This a great idea for an event, let’s you think beyond what we currently know about fielding. I had the opportunity to link more portals, within fields that I already created, and the double AP is a nice bonus. I would seriously consider making this a future game change, in my opinion, this could help agents stuck under BAF’s to still effectively play their game, without being discouraged. I live in active play area, so that’s not my situation; however I can this change to be positive for all @nianticbrian
Reading this, I get the impression that the whole world and all the capitals are under the fields. Does it bother you? Take it down, don't whine.
Such an innovation will NOT attract enough new agents, but will leave the game a large number of old players, just those who are quite paying and for subscriptions, and medallions, and tickets to anomalies.
Yesterday I wanted to make a link under the field, but I couldn't find the right field, so I bailed.
Also, something like this causes agents to be lazy. Why hit big fields if they don't get in the way?
This game once attracted a lot of people, why not make it the way it used to be? Why can't we go back to what worked and attracted? I know so many agents who left the game for this very reason.
If this kind of innovation stays, even with zero MU under the margins - I'll probably lose interest too, as will many of my friends. For an easy walkthrough game there's Pokemon GO, there's a third faction and vintrade, why would the ingress turn the same into it?
My biggest goal this event is to fix a few of my layers
Certain agents love to grief (esp those GO players) and will break up nice fields for no real reason
As to game mechanics
I understand to a point the concern about serious areas getting upset over losing points
But I also understand agents who rage quit because where ever they live is under a perma-field and especially those who have no chance of ever breaking said field (eg an anchor out on an island which not only covers an entire city, but extends into the next country even; I am totally going under that enemy field as well)
My point is those agents who actively play in the area really do not need to worry about losing their scores. Those agents who put up a BAF 5 years ago and have never set foot in local group since are going to lose their area scores and I won't shed a tear.
Oh but I wish there were medals. An actual good idea from the GO crowd would be to copy the Collection Medal at least. (Make an event Medal; you get +1 count for each event you complete the metric. So 5 events = bronze, 15 events = silver, 25 events = gold, etc)
Now I have simulacrum badge in 3 and near to be level 8 again thanks to this special event. I believe this event is for help small players below big fields.
Some fields are massive, and the people under them don't have the means to travel the distance to take them down. It's not a matter of whining, it's a matter of new players joining the game and seeing game mechanics that they can't "do" because of perma-fields that never go down. It's a matter of people who will fight to rethrow the perma-fields as soon as they go down. It's a matter of Ingress bitter-vets unable to let go of something for a few days to let others try things out.
I'm sure others have great examples. I would be interested for the agents being very vocal about opposition... Where are we seeing the game being completely broken? Need some datapoints.
>This game once attracted a lot of people, why not make it the way it used to be? Why can't we go back to what worked and attracted? I know so many agents who left the game for this very reason.< Sadly that has to do with the fact that Ingress used to be the only gps location based game, and now it's not.
There's one thing that would really help to get a lot more people onboard, and that's advertising. Pokemon Go advertises all over the place, inside other games, on google news, and every where you look. Ingress doesn't advertise at all. @NianticBrian can you please start advertising ingress the way that pokemon go is being advertised? we'll even chip in on the costs!
I think it's more of The Pokemon Company also adding money to advertising.
Ingress did have advertisements through social media when Prime launched in 2018. I don't really know how they could advertise at this time. There's also a lot of streamers when it comes to Go - maybe the community should look at interesting ways to stream the game? Streaming an ops would be interesting without delivering a lot of details at the same time, for example. We had these ways present for the original scanner such as Ingress Obsessed.
Pogo has so many famous youtube streamers by now everyone knows of them and the game, even someones grandma plays pogo.. but yes u hardly see ads for ingress prime anywhere which is shame...
We used to have 'famous Ingressers' within the community at least, because of the Ingress Report, and it was a great tool to show prospective players what the "big fun teamwork" was like. The Forums 'sitreps' discussion is sadly lacking in content.
