There have been plenty of people who moved from PoGo to Ingress, because it appealed to them more.
But PoGo is a completely different game style to Ingress. One is a collection came largely viable without a lot of travel. The other is a wide area strategy game. Aside from the wave of mostly "I tried Ingress till PoGo came out" players, Ingress players don't move to PoGo for the same reason. They're games with different goals.
But for those who like doing both, I know plenty of people who play Ingress regularly, but also go to all the raid hours and community days in PoGo.
Catan is a completely different style again.
Yes, stretching time over two or even three games will be tough, but 'other games' are the least of the problems with Ingress.
The percentage of people actually in a permafield, who cannot do anything about it, is tiny. This is one of those "Why won't someone fix the game so that I can play exactly how I want, no matter the impact to anyone else or the game, because I choose to play less than my enemy." complaints.
You have some good points, but I'd challenge you on your point about a game that that is less fun or interesting. A stagnant game is less fun. A game where there is generally one path to victory is less fun. And a tweak to the rule for three weeks, in my opinion, isn't going to ruin the game.
Let's say the change I suggested above leads to less people playing. I'm not sure how, but let's say it does. After three weeks, you're back to normal. There is no permanent harm. The game continues as it was.
Let's say the change leads to more people playing. After three weeks, you revert back to normal. You have the same game. Maybe some of those players stick around because they're "back in the game." The game continues as it was.
I think a more realistic result is that the game changes in unexpected ways during those three weeks. You learn some things. You realize that the change you made isn't the best one, but it's in the right direction. So you tweak another rule. And another. Some you might keep. Others you forget. But always, the measure is people playing. Because the more people play, the better the game experience for everybody.
You'd have to find the right balance. A game that changes **** nilly every three weeks isn't fun. But I argue that balance can be found because I've found it in so many other games. Magic the Gathering has been changing for 30 years. League of Legends for what, a decade? Constantly changing. Forever fun. This is what Ingress could be.
The thing I like about a rules-tweaking approach is there would be minimal investment. If what you say is correct, and Ingress is in a downward spiral, and the "higher ups" don't want to invest any more money . . . these changes to the rules can be done with very little investment. I'm not a programmer, and maybe tweaking code means a lot of testing, but we're not talking about writing new code. We're not talking about new hires or big investments into something new. We're talking about changes to existing rules. An investment that I think has the potential for an extremely high ROI.
@Firemeboy I am a programmer and I have been since I wrote my first line of code over 40 years ago. Much of my career has been in software testing and operations. You're definitely talking about writing new code, and a fair bit of it when you include not just the functionality of your changes but also the code that tests all of that functionality. I've never seen the Ingress source code, but I have enough professional experience to be able to guess at the magnitude of your proposed changes. There is also documentation to update.
I also see an obvious exploit. If I could throw fields under an existing field, and being under an enemy field gave me more MU, then I have a pretty strong incentive to throw a field that uses the existing field as an outline but is slightly smaller. Voila! And then my opponents throw one just under mine and... now we have a design ambiguity. What happens to a field that is under existing fields of both colors? (-:
Don't get me wrong. I think you are spot-on about most of your initial message, including the reasons why Ingress is a great game and also some of the ways in which it can be frustrating. I'm just saying that it's not quite as easy as you suggest. Also, as d0gboy pointed out, there aren't many places in the world that are under permanent fields.
If Ingress can be played in multiple ways then why not have multiple leaderboards? Meaning not just mu but add one for AP gained or portals owned? Right now the only metric being recorded for the score is mu. And really not many people even care about that. If people could be ranked by glyphing or recharging it could become more interesting.
I do not, I've already lost the game. They are better, they have boats and unlimited time and fuel in their cars. If I just lie on the ground quietly then they might stop kicking me in the head.
One of the fun things about Ingress is that in general, the game doesn't define the win condition for you-- you define it for yourself. For some people, winning is keeping their neighborhood built up while they walk the dog. For others it's smashing every P8 their opponents build. For some it's earning badges or leveling, being the top dog in their local stats competition, ensuring that fracks have quorum whenever anyone needs to farm, building community, planning big ops, showing newcomers to the ropes, doing cool field art, making long-term changes to the playfield, supplying gear to local players. Cell MU is one win condition but it's not the only one, and if it doesn't make you happy then you can safely ignore it. You don't need a leaderboard to know if you're happy with your accomplishments.
