Just imagine all the inevitable bugs that would come along if they tried to implement something like that:
"I lost all my keys", "This portal didn't turn off after hours", "This portal never turned back on in the morning", "This portal turned off 3 weeks ago and never came back", "This portal turns on/off at the wrong time", "This portal came back aligned with the wrong faction", "This portal shouldn't be turning off", etc. etc.
I think the real problem was the no fair-play of the player who forced the rules to break Montreal’s world ENL dream only by wickedness.
Asking Niantic to act against this player ( + 8 complaints, and precedents not followed by effects) is reminding Niantic of their own wording which is to play friendly.
Faced with the massive postponement of the offence, ENL Montreal could have expected a quick response from Niantic (I was still waiting to be told that my complaint was received when I was given a warning 2 hours after calling the culprit a "little lord".)
This is what makes injustice felt. Is it showing Niantic's little regard for thousands of players to perhaps those who pay a monthly fee?
In every game, there have always been cheaters. This does not mean that we want to play with them. Will Niantic hear it?
Trespassing has been an issue raised ad naseum since Ingress began.
There is basically no good solution for this.
You can't ask Niantic to try and moderate this, it's basically impossible. What about people working in closed facilities? You can say they should be working, maybe, do we now enforce people not doing their jobs? What about break times? What if they live on the site as a caretaker and so on and on and on.
Your best bet, is to approach the faction and use diplomacy to establish local rules and sanctions. We eject rule breakers from our local community after repeated bad behaviour. But first we negotiate with the offender and try to fix things before throwing them out.
Diplomacy is your best bet here in the long run as it helps with so many other things as well.
If the person has legitimate access (in your case I guess they trespassed) you have to live with it. We have a local who can access all urban military bases, we have nobody who can. Outplay them instead.
what does a warning give?
the player cheated and it scrapped the game of several players who worked hard to plan everything.
if the action was legal, it is correct
the action was illegal.
by not acting, Niantic favors a cheater to the detriment of several legal players.
do the math ... within a few months the community will shrink by half or more.
and the game becomes totally uninteresting.
1 - the player must be banned
2 - Montreal players must have the opportunity to show their star to the whole world.
this is the only answer acceptable to players expecting justice to be done.
@hosette
you prove by your answers that since you did not have a feeling for not having respected the rules it encourages you to start again.
Let's put this into perspective: it's hard for Google Maps to verify information on when a place is open or closed because it uses verification from other users or from the business itself. That effort would be insane for anyone.
Not all portals have public access by everyone playing the game, at all times. Like it or not, that's just the way it is. Please, don't ask Niantic to try to attempt the impossible.
Your durable portal wasn't as durable as you thought it was. That sucks, a lot. Especially after putting so much work into it. I get that disappointment. I do.
But really, if this game has taught me anything over the years, it's that nothing in this game is durable. Until Niantic can figure out how to make the game 100% unhackable on electronic devices that are owned by people (hint: they won't, and that's not a ding on their part, it's an acknowledgement of reality), nothing is going to be 100% durable. It just isn't going to happen. Stop expecting it to be the case. You'll work yourself up into a tizzy, otherwise.
Cheaters happen. All you can do is report them and know that you can keep playing legit in the face of their cheating. You can only make assumptions about how Niantic is reacting to reports of cheating in the game. Don't make them, it makes life easier.
@Karandache2 I understand your frustration. I've had ops destroyed by a trespasser too.
Did you or anyone witness the player trespassing? Are you sure they didn't get access by social engineering or some other legitimate means? In other words, are you assuming that they trespassed to take it down or are you guessing?
Yup, and Google Maps quite often has inaccurate hours listed. I went into an arboretum last week. Google Maps said it closed at 4:30pm. Official site for the arboretum said dusk. I went in after 4:30 and it was still open. I'm pretty sure 4:30 was outdated info from when the place first opened back up with limited hours after Covid shutdown. Places change their hours all the time, and it would be impossible to keep up with that.
