that is almost impossible, spoofers would be ideal if it was automatic the whole thing on suspicious behaviour but that needs a very good anti-cheat system that works in realtime.
- Rollback of MU counts after removal of spoofing fields?
- Prompt assistance in sending a spoofing report, as well as prompt removal of the consequences of spoofing?
- Ability to declare your OPS for additional immediate support and protection against spoofing during the OPS? (agree, nowadays OPS are not that frequent, but very important for communities)
- Assigning unique numbers to portal keys and tracking those keys in flagrant cases of violations?
- Open records and logs of agent actions, visible to all, to simplify collection of information to prove spoofing?
- Google "Ingress/Pokemon Go JZS spoofing" to find out and stop new methods of spoofing?
I regularly notice that the <NianticThia> account does this now, at least it removes spoofing actions over Russia. Of course thank her for that, and glad she cares. But the linking by spoofers goes to the same portal, can't you check who and where are the keys to this portal, and ban all zero and suspicious accounts that have keys to this portal, take care once and save yourself and the players from this problem in the future.
There are not many places where spoofing thrives regularly and has a big scope. It is possible to strain yourself and manually solve problems in locations from which such messages are regularly received.
There's a thread about Seoul right here. Clearly a gross violation of the TOC. Is it impossible to devote a few hours of work time to deal with this cheater, delete all his twinks, etc.
If Niantic had dealt with this cheater in Seoul, I think the forum members would have been very happy with the problem solved and a report about it, and the players' attitude towards Niantic would have been better.
Nia isn't clearly developing tech support, it's in a terrible state. It's like stopping to clean your house. If you don't clean, there will be a lot of dirt, and you will have to sweat to get everything in order. But if you keep your house in order all the time, it's not a big deal, and it won't take a lot of time. It's exactly the same here, you have to work - that's the key to success in any business.
Look everyone, we've suggested tons of monetising ways over the years and even simple ones like a memento key cap have been ignored.
The key reason the game still has the players it does, is local and international communities. If these stopped, particpation would plummet. We actively encourage players to take part in events, pub farms and have a role in onboarding new players to the community.
You want to fix the game? Replace the manager and hire a proper community manager.
From the core values section of Niantic's careers site:
"
Weather storms.
We won’t always succeed, and that’s OK. When we fail, we look for how to improve, not who to blame.
"
At the core of the company, they seem to allow mistake after mistake. There has to be a balance with accountability. There is currently a disconnect. Too much leniency. But, we're not privy to their financials as a business unit, so it's hard to judge how well they're doing given the resources available.
Considering they fired 80+ people, canceled 5 projects, wasted $millions on a useless crypto startup and shoving IAP into every UI element, either they don't have money or they have no control over their investors who are twisting their nuts for more profits.
As you have written, of course, Ingress is different in nature from Pokémon GO and is usually played much more independently than Pokémon GO.
There are no raid battles in Ingress.
But at the same time, it is not compatible with decentralized events. These should be improved.
(Something else called Anomaly in February and March was the worst, calling a 2vs5 matchup anomaly was too much to ask)
Specifically, the Hexathlon, which was virtually never held due to the COVID-19 infestation.
It is a points race between individuals, not between camps.
This can successfully neutralize the anomaly of excessive confrontation between camps.
And it would bring a different aspect to Ingress than an anomaly that would induce player fatigue if held monthly, or a mission day that would eliminate players' travel expenses if held weekly.
Also, the top players can tickle players' self-esteem by posting their scores, and the play logs will be active.
And, like the Anomaly Medal, selling cool medals to agents who participated in Hexathlon as proof of participation would provide a certain improvement in financial terms.
Perhaps a format similar to buying a ticket for attending a community day in Pokémon GO would be a good idea.
- Open records and logs of agent actions, visible to all, to simplify collection of information to prove spoofing?
Why? Players should not have the complete activity of every other player, for massive privacy violations. NIANTIC has all this information and when an item is reported, they can review it. If they do nothing with all the information, you pointing at the same information will do no better.
Exposing our private information because you want to play incompetent policeman is a horrible idea and a great way to turn new players away.
To be fair, it feels like a lot of the tickets are closed without anyone actually reviewing anything. Recently was at a station that was removed; the map was still a portal, but removed. Streetview was updated and I created a photosphere.
