Possible improvement to constantly rethrown fields to inaccessible portals.

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Comments

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    So you just said "No" and disagreed my statement, but you basically agree with me? The idea is good, but, as I intented to state, without any fix on spoofing, it will solve nothing.

    There was some time ago several ideas for new items and there was this VR Key item that would consume to replicate a portal key in your inventory. That could be a point in between both positions.

    But, once again, thereal problem remains ignored.

  • I feel you should focus more on the spoofers punishing players that have gathered keys to solid anchors is wrong as far as quantum caps you guys have flooded the game with them and now you want them to only make certain items that's wrong they already don't make VR items any more with out them making keys what's the point in even having them !!!

  • edited December 2020

    Note that this solution has nothing to do with spoofers, both positively or negatively. It's not meant to solve it, and it isn't likely to increase it. It's focused on troll fields by real players. A troll player cannot be banned for trolling. A troll player that moves to spoofing deserves to be banned.

    Niantic has to fix spoofing, but in-game changes will never affect that. (And people need to stop suggesting changes that will hurt the players more than spoofers)

  • I don't think stopping key duplication will fix the problem. The same agents willing to invest the time, effort and inventory space to get enough keys, to get a reliable enough duplication engine for a perma-field aren't going to have any problem farming the necessary keys with, or without QC duplication. Likewise, agents that aren't willing to go outside their daily commute to take a field down, aren't going to do so if you stop QC duplication.


    Personally, I enjoy difficult portals. When I was level 3 I took down a city-wide field that was anchored close to an hour from town, down gravel roads in the middle of nowhere-ville, on seemingly private property (not actually private), and was guarded by a pack of aggressive goats, and I loved it. It was an adventure.


    Besides, this problem is a small one that I doubt affects as many agents as you might think. Personally, in a few years of playing I've only come across a few portals that are truly inaccessible. I've found more than a few that aren't easy, but that's a two way street, legitimate game play assumed... I've made more than one difficult portal change factions, because I was more willing to go there than the other faction. I'm not saying that there isn't a problem in some areas, just that it's a relatively small problem when compared to others.

  • The same agents willing to invest the time, effort and inventory space to get enough keys, to get a reliable enough duplication engine for a perma-field aren't going to have any problem farming the necessary keys with, or without QC duplication.

    The problem it's solving is that the selected portals must be accessible. Otherwise no matter their dedication, they won't be able to get more keys.

    This is meant as a minor tweak. It's not meant to solve world hunger. Other Agents will still have to take down the portals, but they'll be less likely to be impossible access ones.

  • It's really not a minor tweak. Most agents I know from both factions use QC almost exclusively for keys. Most other things either don't replicate, or aren't worth duplicating, or the extra space. I have a hard enough time efficiently getting rid of mods as it is, and regularly trash L8 gear... If they stop keys from duplicating in QC, I'll be turning mine into XM. Why not just remove QC entirely? Better yet, why not remove the "impossible" portals?

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @kernelPanic192 If it wasn't for spoofers that would create an interesting twist. Any portal that hasn't been visited in some period of time, say six months maybe, becomes unlinkable. Maybe if it hasn't been visited in three months keys no longer duplicate?

    Unfortunately, spoofers would immediately negate this.

  • VenomousToadVenomousToad ✭✭✭✭✭

    Maybe fields should only last 2 weeks, then they get taken down by instant decay.

  • d0gboyd0gboy ✭✭✭

    The concern here is not a field made from rarely visited portals on all sides. If this were really the problem, rare visits to take it down would also suffice.

    Instead it's fields made by agents with ready access to anchors on one team and not the other. Which means that decay sounds like an elegant solution, but then you'd just rethrow. Or ADA/Jarvis and rethrow. Or battle beacon and rethrow five times for AP. etc.

