As much as I love new players, I hate them too
The title says everything.
Some of us have had discussion about this multiple times - new players are as "good" as bad. I live in a city where there are not that so many Ingress players and every new player is more than welcome in our community. More players = better game.
I'm sure how a majority of us started leveling up by making sh!tlinks to any available portal. Sure, I understand that but you can't do that through all the way to level 16. I personally know players who are level 11+ and still sh!tlink the whole city and once you warn them about how their behaviour is bad for the community they start to giggle like retards thinking it's funny to pull dumb links everywhere. They're conscious of the fact that they scr3w their own faction and that's NOT FUNNY.
They:
- refuse to get help we offer them (how to max field)
- either giggle thinking it's funny OR play victims (OH NOONE LOVES 'N' SUPPORTS ME, THAT'S THE WAY I PLAY)
- refuse to listen AT ALL
How to deal whith these people and their ingame behaviour?
Here's one cool starburst photo
Comments
Long time players mess up my fielding plans all the time. I shrug and deal with it. If it's important to me, I throw blockers.
How to deal with it? If you meet them in person, maybe during a First Saturday event when this whole COVID-19 thing is over in another lifetime or two, greet them, then talk to them about it. Less chance of misunderstanding that way. If they don't want to play nice with others? Leave them alone. This game is mainly interesting because of the community aspect. If you make it known that it frustrates you, some people will continue simply because they're trolls.
One of my first interactions with other Ingress player is with someone chewing me out on all comms for deploying a force amp (or some other junk mod) on their desk portal. I seriously considered making it my life's work deploying junk mods on all his desk portals all the time at that point. Don't be that guy.
Summary: if you don't try to control the actions of others, you'll be a lot less frustrated.
I know recursed agents that do nothing but shitlink, they have platinum Connector but only a gold Illuminator badge!
It's just the nature of players and an aspect of the game that has to be worked around. People won't listen to change their play styles to suite others, they will play the way they want to - and that should be respected.
If you want to link and field nicely, you need to employ your strategy to create blockers and perfect your timing so that you can succeed.
The game is very fluid and anything can happen at any stage, the more prepared you are, the better position you will be to succeed.
Once blockers was made to "protect" the fielding of my cityquater. Guess what happened next? One of the sh!tlinking guys literally got "inside" those blockers and destroyed my fanfielding in process! He refuses to join FS meetings and refuses to be talked to. Other guys join FS but refuse to listen and giggle instead. No matter how detailed you want to explain them, they still won't listen. It's ridiculous.
I have also players like that in my area and I was also a player like that. What works is talk and tell that they are blocking plans and how time and work and man hours you have put into this game plan.
But sometimes the only thing you can do is follow that player and destroy it's work. That works wonders with XF actions like XF Christmas star. You need to lay the basics with building a social netwerk of helping the players. You should worry at the moment your local fraction is a pack of lonely wolfs. A lot of big plans fall because there is not local support. If some one is willing to use flipcards against it's own team then it is team up and offer the last helping hand and then it is situation where you did to draw the line and you need to force the player to work together.
New players?
What you described is not limited to new players. In fact I have seen this mostly from veteran players who should know better by now - throwing yolo-links all over the place even when visiting areas that they don’t normally play in, deploying junk mods in strategic high level portals (you don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to understand that high level portal with VR mods doesn’t require your Common Multi-Hack). Why upgrade portal to help others when you can throw all links that show and drive away?
It’s not limited to single faction either. I have been on both sides via recursions.
My biggest enemy has always been my teammates messing up my plans. Way more expensive to fix than opponents doing the same.
Not much u can do, in my region we have some res players too that dont even want be in our community chat, play for themselves dont even help others just throws their fields etc... how is this fun just play solo i dont know? might aswell play pokemon since u dont have to pay attention to anyone there more or less..
Sorry, but you don't get to decide an across-the-board playing style for anyone. Ingress can be played a variety of different ways, and just because you (or the majority) have decided that max fielding is best practice doesn't mean that everyone has to do it that way. What you decide is a "sh!tlink" is someone elses playing style. What you decide is someone "scr3wing their own faction" is just someone simply finding joy in playing a video game, which you seem to be unable to do. Links are meant to be thrown. If you don't like where it was thrown, Jarvis it (portals are meant to be captured, flipped, and destroyed - not just used for max fielding).
Ingress players can:
Link in your way? Work around it. Someone thwart your plans? Change your plans. Everyone has a different playing style and not everyone is interested in max fielding. Some people like chaotic links, and you're not going to force them to find something else more visually appealing if they just don't. This game is fluid and ever-changing and you can't expect people to NOT play the game how they want just so YOU can play the game how you want. Work together, stop complaining.
@artemush interesting position. Hypothetically speaking, what if majority of players in the area across both factions can agree that it’s a “sh!tlink”. Let’s be real, you know that it is when you see one. Still ok? But why pretend that you’re part of the team then?
Let’s go to another extreme. You said portals are meant to be destroyed. Destroying your team’s L8 flip farm. Also ok?
I’m just wondering where do you draw the line...
I’m not pretending anything, I’m playing a video game. What you call a “sh!tlink” might be my blocker or my longest link or something I earned double AP for to level up before I went to bed. I dont level up for the team, I do it for me. Not every link thrown has to be thought out, planned, discussed and approved by the team. Don’t assume I “know a sh!tlink when I see one,” your perception is not the same as mine.
We flip 8’s all the time around here for strategic gameplay purposes. Yes, our own farm portals. Portals change factions all the time, 8’s get leveled, that’s how the game works. I get along fine with my team, but I don’t bow down to control freaks who try to force me to play their way. I don’t play your way - I play Ingress.
This is not a problem of new players specificaly, but just a characteristic of a bad player.