The hours for that park are inaccurate because Google Maps (and Google My Business, the service most businesses use to list their hours) doesn't even accept "dawn" and "dusk" for business hours.
Every "dawn to dusk" park and cemetery in the world has the wrong hours on Google Maps. Half of them have fake hours, and the other half are listed as "open 24 hours." Google Maps is a very unreliable source for park and cemetery hours. It's the weirdest problem with Google Maps that Google refuses to fix.
@Hosette I’m thinking of all people who prepared the Event. That was exciting . Sure. And we are disappointed the way is finished.
But the point is not really trespassing or not for the cheater.
Enl choose an anchor which was not supposed to be reached ( because the access was supposed to be closed and we verified that), that was the first point.
Secondly , why over the world Enl could do a star and why in Montreal it wasn’t possible?
Only by the will of one blue player who decided alone to break this dream. And used for that the worst part of the game: cheating (and yes, we find the little hole in the fence he used like a rabbit) . His timing was wickedness: 5 minutes after the cemetery closed, a huge blue triangle covered Quebec in its entirety, until the next day at 7:30 am. The first links were drawn and I was surprised to take the last screenshot at 9:04 am before the Ada at 9:05 am.
So, yes, I’m frustrated, but by thinking of all ENL who planed hard this Event.
And how it wasn’t a good player's behavior.
And this makes the game uninteresting. Cheats have always been excluded from player communities. Does tar and feathers really mean anything to you?
I understand that the idea I presented seems impractical, but are we going to wait for an agent to be in mortal danger when he/she goes to a certain portal. A perfect example is a portal near Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Should Niantic allow the said portal to be active considering there is turmoil in that area?
@Karandache2 I completely understand where you're coming from and I sympathize. I hate cheaters.
The point I'm making is that you don't KNOW he trespassed . It seems like probability is high based on what you've said, probably 98% or higher, but it's not 100% unless you have ironclad evidence.
Gotta say, several agents already died in Ingress history fro trying to reach portals instead of thinking twice, like for example reaching a lighthouse at night not using the road or playing while driving. Tribalism makes us blind.
That is a fair point, but Niantic is not inside communities to make such moves. If you spot a cheater in your community, it is in your hands to fix it. If your community accepts cheating, then create a different one, even if you are alone, and time will play in your favour.
During last shard event some agents sent shards to Chernobyl area. Chernobyl is accessible for some very limited people and it is forbidden for several obvious reasons. Is it ok that portals in that area exist? Same goes for ANY militar basement. there are some portals that should just dissapear.
I cannot speak for anyone, but my guess is "no trespassing" is a suggestion from Niantic in addition to being a real world rule. I believe Niantic is strongly hinting with that "rule" that one should not break the law while playing Ingress. Now, if an agent risks it, and they get caught, and they go to prison and / or suffer other real world consequences, then that agent can't blame Niantic because Niantic said not to do it. It's right there in the TOS.
But, if an agent succeeds, then they succeed.
Going a little off topic, but one could complain that portals on land that is normally closed to the public creates game mechanics that strongly encourage agents to trespass and break the law. This is the same kind of complaint that some had against a certain game company when that company made MMO raid bosses that take so much time to beat that it encouraged players to play for hours on end, to the player's detriment. The company may warn against doing it, but the game mechanics say otherwise.
I feel that portals on land closed to the public creates something similar. I also believe that it highly encourages spoofing, as spoofers do not have the same land access problems that a normal agent has.
There is also restricted access and restricted... These range from secure military, port, industrial facilities etc down to things like fun parks and zoo's. (Disney world is a prime example).
We had enemy agents very angry they lost a zoo portal at night, but, it was legitimate, the zoo was holding a special evening event the agent was invited to. Fair.
When I say diplomacy, it is really up to individual factions to enforce it. Our local faction forbids trespassing. If you are found out you risk ejection from our community.