If I was under an opponent's permafield then my win condition would be smashing every single portal they built in my area every day. My current long-term win condition is keeping my ratio of resonators destroyed to resonators deployed at 3:1. I'm very slightly behind right now simply because the pandemic has curtailed my massive smashing runs.
You have an established veteran playerbase who is bored. They enjoy controlling their "area" and will play until anyone in their zone quits. We're talking permafields off hard anchors with tons of keys that get distributed to be duplicated in quantum capsules.
When a new player joins the game (which is super rare nowadays), they're met with a field over their head. Right off the bat, they can't make fields. They level up capping portals and eventually get to levels 6-8. Now they start looking to attack portals. They can take down whatever is covering them, but it's painfully difficult with people recharging. Maybe they take it down. But shortly thereafter, they're covered again. and again. and again. and again. The veteran players get a short burst of satisfaction in dominating the new player and the new player quits.
This isn't unusual. It's what I had to deal with when I started playing. It's what my team is doing to new players in the area I'm in currently. It's effective, but it isn't healthy for this game.
There are a number of ways you can keep new players hooked:
You could let them microfield while under an existing field. Large fields that cover hundreds of square miles won't be an effective deterrent anymore. They could actually level up regularly instead of completely missing half the AP gain as they play. Not to mention they'll have a use for all the keys they hack.
You could stop making keys duplicate in quantum capsules. This is what stagnates the game heavily. Force agents to go back to their difficult anchors regularly for more keys. Lighthouses, islands, mountain portals. This wouldn't be a popular change, but would be healthy for the competitive environment.
You could make it so permafields aren't as valuable. Diminishing returns on MU from covering the same area over and over again would require field locations change to reach cycle wins.
A while back I messaged @NianticBrian with these and other ideas for helping repair some of the flaws in the game which lose us players regularly. He asked for these ideas in a First Saturday visit, but he never actually followed up on them. It would appear this fell on deaf ears. I'm glad this thread got his attention, hopefully they'll make some balance changes to work on player retention and breaking up the monotony of the game.
You could stop making keys duplicate in quantum capsules. This is what stagnates the game heavily. Force agents to go back to their difficult anchors regularly for more keys. Lighthouses, islands, mountain portals.
@Hosette "If I was under an opponent's permafield"
but aren't you?
"then my win condition would be smashing every single portal they built in my area every day."
There are no enemy portals, or friendly portals. Under the permafield that lasts for months, no one is playing anymore.
Read any story about Ingres so the main goal is to build links and fields. If this can’t be done then it would be the same thing as taking the goals and ball from the footballers.
Without links and fields, all strategy and scoring will be lost in the game. Sportstracker has more purposefulness than ingres if you have to play under a long-lasting permafield.
1) so child can play hpwu or pogo via "niantic kids". No ingress in any way,even via direct support-message.Really? I hate that resistance backpacks in my nr 02 delta10,but noone cares,some dudes play with 6 or 8 yo children and that's good for them. So,tos or families,.
2) in hpwu alpha we had some advanced settings to download all cached info. Is ingress worse to have "advanced settings"? Even better,we are on bleeding edge to test any new feature,that's why our concept still here. So why?
3) so again. how about forget 'bt that safetynet? it is really not trustworth,my rooted nexus5 2013(!!!) yo works with custom rom;) and works nicely. And, as we have alternative login,why just not give a way for those who know why (!!)/gplay services are just waste of storage. Or for those who will use "HMS"(huawei services). Or for those who prefer microG.
4) oh and a simple language/notification selector. Okay we know you dudes s**t on us and never will release proper audioasset. So look at statistics,again and again. Look at good old 1.** releases. Look at roboVM alternatives or forks,they are alive. And then,tell me,why good apps even paid have that simple button?
Answer is simple. You don't care,you just want money for nothing.
Yes, hundreds of empty portals that no one has taken over for months. You can find such cities on the intel map a lot and easily. Now it’s not a question of where I live but of the mechanics of the game that lead to player loss.
That's not a permafield blocking play. The lack of players combined with the constant increase in portals, directly causes most major regions to have about 70% grey rates. But that is not the claim here.