I'm going to throw this out there as an example of a benefit of this type of event. The blue player in this area has been regularly covered by green fields and generally plays close to home. When covered, this person doesn't play. I want that blue player as an opponent, rather than pushing him out.
By being able to play under the fields, They're able to level up via microfielding at their local park. There are some longer links, however in my ideal scenario link distance would be limited so they could only create those small microfields in the center. By doing so, there's now a juicy set of blue microfields a green player could easily smash and rebuild which in turn, resets the play area for the blue player. The payoff of tearing down an area of opposing faction and rebuilding pays off so much better than building up from grey.
I want this sort of opportunity in the game. normally the blue wouldn't exist on the map and the playbox would be all grey portals. I'd rather have the ability to have more targets on the map instead of disabling play areas completely and having no targets. We can make this work without breaking the MU game. Call the new feature link suppression. "Link Suppression: While under and existing field, players can not create long links until the field over them is removed". Make it scale based on portal density. Heck, make it so larger and larger BAFs increase the amount of link distance suppression. I'm all for that too.
Edit: Thinking about this more... By effectively creating a link distance suppression, we've also created a new valid use-case for rare link amps, beyond making a useless campfire/pineapple to flip on the opposite faction. RLAs would provide the ability to make some longer links while under a field, perhaps for blocking or slightly larger fields. Have them boost link distance but also remove a percentage of link suppression.
We've had a full weekend of this feature, nobody has reported game-changing "the world is ending" events like the doom/gloomers have been posting here. If you think this is game breaking, try going out and breaking the game over the next week the event goes on to prove otherwise. Until then, I'm holding with my convictions that the vocal minority here are upset they can't grief players out of the game anymore.
i don’t play under a field, so that portion of the event is irrelevant. That being said, the 2xAP for fielding and linking is huge. I’ve had a stash of apex boosts waiting for the perfect moment and this is it! Apex boost, two battle beacons and a bunch of SBULs made for some serious AP last night. So much so, I did it again today. Over 6 million AP in less than 24 hours!
Early results from event. I decided to field for mu. My weekly totally is approximately 180k of that 15k was from under field linking. I won't be able to squeeze in too much more underneath based on time I can actually play and current layout of fields and links. I still really like the under linking.
I want that blue player as an opponent, rather than pushing him out.
In the context of the MU game, I don't think you're describing an opponent; you're describing cannon fodder for AP. An opponent has to have the ability and willingness to do things of consequence. In the MU game, that means being able and willing to create (and destroy) links and fields that "matter."
As long as this Agent is not impacting the MU game, they're actually a good example of how there's no need for a complex "link suppression" mechanic.
Thanks; these are good examples. Some folks only know about SLC, which can skew perceptions.
I tidied up some microfields over the weekend with internal links, and it seemed fine, if a bit like playing in beginner mode. So I have mixed feelings about matryoshka. It certainly makes fielding more accessible, but at the cost of some complexity that enriched the game and encouraged community.
But I'm also wary of "kids these days" syndrome. It's easy to fall into when we remember walking 10 miles to school, uphill both ways.
@crystalwizard fine sentiments of the good ol' days, but those aren't coming back. Multiple AR games now exist, Ingress must compete for users with them or perish. Ingress enjoyed the first-mover advantage in the ARG space. It was very special, very unique. Sadly, I wasn't around for those years. I joined just before Philly's most recent anomaly, which became my first one. That's an exciting event. Sadly, I have never known a world with guardians/guardian hunting, nor have I ever seen two factions compete for shards, just cooperate.
We can't turn back the clocks and get the magic back from yesteryear. That's a sunk-cost fallacy in the business world. What we need to address is 1) Getting more people to start playing and 2) Getting people to stick around playing. Agents who have quit aren't going to be part of the recovery, "Don't throw good money after bad" is the business saying that applies.
