP is suggesting that this be requirement be removed in order to fix the potential problem of areas that simply don't have reviewers from both factions taking forever to have submissions reviewed.

​

I believe that OPR now giving reviewers more distant portals to review has already solved this issue more effectively than OP's idea would.

Gauravsingh432 1 points · Sep 2018

Or mabe before giving portal submissions in pokemo go- give opr to level 40 players a month prior .

Nihilons 6 points · Sep 2018

Sure not, that would be the worst thing to happen, as I play pokemon myself and the pokemon players around me are all excited to push every tiny piece of crap into submission to get home or work stops, and that's how they would vote

spottyballbag 1 points · Sep 2018

as much as I'd love more reviewers, I agree this would happen. I'd probably end up in poor status for rejecting things that a bunch of PoGo players approve and my agreements will go down 😂 I'm a level 40 PoGo player myself, and have seen that many players are happy to bend rules and guidelines for their own ends. Account sharing, multiple accounts etc. They're not going to follow OPR guidelines if it means more gyms and stops everywhere.

Zynade 0 points · Sep 2018 · :RESR12:

in terms of fresh blood i wouldnt just say its faction biasd but thats just my experience we had some active player on both sides but we got 1 overly aggressive guy who wants do dominate the city or whatever but he managed that most player got inactive on both sides because the same faction got nothing to do and the opposit faction if something gets build he drives there and destroy it he destroys the fun for everyone

for opr i think fation bias are a huge problem i dont know why people cant just accept a good portal no matter where it is just because 1 faction is strong there for a moment doesnt mean it last forever and every new portal could make some player happy in ingress/pogo or whatever game will come later

GorillaHeat 7 points · Sep 2018

I would be inclined to believe this if I wasn't reviewing portals from all over the country thousands of miles away.

Zynade 1 points · Sep 2018 · :RESR12:

i still believe that opr can be influenced you just need enough people or im just paranoid but befor the opr rework with increased range it was quite impossible to get something through mostly everything was rejected even now its not that easy to get 5* portals live in our town on the other hand i helped some neighbour town with my last submissions and only 2 where there rejected and i helped the person to pick the right stuff to submit so i dont think my methode is wrong

thats why i think factiion bias are a huge problem in opr or its just me been paranoid

[deleted] 3 points · Sep 2018

[deleted]

Zynade 1 points · Sep 2018 · :RESR12:

its the same stuff nearly the same like in my town so i wouldnt say there bad submissions per se

Gauravsingh432 -1 points · Sep 2018

Is there a criteria which tells that pokemon go players are fools and ingress players are not? If ingress players can submit portals then pokemon go can also submit pokestops.