Sure Niantic doesn’t wanted to have pursuit if someone breaks the law. But this rule is recalled so that the game goes smoothly with the same rights for all. What I denounce here is that this player does not even clap on his fingers because several complaints of bad behavior have already been made to Niantic. I also question the bias of those who deal with complaints. That’s poor attitude.
Niantic, as an augmented reality development software company may not be in the business of law enforcement, but it should bear some obligations or responsibilities if their product such as a game cause potential harm towards their players. An agent told me that when it comes to evaluating a complaint towards an agent; Ingroup preference bias can be seen from Niantic.
You're arguing for Niantic to be responsible for players safety, now, when they have zero control over those people in the real world. Even if they did deactivate portals temporarily for whatever reason, why do you think that would stop people from doing dumb stuff? Whose to say someone wouldn't camp at the portal over night, so they can take it out as soon as the portal is reactivated?
Players are (and have to be) responsible for their own actions. If they get hurt while playing the game, because they weren't paying attention, whose fault is that? Niantic isn't watching our selfie cameras to make sure we're all being good people. Would you really want that?
dude, Ingress is dead already. just keep playing if you want too. Niantic cant act of every babies who cry because someone destroy one of their portals.
Dear @NianticBrian, @NianticThia This post which looks like a public lynching attempt is mostly full of lies and exaggerations.
The Enl chose their anchor in Mount Royal area, 15 minutes on foot from my home and it has has been my playing area since 2014. Since I play a lot around Mount Royal and it's 2 cemeteries, I have befriended a lot of it's workers and city workers over time which can be convenient at times.
Reacting to some of the comments in forum :
Montreal is not Perma BAF, we score the points and destroy our main BAF after in average 5 minutes just to score the points at checkpoints so that players can play, we don't have to do so but we do and it costs us more time to get the keys and viruses. On rare occasions we will use it a bit longer for strategic reasons and it is legitimate gameplay
I didn't get ousted by Montreal Resistance, in fact I am VERY involved in it.
One of the participant got comm ban a few times for saying obscenities to me and other players in comm and by pinging me all the time to annoy me and **** me. Comes from downdown several times a week to my home portal since many years and stalks me, how toxic is that?
Many Enl in greater Montreal area and elsewhere do exactly what they are complaining about here in this post.
Getting close to 600 M AP so yea I play a lot and keep playing for the reasons I enjoy the game. I mostly like around Mount Royal area to make fields and have been involved in BAF since less than 2 years yet we managed to captured more than 21 billions MU because we have a good plan, teamwork and the Enl allow us to. Yet since 2014 I have been harassed by the local Enl in many different ways and this public lynching attempt is just the latest.
I am not saying that players should not bear any responsibility for their actions. What I am stating is for Niantic to bear its own responsibilities too. It's clear with the type of responses here in the forum that Niantic likes to keep quiet and wash its hands off from any fault and stay away from controversy. It's a 50-50 rule and if this is the type of status quo that Niantic chooses to follow, then it will only hasten the demise of this game. It's just a shame that this augmented reality game had the potential to attract more players because of multiple positive aspects, but its the way how veteran agents treats its new agents, Niantic's protocol of silence, the toxic type of play, and chronic complaints of spoofing & trespassing discourages existing players to recommend this game to their friends and families.
Comments
Just imagine all the inevitable bugs that would come along if they tried to implement something like that:
"I lost all my keys", "This portal didn't turn off after hours", "This portal never turned back on in the morning", "This portal turned off 3 weeks ago and never came back", "This portal turns on/off at the wrong time", "This portal came back aligned with the wrong faction", "This portal shouldn't be turning off", etc. etc.
Niantic says not all portals are available for agents , i can agree it sucks when such portals are used for bafs but niantic says they are ok.
@Hosette
I think the real problem was the no fair-play of the player who forced the rules to break Montreal’s world ENL dream only by wickedness.
Asking Niantic to act against this player ( + 8 complaints, and precedents not followed by effects) is reminding Niantic of their own wording which is to play friendly.
