When Niantic rebooted Ingress as Ingress Prime back in November, it was after a year of work effectively porting the classic MMOARPG to Pokemon Go’s tech, buffing the graphics, and streaming the UI in an attempt to both appeal to noobs and make cheating much harder. But it wasn’t exactly a new game: Players kept their old accounts and ranks, and many gamers just looked at it as a graphics upgrade than as a reboot.
Unfortunately, the last two months have been rocky indeed. There’s a whole separate Reddit dedicated just to feedback for Prime, as players complain about battery use, syncing, location bugs, visibility, illegible UI components, and on and on. In fact, early on the complaints were so loud that Niantic gave in and put up an original-flavor version of the client, Scanner [REDACTED], to cater to those who preferred the old version.
Just before Christmas, Niantic put out a patch intended to shore up some of the new client’s issues, but player comments on the Google Play Store continue to slide, and at this point, Scanner [REDACTED] boasts significantly better reviews. Niantic, for its part, says it’s still working on more bug fixes, portal nominations, and regional scoring.
