Kureze is an Anomaly?
Was confused by my Kureze effect medal appearing in front of my Anomaly badges. Then was told this is an "Anomaly".
To me, the Kureze thing felt like other similar things. Didact, Courier Challenge, Myriad Challenge, Magnus builder, via lux, etc... Not a full blown Anomaly like past Anomaly events.
RIP big in person Anomaly events then, i guess.
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It's mentioned multiple times in the main announcement thread: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/17901/kureze-effect-the-formation-phase-1-locations/p1
In recognition of your contribution to study this XM Anomaly
The following single-tier Kureze Effect Anomaly medal will be awarded as soon as an Agent meets the criteria above, and will be placed among other Anomaly medals:
The FAQ also says:
The Kureze Effect is the idea of a quarterly season, structured the same way as Anomaly Seasons in the past, and builds on the experience we had with Primary Sites, and Satellite Sites plus Connected Cells to activate players from anywhere.
It doesn't feel like an anomaly, but Niantic are trying to treat it as one, hence the faction vs. faction competition over multiple phases
me and mum through down a dozen or so rare battle beacons, circled the block once, and then threw down some resos. didn't feel much like and old school anomaly. =(
Covid safe Anomaly? Okay
Yes, with the Omicron variant surge this winter. Were the cities selected for the Kuruze Anomaly based on the number of COVID cases for safety perhaps?
They were all prior Anomaly and/or Event sites in the recent past.
It's kind of like a mini anomaly with a connected cell component, only the connected cell is the whole world.
Hot take: What you and I did was the equivalent of a recharge room. You didn't have to go anywhere or fight to get the badge, you just had to sit at home (home area not your living room) and do some stuff.
Another hot take: It's like buying an anomaly badge or having someone else buy it for you. A few of us got together tonight, had dinner, then went for a short walk. One person bought a stack of rare battle beacons and I used a couple that I had in my inventory. We dropped beacons, everybody dropped a reso, and when we'd done ten portals we were done.
Lukewarm take: I think Niantic imagined that local areas would organize little micro battles between the factions.
Serious take: I think Niantic really wanted to do something like an anomaly but they understand that traveling and gathering tons of people in one place is a really bad idea right now. They wanted to be as inclusive as possible, and this is what they came up with. It's far from perfect but it's better than nothing.
Nice effort on the part of Niantic, but the design of the badge and the Omicron surge in the local area is a "no" go for us.
Its the best they can offer during covid times
A badge you can just get by buying stuff should be an event not within anomaly medals. that's just lame
We got together, about 25 agents from both factions, dropped about 15 beacons in a huge park in Central London yesterday, and it was total madness 😂😂😂. Absolutely loved it. Never been to an anomaly before so can't compare to the real thing but it was certainly worth it.
FWIW, I got my Umbra medal because one of my souvenir keys I picked up in Brooklyn the week before happened to be in the playbox. I bought a ticket and remote recharged and voila, Anomaly medal.
Umbra was the only Anomaly with a direct ticket cost, but the remote recharging aspect has been a mainstay of Anomalies since inception. This Anomaly doesn't "feel" like an Anomaly for those who actively participate in the traditional Anomaly festivities, but the bar for participation credit isn't much lower than usual.
we could only get 6 people together but we got 10 BBs up and it was really nice to get together outside an a gorgeous January day (by our local standards).
My only complaints would be the 10 minute delay time confuses people and 3 3-min intervals is a bit short (especially considering it’s after a 10 minute wait).
I agree the 10min wait makes no sense, it should be 1min not 10 which sucked when its cold outside and all u can do was wait o well...
Yeah, I guess the idea is that it gives other local players a chance to come over and join but unless you have a pretty dense player population the odds of that happening are too remote to justify such a delay.
The delay gives nearby agents a chance to join the battle. Without the dealy, it would be far too easy to win the battle for the faction that deploys the battle beacon.
But thats exactly what u dont want, play with the other team since u dont want give away points, i saw 9 local Enl players gather and no single res agent, same with the blue team they played without Enl.. Usually this is planned before so i still dont understand the long wait
with only one faction, it is not a battle. they should change the rules so that points and medals are only awarded if both factions interact with the portal during the battle period.
I agree with changing the rules, but right now it's still in the pandemic period and still have to keep the crowds not too big.
Then the strategy becomes: Interact with a battle beacon only if you think your faction can win it, because otherwise, you're giving the other faction free points. "If my faction can't get the points, then I can at least deny the other faction their points." That's actually worse than the current design.
true. if you join the battle and lose, you give the other faction more points because the battle category will be higher.
