The dawn of cheating begins.
I am an honest player, I have 1 account on which I play. I regularly encounter portals that cannot be destroyed. When I approach such a portal and start demolishing it, I see the instant recharging of the resonators at any time of the day. I can use an unlimited number of bombs, but the portal has always stood, and will stand.
I also know players who always have a huge number of bombs in their inventory, which exceeds 2000. These people use bots to get in-game items for bag accounts. They always have a bunch of level 8 weapons.
And what does an honest player have to counter them in response? Nothing. Previously, we had quantum capsules that allowed you to multiply keys and weapons of level 8. But with the departure of quantum capsules, you will only make the position of cheaters even more stable.
Comments
After quantum turned off - bad actor will not have stable income from quantums(that's good news) but still will have backpack with "useless" LOTS of gear. So i'd expect raised xmp activity after that change.
Also maybe i'm lucky enough - i've never met absolutely undestructable portals (not talking about restricted access or that bug with L1 reso). Matter of tactics,You can use L1 US to remove mods, use L8 US to take resos one by one,take a break after few resos knocked off. Opponent can be predicting Your next attack and looking on one Portal - also a matter of tactics. Also haven't seen recharge bots,only rumors about that. Also it's a matter of internet speed,ping,even phone related.
But dawn of cheating - definitely YES,i expect more spoofing for keys and more L1 accounts making first hack on anchors to obtain more keys.
Some players just like also to recharge like crazy no matter what lvl or how many resonators left.
If removing QCs is why people choose to cheat, they were always going to cheat.
Thats a point of strategy or ingame preferrences. If someone likes relinking why should he/she recharge,more fun delivered. If i don't like relinking (i prefer purify) OR it's anchor - it should be recharged,also the more xmp opponent wastes less i will rebuild(don't like rebuilding).
The oppisite makes way more sense: The end of cheating.
Backpack mule accounts become finally obsolete. Imagine 20 of them creating gear out of nothing, the main account has unlimted burster and mods.
Your issue is different. Massive recharge is gamebreaking too, but its not really linked to a lack of X8. Without recharge its perfectly fine to take down portals with the stuff you can always hack - X5 and X6.
Let's just wait for the Quantum removal, empty cheaters backpacks, and then push for a change in recharge funtionality. And finally we may end up in a real, fair competetion again... we had it until the stupid decision to introduce a MUFG. (Noticed, that farms became a rare thing since then?)
20 accounts are at maximum 38000 items(19 qCap full each). For example 25-30k will be xmp,2-4k will be US and rest - shields. I estimate upto year before that loot will end. More,that loot becames useless(it is not duping so why should it be kept),so more activity after deactivation of qCap is +-obviously. And last,cheaters gonna cheat,so without qCap mules there will be more spoofing,both to gain xmp or keys or mods.
Hope NIA awaits exactly this scenario.
Spoofing is way more risky than backpack muling. Multiaccounts may appear legit or even are - family, friends, colleagues... everyone may be asked for a favor.
Only way to stop it is to terminate itemdrops at all. "you wanne play ingress - get out and hack gear yourself". If they really introduce kinetic multiplication of keys and let drones be able to hack keys... there's no showstopper.
Suggested mitigation measures against bad actors, and players end up complaining about doing the mitigation measures.
That is a true statement. My box crawls with that.
Under that scenario moving keys around for ops become a mess.
so, for these big Ops, where it's impossible to drive to the anchors, we accept the multiaccount problem, right? For these 1, 2 checkpoints in a cell score cycle? That's why the whole community is constantly discussing backpack cheater issues since 10 years? For those BAFs once in a month. once a quarter. sorry, we reached once in year. Just to support these moments the factions blame each other, legit agents forced to quit and so on.... got it, now it all makes sense to me.
.....do you really think that bad actors are relying on quantum capsules to farm items?
Spoofers don't really need QC at all, they can farm every portal they want. They just need to stay under Nia's radar, which is not hard from what I saw.
Last week's events showed me personally that Niantic has now started banning spoofers pretty quickly, which I would like to thank you for.
But unfortunately there is still a problem with multi-accounts and with the promptness of removing the consequences of spoofers' activities.
That depends soley where you live. I could have survived a lifetime with that amount of bursters, but my opponents would last maybe 2 weeks up to a month as moust? If not hacking new gear. I think all agents need to rethink their strategy in some ways. No matter if they are cheaters or not.