Faced with the massive postponement of the offence, ENL Montreal could have expected a quick response from Niantic (I was still waiting to be told that my complaint was received when I was given a warning 2 hours after calling the culprit a "little lord".)
This is what makes injustice felt. Is it showing Niantic's little regard for thousands of players to perhaps those who pay a monthly fee?
In every game, there have always been cheaters. This does not mean that we want to play with them. Will Niantic hear it?
Ok, lets chill a little.
Trespassing has been an issue raised ad naseum since Ingress began.
There is basically no good solution for this.
You can't ask Niantic to try and moderate this, it's basically impossible. What about people working in closed facilities? You can say they should be working, maybe, do we now enforce people not doing their jobs? What about break times? What if they live on the site as a caretaker and so on and on and on.
Your best bet, is to approach the faction and use diplomacy to establish local rules and sanctions. We eject rule breakers from our local community after repeated bad behaviour. But first we negotiate with the offender and try to fix things before throwing them out.
Diplomacy is your best bet here in the long run as it helps with so many other things as well.
If the person has legitimate access (in your case I guess they trespassed) you have to live with it. We have a local who can access all urban military bases, we have nobody who can. Outplay them instead.
@SSSputnik
I agree with you
Diplomaty is the best.
but what can we do when the player refuses to talk, say hello, hide and destroy just after you build? Every hour, every day.
I was saying since the year I play “that’s the game”. I never report his agressive way of playing.
This last action of him ( timing of the Big blue Triangle all over Quebec and Ada anchor) could have two reasons: wickedness or psychiatric pathology.
If it’s wickedness, this player must be ban very fast from Niantic for “inappropriate behaviour “.
Anyway all Montreal players would have appreciated a quick response from Niantic by suspending the offending player while waiting to see more clearly.
Let's put this into perspective: it's hard for Google Maps to verify information on when a place is open or closed because it uses verification from other users or from the business itself. That effort would be insane for anyone.
Not all portals have public access by everyone playing the game, at all times. Like it or not, that's just the way it is. Please, don't ask Niantic to try to attempt the impossible.
Your durable portal wasn't as durable as you thought it was. That sucks, a lot. Especially after putting so much work into it. I get that disappointment. I do.
But really, if this game has taught me anything over the years, it's that nothing in this game is durable. Until Niantic can figure out how to make the game 100% unhackable on electronic devices that are owned by people (hint: they won't, and that's not a ding on their part, it's an acknowledgement of reality), nothing is going to be 100% durable. It just isn't going to happen. Stop expecting it to be the case. You'll work yourself up into a tizzy, otherwise.
Cheaters happen. All you can do is report them and know that you can keep playing legit in the face of their cheating. You can only make assumptions about how Niantic is reacting to reports of cheating in the game. Don't make them, it makes life easier.
@Karandache2 I understand your frustration. I've had ops destroyed by a trespasser too.
Did you or anyone witness the player trespassing? Are you sure they didn't get access by social engineering or some other legitimate means? In other words, are you assuming that they trespassed to take it down or are you guessing?
Yup, and Google Maps quite often has inaccurate hours listed. I went into an arboretum last week. Google Maps said it closed at 4:30pm. Official site for the arboretum said dusk. I went in after 4:30 and it was still open. I'm pretty sure 4:30 was outdated info from when the place first opened back up with limited hours after Covid shutdown. Places change their hours all the time, and it would be impossible to keep up with that.
The hours for that park are inaccurate because Google Maps (and Google My Business, the service most businesses use to list their hours) doesn't even accept "dawn" and "dusk" for business hours.
Every "dawn to dusk" park and cemetery in the world has the wrong hours on Google Maps. Half of them have fake hours, and the other half are listed as "open 24 hours." Google Maps is a very unreliable source for park and cemetery hours. It's the weirdest problem with Google Maps that Google refuses to fix.
Ill put this into perspective.
During a shards op, we hired plane flight for four agents plus accommodation to get to a shard in a remote region where enemy faction had two agents.
