US software developer Niantic might be best known for Pokémon GO nowadays, but this wasn't always the case. Before the company shot to fame with its recent mobile sensation, it was focused on its own augmented reality game Ingress. With GO now nearly two-and-a-half years into its lifespan, Niantic has been able to return some of its focus to its own IP. Yesterday, it launched Ingress Prime - a rework of the original game built on lessons from Pokémon GO.
The team at Niantic is now hoping some of the features in the newer version of Ingress can be implemented into GO eventually. According to Eurogamer, one feature that would be appreciated is the new prestige system. Once players hit the level cap in Ingress Prime, they can now roll back to level one and gain unspecified "unique benefits" - with their prestige status also reflected to other players.
Many GO players have hit the level cap (40) as well - especially since the implementation of the friendship system. When asked if the prestige feature was coming to GO, Niantic engineering boss Niniana Wang said certain technologies could be used across every game:
The engineering that goes into those features can then be more easily integrated into each of our games... so when you ask specifically about prestige, some elements of that are very specific to Ingress, in particular the levelling and badges, [but] there's an amount of technology for features that do get put into libraries that can be used later, and there's an amount of learning that is then spread throughout our organisation.
Niantic has reiterated time and time again, it's able to apply its learnings from one game to another. In the case of Ingress Prime, it was able to experiment more freely when working with its own IP. Niantic also hopes to attract more of the hardcore GO crowd to Ingress Prime and will continue to use GO as "the world's best onboarding tool" for its own game.
Would you like to see a similar prestige system make its way to GO? Have you played Ingress before? Tell us in the comments.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 8
Ooh and with Pokémon Let's Go, this can really be interesting what they will do to improve the games. 😁
What's the level cap in Pokémon Go, anyway? I'm at 28 rn.
There's always room for improvements
Niantic certainly has room to improve. While I defend Pokemon Go now as being WAY BETTER than it used to be. It still could benefit from a lot of improvements. In particular it could use some stability improvements.
You might laugh on NL hearing about a need for stability, but even on my relatively new Galaxy S8, Pokemon Go does still bug out sometimes. To be fair, usually simply reloading the app fixes it. But a Galaxy S8 isn't some fringe off brand budget smartphone. It's one of the best phones on the market in the last couple years.
Still, the game is dramatically better than it was back in 2016, with loads of new content and features that really make it feel a lot more like a complete game.
I must admit Pokemon Go has only got better as time has gone on. The new background egg tracking feature is amazing. It makes hatching them a lot quicker and easier which probably translates into more incubator sales for Niantic.
@RadioHedgeFund Which ultimately means more coin sales because there's still a 50 coin per day limit to earning from gyms. This only makes the gym coin rewards more obsolete as you run through incubators.
Notice that they're bundling fewer and fewer incubators into the event boxes too? They definitely notice that many if not most players wait until those boxes go up to spend coins on super incubators.
Probably will be quite easy to integrate Ingress with Go.
I don't care about the level cap. How about making it so you can take your pokemon out of a gym? Or better yet, make it so you can bump a team member's pokemon out of a gym if they've hit their coin cap, or if they've been in for a certain amount of time. That way there's an incentive to hold a gym for your team instead of hoping for another team to come along and roll it over so you can retake it, AND you can get your pokemon back from a gym healthy rather than always fainted.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...