You're claiming that a permanent field is blocking that play. A region of grey portals not covered by a permafield is not what we're discussing. If anything, those zones of grey with no fields, are literally waiting to be played with by the very people you claim can't play. Anyone claiming they 'can't' play in a zone of grey portals with no permafield is simply wrong.
While I accept that some areas do exist in this state, every time someone has pointed at one, it's either been somewhere far less significant than claimed, like a field that covers a few suburbs and survives because no-one can be bothered to drive one suburb over. Or it's not really a 'permafield' it's just regularly put up, and regularly taken down, but no attempts made to properly block it.
So again, where is this permafield with zero play?
@JukkaJuu No, I'm not under a permanent field. Most people aren't. I suspect your definition of permanent field is different than mine. When I think permafield I mean one that is technically difficult to take down and persists for months because the opposition players are unable to find a way to destroy it. By that I mean anchors that are inaccessible for months due to snow or being closed to the public for construction, requires an extremely challenging hike, or some other thing that makes access extremely difficult. (Edited because apparently the forum doesn't like to talk about the idea that we might k-i-l-l fields.)
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=64.684172,24.481596&z=15 is the first one of these that looks at all challenging. If I lived under that field and was Enlightened I'd be figuring out what it would take to get out to one of those islands, and ideally trying to recruit a player who had easier access.
Are you telling me that there are agents who live in those towns who would play if they weren't under a field? If so, why don't they just go destroy the fields and throw blocks so that they can't be put back up as easily? Or coordinate with nearby players? The vast majority of these look like a short drive and a flipcard would **** the field.
we could use new lvls like pokemon now got, 10 new lvls.. when will ingress get new lvls for existing players bored of not much do ? and recurse is not new lvls u just reset 0-16 and start over and over... not fun imo.... new badges would also not hurt for some stats that is tracked but sadly have no badge..... the lack of real events etc is also what makes many quit now in cold winter times....
My own experience is that years ago, when there were many more active players, large fields required more effort to create because we had to contend with more blocking links being created as people played normally, and they lasted for less time because the other faction had a larger group of Agents from which to find someone who could go destroy at least one corner of the field. … With fewer active players, there are fewer blocks to contend with….
Which is to say, "permanent" fields arise as the effect of there not being a healthy level of activity in a region. They might very well contribute to a decline in activity, but then, I'd argue that the decline was already in progress.
An important question, and one that maybe on only Niantic can answer with their data, is how many new agents start out under such "permanent" fields and quit soon afterwards because they are unable to create even the smallest of fields or links?
About perm fields; They are bad for new agents first thing u start up scanner and u cant even field, many new will just there stop to play further because they dont understand why they cant make a field or link that they learned during tutorial... should be that allow fields under existing but take away 50% MU value or something..
I disagree with the idea that it should be allowed to create links while under field. This would tremendously simplify multilayer fielding, and achievements like homogeneous fields would be far easier and thus obsolete (since it's too easy). Find another ways.
your bad though I dotn agree with, imo niantic have a decent balance of what's in the shop (though I wish busters were to level 8 rather than 6). If you turn it into pay to win, the people who have loads of money, which is usually the team thats winning g already as they can afford boats or long trips to far away portals, will be at huge advantages (even more than usual). The last thing ingress needs is to turn into the money grabbing game like pogo has become.
As for your Ugly. I dont get how the fields would work, diminishing returns for large fields is backwards, bigger fields should yield more, it takes timing, skill, planning and luck to get bafs up. But, your idea of being able to field under other fields is one I think a lot of people are on board with, maybe with only getting a 3rd of the mu (and only if the smaller field is out up after the bigger field was in place) so long as its the opposing teams field, same team I think shouldn't be allowed to field under their own fields
In a Covid free world that would happen. It's not. and it may be six months to a year before movement does happen.
Given that that is not the case, how soon should a hyper decay happen to force the opening up of areas? (e.g. 5 hours with 100% for portals anchoring fields, 10 hours for 100% decay on a link and 25 hours 100% decay unlinked as most drastic scenario.)
@Hosette :"Are you telling me that there are agents who live in those towns who would play if they weren't under a field? If so, why don't they just go destroy the fields and throw blocks so that they can't be put back up as easily? Or coordinate with nearby players?"