Yes, let's get more advertising for Ingress. But until we have #2 fixed, spending money on advertising won't do us any good. New players leave due to the high bar of entry compared to other AR games. We need something that's inclusive, but retains the late-game strategy. Right now we're letting agents who have all the AP they ever need dictate where and when new players (who are low on gear/power/skill/AP/etc) can play and level up. Moreover, it's a hobby of some experienced players to cause this grief on purpose. There's a few here who say to just get in contact with your local community, but the truth is that over time areas have stagnated and there aren't the resources for those players to reach out to.
You can't play chess when the black chess player starts with a full set of pieces anywhere on the board they want and the white chess player starts with one piece. It's not conducive to a fun game. Also, many communities have become one faction continuously putting the other team's last chess piece into check, over and over and over, forcing them to move with no possible gain or win scenario. Therein lies the problem. This isn't a game of perfect competition. Ingress actually isn't chess. Chess has an end. The only end to our game is when we've driven enough players out and the population can't sustain the development and maintenance costs. Ingress is not chess. Ingress is a continuous prisoners' dilemma.
I wrote a post a while ago that brought up the "broken" nature of the game. A great game is one where one player or side can't run up the score. Think of Monopoly or Risk. How many times are the games over and you're just going through the motions? There is no point in finishing because there's no hope of winning?
You have so many areas where one side wins every cycle. By millions of MUs. A new player downloading the game can't hope to make a difference without months of monotonous play, and literally hundreds, if not a few thousand, dollars of equipment. And all the while, they'll usually be harassed, griefed, bullied, and threatened while they do it.
This game has poor balance. The sad part is, it could be relatively easy to fix by tweaking how the scores are calculated. It could be done with math changes, not gameplay changes.
And the game, unfortunately, often attracts insecure bullies who find in the game a way that they can be good at something. Here in our area, a local group maintains a website where they track their Ingress score going back years. They have often complained that Ingress should do a better job of showing scores over time because nobody realizes just how amazing they are.
You know there's a complete resolution to the prisoner's dilemma right? Don't play. It's not a prisoner's dilemma because you can walk away at any time.
Ingress has a weekly 'end' in the Regional Scoring. If you choose not to play that game, then it's like you want to play chess but just move the pieces around without actually playing.
If you don't participate in the competition, of course you're not going to see it as a competition.
Yes, many people pick don't play. If this continues, we all won't get to play. EXACTLY my point. I don't want that.
Just because one side stopped playing in an area doesn't mean the cycles stop too. In the case of ENL versus RES, it's is indeed a continuous iterated prisoner's dilemma. Iterated reptetition of cycles focused on MU among two entities. By definition, that's what this game is. The factions still exist if zero players are playing for them in that particular area and the scoreboards don't disappear.
I know a bunch of regular players (including myself) who open the game daily, enjoy fielding, making AP, taking strategic portals, destroy enemy field, etc without looking at the score. I don't care about a list made for showing off, I'm not interesting in comparing numbers who don't mean much to me, only interesting in being able to actually play. Who cares if your faction is behind on a score board, who cares if some agent you never meet in your life is on top of this list because they are spending their day in a car just to get a bigger number ? I don't play the score board, I don't play the MU race. But I'm linking, fielding and enjoying it, can I say I play Ingress ?
In other words, you don't actually play the game, you just make the moves that woukd let you play the game. Its like you're sitting at a chess board, but all you want to do is move the pieces around, you're not interested in actually checkmating the other guy. In fact, you're not even interested in having to be strategic at all. That isn't playing the actual game, that's just playing with the pieces.
I find this event and new ideas entertaining for an event. So if i forgot and cover some unlinked portals inside i could easily link it inside an existing field. But of course this is really against the core of playing ingress and would not be used permanently. But for an event its really refreshing 👍🏻👍🏾👍🏼
Comments
Niantic probably wants to have a metric to see what player engagement is during the event, and decided to make it visible to players just for fun?
i guess...
This a great idea for an event, let’s you think beyond what we currently know about fielding. I had the opportunity to link more portals, within fields that I already created, and the double AP is a nice bonus. I would seriously consider making this a future game change, in my opinion, this could help agents stuck under BAF’s to still effectively play their game, without being discouraged. I live in active play area, so that’s not my situation; however I can this change to be positive for all @nianticbrian
Reading this, I get the impression that the whole world and all the capitals are under the fields. Does it bother you? Take it down, don't whine.