  • EvilSuperHerosEvilSuperHeros ✭✭✭✭✭

    I agree with you on the spoofing part. But removing key duplication? Nah..it's really getting overblown as the key problem in the situation that they described. Fix the spoofer part first, then you can **** key duplication. But not before...

  • I use quantum capsules to duplicate keys. But they're not to mountain tops or nuclear reactors. They are to dup keys for my neighborhood, which I regularly field with nothing over an L3 portal. Then I flip it and do it all again. Why would you want to shut down how I play the game?

  • @EvilSuperHeros " Niantic/Ingress likes to see (large fields, mega link stars, ect)"

    I think Niantic wants to see more players.

  • If you have unlimited keys the fields just go back up. Which is what happens when you have to linked inaccessible portals and unlimited keys right now.

  • EvilSuperHerosEvilSuperHeros ✭✭✭✭✭


    <sarcasm>

    maybe, the real problem isn't the keys duplicating in quantum capsules, but those silly power cubes. because you know, once upon a time, they didn't exist either. if you wanted to recharge a portal you had to get up and go run around and collect that silly xm stuff laying all over the ground.

    maybe we should get rid of power cubes instead? make those agents run around the city looking for xm to recharge those hard to reach portals, right? that will solve the problem!

    i mean you could do all this stuff before there was power cubes, or even ADA or Jarvis, or, or, or, or....

    </sarcasm>


    Without quantum capsules duplicating keys, and hacking mods I'd likely still be working on my Onyx Mind Controller or Onyx Connector badges, but both of those were helped out by those quantum capsules. They are used as much in local play as they are for other things, maybe even more so. I bet they even help me get wings on my mind controller badge...

    Quantum capsules have definitely helped me work my way towards wings for my Engineer badge...

    Do you even triangle?

  • Change is fine. Once the effects of the change have had enough time to be evaluated, it can be decided if it's good or bad. Power Cubes are still good.

    The nonsense of "Oh if we remove this, why not remove everything else" is repeated stupidity. It's a fall back for "I don't have a real argument, I just feel like I'm losing something".

    I've given you actual reasons why this is relevant, and used the period prior to the original change as an indication that the attempted disagreement is not true. The game moves forward, and this is a suggested change to improve it. Once a change is made to something that's not a justification that it can't be changed again or changed back.

    So far the disagreement comes down to "But I want it!". Maybe the initial solution is lower replication, but any replication given time will still result in many keys.

    It's the better of the solutions to this issue that's been raised over and over in many threads. If no change happens, fair enough, but if there's going to be any change to address these troll fields, this is the better of the options.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    A different suggestion thrn, why not have it that portals that are used as anchors regularly or are being used over a cycle lose half the mu they would gain for the next 3 cycles, same with portals that are regularly used for fielding

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @gazzas89 Anchors don't or gain MU... the MU is based on the area covered by the field. It's kind of a nit, but may not be at a technical level.

    There are also some unintended consequences. It's easy to imagine an anchor that was used regularly to hold up fields west of it. The people who live east of there decide to use it for a field and suddenly their MU is nerfed because of actions that they had nothing to do with. That doesn't seem fair.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Merging key dupes is very bad.

    Myself I duplicate keys for local portals, and difficult to reach portals.

    In fact I distinctly remember the community were pushing Niantic to change the key duplication from very rare, to common.


    I feel for those who are under perma BAFs, and dramatically changing the integral game design is IMO not the best option for those who play local, and those that enjoy the "big game".

    Things like being able to field under a field is not in keeping with the game design. Players need incentive to take down fields.


    Excessive decay rates only serve to antagonise players who have spent significant effort and money.


    There are really really, very few options that serves to retain the game design, ie pure strategy, and can retain new players.


    That just leaves how the scoring is tallied. Local and Global

    Rewarding local play, and rewarding global play through different tallying methods would be better, especially with players coming from pokemon go and Catan, who have different view points on how local and global scoring should be done.