I don't know, and we don't need to know. We have enough information that in what kind of cities players will stop playing and there will be no new players. In the cities below for ever lasting big fields, the game stops. Playing in cities with small fields and short links is active. This can be viewed by everyone on the intel map. In a minute you will find examples of both.
@JukkaJuu So basically you're arguing that people aren't playing because of those fields without knowing of any players under them?
Yes, I get that there are a few places that are often covered in hard-to-destroy fields.. the closest one I know if is about 1000km away, a moderately large US city. I'm sure they have lost some players because of it but there is still an active base. I understand that it can be frustrating to play when you're under a large field that's difficult to destroy, but I don't think that is one of the biggest problems that needs to be solved right now.
(I keep forgetting that the forum software opposes violence against fields and stars out the word k-i-l-l.)
One solution to new players being put off by being under permafields would be to allow players up to level 8 (or some other number) to field under fields.
@Hosette "So basically you're arguing that people aren't playing because of those fields without knowing of any players under them?"
Yes, because it looks so obvious.
The world of location based game has changed a lot since the release of Ingress. Then there was Ingress and geocaching. Portals were conquered when it was the only game you could do outdoors if you had already found all the geocaches nearby. As people moved and played they allied and formed teams that went together to take over the hard to get portals.
Then came Pogo, TWDOW, HPWU, Recources ... There came a lot of options where all the game content is always available right from the door. If a field prevents you from building links and fields, you can play something else. When people no longer play under the fields ingress no teams are formed.
What worked 5-8 years ago no longer works. Ingres needs to change or it will die. Everyone dies who is unable to change as the world around them changes.
New players also get fed up of cheaters the very second they "grow".
Can't even count how many times a grey area has become some spoofer HQ few days after a new agent in the oposing faction was born.
Sure, poping up under a big field is a problem, specially when a truly new agent wouldn't even recognize this is the cause why they can't play!
As always, you are looking at the wrong problems, this is the way the game has been from the very begining, but somehow now is a reason for it's community to be off?
Until Niantic puts REAL solutions to the REAL problems, there is
I think ingress need some new fresh game mechanic-changes because when u think about it, not much has changed from 2012, its still 8 people to build a p8 portal normally, u can only build a p6 yourself now, before normally a p5 etc... 2 players can built a p7 now, before 3.... the whole MU cycle system many are tired of because either the winning or losing faction in a cell gets any advantages or disadvantages, i myself live in a cell where Res wins contant every cycle since 2017, sure its fun but i stopped care that long ago since it doesnt add much fun really....
Several posters here are confusing cause and effect. Standing fields are almost never a result of diamond hard anchors lasting forever. Instead, it is a result of a shortage of players, or players with any time under or near the anchors.
Hosette and I both Ingress in a state with ferocious winter locked portals, Pacific islands, hike portals of every duration, pitiful cell coverage (imagine roads with a double dozen portals that close for winter and require a satellite modem to hit), and that's not even counting the lighthouses guarded by wild boars.
I have fielded this state for eight years. In the entire time the closest thing we have ever gotten to a "permanent" field was a 17 checkpoint monster for which the random factors and a helicopter converged. The average "hard" field lasts 4 checkpoints if it covers any city of significant size. Periodically, you can throw a field between a closure anchor, a zero cell lighthouse, and a 10 mile hike, and someone has seen the field coming and there is someone there waiting for you and it doesn't even last an hour.
This is because California is a place where Ingress is played.
Long-lasting fields are generally an artifact of the area being remote, or perhaps a cultural inversion of favored team color. It's all over the images you've posted -- cities of gray portals, and a bare flicker of activity.
==
This is not to say the field game is perfect (not even close); it's just you're not going to have sensible solutions if you confuse cause and effect about what's going on.
Comments
There have been plenty of people who moved from PoGo to Ingress, because it appealed to them more.
But PoGo is a completely different game style to Ingress. One is a collection came largely viable without a lot of travel. The other is a wide area strategy game. Aside from the wave of mostly "I tried Ingress till PoGo came out" players, Ingress players don't move to PoGo for the same reason. They're games with different goals.
But for those who like doing both, I know plenty of people who play Ingress regularly, but also go to all the raid hours and community days in PoGo.
Catan is a completely different style again.
