The curse of the Recursed

For some time, topics about a third faction or AI opponents have been discussed. Due to various reasons, the gameplay in some places have stalled. I know most of your comments will be: “recruit more agents” Yes that will certainly help, but sometimes that is hard to do. So I have this idea in my mind and off course the more I think of it, the better I like it, therefore I would like to share it and have your thought of it. Here it goes: 

What if a recursed agent is cursed? it was introduced In the Anime, that being recurced, you only live for some time afterwards (I cannot remember the length) What if we transfer this into Ingress? 

Every xxx amount of days, a recursed agent is cursed. When cursed, the agent will be “red” and therefore a “lone wolf” and cannot interact with own faction. The cursed agent will not be able to pick up anything from the ground, except keys. The period starts, when you as agent all off sudden deploy a red resonator, then you know it. You now have seven days to prepare, before you full deploy a red portal. All your inventory will be intact and able to use.

Due to the better interaction with the portal network (feature of the Recursed agents!?). The cursed agent will have a better chance for higher output from hacks. More items and more high level gear from a single hack. Could be 20% of each? 

To lift the curse, the cursed agent will have to make 1.6 Million AP or wait 1,6 Month whatever comes first and will after that, rejoin the faction the agent came from. 

In this way, we will have something that can shake up the play board and give new life to some places where things are stuck. It will be a “real” agent. Playing normal play style and not some strange AI doing strange things in strange places :-) 

Imagine being able to attack both RES and ENL portals. Leave a trail of red portals, links and fields for green and blue agents to attack and capture! 

Maybe it could be a thing, you, as agent could be able to choose to be a part off. I know some do not like to be a lonely wolf, but for a certain amount of time or AP, I believe it could be fun :-) 

What do you think?

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Comments

  • Sounds interesting, it might diversify the gameplay, but only if the agent has the option of choosing whether or not to become cursed. It's a pretty radical change, and would require a lot of team resources to implement that they could have spent on other things, so it might not be to many people's liking.

  • @saarstahl and @NikaKor Thank you for your thoughts on this. One of the good thing about this, is that you can still be loyal to your "homefaction" Just keep smashing the normal opposite color portals and leave your own faction alone. It's up to you to decide. We are given opportunity to change faction entirely when recursing and I know THAT is a huge decision to make. This curse thing could be a "middle solution"

    The reason I wrote that it could be nice to have it as a option when recursing, is that, it's another layer of the game, and it might be a tough one to overcome... The AP and timeframe for reversing the curse, was just out of my mind. 1.6 Mill AP for a player with L16+ experience, should be possible to reach with a fair amount of play (and with a little help from APEX). But I know some agents are in places where it is a HUGE effort to get 1.6 Mill AP.. hence the timeframe.

  • Only if you first provide the option to "reset recursions" for those who don't want this absurd punishment.

  • @Perringaiden It is a way to create an option other than a complete faction change. Some places need a way to break up a stalled gamezone. This could be a way to stay in your own faction, BUT allow at least some change. It is not meant to be a punishment, therefore it could be an option you could choose when recursing (default Off, in that way it is an active choise)

  • hm, its already hard to build farms. now remove some people from chance to help building farms ? as idea its interesting, but it has downsides. will all portals give R8s? what if people do not want this ? without possibility to opt out from this, it might lead to more people leaving the game

  • @YURI5K They will only be "removed" for the time it takes to make a certain amount of AP or a given timeframe, then they will revert to the faction they came from. It´s a sort of challange of being recursed. You know the game, how it work´s and how to maximize the AP gain (with a little help from APEX perhaps. Income for Niantic)

    And again, It could be an option for agents recursing, to active select this.

  • KarM3LKarM3L ✭✭✭✭

    Is it still possible to reverse a Recursion? 0 count recursion badges were interesting to look at....

  • @Traken22 I am not saying not to do this, but let people who recursed to decide if they want to do this. experience from being forced to do this, for people without prefarmed XMPs will be pretty terrible. also experience of people who actually care about relations with their own faction (yeah, go **** your factions portals they will be happy). and APEX will not help you, if you wont have other portals that your owns to use for building. I think, that cursed people will just switch to wintrading or will wait out this time. hoping to get more money - I dont know, it looks like extortion practice. for me, if I hated enforced feature on me, that dropped on random my way to solve it would not be to send niantic more money. imagine how nice it will be that you are going to do BAF with 100+ people involved, only to have 1 of agents switched to this absurd punishment role.

    also why to forbit to steal items from other agents ? farming items at multiaccounters home is nice way how to restock items.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Its an interesting idea. I kind of like it.

  • My idea was to give the agent a warning (from the deployment of the first resonator) In that way, you have seven days to restock and get help from your teammates, in form of gear supply. I hope they want you back in the flock ASAP in order for you to rejoin the faction and the local community. They know you are cursed and hopefully therefore will help you out of it.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    The idea is not that bad, but I'm afraid you can't do that to agents since the implications are too high and would affect the game in many ways.

    I think it's much easier to create some automated script that turns portals in urban areas to the red faction, like some kind of infection to be erradicated. This could be an event!

  • They do have something like that in PoGo, ... so it could be possible that they will implemment it in Ingress to (soon™) But i would rather go for all uncaptured portals instead of 'urban areas' only.

  • The problem is that "giving a temporary faction change" is not a necessary element. Recursed agents already have an option to turn traitor. Ingress doesn't need more player factions. We already have few enough players, and Recursed agents currently provide the bulk of R8 deploys in most areas. Denying that ability would make the situation worse not better.