Such an innovation will NOT attract enough new agents, but will leave the game a large number of old players, just those who are quite paying and for subscriptions, and medallions, and tickets to anomalies.
Yesterday I wanted to make a link under the field, but I couldn't find the right field, so I bailed.
Also, something like this causes agents to be lazy. Why hit big fields if they don't get in the way?
This game once attracted a lot of people, why not make it the way it used to be? Why can't we go back to what worked and attracted? I know so many agents who left the game for this very reason.
If this kind of innovation stays, even with zero MU under the margins - I'll probably lose interest too, as will many of my friends. For an easy walkthrough game there's Pokemon GO, there's a third faction and vintrade, why would the ingress turn the same into it?
I would also add some limitations, like halp outgoing links and half the distance link (maybe more).
My biggest goal this event is to fix a few of my layers
Certain agents love to grief (esp those GO players) and will break up nice fields for no real reason
As to game mechanics
I understand to a point the concern about serious areas getting upset over losing points
But I also understand agents who rage quit because where ever they live is under a perma-field and especially those who have no chance of ever breaking said field (eg an anchor out on an island which not only covers an entire city, but extends into the next country even; I am totally going under that enemy field as well)
My point is those agents who actively play in the area really do not need to worry about losing their scores. Those agents who put up a BAF 5 years ago and have never set foot in local group since are going to lose their area scores and I won't shed a tear.
Oh but I wish there were medals. An actual good idea from the GO crowd would be to copy the Collection Medal at least. (Make an event Medal; you get +1 count for each event you complete the metric. So 5 events = bronze, 15 events = silver, 25 events = gold, etc)
Now I have simulacrum badge in 3 and near to be level 8 again thanks to this special event. I believe this event is for help small players below big fields.
Fielding under fields greatly increases the gameplay, I love it
Some fields are massive, and the people under them don't have the means to travel the distance to take them down. It's not a matter of whining, it's a matter of new players joining the game and seeing game mechanics that they can't "do" because of perma-fields that never go down. It's a matter of people who will fight to rethrow the perma-fields as soon as they go down. It's a matter of Ingress bitter-vets unable to let go of something for a few days to let others try things out.
Good examples where this event is a big help for players:
Salt Lake City, UT
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=40.628546,-112.318726&z=9
Montreal, Canada
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=45.602509,-73.086548&z=9
Charleston, WV
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=38.329807,-81.546707&z=11
South Florida
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=27.843933,-80.48584&z=8
Half of Alabama
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=32.073266,-86.083374&z=8
I'm sure others have great examples. I would be interested for the agents being very vocal about opposition... Where are we seeing the game being completely broken? Need some datapoints.
>This game once attracted a lot of people, why not make it the way it used to be? Why can't we go back to what worked and attracted? I know so many agents who left the game for this very reason.< Sadly that has to do with the fact that Ingress used to be the only gps location based game, and now it's not.
There's one thing that would really help to get a lot more people onboard, and that's advertising. Pokemon Go advertises all over the place, inside other games, on google news, and every where you look. Ingress doesn't advertise at all. @NianticBrian can you please start advertising ingress the way that pokemon go is being advertised? we'll even chip in on the costs!
I think it's more of The Pokemon Company also adding money to advertising.
Ingress did have advertisements through social media when Prime launched in 2018. I don't really know how they could advertise at this time. There's also a lot of streamers when it comes to Go - maybe the community should look at interesting ways to stream the game? Streaming an ops would be interesting without delivering a lot of details at the same time, for example. We had these ways present for the original scanner such as Ingress Obsessed.
Pogo has so many famous youtube streamers by now everyone knows of them and the game, even someones grandma plays pogo.. but yes u hardly see ads for ingress prime anywhere which is shame...