A newcomer will create a few bad links, and block himself, and will starting planing his next links to not mess up himself, and if engaged with the community, to help them and to block the ennemies. But a bad player/noob will never learn because he doesn't care. Its easier to do simple hacks a throw random link. Farming takes times and is boring so is a no no. Well, each one will have a playstyle, some will get better or other not, some will get deep into the lore and other won't care at all.
Some people will never learn. Some might finish Mario World without using Y to dash because never cared to press it while hold + so believes it does nothing and never tried it again.
There's a player in my area with north of 400M AP who YOLOs like a fiend-- if it shows, it throws. I know him well... he's a former coworker and I recruited him to Ingress years ago. It's just a different playstyle, not better or worse, just different. If one of his links is problematic then I'll just take it down and neither one of us is going to be upset about it. Or I'll wait a couple of days or weeks and it will be smashed.
You seem to have the notion that tight microfielding is a better way to play. I disagree-- it's not actually better, it's just your preferred style. One of the beautiful things about this game is that it's a blank canvas with essentially no defined win state (ignoring cell MU, which is almost always a different game than microfielding.)
Why do you believe your style is better?
At the end of the day, I want as many people to play Ingress as we can get because it's more fun to play when there are more Agents and more Agent activity. It's also important to me that we not lose the players we already have, but I don't think saying something as broad strokes as, "I hate new players" is too helpful.
If you're a new player, welcome! I'm so glad you're here, and thank you for playing our game. Regardless of the Faction you choose, https://www.smurfling.guide/ is a really good resource to help you get started. And First Saturdays can connect you to other players in your area (or virtually anywhere): https://ingress.com/events
If you're a veteran Agent, we're always working to make Ingress better. We've got a lot of work to do, and we're excited to keep iterating and improving.
Yay thanks for the shout out! But just a reminder of how out of date it is!! 😱
The problem with slinks is its just way too costly to clear them if they are thrown by your own team, especially if they are constantly being thrown.
What we really need is an item that can break links to a portal of ones own faction that's more common than the current Viruses - preferably without reversing the alignment of the portal. Lock it behind recursing or something so it can't be readily abuse by people making alts.
So, a story, from several years ago:
It happened that every now and then, an agent of the opposing faction would throw a "s**t link" through an area not necessarily dominated by my faction. The question was always, "Do I take the link down and try to make my own 'interesting' fields? Or do I leave the link up, because it prevents the opposing faction from making their favorite fields?" The answer was always, "yes, at least take down the link."
See, there was one particular agent on the opposing faction who would always find a way to field off of any s**t link her faction made, and it'd inevitably be worse (for my faction, MU-wise) than the usual fields. She didn't have fixed notions of how an area "should" be fielded. There are links. There are portals. Hack keys. Make triangles layered upon triangles. Relish the opportunities to do something different and creative.
I miss her, and in my more contemplative moments, I wonder if it might not be better for the game if us crotchety old players were more like her, more open to being creative and working with the game board as it is given to us, and less fixated upon making the game board (and new players, new portals, etc.) conform to our stodgy ideas of how an area "should" be fielded.
Agreed. Sometimes there is a very good reason to leave a link up that deserves to get smashed. The MU argument is a perfect one.
Fields put up by a less than level 5-6 player you know is real, might stay up a little longer than the recursed player's links because you "know" what happens when left unchecked what they will do.
That's nice if it applies to your area, but wayward links here mean several ADA/Jarvis to get any MU. 1/1500 Hack per own team link you want dead, that's just dumb.
YOLO Players are nothing new and not just new people. And everyone plays their own way.
My preference is to link every portal 5+ times, when fielding out an area, because it gives far more shielding and makes more work for the other team to knock down. So to me, it's annoying when someone comes along with an unhealthy obsession for linking every portal back to 2 and layering it all up, because two kills and the whole area is unlinked, and more often than not they've ignored 80% of the portals under those layers in order to use the spine.
Does it annoy me? Yes. Does it make me want to strangle someone? Nope. Because their very indefensible setup, by its very nature, will disappear soon enough when someone wanting AP sees it. It's far too juicy a target to be left alone, and then all I have to do is get in before the layer nut comes back, and throw enough fields to stop any layering until I can finish it all.
“My preference is to link every portal 5+ times, when fielding out an area”
@Perringaiden care to share a picture if this geometrically impossible linking pattern where *every portal* has 5 or more links?
@TeamWarez:
Care to share a picture of this geometrically impossible linking pattern where *every portal* has 5 or more links?
For the geometry, take a look at Triangular Tiling. For a collection portals amenable to that pattern, uh, I leave that as an exercise for the reader. 😅
Outer portals do not have 5 links.
That strikes me as a rather useless nitpick of the point that @Perringaiden was making. It's not difficult to imagine the style of fielding being described.
For me, if it shows it throws. Especially for keys I know will be useless to me otherwise.
Nitpick or not but I’m still interested in linking pattern where *every portal* has 5 links or more.
It’s possible on sphere, but let’s stay realistic and say we are not covering the whole Earth.
There is lots of ways to play. What I'm seeing is agents trying to define areas as "theirs" and percieved ownership causes more issues in this game than anything else (guardian badge being taken away was a relief).
Where I am, we have a couple of agents that do huge stacked multifields which are great in themselves, but if they are taken out, they are put up under 2 hours. Multiple players have given up because they can't play under these fields. Any agent of the same faction that takes them out are labelled traitors and bad agents. Any agent the blocks the lines are whinged about.
Ive taken them down myself a couple of times so that 4 'same faction' agents in the area can try to level up. Its frustrating for them. They shitlink when they can mainly because they just don't get enough actual play time to plan properly and the game just suffers from it all.