Have a 1 in 1500 chance when glyph hacking to bring down an opposing team field you are under.

TL;DR have a 1 in 1500 chance when glyph hacking to bring down an opposing team field you are under. It wouldn’t neutralize the portal, one of the links that constitute the field would randomly be selected and removed thereby destroying the field. This would make the game more enjoyable to more people by reducing the number of permaBAFs.

Motivation

Niatic wants to have a product that is self sufficient and making money. The best way to make this happen is to make the game as enjoyable as possible for the greatest number of people. One of the biggest complaints about the game on forums that I see is that a few, very dedicated people leave large cities/areas under permanent large fields. Fielding is a huge aspect of the game, as there are only a few people that will dedicate massive amounts of time to this game only a small subset of the population play ingress. It needs to be made more available to everyone. The game needs to be changed to make it possible to retain more people.

If players had the ability to take down a field they are under by glyph hacking portals under an opposing team field, then permaBAFs would happen less often. This would make the game more enjoyable by more people.

Pseudo code (possible way to implement this into ingress, lots of assumptions, but should give the general method)

There are already checks in the code to see how many hacking points you get. 1 point would equal 1 in 1500 chance (not sure what the actual chance should be) to take down the opposing team field that the portal is under.

  • Someone glyph hacks a portal controlled by their own faction
  • Calculate the number of hacking points one gets from successful hacks
  • Check to see if under an opposing team field (need to have this be applied to the smallest field you are under if you are under multiple fields, not sure if this is easy or hard)
  • If the field is less than 24 hours old , you can’t take it out (again not sure how long this should be)
  • If under opposing team field and it is older than 24 hours apply the 1 in 1500 percent chance to take the field down for each glyph hacking point
  • If you succeed then randomly select one of the three links and take it down, thereby destroying the field 
  • If you don’t succeed then tough, glyph hack again.


Here are the possible counter arguments for this change

  • The “few very dedicated people” that are making the permaBAFs are the people that are spending all the money in the game anyways, and we don’t want to make them grumpy because they disproportionately are the most money makers (I don’t have the data to confirm this, but it is worth looking into)
  • The “few very dedicated people” will find ways around this, by just making permaBAFs every day. This will invalidate any reason for making this change.
  • This will slow down the hacking process as it adds more code checks, it already can take a while for linkable portals to show up when linking, this would just take longer for glyph hacking and it is not worth it.
  • It takes the "fun" out of it for those that are highly motivated to making large fields, why spend all that time, money, and effort when your big field will go down in a few days? (not sure if this is a flaw or a feature?)

Any other ideas people have either for or against, please put in the comments. I have not been playing very long, and I am sure there are more aspects of this change that could help.

Comments

  • I like this idea because it adds a little bit of chaos to the gameplay. Unchanged gameplay seems to be a main complaint from what I’ve seen.

  • I note too, that you're talking about "all fields" not just "fields over a certain size".

    This could have some significant implications if you're farming the other team's portals and randomly destroying fields. Suddenly every portal is Force Amp'd to make it harder to dirty hack.

  • Sorry I guess I wasn't clear. It would be opponent fields that you are currently under. If it was a field that your own faction had you would not be able to "hack" it down. It would also only work if you were hacking at a portal your own faction controls. This is to fit in with a story of being able to hack down an opposing teams portal.


    You are probably right. 1 in 1500 is probably too easy. This would have to be tested to get a decent number, maybe a 1 in 10000 chance?

  • KonnTowerKonnTower ✭✭✭✭✭

    The problem here is the inability to control this. Someone might be keeping a field up for a specific reason. Either blocking for a future op, or they have reduced the field to only one or two layers so more can't be thrown.

    There needs to be strategy and control to the change in the map. Random deletions will create issues with people feeling the game is broken.