We used to have 'famous Ingressers' within the community at least, because of the Ingress Report, and it was a great tool to show prospective players what the "big fun teamwork" was like. The Forums 'sitreps' discussion is sadly lacking in content.
I'm going to throw this out there as an example of a benefit of this type of event. The blue player in this area has been regularly covered by green fields and generally plays close to home. When covered, this person doesn't play. I want that blue player as an opponent, rather than pushing him out.
By being able to play under the fields, They're able to level up via microfielding at their local park. There are some longer links, however in my ideal scenario link distance would be limited so they could only create those small microfields in the center. By doing so, there's now a juicy set of blue microfields a green player could easily smash and rebuild which in turn, resets the play area for the blue player. The payoff of tearing down an area of opposing faction and rebuilding pays off so much better than building up from grey.
I want this sort of opportunity in the game. normally the blue wouldn't exist on the map and the playbox would be all grey portals. I'd rather have the ability to have more targets on the map instead of disabling play areas completely and having no targets. We can make this work without breaking the MU game. Call the new feature link suppression. "Link Suppression: While under and existing field, players can not create long links until the field over them is removed". Make it scale based on portal density. Heck, make it so larger and larger BAFs increase the amount of link distance suppression. I'm all for that too.
Edit: Thinking about this more... By effectively creating a link distance suppression, we've also created a new valid use-case for rare link amps, beyond making a useless campfire/pineapple to flip on the opposite faction. RLAs would provide the ability to make some longer links while under a field, perhaps for blocking or slightly larger fields. Have them boost link distance but also remove a percentage of link suppression.
We've had a full weekend of this feature, nobody has reported game-changing "the world is ending" events like the doom/gloomers have been posting here. If you think this is game breaking, try going out and breaking the game over the next week the event goes on to prove otherwise. Until then, I'm holding with my convictions that the vocal minority here are upset they can't grief players out of the game anymore.
i don’t play under a field, so that portion of the event is irrelevant. That being said, the 2xAP for fielding and linking is huge. I’ve had a stash of apex boosts waiting for the perfect moment and this is it! Apex boost, two battle beacons and a bunch of SBULs made for some serious AP last night. So much so, I did it again today. Over 6 million AP in less than 24 hours!
I've posted my review of the Matryoshka Event. Hope you all are having as much fun as I am!
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/14713/
Nice Love this event already.100AP per recharge is pretty good.But lets not make these perks permenent
Early results from event. I decided to field for mu. My weekly totally is approximately 180k of that 15k was from under field linking. I won't be able to squeeze in too much more underneath based on time I can actually play and current layout of fields and links. I still really like the under linking.
I want that blue player as an opponent, rather than pushing him out.
In the context of the MU game, I don't think you're describing an opponent; you're describing cannon fodder for AP. An opponent has to have the ability and willingness to do things of consequence. In the MU game, that means being able and willing to create (and destroy) links and fields that "matter."
As long as this Agent is not impacting the MU game, they're actually a good example of how there's no need for a complex "link suppression" mechanic.
Thanks; these are good examples. Some folks only know about SLC, which can skew perceptions.
I tidied up some microfields over the weekend with internal links, and it seemed fine, if a bit like playing in beginner mode. So I have mixed feelings about matryoshka. It certainly makes fielding more accessible, but at the cost of some complexity that enriched the game and encouraged community.
But I'm also wary of "kids these days" syndrome. It's easy to fall into when we remember walking 10 miles to school, uphill both ways.
.
@crystalwizard fine sentiments of the good ol' days, but those aren't coming back. Multiple AR games now exist, Ingress must compete for users with them or perish. Ingress enjoyed the first-mover advantage in the ARG space. It was very special, very unique. Sadly, I wasn't around for those years. I joined just before Philly's most recent anomaly, which became my first one. That's an exciting event. Sadly, I have never known a world with guardians/guardian hunting, nor have I ever seen two factions compete for shards, just cooperate.