The 'invalid portal report' was rejected within 24 hours, stating the portal should remain. They don't want to improve the portal network or something; or maybe quantity > quality?
There are many new things in other games. Big updates are coming out all the time, stores are bursting with goods, and new players not only stay in the game for many years, but also bring other players. And we have the same thing for several years, with small changes and a bunch of imperfections.
Actually, Niantic has a lot more information about you because they know where you are whenever you make a call like "Tell me what is around me" so having your app open tells them a lot more than what you see on Intel, and players are capable of hiding their movement.
Exposing all of the additional information would expose operations, movements, people's homes and work locations, etc.
If what you mean is "Allow us to see more than 30 days" I don't really see the point, but if you're that desperate to play policeman, there's more dubious trackers that Niantic hasn't found and killed, out there.
So let them use this information, since they have it. Let them conduct normal investigations at least in areas where spoofing flourishes.
It is clear to a fool that if an account is new, but suddenly starts to build awesome fields in remote areas, then this account is suspicious.
When writing a report on a spoof account, you need to give evidence, and to do this you need to find this evidence. Who, when, where.
Moments such as:
- The agent took over the portal.
- Agent made a link
- Agent took down a portal.
That's enough to see that, for example, you can't physically move between two portals in a small amount of time.
Intel is glowing as it is, you can see that, but you start cracking it all open, you're immediately charged with scrambling.
The same goes for photos of agents with twins who have 2 or more phones. In general access such photos are not posted, only to Niantic tech support, not in general access, but nevertheless this is also a violation, and therefore it is virtually impossible to prove to Niantic that the person uses twinks.
And Niantic himself clearly does not want to do this.
So let them use this information, since they have it. Let them conduct normal investigations at least in areas where spoofing flourishes.
That's the point.
Exposing our privacy will not change Niantic's behavior, because they have all the information. If they're not going to act on it, us knowing won't make them act on it. Until Niantic extracts a digit from a dark place, and does more detection and disciplinary work, no matter how much information we have, it won't change things.
There are niantic community days where lots of pokémon go players and a handful of ingress players converge - if the event hosts tents were stocked with some ingress stuff as well as pokemon go stuff there would be people who having enjoyed pokemon go would give ingress a try. I was disappointed to find nothing at London's south bank niantic tent on community day, it felt like niantic aren't investing in ingress any more
This has been suggested the last 4 or 5 times they've done them. Seems to be falling on deaf ears unfortunately. I find it hard to believe that ANYONE would find that a waste of time or money, but apparently there is either too much cost or effort and I'm left to believe they must have better plans for getting Ingress in front of people.. Maybe plushie hunts on twitter is what the kids are into these days...
Well, we don't want to cram ourselves into a situation like Pokémon GO where we are forced to digest tasks, but the first thing we need to do is to enhance the official Ingress events.
I have first-hand experience as to why I think this is important.
In Japan, we managed to surround Japan with a BAF aimed at helping the then underdog ENL team win at the Darsana Tokyo Anomaly.
This was a hot topic at the time, trending on Twitter, and many Ingress players were born. (I was one of them.)
This expansion of the player population continued until the Aegis Nova Tokyo anomaly.
At that time, about 15,000 agents attended the anomaly, which was held only in Tokyo.
This continued until the VIA LUX and VIA NOIR annomaries that followed.
However, Niantic was so preoccupied with the Pokémon GO issue at the time that it did not take any new action on Ingress for about a year after that. (In Japan, there was a decoding event at the end of the year and a Global Shard the following spring, but unfortunately, only a few agents were able to enjoy these events.)
The Darsana anomaly to the VIA NOIR anomaly was held quarterly.
After that, however, it is approximately every year.
It is safe to say that we left it almost without any regular events.
This makes players lose interest.
During this time, a good percentage of Ingress players left Ingress because they could not maintain the tension.
Outside of Japan, Ingress may have been just a cyberpunk and maniacal game.
But by doing this, they lost themselves a good fan base.
Such marketing and management mistakes should not be made.
The Niantic Community Day should be held to promote Ingress and the event with this in mind.
In this case, I would recommend Mission Day, Second Sunday, or Hexathlon over Anomaly.
A Monthly Challenge would be even better.
It is best to have a medal with a cool design that serves as proof of participation.
But on top of that, it is good for Pokémon GO and Pikmin Bloom players to get interested in Ingress and start with Community Day.