If you only allow it to count if there's an actual opponent to battle with then the opposing faction would just not compete to deny the badge. That's been an issue too over the years. Badge denial is a thing.
In response to your lukewarm take. I think in some areas, this looks like it worked well. In other areas, almost no interest because people are waiting to see if their city gets picked for a future phase. I reached out in my local chats and saw very little interest and others said they were waiting. I was actually hopeful to finally meet some of the people I've been chatting with for 3+ years as I never did any FS events before covid. But, again, very little interest.
In response to your serious take. It's hard for me to remember others parts of the world are experiencing different styles of lockdown and safety measures. Where I live, I'm seeing 65,000 people pack into a stadium to watch people play football. So it seems absurd that Niantic is careful to see 100-200 people go to a park, outside, in the open. I'm disappointed that Niantic held off on announcing the cities for so long. We are adults and should be able to manage our own levels of risk. No one should be blaming Niantic for covid cases. If someone is high risk, they had the option to buy beacons for a solo attempt or plan ahead and get keys to remote charge (it's how I got most of my medal ticks). It's crazy Niantic will listen to the minority about covid risk and plan entire events because the idea of a hundred or two people in an open space sounds dangerous, yet, pleas of updates for latency fixes, drone medals (medals that people can do at home safely) and other fixes have gone largely ignored. I agree, far from perfect, but better than nothing is accurate.
@ZeroHecksGiven I get where you're coming from with that last part. Different parts of the world have very different COVID conditions and different responses to COVID.
Different people, and companies, also get to choose their own boundaries around COVID. I think Niantic is trying to adopt an ethical and somewhat conservative stance around safety and I think that's a perfectly reasonable decision to make... I don't consider it the least bit absurd. You suggest that players should be able to manage their own levels of risk and that is exactly what Niantic facilitated. They set up the event so that people could choose whatever of risk they wanted, whether it was traveling to attend one of the cities, getting together with people locally for player-driven battles, or playing solo. I am often critical of Niantic and their actions, but in this case I give them a gold star for being as inclusive as possible in giving players options.
You don't need Niantic's blessing to organize a gathering of your local players. All you need to do is say, "Hey, anyone want to get together and hang out?" If there's interest the group can collaborate to figure out what risks people are comfortable with and what safety measures they'll put in place. Last weekend I declined to go to a small gathering of agents at an indoor restaurant but participated when an outdoor venue was chosen instead.
(Personally I think it's absurd that 65,000 people are packing into stadiums. Any words that I would use to describe those people would be starred out by the forum's filters.)
I went to the chosen city: Atlanta GA. It was very much like an anomaly.
The day before, Niantic showed (ornaments on Intel map) which portals would have Battle Beacons, in order. Our operator recorded them, so knew where to send us for optimum effect. We had 5 on foot, and 2 car teams with 2 people each. The playbox was HUGE, but the car teams could claim a portal in advance, and if they couldn't get back to it when its beacon appeared, our faction still got some credit (unless the other faction came by in the meanwhile).
It was really fun! I was part of an operation! I got to meet old and new agents, and see the world in yet another way. We were outdoors, so no covid risk.
It was hard to figure out how to read the portals in the field (it was easier for our operator). Some Battle Beacons had a timer on top (counting down until it started). Some had counter on bottom (active, counting down until finished). Some just had a score (done). Others (older) were beacons of its winning faction. Others were thrown by agents who played through. Where portals were thick, EVERY portal was beaconed (good for lots of play) - you had to zoom in and out, and follow lines of beacons, to figure out what was what.
The other hard thing was explaining the above to agents who just came by. One got very mad because we flipped "his" portal, after its beacon ran out, while a timer was running until its next beacon. He had gotten a point from that portal, and us flipping it took it away! He had no idea how his personal stat worked, that there was a team score, that not all battle beacons were active, that the battle had stages, or that you'd get a second point for a second beacon on the same portal, etc.
i'm glad you had fun. Atlanta is not far from my current location. i was hesitant to go; there seemed to be no central coordination. i didn't want to turn up in Atlanta (a big berg) and not have anyone direct me to what was going on. Niantic could have chosen to do portals anywhere in the city. what was i going to do? turn up and chase beacons? seemed like a nonstarter, so i decided against it.
@GorillaSapiens If you're in any Enlightened groups, someone might have known someone in the Atlanta region. We were organized and could have used your help. One guy came down from Knoxville, thru a mutual friend in San Diego, lol.
i like what they're doing for phase 2, lighting up the portals beforehand, and in MANY more cities.
this makes me more inclined to participate (even though i've already got the badge)