We can't turn back the clocks and get the magic back from yesteryear. That's a sunk-cost fallacy in the business world. What we need to address is 1) Getting more people to start playing and 2) Getting people to stick around playing. Agents who have quit aren't going to be part of the recovery, "Don't throw good money after bad" is the business saying that applies.
Yes, let's get more advertising for Ingress. But until we have #2 fixed, spending money on advertising won't do us any good. New players leave due to the high bar of entry compared to other AR games. We need something that's inclusive, but retains the late-game strategy. Right now we're letting agents who have all the AP they ever need dictate where and when new players (who are low on gear/power/skill/AP/etc) can play and level up. Moreover, it's a hobby of some experienced players to cause this grief on purpose. There's a few here who say to just get in contact with your local community, but the truth is that over time areas have stagnated and there aren't the resources for those players to reach out to.
You can't play chess when the black chess player starts with a full set of pieces anywhere on the board they want and the white chess player starts with one piece. It's not conducive to a fun game. Also, many communities have become one faction continuously putting the other team's last chess piece into check, over and over and over, forcing them to move with no possible gain or win scenario. Therein lies the problem. This isn't a game of perfect competition. Ingress actually isn't chess. Chess has an end. The only end to our game is when we've driven enough players out and the population can't sustain the development and maintenance costs. Ingress is not chess. Ingress is a continuous prisoners' dilemma.
I wrote a post a while ago that brought up the "broken" nature of the game. A great game is one where one player or side can't run up the score. Think of Monopoly or Risk. How many times are the games over and you're just going through the motions? There is no point in finishing because there's no hope of winning?
You have so many areas where one side wins every cycle. By millions of MUs. A new player downloading the game can't hope to make a difference without months of monotonous play, and literally hundreds, if not a few thousand, dollars of equipment. And all the while, they'll usually be harassed, griefed, bullied, and threatened while they do it.
This game has poor balance. The sad part is, it could be relatively easy to fix by tweaking how the scores are calculated. It could be done with math changes, not gameplay changes.
And the game, unfortunately, often attracts insecure bullies who find in the game a way that they can be good at something. Here in our area, a local group maintains a website where they track their Ingress score going back years. They have often complained that Ingress should do a better job of showing scores over time because nobody realizes just how amazing they are.
You know there's a complete resolution to the prisoner's dilemma right? Don't play. It's not a prisoner's dilemma because you can walk away at any time.
Ingress has a weekly 'end' in the Regional Scoring. If you choose not to play that game, then it's like you want to play chess but just move the pieces around without actually playing.
If you don't participate in the competition, of course you're not going to see it as a competition.
Yes, many people pick don't play. If this continues, we all won't get to play. EXACTLY my point. I don't want that.
Just because one side stopped playing in an area doesn't mean the cycles stop too. In the case of ENL versus RES, it's is indeed a continuous iterated prisoner's dilemma. Iterated reptetition of cycles focused on MU among two entities. By definition, that's what this game is. The factions still exist if zero players are playing for them in that particular area and the scoreboards don't disappear.
I know a bunch of regular players (including myself) who open the game daily, enjoy fielding, making AP, taking strategic portals, destroy enemy field, etc without looking at the score. I don't care about a list made for showing off, I'm not interesting in comparing numbers who don't mean much to me, only interesting in being able to actually play. Who cares if your faction is behind on a score board, who cares if some agent you never meet in your life is on top of this list because they are spending their day in a car just to get a bigger number ? I don't play the score board, I don't play the MU race. But I'm linking, fielding and enjoying it, can I say I play Ingress ?
In other words, you don't actually play the game, you just make the moves that woukd let you play the game. Its like you're sitting at a chess board, but all you want to do is move the pieces around, you're not interested in actually checkmating the other guy. In fact, you're not even interested in having to be strategic at all. That isn't playing the actual game, that's just playing with the pieces.
I find this event and new ideas entertaining for an event. So if i forgot and cover some unlinked portals inside i could easily link it inside an existing field. But of course this is really against the core of playing ingress and would not be used permanently. But for an event its really refreshing 👍🏻👍🏾👍🏼