    An AI faction would be far far better to provide non-stop unwavering opposition that never gets bored, tired, or run out of gear.

    Forcing Recursed agents to "recover" would result in many low activity agents quitting all together, and never returning, because they were forced out of the faction that they enjoy chatting with, and helping out with deploys at drinking farms etc.

    If you make it "optional" you just generate a group of players who others know chose to attack their own faction. And you know they would, no matter how unlikely they'd claim it would be.

    Ingress already has enough difficulties holding ever thinning communities together. Adding new drama would not help that.

    Redfection or another AI enemy is the best and only non-drama creating option for "additional opposition", and I really hope Niantic is already exploring this concept.

  • Currently, no, but realistically, a Recursion is simply:

    • Remove your recursion count.
    • Disable wings.
    • Return your total AP to your current AP.

    So in terms of development it wouldn't be hard. Given that Recursion provides zero benefits, and this would introduce an arbitrary random punishment, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only person asking for a reversal if they ever did this horrible idea.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Given that Recursion provides zero benefits,

    Better loadoutkits for subscribers. 😉


    Redfection or another AI enemy is the best and only non-drama creating option for "additional opposition", and I really hope Niantic is already exploring this concept.

    I hope it too, it already exists in the anime and the Rocket invasion on pokemon is pretty much the same idea. When the dark xm event was announced I was really expecting they were going to turn all neutral portals red... That was a missed opportunity.

    It doesn't even need to be overcomplicate, just reuse the same logic from Team rocket invasion, just turning the neutrals portals Red/orange will be great already.

  • There's got to be better logic to the selection and spread, simply because having it select distant anchors would be no better than having a total gameboard reset, which would pretty much **** the game. You want it to start with grey portals, and then spread organically if left unchecked. Which would mean some regions would end up completely Redfected if there's only a few players in one part.

    Redfection Logic is in here:


  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Interesting idea.

    Not sure it would go down well



    Niantic in the Recursion story hinted that if a player didn't re Recurse within 1771 days, something bad would happen.

    Spoiler. Nothing changes other than your Recursion stat going up

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Wasn't 1331 days? I wouldn't mind if that would be a forced recursion. Fits the lore at least.

    Maybe red faction is already in the game,we just need to wait 4 years to see🙈

  • MonkeyPeltMonkeyPelt ✭✭✭✭

    I really hope there is something after a recursion at 1331 days. Even though it could be horribly inconvenient, a mandatory re-recursion at 1331 days could be rad, but recursion might need more benefits to balance this.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I dont mind the idea, though I'd say, to get rid of the curse, you had to destroy x amount of resos, fiekds, links etc. Of your own team and of the other team an equal amount, so that you are properly against both teams, but when cursed, as you said, hack outputs are higher to offset the unfairness. Let's be honest, if someone in a faction did get cursed, chances are that faction woukd work with the cursed to set up resos and fields they didn't mind losing anyway

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think a 3rd faction would actually bring more players in.

    A lot of people are disillusioned/bored with own faction and yet don't want to join the opposing faction due to some past evil.

    So they end up not playing. I still see local chats people pining for Red Faction.

  • Traken22Traken22 ✭✭
    edited February 2021

    @gazzas89 I could be a fixed set of "assets" to destroy, but in some regions, opponents are non present and therefore it could be impossible to destroy that amount from opposite faction. The idea was, that IF a situation is like that, meaning a opposite faction is missing, it could be a way to create some action without a complete faction change. Ingress is a game where faction's are very tight (and that is a good thing) and therefore leaving the local community is not desirable. I believe that since everyone from own faction know's that you are cursed, they will perhaps help out the best they can, and mayby even like that something else is happening other than waiting for reso's to decay. Afterall, who would not help a teammate to get rid of a curse :-)

    Edit was spelling

  • And in a few months the same things that caused them to dislike their own faction will occur again. What do you think a faction of outcasts and lone wolves would achieve? If you've managed to have two factions disown you why would a third be better? A faction made up of the people you didn't like from the other side either. A third faction won't suddenly make drama and toxicity go away, and in many respects is likely to make it worse.

  • Hence the idea of a temporary "curse" where you have a fair warning, where you have the chance to prepare both yourself but also your faction. We need to get things moving... We see signs off agents getting WAY to attached to portal's because of lack of action or even worse, are getting bored!!

    In every "how to play Ingress" I have seen, it is stated: " do NOT get attached to a portal. The nature of this game is change and it is bound to happen. Make it difficult to capture, but accept change" The problem in many places is, that change do not happen and therefore we as agents get more and more attached to portals. That is not a good thing.

  • I like the idea of an AI opponent. I often feel like Niantic rush features in without enough thought so my ideal would be an event where they test how it works and how players feel about it. Ideally, the AI should do some random attacks but often attack areas that are heavily one colour. However, would players be furious at losing their farm to a bot?

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The fixed assets thing was more to guarantee the person attacked what they could in their area, but a time limit would still need to be in place, even if its just a month or 2. I wo t lie, I could see both my team and the opposition wanting someone cursed to clear out own team blockers lol so thats why I would like it

  • One of Redfection's suggested mechanics is capture greys first, and P8s and portals with 4 links can't be infected, because regions with heavy activity generally don't require an opposition, and shouldn't come out of the gate being more aggressive than real players.

  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭

    Points for creativity, but I can't support the idea. I wouldn't have recursed if this were a thing.

  •  I could see both my team and the opposition wanting someone cursed to clear out own team blockers lol so thats why I would like it

    Why not just get someone from the other faction involved and be done with it? Or do like everyone else and use lots of flipcards.

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