Meet-in-the-middle Suggestion for limited access areas with lots of portals.
One of the constant arguments in Ingress is about limited access areas and portals. And there's always a counter argument to discussions about banning portals on military bases or closed areas.
"What about the people who live there? Why can't they play in their local park?"
So one suggestion in this situation would be to similarly limit the access of links. Instead of saying "NO PORTALS!" limited access areas could be designated on request, as link bounded areas (LBA). Within the area, linking can function as normal to other portals within the area. Outside the area, linking can function as normal to other portals outside the area. But linking into the area from outside, or linking out from inside would be blocked. Essentially, invisible blocking links surrounding the area.
This would allow people living on the military base or closed city or limited area, complete freedom to submit, build and link portals within the area, without it becoming a strategic bugbear for people in the surrounding area outside. Often these areas have a lot of portals because they are valid portals, just limited. The idea would be 'best of both worlds' for general play, and a removal of the pain regularly caused by people actively abusing the limited nature of the area.
This would not be applied to "difficult to reach" areas, such as the tops of mountains, that require strength/skill, or public but limited permits etc, but to specific legally restricted areas. It could also be extended to employee-only business campuses and research laboratories etc. At it's most (possibly over-) used, this could also be applied to gated communities with a large number of portals.
It also doesn't have to be the only solution, but it could be one more tool in the arsenal of "Ways to allow people to enjoy playing where they live" without every limited access area being a problem for those outside it.
Examples of places this could be applied:
Guantanamo Bay - Cuba
Sarov - Russia
Comments
That seems way too complicated an idea just to deal with edge cases where people are but outside access is limited.
The research needed to verify what locations should qualify and where to draw the borders is already more work and time than is worthwhile and that doesn't even get into the technical implementation of it.
I know you only made this thread in response to a discussion in a chat group, but still it's a terrible idea.
That seems like a nightmare for Niantic to establish and maintain. DramaLevel: 11
The simple technical implementation is basically near zero dev. Permanently established visible or invisible links.
invisible blocking links surrounding the area
What happens to links that transit through the area?
That technical nitpick aside, the real problem in these discussions is actually defining what counts as "limited" or "specific legally restricted" areas. The terms are uselessly vague: most areas considered open to the public still have limited hours, outside of which you are legally trespassing.
It's easy enough to decide that the city park that's closed from 10pm-6am every day is okay, but a military base is not okay. What about a site that's open to the public only four days a week? What about a site that's open to the public nine months a year and closed/shut down the other three? What about a site that's open to the public one, or maybe two, days a year?
Yes. When it's very obvious that Ingress dev team have very limited resources and motivation to put on feature requests asked by players for many years such as profile medals DIY, fast reporting (which is promised for C.O.R.E. but never implemented)...
and when even bugs like this would happen for no reason and not fixed instantly...
Some players however are continuously raising suggestions about very complicated feature requests which are impossible for Ingress team to implement. What's the use of doing so? Drama Level 999.
There is also legitimate security concerns by the military, airforce or navy, who aren't always in the know about Augmented Reality Games.
So this is still a no from me
@Perringaiden The technical nightmare is defining, identifying, and maintaining those areas.
The first challenge will be defining limited access areas in a way that makes sense and doesn't have countless loopholes. Are gated communities in or out? Corporate campuses? What if the corporate campus has weekly public tours? Amusement parks? All the time or only in the off-season? If you've done much Wayfarer you know that Niantic doesn't have a very good track record of this, and I nominate this for understatement of the month.
Don't forget this has to be done globally, with all sorts of different laws and regulations to deal with. There's no data source available so they're going to have to gather that information manually, and that sounds like an enormous amount of work. We can guarantee that whatever database they build will never be anywhere near accurate.
And then there's politics. You know as well as I do that somebody's going to campaign to get someone else's area marked as limited access, and someone else is going to try to get theirs taken off the restricted list. This part will never bee anything but ugly.
I'm all for this. It doesn't have to be an 'all at once' thing. Areas can be slowly designated over time.
Yes, it's work, but these bugbears have been a huge source of angst over the years and many are not legal either.
For instance, military employment contract in Australia forbids taking photos on military bases without express permission.
Private company mine sites. Res have them, Enl have them. Pretty much permanent nailed links.
We have people attempting to forge letters on fake company letterheads n all sorts of **** going on to try n remove them.
It would be fairer on all if they were all removed or so links in-out were not allowed.
This sounds like a truly awful proposition. Controlling access to durable portals is a core gameplay mechanic.
Niantic destroyed a portion of this when they decided to enable under-field linking. That took some of the *control* out of *control field*.
employee only access site like military site should have all their POI removed.
no fun from those POI