  • @KonnTower This is absolutely right, but it is the opposite team that is trying to block or cause trouble. That is why it is only when a member of the opposing team is under a field that they can have a chance to destroy it. I think the randomness is a feature not a bug. We have people of the opposing team that often have bgan portals in remote areas, that keep a field up over almost the entire state pretty much all the time, these folks have invested hundreds of dollars in hardware, and spend hundreds of dollars in travel a month. Yes this change would mess things up for them, but that is the point. Niantic really wants money and more players to continue to provided them data and a testing grounds for other games that make them even more money (pogo and wizards), oh and also to have happy players. I think something like this change needs to be implemented so that a few very dedicated people don't reduce the number of players so much.

    The only caveat to this, is if those players spending 100's of dollars to "win" are also buying 100's of dollars of items a month and niantic is making lots of money from them, and Niantic don't care about expanding their player base so they want those players to stay happy.

  • @grendelwulf Yes that is the primary way to deal with permaBAFs, knock out the anchors. But if Niantic wants to expand its player base to make more money, then they need to provide a way for more casual players that are under permaBAFS that don't want to spend hundreds of dollars (mostly on travel, not paying to Niantic) and hundreds of hours to be competitive. My observation is that play pretty much shuts down when there are a few dedicated permaBAFers, so the whole capture portals while under a BAF is not enough to keep play going in our area at least. Having a chance to knock down an opposing teams field by glyph hacking a portal would provide more incentive to casual players, and reduce incentive for permaBAFing. I believe this would serve to increase the playerbase and make the game more enjoyable for more people.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think your 1500 number is way too low, even if this is a good idea which I'm not sure it is. Let's make it 15K. If your goal is to **** permafields then 24 hours is too short. Maybe 7 days.

    Ten players, one four-portal farm, one VRMH per portal. That's 640 glyph hacks of P8s assuming everyone glyphs perfectly. One farm like that is roughly a coin toss to take down a layer. Oh yeah, layers. You're probably under a bunch of them, and they may be onioned. Build another farm, repeat the process, **** another layer. Eventually all of the layers will come down.

    So what's your opponents' counter-strategy? They either add a layer on or flip and rethrow.

    I'm still not convinced that this is a good idea, but maybe the probability goes up a little bit for each day that the field remains up?

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    I don't personally like this idea.

    I believe that the solution to these permafields would be just allowing links to be created normally under a field with just a capped AP prize and also rewarding 0 MU if a field is created under another field.

    -Allow links and fields to be created within existing field.

    -Reduce the AP reward of any link/field generated under a field.

    -Reward 0 MU to any field generated under a field.

    This would let all agents to extend their game without affecting those who play the megafield game.

  • zlzlzlzl ✭✭✭

    No way.

  • I mean the opposition fields. If you're farming the other team's portals, you'd be accidentally destroying fields, making them less willing to let you keep farming their portals, which can result in a scorched earth policy.

  • @Perringaiden The way this would work is that a blue player could never accidentally take out a blue field over them. It would only work if a blue player hacked a blue controlled portal under a green field. If a blue player hacked a green portal there would be no chance to destroy the green field over head.

    @Hosette I agree the original 1500 number is too low, probably multiply it by at least 10, and I like the suggestion of having an age dependance probability that gets higher the older the field. The purpose is to get people engaged, if a huge BAF occurs people would be excited to go out and do a lot of hacking on the chance they could bring it down. Currently I feel like when a BAF goes up that is set up by elites/obsessed players play shuts down, except for maybe the other team elites/obsessed. This results in maybe 20-30 active players in my whole state of 4 million. I think this change would help make the game more accessible.

    @GoblinGranate I could get behind that Idea, then more casual players would still be able to make fields and gain experience from it, but for those that are super concerned with MU they are left to play as they have been. I think I would vote for no reduction in AP gained by fielding under a BAF, but the 0 MU sounds good.

    I anticipated that this change would not be very popular on this site, since most folks that are posting here are the elite/obsessed players, and this would make it easier for more casual players to influence the game.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @BobTheChicken33 Here are questions that I think are important to consider when thinking about a proposal that changes the way a game works:

    • How could this create 'perverse' incentives for players?
    • How could malicious players abuse it?