However, many Ingress agents are aware that there is a problem with many Pokémon GO players having multiple accounts. We are concerned that some people have completely different values than Ingress agents on that point.
It is also cheating and I would like Niantic to encourage them to resolve this issue with a system that is not the CAL system.
I would expect the Ingress team's marketing staff to do that.
Also, in this regard, I personally believe that we don't need to have portals or sponsor items.
I would rather have sponsors that help us have a great experience in the real world.
So I would like to see a major travel agency, airline alliance, or railroad company become one.
For example, if Star Alliance were to sponsor Ingress, it might be a great experience for both worlds if you could get a Very Rare Link amp if you purchased a round-trip ticket and hotel package from an Alliance member airline such as United, Lufthansa, and All Nippon Airways.
Well, the Very Rare Link Amp is a joke, but Pokémon GO has begun to provide clear real-world benefits to sponsors (purchasing sponsors' products is the key to redeeming items and tickets).
How much funding did Ingress actually get out of "sponsors"? We still have Softbank (at least the name hasn't changed but that may simply be laziness on the Devs part), but otherwise, the others fell away and left us with overpowered mods that unbalanced the game in many ways, Quantum Capsules being the most egregious example.
Comments
that is almost impossible, spoofers would be ideal if it was automatic the whole thing on suspicious behaviour but that needs a very good anti-cheat system that works in realtime.
- Normal tech support?
- Rollback of MU counts after removal of spoofing fields?
- Prompt assistance in sending a spoofing report, as well as prompt removal of the consequences of spoofing?
- Ability to declare your OPS for additional immediate support and protection against spoofing during the OPS? (agree, nowadays OPS are not that frequent, but very important for communities)
- Assigning unique numbers to portal keys and tracking those keys in flagrant cases of violations?
- Open records and logs of agent actions, visible to all, to simplify collection of information to prove spoofing?
- Google "Ingress/Pokemon Go JZS spoofing" to find out and stop new methods of spoofing?
I regularly notice that the <NianticThia> account does this now, at least it removes spoofing actions over Russia. Of course thank her for that, and glad she cares. But the linking by spoofers goes to the same portal, can't you check who and where are the keys to this portal, and ban all zero and suspicious accounts that have keys to this portal, take care once and save yourself and the players from this problem in the future.
There are not many places where spoofing thrives regularly and has a big scope. It is possible to strain yourself and manually solve problems in locations from which such messages are regularly received.
There's a thread about Seoul right here. Clearly a gross violation of the TOC. Is it impossible to devote a few hours of work time to deal with this cheater, delete all his twinks, etc.
If Niantic had dealt with this cheater in Seoul, I think the forum members would have been very happy with the problem solved and a report about it, and the players' attitude towards Niantic would have been better.
Nia isn't clearly developing tech support, it's in a terrible state. It's like stopping to clean your house. If you don't clean, there will be a lot of dirt, and you will have to sweat to get everything in order. But if you keep your house in order all the time, it's not a big deal, and it won't take a lot of time. It's exactly the same here, you have to work - that's the key to success in any business.
Look everyone, we've suggested tons of monetising ways over the years and even simple ones like a memento key cap have been ignored.
The key reason the game still has the players it does, is local and international communities. If these stopped, particpation would plummet. We actively encourage players to take part in events, pub farms and have a role in onboarding new players to the community.
You want to fix the game? Replace the manager and hire a proper community manager.
From the core values section of Niantic's careers site:
"
Weather storms.
We won’t always succeed, and that’s OK. When we fail, we look for how to improve, not who to blame.
"
At the core of the company, they seem to allow mistake after mistake. There has to be a balance with accountability. There is currently a disconnect. Too much leniency. But, we're not privy to their financials as a business unit, so it's hard to judge how well they're doing given the resources available.
Yeah our company has a no blame culture as well. Doesn't mean that poor performance is tolerated.
Considering they fired 80+ people, canceled 5 projects, wasted $millions on a useless crypto startup and shoving IAP into every UI element, either they don't have money or they have no control over their investors who are twisting their nuts for more profits.
The crypto things just facepalmy.
As you have written, of course, Ingress is different in nature from Pokémon GO and is usually played much more independently than Pokémon GO.
There are no raid battles in Ingress.
But at the same time, it is not compatible with decentralized events. These should be improved.
