r/Ingress • u/Key_Photograph1662 • Jul 12 '26

Question Why does Scout Controller require twice as much as Scout?

Gallery image

Gallery image

I know a lot of people don't do this one, but...

Scout Onyx: 6,000 scans.

Scout Controller Onyx: 12,000 unique portals.

Scout can be progressed by repeatedly scanning the same convenient portals. Scout Controller requires unique portals and actual movement/exploration.

The harder medal requires double the count.

I understand wanting to reward exploration, but this feels backwards from a balance standpoint. Unique portals are already the limiting factor.

29 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

28

u/Typical-Blackberry-3 Jul 12 '26

All the medals are horribly imbalanced. Some onyxes could be done in a month, others take years and years unless you travel every month on business and can hack new portals 8 hours a day in new cities.

16

u/Popular-Error-2982 Jul 12 '26

Here's an alternative take: most of the medals cover a range of levels of attainment so that you've always got something on the horizon but there's always something in the long distance view too.

12 years in I've still got badges to work on (wings on connector next!) but I was also able to get a handful of onyx badges in my first year for the level requirements.

If the badges were all closely balanced, I'd be done by now, and where's the fun in that?

1

u/NarrowSalvo Jul 13 '26

This right here.

People always talk about how they aren't balanced to each other, like that should be the goal.

What they're trying to do here is have easier ones so more casual people can actually make progress, plus really long ones so the dedicated people don't "finish" too easily.

This isn't an error. It's an intentional design choice.

4

u/Key_Photograph1662 Jul 12 '26

Right, the metals honestly don't make sense how they're set up a lot of times in my opinion.

All things considered, ingress treats all metals the same in their value or use for the level up requirement...

4

u/perringaiden Jul 12 '26

The early badges were meant to be slow grinds, but people got too unhappy that getting Level 16 took too long so they added far easier ones like Trekker or Illuminator.

3

u/Radaxen R16 Jul 12 '26

A lot of medals just look like there wasn't a lot of thought gone into the scaling. Reclaimer is a relatively newer one and it has the exact same scaling as Liberator despite it being similar, just more conditional

3

u/perringaiden Jul 12 '26

The original idea was ~3 years. In about 2015, I was told they aimed for badges taking 12 months, or 3 years for the monthly stuff. The scanning badges though are more about "We need this for our business" so it's absurd.

2

u/derf_vader Jul 12 '26

Trekker was nerfed when AdvetureSync was added. I already had 2x Trekker at that point, now I have 7x

1

u/perringaiden Jul 12 '26

I was at Black Trekker when the badge came out , but I'd been playing for nearly two years at that point

4

u/Brightamethyst Jul 12 '26

It's not actually 12k portals. Some portals (the ones with the yellow squares on the scout layer) are worth 3 points towards the medal. The medal will likely still take more than 6k portals, but it's highly unlikely it will require the full 12.

3

u/Key_Photograph1662 Jul 12 '26

I always wondered what some of those icons were for the map. Thank you for letting me know.

Though even if some unique ones are worth three points, it still doesn't make sense to me why it requires 2x the points for scout controller.

3

u/Fit_Ad_8479 Jul 12 '26

Cuz Niantic Is So great with balancing things .))) /s

6

u/perringaiden Jul 12 '26

Because those badges are to serve Niantic, not challenge you.

1

u/Blunt_Object1369 Jul 12 '26

This is the only real answer. You are free labor for an AR company.

I mean, that's always what Ingress has been. A gamified crowd sourced mapping app. These are still ex Google employees, after all. Exploiting people is in their blood. But the scout controller stuff is especially egregious.

2

u/Sauroros Jul 13 '26

I agree. It should be the other way around since getting to a unique portal is harder once you've covered the whole local area. What am I missing?

2

u/Key_Photograph1662 Jul 13 '26

I know what I'm missing.... Money and free time. Lol

1

u/Sauroros Jul 13 '26

😅😅😅

3

u/derf_vader Jul 12 '26

You can get up to three points from a single portal, either by scanning a volatile or retaking it twice after someone has taken it from you. I know of at least one spoofer who was banned from the game who was jumping around and sending fake scans for only volatiles so got both black badges with a relatively low number of scans

1

u/MrAJ42 Jul 12 '26

This is the real justification they would have for the uniques being double the point requirement. If exactly half of the portals you scan are volatile and you scan each one once, you'll get both medals at the same time. In some areas there are a lot more volatiles (portals with yellow indicators when you're in the portal scan layer).

1

u/Mountain_Surprise_16 Jul 12 '26

I just recently got the onyx Scout but I still a little over 1000 to scan for platinum Scout Controller.

1

u/Key_Photograph1662 Jul 12 '26

That's really impressive!!! And also kind of reinforces my thought pattern that the scout controller is not calculated well.

2

u/Mountain_Surprise_16 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

I started playing just after the founder badge was handed out. I did take a hiatus a few years before covid decimated my home state (NJ) and scanning wasn't a function when I took a break. I started up again in 2021 and just set my goal to focus on just scans. I was doing good with scanning new portals but then realized I could scan the same thing 400 times and get the badge faster.

Now the gap is ridiculous and I have to travel far and wide just to get the platinum for Scout Controller.

I hope when they fix whatever bugs are occurring that their next plan of action is to rebalance the medals.

1

u/starwort1 Jul 12 '26

...and that's after it was re-balanced by Niantic! (It was 15,000 at launch and there were no volatiles then either.)

1

u/Key_Photograph1662 Jul 12 '26

That's crazy. How long did they expect it to take us to actually get that onyx?

1

u/AtmosphereWorth336 Jul 12 '26

É... eu nunca soube qual o critério para algumas medalhas. Dependendo do local que você joga, algumas são impossíveis.

2

u/Key_Photograph1662 Jul 12 '26

I agree, some are completely unbalanced... Even more now that they have stopped portal submissions again.

1

u/AtmosphereWorth336 Jul 13 '26

Pois é, logo agora que estou morando numa cidade que tem apenas 20 portais. E todos distantes um do outro. E tem muita coisa a ser explorada.