Playing under lockdown - a suggestion to stop the game dying

photofitzphotofitz ✭✭
edited March 2021 in General

Obviously different country's laws will differ, but here in the UK while the lockdown rules persist we aren't allowed by law to travel from home other than on foot. Essentially travel is allowed, but Ingress doesn't count, despite what some of us may think. 🙂

The restrictions mean that if you find yourself under a large field, you can do nothing about it. Travel to take down the corners is forbidden by law. The net result is that any new players immediately find that they can't play. They can't even complete the tutorial.

I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few months and it occurred to me that a simple solution to this would be to prevent links from being created if they are more than 3km in length. That's long enough to get your MU count, but walkable in an hour to put up or take down, keeping the game alive.

What do you think?

Comments

  • NaruwasherNaruwasher ✭✭✭✭✭

    3 km limit on links? If I were to make a field covering a 3km area, I would barely get about 1000-2000 MUs. Not all cities reward MUs like some of the more densely populated cities do. More importantly, this would completely destroy the BAF aspect of the game, which forms (one of) the basis of several community strengthening exercises in many regions.

    On a completely different note, one always has the option to skip the training if they want to, and just proceed to figuring out the game by poking around, reading up on the internet, or reaching out to the local community for doubts and any questions they may have.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm afraid this restrictions mean nothing to Ingress, the same way restricted areas mean nothing to Niantic. The only difference is now those restricted areas are waaaaay bigger.

    About the suggestion, 3km is nothing for a MU counter. I can tell places with 100% land coverage awarding less that 200 MU for 5 km links field.

    What I suggest is a way to get those fields destroyed, like some NPC that gets chances to neutralizing a portal with a probability based on the size of the fields it's holding.

  • KhatreKhatre ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021

    in some place the nearest portals are more than 3km apart.

    but i agree about boring perma field.


    increasing decay with link age or Mu size would be nice maybe ?

    Post edited by Khatre on
  • As a standard game rule, this would destroy the game.

    During a pandemic...it'd still have serious negatives for the game.

    The problem is that if you can't go out, then how does the field get thrown in the first place. And if you can go out and throw fields, how come you can't go out and take them down. In the places where people are going from portal to portal to build big fields, people can travel. In the places where people can't travel, people aren't creating big fields.

    The pandemic has affected different areas differently, and I know that half the players in my local area could not throw a link less than 3kms without travelling into a town, which is precisely what we don't want to happen right now, if they don't need to.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    First of, the enl in my area literally don't care about the laws in place just now, I know an enl.player who drove a nearly 35 mile round trip, because his "local area" was 4.8 miles from the anchor, again, ignoring the fact he had to drive 17 miles there and quite miles back


    But ignoring that, 3km is nothing, like, thats not even a long walk, ive walked an hour to play, all within the law, and that took me 6km, so by that I wouldn't have been able to do my fields which were all done within guidelines


    Plus, its pretty clear that niantic dont really care about the laws so long as no one gets hurt, how many stories are there out and about of people doing completely stupid and illegal things to get a baf up?

  • Drone 2.0 with the ability to more then just hack, when?

  • InvestigateXMInvestigateXM ✭✭✭✭✭

    Never, hopefully. Drones are a nice addition, and they can be expanded, but under no circumstances should they replace being at the portal in any way. Adding new gameplay loops or features exclusive to the drone is fine, like letting it travel along a link, but having it make human interactions like destroy, deploy, link or field is basically the same as spoofing.

  • ZeroHecksGivenZeroHecksGiven ✭✭✭✭✭

    Sounds like a great opportunity to work with agents in your community to get them taken down and possibly block them. I know that's easier said than done, but maybe planning some sort of op to not only take them down, but place a series of blocking links could be what it takes to tackle a BAF covering your area...

  • Which is a great idea, if anyone lives within walking distance of one of the corners. If they don't, the only way to deal with it is to break the law and risk incurring a fine.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Again, will depend on the area, literally today that same person who decided a 35 mile round trip was OK also decided it was OK to get on 2 busses to cross local areas to hit the spine of big fields in my area (that has 2 active agents and 3 ritered agents in the area anyway) again, not a single guideline backs him doing that, he just doesn't care, and his team don't say a word about it and have a feeling they encourage it. Team dependent, apparently winning the cycle matters more than incurring fines

  • ZeroHecksGivenZeroHecksGiven ✭✭✭✭✭

    I read that one needs a "reasonable excuse" to be out and about. So, on the evening of the 12th, every agent of your faction just happens to need to run to the store for toilet paper. And then you pulled over to use your phone safely because you don't play ingress while driving. I know when our lockdown was more strict, I felt comfortable hitting a few portals to and from the grocery store or work. I'm not sure how it is for you.

    Actually, I just looked at the intel map for your area and I get why you might be frustrated. Not sure if you're in contact with those agents to the south or south east, but it's only a 15-20 minute drive. Swap a couple keys and then have someone flip that anchor, you three agents send up some blocking links and it buys you a little bit of time. Maybe even the agent to your east with those fields.

    Good luck. hopefully restrictions ease up in your area soon.

  • Drone is a nice way to people in loockdown dont lose the "Sojouner" streak... Hope never be more then that

  • Drone can be expanded to other ideas, definitely. What it shouldn't do is replicate more in-person actions.

  • my more then that i'm talking about replicate in-person actions

    Drone can do exclusive things, but never replace human things...

    in my point of view off course... nia can think different

  • I would love to witness "Drone V Drone" combat 😁

    Other ideas are things like items you can hack which will 'power up' a drone to make a much larger jump. Sort of like seeing the map in Link view instead of player view, but one time use. Then you have to hack another before you can make a big jump.

  • Thanks, but I wasn't so much citing my own case, as much as the principle in general.

    A few weeks ago I got in the car and broke the law to take down two corners of the field. Within two days it was back up. That's not an issue for me, assuming the people involved worked as a team of the to achieve it.

    My point is why allow a situation whereby that is a problem under these exceptional circumstances?

    Limiting link length is a simple solution, technically; much simpler than exponentially expediting decay, for example, where counters would need to reset every time a new link was thrown to the same portal.

    Shortening decay might help but also might tempt people to travel to re-throw. Limiting link length would remove that temptation.

    One last point regarding BAFs. I know people like to throw them, but I'm proposing a short term change, not a permanent one. It took me two years to gain my first million MU and one night to add my next 3 million, so I've seen it from both sides.

  • Limiting link length is a simple solution, technically;

    Thanks to the law of unintended consequences however, "simple solutions" often have far reaching and damaging consequences. I'd suggest that this is one of those cases for the reasons people have brought up above.

    Simple doesn't always mean good.

    e.g. The simplest way to "Stop all spoofers" is turn off the servers. But it's not a solution where the good outweighs the horrible.

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