(Something else called Anomaly in February and March was the worst, calling a 2vs5 matchup anomaly was too much to ask)
Specifically, the Hexathlon, which was virtually never held due to the COVID-19 infestation.
It is a points race between individuals, not between camps.
This can successfully neutralize the anomaly of excessive confrontation between camps.
And it would bring a different aspect to Ingress than an anomaly that would induce player fatigue if held monthly, or a mission day that would eliminate players' travel expenses if held weekly.
Also, the top players can tickle players' self-esteem by posting their scores, and the play logs will be active.
And, like the Anomaly Medal, selling cool medals to agents who participated in Hexathlon as proof of participation would provide a certain improvement in financial terms.
Perhaps a format similar to buying a ticket for attending a community day in Pokémon GO would be a good idea.
Would you be happy to shut yourself down after playing what you think is a great Ingress game.
Or are you a kid who wants someone else to decide when to quit?
If you are a kid, log into Ingress with your PTC or Niantic Kids account, not your Google account.
- Open records and logs of agent actions, visible to all, to simplify collection of information to prove spoofing?
Why? Players should not have the complete activity of every other player, for massive privacy violations. NIANTIC has all this information and when an item is reported, they can review it. If they do nothing with all the information, you pointing at the same information will do no better.
Exposing our private information because you want to play incompetent policeman is a horrible idea and a great way to turn new players away.
It's all lit up in Intel anyway, who took what portals, etc., but in a very inconvenient format for collecting evidence of spoofing
To be fair, it feels like a lot of the tickets are closed without anyone actually reviewing anything. Recently was at a station that was removed; the map was still a portal, but removed. Streetview was updated and I created a photosphere.
The 'invalid portal report' was rejected within 24 hours, stating the portal should remain. They don't want to improve the portal network or something; or maybe quantity > quality?
There are many new things in other games. Big updates are coming out all the time, stores are bursting with goods, and new players not only stay in the game for many years, but also bring other players. And we have the same thing for several years, with small changes and a bunch of imperfections.
Actually, Niantic has a lot more information about you because they know where you are whenever you make a call like "Tell me what is around me" so having your app open tells them a lot more than what you see on Intel, and players are capable of hiding their movement.
Exposing all of the additional information would expose operations, movements, people's homes and work locations, etc.
If what you mean is "Allow us to see more than 30 days" I don't really see the point, but if you're that desperate to play policeman, there's more dubious trackers that Niantic hasn't found and killed, out there.
So let them use this information, since they have it. Let them conduct normal investigations at least in areas where spoofing flourishes.
It is clear to a fool that if an account is new, but suddenly starts to build awesome fields in remote areas, then this account is suspicious.
When writing a report on a spoof account, you need to give evidence, and to do this you need to find this evidence. Who, when, where.
Moments such as:
- The agent took over the portal.
- Agent made a link
- Agent took down a portal.
That's enough to see that, for example, you can't physically move between two portals in a small amount of time.
Intel is glowing as it is, you can see that, but you start cracking it all open, you're immediately charged with scrambling.
The same goes for photos of agents with twins who have 2 or more phones. In general access such photos are not posted, only to Niantic tech support, not in general access, but nevertheless this is also a violation, and therefore it is virtually impossible to prove to Niantic that the person uses twinks.
And Niantic himself clearly does not want to do this.
And about the house/work, I think everyone knows this about everyone within their towns/areas. ))))
So let them use this information, since they have it. Let them conduct normal investigations at least in areas where spoofing flourishes.
That's the point.
Exposing our privacy will not change Niantic's behavior, because they have all the information. If they're not going to act on it, us knowing won't make them act on it. Until Niantic extracts a digit from a dark place, and does more detection and disciplinary work, no matter how much information we have, it won't change things.
Oh, that's it! :)
this point means to legalize IITC. Everyone uses it anyway, including Nia herself. :))
Does that make more sense? :)
There are niantic community days where lots of pokémon go players and a handful of ingress players converge - if the event hosts tents were stocked with some ingress stuff as well as pokemon go stuff there would be people who having enjoyed pokemon go would give ingress a try. I was disappointed to find nothing at London's south bank niantic tent on community day, it felt like niantic aren't investing in ingress any more
agree feels more of a niantic day
This has been suggested the last 4 or 5 times they've done them. Seems to be falling on deaf ears unfortunately. I find it hard to believe that ANYONE would find that a waste of time or money, but apparently there is either too much cost or effort and I'm left to believe they must have better plans for getting Ingress in front of people.. Maybe plushie hunts on twitter is what the kids are into these days...