Yes, stretching time over two or even three games will be tough, but 'other games' are the least of the problems with Ingress.
The percentage of people actually in a permafield, who cannot do anything about it, is tiny. This is one of those "Why won't someone fix the game so that I can play exactly how I want, no matter the impact to anyone else or the game, because I choose to play less than my enemy." complaints.
It's a competitive game. Compete.
You have some good points, but I'd challenge you on your point about a game that that is less fun or interesting. A stagnant game is less fun. A game where there is generally one path to victory is less fun. And a tweak to the rule for three weeks, in my opinion, isn't going to ruin the game.
Let's say the change I suggested above leads to less people playing. I'm not sure how, but let's say it does. After three weeks, you're back to normal. There is no permanent harm. The game continues as it was.
Let's say the change leads to more people playing. After three weeks, you revert back to normal. You have the same game. Maybe some of those players stick around because they're "back in the game." The game continues as it was.
I think a more realistic result is that the game changes in unexpected ways during those three weeks. You learn some things. You realize that the change you made isn't the best one, but it's in the right direction. So you tweak another rule. And another. Some you might keep. Others you forget. But always, the measure is people playing. Because the more people play, the better the game experience for everybody.
You'd have to find the right balance. A game that changes **** nilly every three weeks isn't fun. But I argue that balance can be found because I've found it in so many other games. Magic the Gathering has been changing for 30 years. League of Legends for what, a decade? Constantly changing. Forever fun. This is what Ingress could be.
The thing I like about a rules-tweaking approach is there would be minimal investment. If what you say is correct, and Ingress is in a downward spiral, and the "higher ups" don't want to invest any more money . . . these changes to the rules can be done with very little investment. I'm not a programmer, and maybe tweaking code means a lot of testing, but we're not talking about writing new code. We're not talking about new hires or big investments into something new. We're talking about changes to existing rules. An investment that I think has the potential for an extremely high ROI.
@Firemeboy I am a programmer and I have been since I wrote my first line of code over 40 years ago. Much of my career has been in software testing and operations. You're definitely talking about writing new code, and a fair bit of it when you include not just the functionality of your changes but also the code that tests all of that functionality. I've never seen the Ingress source code, but I have enough professional experience to be able to guess at the magnitude of your proposed changes. There is also documentation to update.
I also see an obvious exploit. If I could throw fields under an existing field, and being under an enemy field gave me more MU, then I have a pretty strong incentive to throw a field that uses the existing field as an outline but is slightly smaller. Voila! And then my opponents throw one just under mine and... now we have a design ambiguity. What happens to a field that is under existing fields of both colors? (-:
Don't get me wrong. I think you are spot-on about most of your initial message, including the reasons why Ingress is a great game and also some of the ways in which it can be frustrating. I'm just saying that it's not quite as easy as you suggest. Also, as d0gboy pointed out, there aren't many places in the world that are under permanent fields.
If Ingress can be played in multiple ways then why not have multiple leaderboards? Meaning not just mu but add one for AP gained or portals owned? Right now the only metric being recorded for the score is mu. And really not many people even care about that. If people could be ranked by glyphing or recharging it could become more interesting.
@Perringaiden "It's a competitive game. Compete."
I do not, I've already lost the game. They are better, they have boats and unlimited time and fuel in their cars. If I just lie on the ground quietly then they might stop kicking me in the head.
One of the fun things about Ingress is that in general, the game doesn't define the win condition for you-- you define it for yourself. For some people, winning is keeping their neighborhood built up while they walk the dog. For others it's smashing every P8 their opponents build. For some it's earning badges or leveling, being the top dog in their local stats competition, ensuring that fracks have quorum whenever anyone needs to farm, building community, planning big ops, showing newcomers to the ropes, doing cool field art, making long-term changes to the playfield, supplying gear to local players. Cell MU is one win condition but it's not the only one, and if it doesn't make you happy then you can safely ignore it. You don't need a leaderboard to know if you're happy with your accomplishments.
If I was under an opponent's permafield then my win condition would be smashing every single portal they built in my area every day. My current long-term win condition is keeping my ratio of resonators destroyed to resonators deployed at 3:1. I'm very slightly behind right now simply because the pandemic has curtailed my massive smashing runs.
The math of why Ingress is dying is simple.
