I tried to use some Maths and some educated assumptions to estimate if we will manage to achive the overall goal of 36 million unique glyph hack points. I get an estimate of 36.235 million points using these (optimistic?) assumptions.
Points = 5 x (hacks all levels) x accuracy5 + 4 x (hacks 4 levels) x accuracy4 + 3 x (hacks 3 levels) x accuracy3 + 2 x (hacks 2 levels) x accuracy2 + (hacks 1 levels) x accuracy
We know number of unique hacks during Myriad – 29124588
We also know the new goal – 36000000
This means we need 24% more points. So why do I think the goal is too optimistic when points are quite different? There are several unknowns here – but I will try to make my case.
Assumption1 – Hack Myriad ≥ (hacks all levels) + (hacks 4 levels) + (hacks 3 levels) + (hacks 2 levels) + (hacks 1 levels)
This states that overall we can expect that not more unique portals will be hacked during Aurora as were hacked during Myriad. Both challenges are the same lengths of time and same number weekdays/weekends. The main driving force are badges. You need the same number of points for bronze, 43% more for silver and 33% more for gold. At the same time you can get up to 400% more points from a unique portal. As such it seems unlikely to me that on average agents will hack more unique portals.
Assumption 2 – #Agents Hack Myriad ≥ #Agents Glyph Hack Aurora
This states that I expect that the number of Agents taking part in Aurora will be lower as the number of Agents taking part in Myriad. There are several trends here: a) we just had a ban wave of 8000 accounts eliminated since Myriad. It is unknown how many hacks can be attributed to these – but that is a sizeable number of accounts b) we had new agents starting since Myriad as well as stopping play – difficult to judge any numbers c) There are a number of agents who don’t Glyph hack
From all of these the big one is likely c) – the number of agents not doing glyph hacks. Using agent stats I get 17094/85879 agents who have a ratio of 0 glyph points to hacks. This is 20%. There is another 20% which have a ratio of 1. You get 1 glyph point for a correct level 1 – so this extra 20% only hacks occasionally – or just hacks level zero.
My best estimate is 80% of agents will actively take part in the challenge.
Assumption 3 – accuracy ≤ 1
This is a no brainer. You can’t be right more then 100% of times – and even good glyph hackers will occasionally get something wrong. I just did a 4-glyph wrong yesterday as it drizzled rain and my phone got the last glyph wrong despite me knowing what I wanted to draw. We also need to take into account, that players will have to go outside their confidence zone and glyph hack levels that they might not feel comfortable with and this lowers overall accuracy.
My best estimate is 90% for accuracy
Assumption 4 – not all unique portal hacks will be glyph hacks
We have car gressing, bus gressing, etc. You might be in a hurry and not able to glyph hack a portal. There certainly is a higher motivation to glyph hack as many portals as possible. Scant data here – but we have 51% of agents with a ratio between 1 and 3 for Glyph Points / Hacks. There is an incentive to Glyph hack more – but most agents seem to Glyph hack only occasionally.
My best estimate here is 80% taking all of this into consideration
Taking all of this together we can say:
Or
In my first article I wrote that the sweet spot to aim for is 2-3 points per portal. 4 or 5 points is possible – but means a lot of effort. So how realistic is 2.15 points per portal? I tried to make an educated guess to assign a percentage for each scenario. I don’t have 0 points as that value is already included in assumption 3 and 4.
| Points/portal | How to gain | Comment | Percentage |
| 1 | A portal that you glyph hack once because you don’t have time to come back / are unable to upgrade / are unable to take down | There will be a decent number of portals falling into this category. Mainly novel ones where you don’t come back or portals which are stagnant | 25% |
| 2 | A portal you build up or take down. You will have to visit it twice / come back after cool down. | This seems to me the most common case as you build up a neutral portal / take down an enemy one and hack twice | 40% |
| 3 | The maximum of points you can gain on your own building up a neutral portal or for any enemy portal level 1-5 | This is likely the second most common case. You can reach this on your own – but you need to return to the portal twice / use an HS. It also means you have to coordinate. | 30% |
| 4 | This needs either level 6+ enemy portals and a rebuild or collaboration with a fellow agent | This needs collaboration – or access to high level enemy portals. It also needs a high level of bookkeeping to ensure you get all different levels. | 4% |
| 5 | This needs either level 8 enemy portals that are carefully levelled down or a lot of friendly agents who build this up. Keep in mind that for full five points you need to be there at all different stages of the process – or the same portal needs to be build/taken down multiple times to/from level 8. | You need a level 8 portal – and that portal needs to be build / taken down and you need to coordinate a level 6/7 hack inbetween. Too much effort for something you can gain more easily by hacking a few extra portals | 1% |
Crunching the numbers I get 2.16 which is just above the needed 2.15. Does this mean I’m wrong and Niantic is just genius and know their own game perfectly well? My calculated estimate is 36.235 million points.
It wasn’t the outcome I thought I would get. I admit I thought the numbers would indicate a clear fail – I therefore was not concerned to use positive assumptions. There is a good chance if we are about to lose by <5% that the community rallies and that we will manage to get it over the line.
There certainly is limited upside scope to another blow-out event. We will certainly know more in the next 24 hours when we have access to the first 12 hours or results. I will surely follow them with high interest as the first 12 hours will be a much better benchmark how close we are or not.