Farewell Redacted - Hello Prime - Thank You NIA
I was going to start this post another way, and then this weekend happened.
This weekend the CA ENL decided to send redacted off the way we welcomed Ingress with a gigafield. We worked long and hard to find portals and a field that would take advantage of the last moments of Redacted. We sent people hours from home and managed to throw up a beautiful field that covered 95% of CA. Sadly, we all knew the field would only last until a spoofer hit it, but we still enjoyed this one last field on Redacted. Hell, we even named the field "Viking Funeral." As expected, our field was spoofed at 1:15 am, and the account was quickly banned.
Here is where I get to the unexpected part - thanks to the coordination with Res Vanguards (names redacted) NIA put the field back up 17 hours after it was torn down. It took many people - from @ATECH8700 and @greenlantern64 for helping clean up links across the spoofed lane in the north to the hero of the day @TMoneyistheOne for completing a 5-hour drive to Tecopa, CA to drop the last links crossing the tainted lane. At 6:47 pm PT NIA Gamemaster re-established the field and to me signaled a win for all players.
I have been a vanguard for two years, a player advocate for longer and today more than any other day I was struck by the changes NIA has made for the better. This isn't just about a field; this is a moment that NIA threw up a **** against spoofers. A moment the player in the field realized that their hard work and effort meant something and that NIA recognized the effort they put in.
I get the game isn't perfect - I see it every day and the loss of redacted is hard but moments like this show that @RedSoloCup as our community rep and Brian Rose as the new producer are continuing to make improvements and listen to players. Tonight, I watched local communities light up out of shock and joy to see NIA restore a field. This is an excellent welcome to prime - a moment to start fresh and make this game the way it should be; competitive but with a way to neutralize cheating.
Thanks, NIA for doing the right thing, Thank you Resistance VG's for working with and supporting this. Thank you, agents, for your never say die attitude. I sleep under a green field tonight, and I am content.
#ScrewSpoofers #CheatersNeverWin

Comments
This really is a change for the better! Let's hopethat this x faction cooperation continues in the future and teams continue to respect spoofed down lanes until Nia can put the fields or links back up. This truly is a win for both factions!
Unfortunately, we have spoofers plaguing the game. Unfortunately, we have real players that knowingly take advantage of spoofer's work, and refuse to do the right thing, even when asked nicely. It takes both factions to keep the game on track. What I like about today is that the community game together and NIA was responsive - together. Hopefully, this is a continuing "threesome" for the growing future. Thank you all who play by the rules and the personal ethics. In this f
I’m a fan of Prime. As much as I miss the art style of Redacted, this is a step in the right direction. I like how much quicker I can do things on 2.0.
I sent off redacted with me cleaning the green from most of Shawnee, Oklahoma.
This was a day I will never forget. Cross faction cooperation is not a normal thing here in California, but to see Resistance agents voluntarily helping on this effort was a wonderful feeling. I am a big proponent of cross faction events and this gives me hope for the future of this game.
Although improved, anti-spoofing efforts are far from perfect. NIA needs to implement full transactional rollback for all activities taking advantage of spoofed lanes, including removing any gained AP and agent stats earned crossing those lanes. This need to be fully automated (including re-linking/fielding based on logs instead of having to rely on agent-submitted reinstatement requests) and executed quickly after spoof has been determined. Combine that with better spoof detection or smarter procedures to verify if something is spoof or not. Only when the effort and cost is too high compared to the gains of the spoof we can expect less spoofing. I don't really care if unknowing agents gets a few stats rolled back due to reinstatements like described - it is negligible in the big picture. Doing it this way would also remove the current need of gentleman's agreements about not crossing spoofed lanes and all the fighting involved with that.
Thank you Niantic for putting the field back up. I think it's a strong statement against spoofing. Your cooperation helped us believe in the game by setting things right. I want to thank the resistance for patiently cooperating with the effort to re-establish the lanes. We have definitely landed in a brand new world of Prime and have found our real Nemesis. 💚💙💚💙
Good times with redacted. Hard sacrifices where made what with long km links destroyed. Many a portal was flipped to bring us this 25M MU. CA ENL Strong-er together.
Godspeed with Prime, to all!
True. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy. Fighting ghost is what factions do well together! 😆😁
I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of @MM207A's words above. The restoration of the field by NIA Ops was a huge step in the right direction in the effort to minimize the impact of spoofers.
But it strikes me as silly and more than a little disrespectful to the community of Ingress agents that NIA Ops would not restore the field unless the lanes were re-cleared by agents on the ground. While this effort to get the lanes re-cleared was exciting and suspenseful in the moment, I find in retrospect that it is a completely unnecessary and arbitrary requirement. What would happen if, after the restoration, the field was spoofed again? Another period of watching the worker ants (agents) scramble around to rebuild their anthill so that the field could be restored. What about a third time? Eventually, even the most dedicated players in the game would get annoyed with this routine. Many have already become very disillusioned with the game due to the game-breaking impact that spoofers can have on it.
Agent @Kuleramme described above a much more reasonable solution which respects the effort that players put into the game. If fields over anomaly sites can be "destabilized", then certainly links across a tainted lane can be removed so that the proper state of the game board can be restored once an incident of cheating has been detected.
While I'm sure it was a great adventure for my friend who drove for 5 hours one way to clear those final blocking links, and while the degree of XF cooperation in this whole effort makes for an amazing Ingress gameplay story, I can't help but wonder how many times you can go to that well of enthusiasm before it runs dry. Not many, I suspect.