Is the "No Trespassing" rule just a suggestion?
If so, just don't call it a rule, that would make it clearer for everyone, and fairer.
The Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery is the third-largest in North America, it is a beautiful landscape with lots of interesting portals. Last year, because of the pandemic, the cemetery authorities decided to close acces to their facility on Sundays, weird choice you might say, but they have their reasons.
Of course as Ingress players, we saw that as an opportunity, having a portal with no possible access for 39 hours (normal hours of operations are from 8 AM to 5 PM Monday to Saturday) , and we heard about the Starbattle event happening, the Montréal ENL Team decided to join the fun.
Weeks of planning, and key farming, we "only" got about a thousand, and then a day of cleaning up we were ready to capture the anchor portal at the last minute and get the hell out of there before the official closing. Rules are important for some people apparently. Of course RES decided to close their year long intermittent BAF over the whole city to prevent everyone from doing any links, but that's not new, we had until Monday morning, so we played the waiting game.
At 7h30 AM on Sunday, the BAF is finally down, our team starts to organize, break the last few blockers, and start linking to do our beautiful starburst. This was all really exciting, until a RES player decided that trespassing on a cemetery and flip an inaccessible portal was acceptable to stop an ENL event from going on..
We all went home and started reporting the event. 24h hours later, nothing. No ban. No portal reset. Radio silence from Niantic.
So asking frankly is it ok to trespass seeing that people doing it suffer no repercussions, is Niantic waiting for someone to get seriously hurt jumping over a fence to enforce their own rules?
ENL Montréal Team.
Comments
Montreal is on my list of locations for examples where perma BAFs are negatively affecting routine play.
Just need to put a modified matryoshka into the game permanently, would solve a lot of these issues.
To answer your question, no... Niantic won't do anything. Niantic won't give you an official answer. It's a rule they have to state for legal purposes which they have no way of effectively/realistically enforcing. It's the equivalent of posting a speed limit but only assigning about 10 police officers across an entire country to do it.
Report it to the police. I would like to say it is against the spirit of the game, but if you can get away with it, in the end it is no different than driving over the speed limit between portals. It is a civil matter.
Please don't waste law enforcement time over a video game. Hard disagree.
Exception: Property damage/threats/etc which actually warrant a response.
It's enforceable, they have the precise location and time of every players action, if it happens somewhere where they are not supposed to be they should put on their big boys pants and make an example.
@NianticBrian, @NianticThia and all, we'd like to hear from you. If you tell us to respect "human rules" with the evidence to back it up, what's to stop you from cracking down on the game. That's what strikes are for, right?
While they may have the location/time information, what they don't have are the circumstances surrounding the access. Agents may obtain prior permission, or have staff access, or someone on the premises allowed them in, or any number of other reasons that might justify their presence there. This won't be apparent to you or to Niantic.
Not saying that trespassing doesn't happen. Just stating that it's not always a clear-cut case.
Oh interesting loophole. We just made everything eligible for field action with that sentence.
I don't agree on this point, if the place is closed to the public it doesn't give more right to the custodian of the place to play.
Let's keep in mind the rule that is dictated to us by the referee of the game NIANTIC. If they are not able to, they must be transparent and say so.
Trespassing is a tricky one.
We had a player cross a Covid quarantine boundary to play and everyone complained, including own faction.
Its not uncommon for escorted access to say military bases, or being friends with someone that allows access. (We had an agent at a remote anchor once who was friends with the lighthouse keeper and had dinner with them, hours after official closing time.
True trespass is a police matter, whether you choose to report it or not, is up to you.
I'd say it would have to be pretty serious to go to law enforcement. Also law enforcement may just laugh at you unless its something that endangers themselves or the public.
@NianticBrian
I'm sorry, did I state somewhere that trespassing is allowed? No, I didn't. I merely stated that instances of perceived trespassing may not be that at all. It's not always clear what access permissions an agent may or may not have.
Edge cases will always be a thing, that's why there's a thing called common sense and trust in the judgement of other people. In the presented case there is absolutely no justification for the behaviour, just a smug sens of entitlement and disregard for any rules Niantic chooses not to enforce.