You have an established veteran playerbase who is bored. They enjoy controlling their "area" and will play until anyone in their zone quits. We're talking permafields off hard anchors with tons of keys that get distributed to be duplicated in quantum capsules.
When a new player joins the game (which is super rare nowadays), they're met with a field over their head. Right off the bat, they can't make fields. They level up capping portals and eventually get to levels 6-8. Now they start looking to attack portals. They can take down whatever is covering them, but it's painfully difficult with people recharging. Maybe they take it down. But shortly thereafter, they're covered again. and again. and again. and again. The veteran players get a short burst of satisfaction in dominating the new player and the new player quits.
This isn't unusual. It's what I had to deal with when I started playing. It's what my team is doing to new players in the area I'm in currently. It's effective, but it isn't healthy for this game.
There are a number of ways you can keep new players hooked:
You could let them microfield while under an existing field. Large fields that cover hundreds of square miles won't be an effective deterrent anymore. They could actually level up regularly instead of completely missing half the AP gain as they play. Not to mention they'll have a use for all the keys they hack.
You could stop making keys duplicate in quantum capsules. This is what stagnates the game heavily. Force agents to go back to their difficult anchors regularly for more keys. Lighthouses, islands, mountain portals. This wouldn't be a popular change, but would be healthy for the competitive environment.
You could make it so permafields aren't as valuable. Diminishing returns on MU from covering the same area over and over again would require field locations change to reach cycle wins.
A while back I messaged @NianticBrian with these and other ideas for helping repair some of the flaws in the game which lose us players regularly. He asked for these ideas in a First Saturday visit, but he never actually followed up on them. It would appear this fell on deaf ears. I'm glad this thread got his attention, hopefully they'll make some balance changes to work on player retention and breaking up the monotony of the game.
You could stop making keys duplicate in quantum capsules. This is what stagnates the game heavily. Force agents to go back to their difficult anchors regularly for more keys. Lighthouses, islands, mountain portals.
🤔 It's time to move, agents! 🚶
@Hosette "If I was under an opponent's permafield"
but aren't you?
"then my win condition would be smashing every single portal they built in my area every day."
There are no enemy portals, or friendly portals. Under the permafield that lasts for months, no one is playing anymore.
Read any story about Ingres so the main goal is to build links and fields. If this can’t be done then it would be the same thing as taking the goals and ball from the footballers.
Without links and fields, all strategy and scoring will be lost in the game. Sportstracker has more purposefulness than ingres if you have to play under a long-lasting permafield.
@JukkaJuu
Under the permafield that lasts for months, no one is playing anymore.
So there's a pile of grey portals ready to be captured?
Where is this magical land with zero play?
Yes yes yes,harkonnen harvester reporting )))
1) so child can play hpwu or pogo via "niantic kids". No ingress in any way,even via direct support-message.Really? I hate that resistance backpacks in my nr 02 delta10,but noone cares,some dudes play with 6 or 8 yo children and that's good for them. So,tos or families,.
2) in hpwu alpha we had some advanced settings to download all cached info. Is ingress worse to have "advanced settings"? Even better,we are on bleeding edge to test any new feature,that's why our concept still here. So why?
3) so again. how about forget 'bt that safetynet? it is really not trustworth,my rooted nexus5 2013(!!!) yo works with custom rom;) and works nicely. And, as we have alternative login,why just not give a way for those who know why (!!)/gplay services are just waste of storage. Or for those who will use "HMS"(huawei services). Or for those who prefer microG.
4) oh and a simple language/notification selector. Okay we know you dudes s**t on us and never will release proper audioasset. So look at statistics,again and again. Look at good old 1.** releases. Look at roboVM alternatives or forks,they are alive. And then,tell me,why good apps even paid have that simple button?
Answer is simple. You don't care,you just want money for nothing.
Yes, hundreds of empty portals that no one has taken over for months. You can find such cities on the intel map a lot and easily. Now it’s not a question of where I live but of the mechanics of the game that lead to player loss.
There are plenty of regions of grey.
That's not a permafield blocking play. The lack of players combined with the constant increase in portals, directly causes most major regions to have about 70% grey rates. But that is not the claim here.