    I have already suggested a way that retains the game essence, but allows for player retention, through how the scores are scored, from starting the local score at 0mu each week and reward players at the end who are in the top 5. That means that a city that is BAFd would have to be taken down by the same faction to be able to score again in the next cycle, if the fields stay up.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Grogyan I don't think that taking a field down and rethrowing it should help. I'd much prefer that cell scoring be based on a net delta from the last cycle. That would reward whichever faction makes the most progress rather than rewarding a faction for just repeating the same thing over and over. https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/12967/improving-ingress-cell-competitions-based-on-changes-from-the-last-cycle#latest

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    It will help, as time is the most precious commodity.

    As the weeks and months go on, the strategies will change, which means that the opposition would have more opportunity to take down the fields

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Other things that would help with player retention, as much as I dislike pokemon go. The task and event system really engages players, similar system is in Catan. Ingress would surely benefit as well from a similar system, daily, weekly, event goals.


    Some of the conversations I have had with new players, also shows that they tend to leave because they cannot get much MU, tends to happen in new suburbs with hundreds of thousands of people living and working there, but the population density heatmap used for scoring hasn't been changed, ever, and uses 2011 data. Despite the pandemic, World population has increased by 800 million @ofer2

  • KonnTowerKonnTower ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm on board for making the change, though I feel to help combat some of the local play issues perhaps key drop rates should be visited for hacks. Perhaps eliminate the chance of getting 0 keys on a hack, unless you specifically say "give me no key"?

    I can say that in my particular play area, both my team and the opposing team have lighthouse and hour+ hiker portals that provide a huge advantage with quantum capsules. I would prefer to see more teamwork revolving around key farming parties and trading keys. Though, I admit the possibility of more people leaving the game because the game just became "harder" than the current status quo. It's a delicate balance and I can only make these suggestions. I don't have the data Niantic has to query for a deeper look.

    I'm also open to the idea of what I call "MU burnout", which invalidates MU gains for particular areas that are fielded over regularly. Mix up where teams have to cover to get score for different cycles. Or they risk having lower MU areas beating them out for doing the same thing over and over again. Intel would need a burnout heat map. Extra layers would initiate burnout faster, obviously.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    What if reduce the link lenght, making it require link amps to achieve a large field? They could rename the VR link amp to a fancy name (like the sponsored mods) but keet the same final link length it provide (continental), and rework the link amps with the 3 ranks (common, rare and vr) for casual gameplay. BAFs would still be possible, but will be harder to do (requiring more mods), and if the idea of link amps acelerating the decay, will make they even more precious (and costly to maintain).

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Perringaiden I agree with you.


    However, you and I are old players, we want the challenge, New players are not as yet as keen.

    And time is the rare commodity.


    Which is why I suggested that changing the way scoring is done is maybe, better To keep new players, and still enables us, old guard, happy.


    No change

  • It's not just about me wanting key duplication. It's a quality of life improvement, that makes an annoying part of this game less annoying, much like power cubes. The fact still remains that you're inconveniencing a large group of people to appease a minority, because of one specific situation that doesn't affect THAT many people.


    I keep hearing about fields thrown to "impossible" portals. Thing is, there's a fine line between impossible, and difficult. Besides, it DOES take 3 portals to make a field. Even if you have one of the RARE portals that is legitimately impossible to get to, you still have 2 other options to take the field down.


    Even if you stick 95 of one key in a QC, you're only getting 5-10 keys a week. Far cry from infinite. I can, and most definitely will take your field down more than that. You can also block that portal... I've seen some pretty effective blocking operations...


    There's also the rampant spoofing. Currently, I can make up SOME of the keys lost when an anchor gets spoofed, and the reset gets blocked effectively. Take that away, and some troll on his couch is going to have a nice laugh.


    Besides all that, trolls are going to troll. They're going to find a different anchor, and they're going to keep fielding, whether they have an "impossible" anchor, or key duplication. If you can't handle trolls, stay away from games, and the internet...

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