Best Of
Re: April - June 2024 Schedule: Buried Memories (Discussion)
Another 3 months of Second Sunday being a boring venture. Sigh.
Re: Where To Next?
I know people hate Campfire and I’m not saying we should use it, but it’s very weird that there’s a Niantic owned chat app, and they don’t suggest to use that.
Re: The Best and The Worst of the Ingress forums
No point to list them because Niantic didn't provide any work to do the same.
Re: Hypothesis: Ingress is a great game, but only at relatively narrow range of scale
I don't know how to quantify that sweet spot but it's obvious to me that it exists and that getting too far outside of it makes the game less interesting.
Different strokes, different folks ..
I'm sure there are players who enjoy having a large bunch of portals and no opposition to do whatever they want. Similarly, there are players who would love a near constant battle for portals.
Re: Suggestion: more long term badges for existing stats
Because destruction is much easier than building and sustaining
Re: Where To Next?
Hopefully IUENG will never be "official" - I cannot participate due to an admin vendetta against me.
Where To Next?
Obviously as suggested by Niantic is the Ingress Reddit community:
But as a lot of people are aware, Reddit has experienced an exodus of people due to the impending IPO and are not happy with how Reddit is being run.
I would like to encourage agents to join the player run "Ingress Updates" channel on Telegram, as well as the associated XFAC chat which has a much more likely discussion than Reddit and also these forums.
Re: Maybe we should let the greatest of games quietly go to another world?
I think people need to accept the beginning of the end has just occurred, with the announcement that the forums are closing down in April.
I really can't see Ingress lasting more than two years at most. I personally think it will bow out at the 13th anniversary, next year.
As I posted on another thread, the game seems to be an increasing 'cheats paradise', and that is partially helping to drive the honest and worthwhile players away.
Make the most of the game whilst you can.
Hypothesis: Ingress is a great game, but only at relatively narrow range of scale
Time travel back with me a little bit to pre-Machina Ingress
Imagine that you are the only player within 100 miles. Ingress would not be very interesting for you because there's rarely going to be any competition. There have always been a few people in this situation and over the last couple of years a lot more have found themselves without opposition. Ingress really isn't a very good game in those circumstances.
Now, imagine the opposite extreme and every single person on the planet plays Ingress. That wouldn't be a very fun game either because everything would be a highly-contested area with no ability to ever build up high level portals or control an area. Ingress isn't a very good game at this extreme either.
Somewhere between those two extremes there's a sweet spot for Ingress where there's enough competition to make the game interesting but not enough for the playfield to become perpetual chaos. I don't know how to quantify that sweet spot but it's obvious to me that it exists and that getting too far outside of it makes the game less interesting.
Machina has been introduced to help players out in areas that have very little competition, and it does help some but it's not a replacement. Machina can't throw an annoying field over you, and it won't care if you throw one over it. It's never going to (deliberately) throw a strategic blocking link, it's not going to smash up your farm, and it's never going to rent a 15-passenger van and roll hundreds of P8s through a city. It's an interesting chaos agent but it's not active opposition.
Competing as a team against another team is what makes Ingress great, IMO. Unfortunately it is likely to be its downfall as well since it needs to retain a minimum player base but there's also a cap on how big the game can get and still be fun. That makes me sad, but unless the game radically adapts it will be the eventual outcome.