You're claiming that a permanent field is blocking that play. A region of grey portals not covered by a permafield is not what we're discussing. If anything, those zones of grey with no fields, are literally waiting to be played with by the very people you claim can't play. Anyone claiming they 'can't' play in a zone of grey portals with no permafield is simply wrong.
While I accept that some areas do exist in this state, every time someone has pointed at one, it's either been somewhere far less significant than claimed, like a field that covers a few suburbs and survives because no-one can be bothered to drive one suburb over. Or it's not really a 'permafield' it's just regularly put up, and regularly taken down, but no attempts made to properly block it.
So again, where is this permafield with zero play?
Well here are a five examples:
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=49.218353,15.881411&z=15
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=64.684172,24.481596&z=15
Take any field covered by an entire city and compare it to a city with only small fields. Player activity in small field cities is much higher.
@JukkaJuu No, I'm not under a permanent field. Most people aren't. I suspect your definition of permanent field is different than mine. When I think permafield I mean one that is technically difficult to take down and persists for months because the opposition players are unable to find a way to destroy it. By that I mean anchors that are inaccessible for months due to snow or being closed to the public for construction, requires an extremely challenging hike, or some other thing that makes access extremely difficult. (Edited because apparently the forum doesn't like to talk about the idea that we might k-i-l-l fields.)
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=49.218353,15.881411&z=15 could be killed with a 12km trip.
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=57.425073,25.903298&z=15 is a 4km trip and looks like an easy portal to hit.
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=64.684172,24.481596&z=15 is the first one of these that looks at all challenging. If I lived under that field and was Enlightened I'd be figuring out what it would take to get out to one of those islands, and ideally trying to recruit a player who had easier access.
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=44.910839,-0.234153&z=15 looks like an easy anchor to hit.
Are you telling me that there are agents who live in those towns who would play if they weren't under a field? If so, why don't they just go destroy the fields and throw blocks so that they can't be put back up as easily? Or coordinate with nearby players? The vast majority of these look like a short drive and a flipcard would **** the field.
we could use new lvls like pokemon now got, 10 new lvls.. when will ingress get new lvls for existing players bored of not much do ? and recurse is not new lvls u just reset 0-16 and start over and over... not fun imo.... new badges would also not hurt for some stats that is tracked but sadly have no badge..... the lack of real events etc is also what makes many quit now in cold winter times....
To paraphrase my earlier self:
My own experience is that years ago, when there were many more active players, large fields required more effort to create because we had to contend with more blocking links being created as people played normally, and they lasted for less time because the other faction had a larger group of Agents from which to find someone who could go destroy at least one corner of the field. … With fewer active players, there are fewer blocks to contend with….
Which is to say, "permanent" fields arise as the effect of there not being a healthy level of activity in a region. They might very well contribute to a decline in activity, but then, I'd argue that the decline was already in progress.
An important question, and one that maybe on only Niantic can answer with their data, is how many new agents start out under such "permanent" fields and quit soon afterwards because they are unable to create even the smallest of fields or links?
About perm fields; They are bad for new agents first thing u start up scanner and u cant even field, many new will just there stop to play further because they dont understand why they cant make a field or link that they learned during tutorial... should be that allow fields under existing but take away 50% MU value or something..
I disagree with the idea that it should be allowed to create links while under field. This would tremendously simplify multilayer fielding, and achievements like homogeneous fields would be far easier and thus obsolete (since it's too easy). Find another ways.
O agree with your good.
your bad though I dotn agree with, imo niantic have a decent balance of what's in the shop (though I wish busters were to level 8 rather than 6). If you turn it into pay to win, the people who have loads of money, which is usually the team thats winning g already as they can afford boats or long trips to far away portals, will be at huge advantages (even more than usual). The last thing ingress needs is to turn into the money grabbing game like pogo has become.
As for your Ugly. I dont get how the fields would work, diminishing returns for large fields is backwards, bigger fields should yield more, it takes timing, skill, planning and luck to get bafs up. But, your idea of being able to field under other fields is one I think a lot of people are on board with, maybe with only getting a 3rd of the mu (and only if the smaller field is out up after the bigger field was in place) so long as its the opposing teams field, same team I think shouldn't be allowed to field under their own fields
In a Covid free world that would happen. It's not. and it may be six months to a year before movement does happen.
