What got you hooked on Ingress?
in General
Lots of people are talking about all the things that drive them away from Ingress, but the reality is, in any endeavour, you take the good with the bad, and when the bad outweighs the good you stop. People complain that new releases don't fix the bad things, the pain points, etc, and that new 'features' don't do anything for them.
So what is the thing that made you say "I want to do this more!" when you first started playing.
Now for clarity, I don't mean "What keeps you playing now?" but what was it that gave you that first spark of realizing you wanted to get more into this random and unique game unlike any other.
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Comments
For me:
5 days after I started playing (back in 2013), I got pinged on COMM and asked if I wanted to come to a tropical island for a meetup. Said "Why not!" and then met up with 40+ people to build P8s and then sat back for a BBQ and people discussing the mechanics of this new game. Little did I know that others there were also planning a big field for a few weeks later.
The instant community was the first thing to get me hooked. The big field was the second to really drive the hook home.
First good impression was because of the local community. People teaching me stuff, constant flash farms, field arts, BAFs...
Next were standalone Mission Days. Once a quarter, we traveled to nearby cities for Mission Days. Met even more great people. Got to know the country better.
I loved doing a banner or two each time I'm in a new city.
After that, the anomaly in Kaunas. After which I regretted not participating in previous anomalies.
And then it all went downhill.
I dont know really.. i started play dec 2012.. i hardly knew much wasnt any portals at all... so interaction was kinda limited back then.. but it felt like i had a motivation to go out to play it since portals from home was not a thing back then lol.. uhad to actually walk alot to find those few portals that were live back then...
2012-13 not many ppl u saw with smartphones, it really felt like u played something really cool and secret not many realized what u were doing.. now today any random u see with a phone plays pogo lol... i miss the old days.....
Then years passed by and now i have played 8 years this year.... but sadly i have yet to been to any anomaly missionday etc...
Definitely the community...
Minutes after I deployed my first resonator, I was contacted on Comm and invited in the local Hangouts chat
The other people (complete strangers to me of all ages) invited me to join them in a nearby city where they would be destroying everything so I could build and earn AP and have a farm/drink afterwards.
Now almost 7 years later, I can call these random people my friends, regardless if they still play.
The first spark was exploration, and seeing things around me that I'd never noticed. December 2, 2013, on my annual trip to London to stuff myself with theatre. I'd just walked out of my last show and was sitting in Trafalgar Square, which I thought I knew like the back of my hand. I didn't feel like heading back to my hotel yet so I decided to install that Ingress game that my friends were playing. I remember hacking my first portal, the statue of the dude on a horse behind me, and realizing that I'd seen it a million times and never paid attention-- I knew it was some king but I'd never paid attention to it being King George IV.
I hacked another and found myself wondering why there was a statue of George Washington in the middle of London, and decided to look it up... it was a 20th century gift from the United States. Legend has it that some soil from Virginia was imported to sit underneath the statue because Washington swore he would never set foot on British soil again. I spent the next couple of hours wandering around the area simultaneously learning to play the game and learning about all of the things in the area I'd been overlooking for decades. The next day I flew home to California and spent a ridiculous amount of time leveling up and exploring my home area, discovering things I'd never paid attention to.
The second spark was a combination of strategy and creativity. I discovered that Ingress was a bit like playing chess on a giant board called the real world, but not really chess. The "moves" in Ingress are quite simple and generally unconstrained, but you can combine them to build things that are more complex. I started drawing and then building layered fields around my area, wherever I could find good options. I kept going, but my area expanded. And expanded.
The community is another thing that sucked me in, but that's adjacent to the game and not the game itself.
I came from PoGo (shock, horror), I was introduced to Ingress by a local agent that suggested I check it out since all the Pokestops were Portals. My initial interest was to purely map out the EX Raid portals and determine the methodology for EX Raid allocation. It took me a while to understand the game from on/off play over a couple of months and slowly it gained more interest than PoGo - which I felt was stagnating and losing it appeal. Thankfully Ingress had a great community, and actually rewarded exploration (which I love to do) as well as had a plethora of strategy involved. It grew from there and now Ingress is a real passion.
I still open up PoGo daily, primarily do the tasks. But I play more HPWU and have stopped playing Catan World Explorers simply because juggling four Niantic games is too much effort. Maybe I'll get back into Catan once HPWU is finished 100%. PoGo I don't care lol But no matter what, Ingress is the most fun and best of them all.
I just like tha idea of helping to build the game (submiting new poi, new pictures, editing names and description) and the hability to shape and dominate "my area". I started a few months before pokémon go release, just to see how it was going to be like, and never stoped since. I liked how it helped me to know my city better and meet new places (I literally coun't go anywhere without gps and was terrible in reconizing the landmarks to guide me).
I'm not a people person so the community was acctually one of the reasons that drove me off several times (I'm constantly geting in and off the strategic groups to do my solo game) but there was like 3 agents that I kept always in touch to coordinate some smaller plans.