    The answer for the first question isn't entirely clear to me, but I think what would happen in many situations is that layers would get dropped and rethrown frequently in situations where that was possible, so that some part of the field would always be protected.

    The answer for the second question is painfully obvious, and would result in areas where fields died immediately as soon as they hit the eligibility time.

  • Inb4 some lucky person just starts onehacking fields.. I don't like the idea of having a chance based mechanic with such a drastic outcome. Also having basically no ability to defend against that is very unbalanced. Bad idea imo.

  • KonnTowerKonnTower ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think you're missing my point. There are use-cases where you WANT to keep the other faction's BAFs up. Green sometimes leaves up blue on purpose and vice-versa.

  • The player who gets the lucky glyph hack should be able to choose whether or not they want to take down the field.

    If one of the 3 links of a standard multilayer field is randomly selected, this might **** all the layers, or just one.

  • In my opinion you Ingress should not be 'a lotterie' where you might randomly win something. And this would only be good for good Glyph hackers. Not all players are that capable.

  • I think a solution to large perma fields would be to give a badge for MU liberated. Basically the opposite of illuminator.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    Let's look at how honest players would adapt to this. If you were the person throwing large fields how would you change up your game to avoid having fields killed by a stray glyph? The things I see:

    • Make onion fields so that losing an anchor doesn't destroy much
    • Rethrow one or more layers regularly
    • Figure out how to make my fields slightly smaller than the cutoff point for vulnerability

    And now let's look at the abuse mechanisms:

    • Army of glyph bots under any field
    • Spoof up a field using my opponents' durable anchors, then deploy the glyph bots until one of their durables dies

    Admittedly spoofing up a field might be hard to execute because reporting the spoofing to Niantic could get the field taken down before the glyph bots had a chance to do their thing.

    What strategies am I overlooking?

  • jjavierjjavier ✭✭✭

    yes, allow fields under other fields seems the best solution.

    but i dont like the idea of having lots of fields inside others, may be only allow microfields, so agents will be able to play but wont be able to build lots of links and fields.

    @NianticBrian, what about of allow links and fields under other fields (same rewards of ap and mu) but with max link length, for example: 1km?

  • KonnTowerKonnTower ✭✭✭✭✭

    I've been requesting this for a while now. Small microfields should be able to be created, but nothing significant in link size. Having your favorite leveling area covered constantly by either team is a real bummer. At the more abusive end of the scale, players use this to push new players out of the game.

  • atsepicnuatsepicnu ✭✭
    edited March 2021

    This would definitely be something I would stop playing for. One of the most nonsensical ideas I've ever seen here. No random killing fields, no fielding under other field. This is really stupid and it destroys the basic mechanics of the game.

    Just go and destroy the anchors. This is what Ingress is about.

  • jjavierjjavier ✭✭✭

    what if anchors are on top of mountains or private areas.

    what if you rise that mountain to destroy it and someone who cheats restore it again in 2 hours.

    what if you live under a big field of your same faction, its ok for you to destroy it and low the global count of mus?

    what if you are a new agent, just born in under a permalink field with no option to destroy it. whats happens? agent dismiss..

    niantic cannot avoid ppl who cheats, so we will live forever with it. let ppl play with some conditions or ppl will keep going out..

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    Ingress is about spoofing these days. Without a fix, no game will develop.

    No real solution will come before that. Fix spoofing. Please.

  • KhatreKhatre ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021

    1 / 1500 is really low.


    i would prefer a increasing decay with field age and/or mu supported

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Err- no - all anyone would have to do is unleash dozens of bots glyph hacking.

  • WikiBlueWikiBlue ✭✭✭

    If that would be a game-mechanic i would never glyph hack a green portal ever again. But what with the ap for destroying fields?

  • grendelwulfgrendelwulf ✭✭✭✭✭

    Glyph hacking should never randomly bring down big fields. Agents work hard to plan and create those and deserve the respect of a proper burster takedown.

  • Places on private property od without safe pedestrian access shouldn't be portals ;)

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