Given that that is not the case, how soon should a hyper decay happen to force the opening up of areas? (e.g. 5 hours with 100% for portals anchoring fields, 10 hours for 100% decay on a link and 25 hours 100% decay unlinked as most drastic scenario.)
@Hosette :"Are you telling me that there are agents who live in those towns who would play if they weren't under a field? If so, why don't they just go destroy the fields and throw blocks so that they can't be put back up as easily? Or coordinate with nearby players?"
I don't know, and we don't need to know. We have enough information that in what kind of cities players will stop playing and there will be no new players. In the cities below for ever lasting big fields, the game stops. Playing in cities with small fields and short links is active. This can be viewed by everyone on the intel map. In a minute you will find examples of both.
@JukkaJuu So basically you're arguing that people aren't playing because of those fields without knowing of any players under them?
Yes, I get that there are a few places that are often covered in hard-to-destroy fields.. the closest one I know if is about 1000km away, a moderately large US city. I'm sure they have lost some players because of it but there is still an active base. I understand that it can be frustrating to play when you're under a large field that's difficult to destroy, but I don't think that is one of the biggest problems that needs to be solved right now.
(I keep forgetting that the forum software opposes violence against fields and stars out the word k-i-l-l.)
One solution to new players being put off by being under permafields would be to allow players up to level 8 (or some other number) to field under fields.
@Hosette "So basically you're arguing that people aren't playing because of those fields without knowing of any players under them?"
Yes, because it looks so obvious.
The world of location based game has changed a lot since the release of Ingress. Then there was Ingress and geocaching. Portals were conquered when it was the only game you could do outdoors if you had already found all the geocaches nearby. As people moved and played they allied and formed teams that went together to take over the hard to get portals.
Then came Pogo, TWDOW, HPWU, Recources ... There came a lot of options where all the game content is always available right from the door. If a field prevents you from building links and fields, you can play something else. When people no longer play under the fields ingress no teams are formed.
What worked 5-8 years ago no longer works. Ingres needs to change or it will die. Everyone dies who is unable to change as the world around them changes.
Ingress will never die, spoofers will keep it up.
New players also get fed up of cheaters the very second they "grow".
Can't even count how many times a grey area has become some spoofer HQ few days after a new agent in the oposing faction was born.
Sure, poping up under a big field is a problem, specially when a truly new agent wouldn't even recognize this is the cause why they can't play!
As always, you are looking at the wrong problems, this is the way the game has been from the very begining, but somehow now is a reason for it's community to be off?
Until Niantic puts REAL solutions to the REAL problems, there is
nothing
to
do
.
I think ingress need some new fresh game mechanic-changes because when u think about it, not much has changed from 2012, its still 8 people to build a p8 portal normally, u can only build a p6 yourself now, before normally a p5 etc... 2 players can built a p7 now, before 3.... the whole MU cycle system many are tired of because either the winning or losing faction in a cell gets any advantages or disadvantages, i myself live in a cell where Res wins contant every cycle since 2017, sure its fun but i stopped care that long ago since it doesnt add much fun really....
Let me just second this point:
Several posters here are confusing cause and effect. Standing fields are almost never a result of diamond hard anchors lasting forever. Instead, it is a result of a shortage of players, or players with any time under or near the anchors.
Hosette and I both Ingress in a state with ferocious winter locked portals, Pacific islands, hike portals of every duration, pitiful cell coverage (imagine roads with a double dozen portals that close for winter and require a satellite modem to hit), and that's not even counting the lighthouses guarded by wild boars.
I have fielded this state for eight years. In the entire time the closest thing we have ever gotten to a "permanent" field was a 17 checkpoint monster for which the random factors and a helicopter converged. The average "hard" field lasts 4 checkpoints if it covers any city of significant size. Periodically, you can throw a field between a closure anchor, a zero cell lighthouse, and a 10 mile hike, and someone has seen the field coming and there is someone there waiting for you and it doesn't even last an hour.
This is because California is a place where Ingress is played.
Long-lasting fields are generally an artifact of the area being remote, or perhaps a cultural inversion of favored team color. It's all over the images you've posted -- cities of gray portals, and a bare flicker of activity.
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This is not to say the field game is perfect (not even close); it's just you're not going to have sensible solutions if you confuse cause and effect about what's going on.