We grabbed the shard and shunted it to a secure military base portal and went to sleep thinking it was very secure.
Whilst we slept, an enemy agent SWAM in the dark, to the fence border, probably half a kilometre, in the harbor, where crocodiles swim.
The portal was in range on the fence shoreline.
Stupid yes, within the rules yes.
So, $1000s down the drain, agents will and do go to huge lengths sometimes for the game.
@Hosette I’m thinking of all people who prepared the Event. That was exciting . Sure. And we are disappointed the way is finished.
But the point is not really trespassing or not for the cheater.
Enl choose an anchor which was not supposed to be reached ( because the access was supposed to be closed and we verified that), that was the first point.
Secondly , why over the world Enl could do a star and why in Montreal it wasn’t possible?
Only by the will of one blue player who decided alone to break this dream. And used for that the worst part of the game: cheating (and yes, we find the little hole in the fence he used like a rabbit) . His timing was wickedness: 5 minutes after the cemetery closed, a huge blue triangle covered Quebec in its entirety, until the next day at 7:30 am. The first links were drawn and I was surprised to take the last screenshot at 9:04 am before the Ada at 9:05 am.
So, yes, I’m frustrated, but by thinking of all ENL who planed hard this Event.
And how it wasn’t a good player's behavior.
And this makes the game uninteresting. Cheats have always been excluded from player communities. Does tar and feathers really mean anything to you?
I understand that the idea I presented seems impractical, but are we going to wait for an agent to be in mortal danger when he/she goes to a certain portal. A perfect example is a portal near Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Should Niantic allow the said portal to be active considering there is turmoil in that area?
"Remain alert and aware of your surroundings at all times." Says it right at the bottom of the screen, every time you start up the game.
@Karandache2 I completely understand where you're coming from and I sympathize. I hate cheaters.
The point I'm making is that you don't KNOW he trespassed . It seems like probability is high based on what you've said, probably 98% or higher, but it's not 100% unless you have ironclad evidence.
Gotta say, several agents already died in Ingress history fro trying to reach portals instead of thinking twice, like for example reaching a lighthouse at night not using the road or playing while driving. Tribalism makes us blind.
That is a fair point, but Niantic is not inside communities to make such moves. If you spot a cheater in your community, it is in your hands to fix it. If your community accepts cheating, then create a different one, even if you are alone, and time will play in your favour.
During last shard event some agents sent shards to Chernobyl area. Chernobyl is accessible for some very limited people and it is forbidden for several obvious reasons. Is it ok that portals in that area exist? Same goes for ANY militar basement. there are some portals that should just dissapear.
I cannot speak for anyone, but my guess is "no trespassing" is a suggestion from Niantic in addition to being a real world rule. I believe Niantic is strongly hinting with that "rule" that one should not break the law while playing Ingress. Now, if an agent risks it, and they get caught, and they go to prison and / or suffer other real world consequences, then that agent can't blame Niantic because Niantic said not to do it. It's right there in the TOS.
But, if an agent succeeds, then they succeed.
Going a little off topic, but one could complain that portals on land that is normally closed to the public creates game mechanics that strongly encourage agents to trespass and break the law. This is the same kind of complaint that some had against a certain game company when that company made MMO raid bosses that take so much time to beat that it encouraged players to play for hours on end, to the player's detriment. The company may warn against doing it, but the game mechanics say otherwise.
I feel that portals on land closed to the public creates something similar. I also believe that it highly encourages spoofing, as spoofers do not have the same land access problems that a normal agent has.
By diplomacy, if the offending player won't discuss, or is uncooperative, approach the other factions leaders.
I thought you could do paid tours of Chernobyl?
There is also restricted access and restricted... These range from secure military, port, industrial facilities etc down to things like fun parks and zoo's. (Disney world is a prime example).
We had enemy agents very angry they lost a zoo portal at night, but, it was legitimate, the zoo was holding a special evening event the agent was invited to. Fair.