Well, we don't want to cram ourselves into a situation like Pokémon GO where we are forced to digest tasks, but the first thing we need to do is to enhance the official Ingress events.
I have first-hand experience as to why I think this is important.
In Japan, we managed to surround Japan with a BAF aimed at helping the then underdog ENL team win at the Darsana Tokyo Anomaly.
This was a hot topic at the time, trending on Twitter, and many Ingress players were born. (I was one of them.)
This expansion of the player population continued until the Aegis Nova Tokyo anomaly.
At that time, about 15,000 agents attended the anomaly, which was held only in Tokyo.
This continued until the VIA LUX and VIA NOIR annomaries that followed.
However, Niantic was so preoccupied with the Pokémon GO issue at the time that it did not take any new action on Ingress for about a year after that. (In Japan, there was a decoding event at the end of the year and a Global Shard the following spring, but unfortunately, only a few agents were able to enjoy these events.)
The Darsana anomaly to the VIA NOIR anomaly was held quarterly.
After that, however, it is approximately every year.
It is safe to say that we left it almost without any regular events.
This makes players lose interest.
During this time, a good percentage of Ingress players left Ingress because they could not maintain the tension.
Outside of Japan, Ingress may have been just a cyberpunk and maniacal game.
But by doing this, they lost themselves a good fan base.
Such marketing and management mistakes should not be made.
The Niantic Community Day should be held to promote Ingress and the event with this in mind.
In this case, I would recommend Mission Day, Second Sunday, or Hexathlon over Anomaly.
A Monthly Challenge would be even better.
It is best to have a medal with a cool design that serves as proof of participation.
But on top of that, it is good for Pokémon GO and Pikmin Bloom players to get interested in Ingress and start with Community Day.
However, many Ingress agents are aware that there is a problem with many Pokémon GO players having multiple accounts. We are concerned that some people have completely different values than Ingress agents on that point.
It is also cheating and I would like Niantic to encourage them to resolve this issue with a system that is not the CAL system.
Make the game preloaded bloatware on Samsung and iphones
They tried that with Motorola. It didn't really work.
"it felt like niantic aren't investing in ingress any more"
The Founders Union echoes this sentiment.
It's also important to find a new sponsor.
I would expect the Ingress team's marketing staff to do that.
Also, in this regard, I personally believe that we don't need to have portals or sponsor items.
I would rather have sponsors that help us have a great experience in the real world.
So I would like to see a major travel agency, airline alliance, or railroad company become one.
For example, if Star Alliance were to sponsor Ingress, it might be a great experience for both worlds if you could get a Very Rare Link amp if you purchased a round-trip ticket and hotel package from an Alliance member airline such as United, Lufthansa, and All Nippon Airways.
Well, the Very Rare Link Amp is a joke, but Pokémon GO has begun to provide clear real-world benefits to sponsors (purchasing sponsors' products is the key to redeeming items and tickets).
Ingress will need a similar initiative.
How much funding did Ingress actually get out of "sponsors"? We still have Softbank (at least the name hasn't changed but that may simply be laziness on the Devs part), but otherwise, the others fell away and left us with overpowered mods that unbalanced the game in many ways, Quantum Capsules being the most egregious example.
As I said, I am not a member of the Ingress team, so I don't know how much the sponsorship is.
And you, as an ambassador, are in a better position to know than I am.
Also, for the record, I didn't ask for sponsored items, did I?
I meant to write that there is no need for such a thing, but I guess my English is machine-translated, so I guess it came across differently.
It is Niantic who decides whether to keep sponsored items with a different name.
I think it is fine for them to disappear.
As for the Quantum Capsule, I myself have no problem with the proliferation of Very Rare items.
The most important thing that should not proliferate in the Ingress philosophy is the portal key.
The philosophy of Ingress is that portal keys are earned by going there.
I have benefited greatly from it, but I still think it is still a mistake to proliferate portal keys.
They partnered with Sony, to implement a feature to 'sony linkbuds' that would work on many devices that support spatial audio.
I wonder how well those linkbuds actually sell... small minority probably.