Niantic Announces Wayfarer Review System

Niantic Wayfarer
Niantic Wayfarer

Trainers, brace yourself! Niantic has just announced Wayfarer, a new unified system for reviewing Pokemon GO PokeStop Nominations and Ingress Portal Candidates! Wayfarer will be rolling out to eligible Pokémon GO players before the new year, stay tuned for updates. It’s not yet clear what eligible means in the context of Pokemon GO, but we know that you are not able to use Wayfarer if you’re banned in one or more Niantic games.

Niantic Wayfarer is a system that allows both Pokemon GO and Ingress players to review player submitted Points of Interest and accept / decline their inclusion into Niantic’s map data. These POIs are called Wayspots in Niantic’s Wayfarer lingo. Niantic has shared the following about Wayfarer:

“Wayfarer has its origins in Operation Portal Recon, which was originally built to enable Ingress Agents to nominate and review Portals and enrich their gameplay experiences. With Niantic Wayfarer, eligible players will be able to review nominations of local points-of-interest (museums, art installations, historical markers, etc.) so they can be added to Niantic products (e.g. Portals, PokéStops and Gyms). We value your perspective in helping us make our game experiences more meaningful!”

You can see Wayfarer in action here:

Here are some screenshots of the new system:

What’s new in Wayfarer?

Wayfarer features a redesigned and improved interface when compared to Operation Portal Recon, the previous system used by Niantic. Gone are the black and green techno vibes, a sleek new white UI has appeared. Looking back at OPR, the list of significant changes is not as large as one would imagine, but they are notable.

Finally, Niantic is unifying the terminology between franchises. Portals are now called Wayspots, which is a generic term that encompasses both PokeStops and Portals. “Should this be a Wayspot?” greets you when you start reviewing nominations, which leads you into the regular review flow. The Review flow is completely unchanged from old OPR interface, but it looks a bit better.

Another large improvement is the Nominations tab, which contains a list of your submitted Wayspot nominations – both current and historical included. The list shows the status of your nominations, which is particularly useful to see which of your nominations are stuck, still pending review, accepted and rejected. Luckily the list is easily filterable and searchable, which is a welcome addition. Pending nominations can also be withdrawn if you wish so.

Credits

The transitions from OPR to Wayfarer was first spotted and reported by the Ingress Updates Telegram group:

Ingress Updates [ENG]
Oct 10, 2019 10:20:52 PM

Agents,

The OPR platform is been transformed into Niantic Wayfarer! Eligible Agents will be automatically redirected to Wayfarer when they log into OPR, and all status and redeemable upgrades will remain the same.

New Wayfarer features include: View Energy Tower nomination history, and choose to redeem upgrades at designated nominations.

See wayfarer.nianticlabs.com for details.

Source: Niantic Team

Note from redaction: the system is being updated right now, wait a bit more to see it

@IUENG