You're awake early 😳
You are saying that trespassing is allowed because you are unwilling to sanction any player who does it whatever the evidence is presented against them so what you are effectively saying is that we should probably start trespassing as well since that's the only way to get to play on an even playing field.
That was so sad for the Event! Imagine all the blue cannot play for their event… they will complained… with reason…
Many complaints (+8) to report a no fair-play behaviour and that was the Enl (3) who receive complaints for inappropriate behaviour in the COMM just because we said the player wasn’t fair and asked how he could legally go in a closed space! #Niantic Montreal inspectors seem to have Blue favouritism.
New player on this game, I no longer agree with Niantic's policy that makes us sign it but allows the abusive behavior of players already postponed for their aggressiveness in the game. I call not only for a boycott of Ingress, but also for the dissemination in the media of these practices. I don't want to invest in this game any more .
How do you suggest Niantic enforce this?
If the person is friends with the manager or authority for an area, and that person lets you in, how are Niantic expected to enforce it?
Simple, facility is closed, no action permitted on the premises. You're supposed to be working anyway, right?
@Azhreia @NianticAndres
Excuse me, but I don't agree.
If Niantic does not sanction illegal acts he encourages them and they will multiply.
it's really important for Niantic's credibility and for the continuity of the game.
do you wish the end of ingress ?
Just to be fair, why not Niantic temporarily deactivate a portal which has been reported as inaccessible or temporarily closed to the public? It will prevent trespassing or spoofing as well.
Le jeu n’est pas drôle s’il n’y a plus de jeu
game is not funny if there is no more game
How does that translate in actual gameplay? I used to throw a field, about half of the layers were in a park that closed 30 minutes after sunset. What happens to those when Niantic deactivates the portals? Does the MU count for the night-time checkpoints? Do the portals come back neutral in the morning, or in their previous state before going offline? Do I lose all the keys I farmed for those portals? Aside from my example, how many portals does this involve in the entire portal network? Who does the work to vet hundreds of thousands (millions?) of portals around the world to figure out whether they should be deactivated, and at what times? What about hours changes? What about locations that only have third party information online which may be inaccurate? Niantic would probably make the players do all of the work, which will just open more avenues for abuse. It doesn't seem practical.
I would imagine that might depend on what you consider to be "deactivated".
You know there is always the possibility that Niantic issued this player a warning. You wouldn't have visibility of this at all. Or a strike, which you wouldn't have visibility of either.
You can't conclusively say that no action was taken by Niantic. The only thing we as players can verify is a ban (temporary or permanent).
Just because the player wasn't banned doesn't mean Niantic didn't do anything. Please keep that in mind.
Turn it into a Field Trip spot. Keeps visible and holds all info, but is not a portal avaliable for it use. It would require some dev for several reasons as agents need to be able to know at first sight that "is not a portal".
That's... not feasible. @kiloecholima pretty much explained why.
@Azhreia
Well, I was talking about a longer term status. If portal is accessible but there are only daily/weekly time restrictions it's not eligible to be disabled from my point of view.
For example, this would fit current volcanic eruption in Canary Islands, several portals are no longer accessible but have not been destroyed, so best action would be just disabling those. Perfect example: Chernobyl.
@Khmorr Do you understand what you are asking of Niantic?
In order to enforce a rule about trespassing they would have to know the details of every single private facility in the world, what its access hours are, who has legitimate access to it during times that it is closed, and whether the player(s) in question had obtained access legitimately or illegitmately. I believe that this is an impossible task for Niantic.
I've been playing this game for eight years now. There have been plenty of occasions where I arranged to have legitimate access to a facility that I wouldn't normally have access to. It's actually not all that difficult to approach a security guard and say, "Pardon me, but can I ask you a favor? I'm playing a geolocation game on my phone and I would like to walk over to (that place) and push a few buttons. Would that be OK?" It's amazing how often people say yes to that, especially if it's a low-security facility. I've also been known to [redacted] and [redacted] in order to gain legit access, and there was that one time that I [redacted]... but that was an outlier. I've also flown over inaccessible portals in a small plane.
I absolutely and unquestionably condemn trespassing. At the same time I understand that Niantic does not have an ironclad way of determining whether someone was in a private location with or without permission. Without having that level of certainty I don't think they can do anything but issue a warning to a player accused of trespassing.