Back then there was less people playing but there were more spread towards the city, so small actions mattered. Now everybody just plays alone on their neighborhoods (when not alone they're multiaccounting).
I have always liked looking at maps, finding interesting things on the map, and exploring. I used to pack the kids in the car and just visit somewhere new without much of a plan.
When I was inttroduced to Ingress I realized that this was a game made for doing what I already liked doing. Now the first thing I do before visiting anywhere or going on holiday is to have a good look at the intel map for the place.
Me personally, I played it first to get portal nominations, but found the tactical aspect to be appealing, then I discovered how, let just say, entitled the other team were, how easy they were having it (and were trying g to run the game) and decided I enjoyed sticking it to them as much as possible
Still not sure if I'm actually hooked, lol. I think I'm hooked on the idea of what "used to be." The stories about BAFs, ops in the middle of the night and all of that is super appealing to me, yet, I've never experienced any of that and I think the allure of that is what keeps me playing. I'm afraid I've missed the boat though, at least in my area...
Ingress marries two of my hobbies. LARPing and public transportation in a nice package so that hooked me in.
Originally, it was the 'get out and move' encouragement that got me out playing.
Eventually this turned into meeting straight resistance men, many of whom were unhappy with their family lives, and flip-carding them to my 'team'.
Unfortunately, due to the ongoing pandemic, I'm on a year-long dry spell eagerly awaiting a vaccine so I can get back to my man-snatching activities - watch out resistance ladies!
Back in 2009 a friend of mine and I were discussing an idea for an Augmented Reality game, after doing some rough guesses into costs involved realized that it was way outside of our scope to proceed.
Ingress had the story, aesthetics and gameplay that made it resonate with me.
I had prior to Ingress, moved away from Magic the Gathering in late 2012, as the card game opponents/friends were all male, and that wasn't mentally healthy. Late January 2013 I finally managed to jump into the public beta.
Didn't know about communites, and just wandered around the cbd getting what little AP I could several days a week. Bumped into a fellow player and the community grew.
The app crashed profusely, mobile I had (Galaxy s3) died in less than 2 hours. Around March I heard about external batteries, which had tiny capacities and ridiculously expensive. So I saved up what I could and bought one. I still have it, though it is mostly redundant now.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2015/03/31/pac-man-invades-ingress-and-google-maps-as-google-gets-april-fools-started-a-little-early/
To put it simply, family and community. @SapphireKat and I were introduced to the game by a family member visiting from the UK in May 2014. He taught us the very basics and we went around playing until he went back across the pond.
Two months later, we (not intentionally) moved to a city which was almost entirely a Resistance farm. The community got in touch with us right away and we met for pizza. There were about a dozen other teammates there. So we ended up getting in the car with these people we had just met and our caravan moved through the city. I was in awe of how many Level 8 portals I was seeing on my scanner and we were given a tour of all the "spots" as we went. At the end of the night, we got dropped off at our car and two teammates topped off our inventories with gear.
Another thing our new teammates had been mentioning that night was an anomaly (what's that?) coming to our city in September. It was a quick transition from learning the ropes in a new city to being assigned to a team, preparing for and doing my part at Helios. We ended up crushing the Enlightened that day and had a blast hanging with our new friends at the afterparty. From that point, I was hooked.
Don't wait for someone else to make the plans then. In my area, the bafs and planning for bafs is dominated by new players. It is definitely one of the best parts of Ingress, so go have a good look at the intel map and come up with a plan!
I've done a few larger ones solo. But you're right, no reason I can't go bigger and see who is down! Thanks
Started my Ingress journey only a year ago, initially as a way to help with nominating pokestops. Over the year as my enjoyment of PoGo has waned I have become more focused on Ingress.
I find myself actually reading the descriptions of the more interesting portals and actively wanting to improve the quality of the portals in my local area. It is quite suprising to discover the rich cultural history in my local area that I normally would just walk by without a second thought or glance.
What was it that gave you that first spark of realizing you wanted to get more into this random and unique game unlike any other.
The Ingress Report, which I commented on long ago, was certainly one of the early sparks, if not the first one.
The other early spark was the map. I liked taking walks, and the map and gameplay provided me with a sense of direction and purpose.
4 years ago, a friend asked me for my cell phone, to be able to download an app and check something ... Without knowing I agreed, after doing so he gave it back to me, when I got home I saw the ingress application I tried to enter to find out what it was, I read The introduction gave me a very good impression, I investigated and got to observe the story of ingress on YouTube and that made me think that it was something mysterious and intriguing. I captured my first portals and went up to level 6 alone. However one day I was about to attack some portals of a resistance agent, when the scanner became neutral, I discovered my friend and he discovered me as a new agent, a few days later they invited me to accompany him and I met Another agent, we talked like old friends, although I did not know him, we arrived at a distant portal, on the beach, it was the farthest from the city, they set moods and agreed, they gave me a key and told me to send the link to that key. It turned out that it was a planned operation and a field was formed linking Mexico-Cuba-Costa Rica. Operation Jaguar. And there I was completely hooked on ingress, for my friends.