When I say diplomacy, it is really up to individual factions to enforce it. Our local faction forbids trespassing. If you are found out you risk ejection from our community.
Sure Niantic doesn’t wanted to have pursuit if someone breaks the law. But this rule is recalled so that the game goes smoothly with the same rights for all. What I denounce here is that this player does not even clap on his fingers because several complaints of bad behavior have already been made to Niantic. I also question the bias of those who deal with complaints. That’s poor attitude.
@Karandache2 Niantic is not in the law enforcement business.
However, even let's pretend that they are. Do you have enough evidence to prove both actus reus and mens rea beyond a reasonable doubt?
@Hosette no doubts. Evidence. Proof.
Niantic, as an augmented reality development software company may not be in the business of law enforcement, but it should bear some obligations or responsibilities if their product such as a game cause potential harm towards their players. An agent told me that when it comes to evaluating a complaint towards an agent; Ingroup preference bias can be seen from Niantic.
You're arguing for Niantic to be responsible for players safety, now, when they have zero control over those people in the real world. Even if they did deactivate portals temporarily for whatever reason, why do you think that would stop people from doing dumb stuff? Whose to say someone wouldn't camp at the portal over night, so they can take it out as soon as the portal is reactivated?
Players are (and have to be) responsible for their own actions. If they get hurt while playing the game, because they weren't paying attention, whose fault is that? Niantic isn't watching our selfie cameras to make sure we're all being good people. Would you really want that?
both factions agents do that.
when the agent in question know the security Guard.. I absolutely and unquestionably know that it is NOT trespassing.
I think the agent who do 20 photos to try to get an other agent bad view from other players here is pretty bad.
just play the game and your portal will get destroyed and go play again to capture it again. it's the game, where
ever the portal is.
this guy take the game way to seriously. It's not real life. it's only a game.
dude, Ingress is dead already. just keep playing if you want too. Niantic cant act of every babies who cry because someone destroy one of their portals.
Dear @NianticBrian, @NianticThia This post which looks like a public lynching attempt is mostly full of lies and exaggerations.
The Enl chose their anchor in Mount Royal area, 15 minutes on foot from my home and it has has been my playing area since 2014. Since I play a lot around Mount Royal and it's 2 cemeteries, I have befriended a lot of it's workers and city workers over time which can be convenient at times.
Reacting to some of the comments in forum :
Montreal is not Perma BAF, we score the points and destroy our main BAF after in average 5 minutes just to score the points at checkpoints so that players can play, we don't have to do so but we do and it costs us more time to get the keys and viruses. On rare occasions we will use it a bit longer for strategic reasons and it is legitimate gameplay
I didn't get ousted by Montreal Resistance, in fact I am VERY involved in it.
One of the participant got comm ban a few times for saying obscenities to me and other players in comm and by pinging me all the time to annoy me and **** me. Comes from downdown several times a week to my home portal since many years and stalks me, how toxic is that?
Many Enl in greater Montreal area and elsewhere do exactly what they are complaining about here in this post.
Getting close to 600 M AP so yea I play a lot and keep playing for the reasons I enjoy the game. I mostly like around Mount Royal area to make fields and have been involved in BAF since less than 2 years yet we managed to captured more than 21 billions MU because we have a good plan, teamwork and the Enl allow us to. Yet since 2014 I have been harassed by the local Enl in many different ways and this public lynching attempt is just the latest.
I am not saying that players should not bear any responsibility for their actions. What I am stating is for Niantic to bear its own responsibilities too. It's clear with the type of responses here in the forum that Niantic likes to keep quiet and wash its hands off from any fault and stay away from controversy. It's a 50-50 rule and if this is the type of status quo that Niantic chooses to follow, then it will only hasten the demise of this game. It's just a shame that this augmented reality game had the potential to attract more players because of multiple positive aspects, but its the way how veteran agents treats its new agents, Niantic's protocol of silence, the toxic type of play, and chronic complaints of spoofing & trespassing discourages existing players to recommend this game to their friends and families.