Virtual IFS abuse and why it needs to be addressed

InerasIneras ✭✭✭
edited November 2021 in General

This thread picks up on accusations of virtual IFS abuse in Korea from 2020. Previous allegations were met with hesitance because proof of collusion was lacking. Now we have 17 months of data. There are still many steps that need to be taken both by Niantic and the community. First, a recap and an update of the goings-on.


For more than a year, ENL agent **** and RES agent **** have been traveling together with their coterie to cities other than where First Saturday events were held to engage in win-trading. There is no room to doubt collusion when they appear in different parts of the country at the same time and perform the same actions in a coordinated manner. They even take the same breaks to build up farm portals to restock. What is problematic is the fact that these incidents occurred in cities that were not hosting IFS. The farthest city was 300km away, which is the distance between N.Y.C. and Boston, or London and Brussels—take a moment to think about how absurd it would be for a team of agents to sign up for an IFS event in the U.K. and to win-trade in Belgium.


They were clearly aware of the criticism and adjusted the time they spent win-trading. As recently as the March 2021 IFS, they began at 1:20 p.m. and indulged until 7:30 p.m. Since then they adhere to the standard measurement window. The whole point of virtual events was to give agents a shared Ingress experience in this time of a pandemic in the safety of their homes. Did the party in question stay home? No. They chose random sites, sometimes traveling more than an hour away from their town, skirting local social distancing rules. Therefore, it comes down to whether win-trading is a sanctioned act when it takes place far away from a host city.


If you are still unconvinced there was collusion, consider the following case. These agents are involved in cross-faction portal upgrades all year long. Put simply, a RES agent goes around flipping ENL portals so that their green friends can have L8 farms. A full list of portals and perpetrators can be shared here upon request. The same player publicly asked a new RES agent to change factions to protect their clique. Their go-to response on COMM is that they interpret the rules differently and wish to pursue a “peaceful” gameplay. Such an argument would make sense if there were a truce, but actively abetting in win-trading is a totally separate matter. This is the cabal that travels together all the time, even for virtual events during a pandemic.


What now? A small group of players engaging in petty stats abuse would not have received such a reaction had it not been for a high-profile agent who supposedly claims to help new agents. They have leveraged their position to mislead others and to sow discord by citing a former Niantic employee and exploiting loopholes. To give a few examples, "recursion is a sign that Niantic wishes to break down the barrier between factions," and "they can't ban players for breaching the Terms of Service because they're afraid of lawsuits." Niantic should update their Terms of Service which was last modified in May 2019. The IFS page under Support/Ingress Events/ has yet to see any new information since virtual events became the norm. An additional paragraph or two addressing rules will certainly go a long way. Let's not let misinformation take over Ingress.


For those of you who have made it this far, please share your thoughts.

Post edited by NianticVK on

Comments

  • good job!!

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    17 months since the first reports? Either you are all lying or Niantic does not care at all.

    Win-trade is cheating, but is it even cheating if it gets no sanctioning?

    Posting this in the forum is ok, but if you really want to push Niantic to do something you should be posting things in public, like Twitter or Reddit. 😊

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2021

    I have a slightly cynical take on this...

    Isn't the pre-pandemic IFS essentially a sanctioned win-trading event? The whole purpose of it is to go out and have a bunch of skirmishes with the other faction, with competitions for specific stats IIRC. And socializing, of course, but the Ingress gameplay seems to generally be about personal stats and using the other faction to boost them.

    And yes, I acknowledge that this is a hot take and will be somewhat controversial. I also haven't attended an IFS because when I saw that the focus was on personal stats and leveling up I wasn't interested. I'm not saying playing for AP and stats is bad, it's just not my cuppa.

    Post edited by Hosette on
  • MirthmakerMirthmaker ✭✭✭✭

    FS pre-covid was exclusively about unique hack/capture, meet and greet with others you've only seen as names on Intel, and afters.

    Anything else is a bonus.

    That a cabal is clearly abusing the setup is a problem that must be addressed.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    What are they doing exactly? Are they playing in the same area like a physical FS would? The store still sells loadouts every FS weekend as if they were physical meetings.

    I'm just trying to understand the issue here because if they have been attempting to play like a physical FS meeting - pandemic or no pandemic, it seems minor but I would like to be proven wrong here.

    There's people who still scrap passcodes from the IFS chatrooms for the 10 powercubes and media which has left some towns not being able to redeem them for their own use.

  • KonnTowerKonnTower ✭✭✭✭✭

    It you want an example of real win trading and ifs abuse, take a look at NYC.

    The two agents who run it are captainkidd and pi(3.14xxxxx). Both players are historically res agents, though now the two of them win trade fields off a portal called "pi mural" in NYC. Kidd has over one billion AP from this. They run both the enl and res side of the NYC first Saturday, plus they flip flop between green/blue constantly. When we had an anomaly in NYC recently, they used green accounts to junk mod portals so res could capture them easier. By them controlling the NYC FS, they have locked the real ENL out of having any say over the time/date/location of first Saturdays.


    This is far and above what you're talking about in this thread of two people win trading AP at FS events. Niantic hasn't stopped the abuse for the top FS event in the united States, what makes you think they'll look into this?

  • InerasIneras ✭✭✭

    You raise excellent points.


    The store still sells FS loadouts to make money and because no one bothered to ask why they are needed during a pandemic when Fev Games changed formats. The continued appearance of loadout kits should not be construed as an encouragement to go out. If anything, I see it as inertia.


    Assuming the group in question wanted to play it like a pre-pandemic on-site event, shouldn't they have physically been in the host city at the designated portal?

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    You answered the question, if they wanted to still make a physical FS meeting - they could have done so in their own local area to not violate restrictions with the pandemic. It's hard to really gather the situation of the restrictions as it has changed based on country, municipality, length of restrictions, the exact limitations that the restrictions enforced, etc - this might be where it's hard for Niantic to enforce specifically.

    Again, I'm only stating this as I don't know the full details and looking at this from an outsider. I'm stating these questions to help facilitate discussion.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    If they wintrade only during IFS, i would say let it go. If they are wintrading and bumping outside of IFS then yeah, wintrading.

    Niantic do on occasion issue bans even on days of IFS events. We had some super high stats subbed for a IFS and both got banned. (I think from memory they persisted longer than the event).

    That said, I've reported wintraders a number of times without luck on ban. (Outside of IFS).

  • niantic doesn't enforce anything.

    for this to be partially solved, item exchanging between factions needs to be cut and jarvis / ada to neutralize the portal instead of changing its faction without any cooldown. that would leave players that play for the other faction without some of their main advantages

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hrm no on portal neutralise. They useful for bumping portals within when no battle beacons.

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