Niantic has finally Shown that Cargress is the intended way to play Ingress

Visited 3 new cities this past week. In the Pre Machina era, the best use of time when you come to a new city to play was to find a portal dense area park and walk, hack, link, field. Ideally you managed to find a hotel with a portal so you could farm keys to link back to when you go on your adventure.

But now with Machina, You've got so many km of portals to smash, with links crossing through dense areas so the only way to do fielding in a new city is to drive around smashing portals. Machina very much pushes Cargress as doing it walking is nearly impossible with portals throwing links 8+km long in all directions.

So I need to thank Niantic, as someone who always takes flack for Cargressing and trying to do it as little as possible, I no longer have any incentive to play out of my car.

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Comments

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    If you think cargress wasn't a way for the other faction to link and field before especially in rural areas, I have a bridge to sell for you.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    I haven't yet seen links longer than 2km.


    However, ever since Ingress came out, players have been playing with cars, planes, helicopters, boats and ferries.

    Hiring or buying expensive communications gear.


    The main thing is, if you aren't able to get around without a car, get in touch with your local players, they can help you with taking down long Machina Links.

  • VenomousToadVenomousToad ✭✭✭✭✭

    In the early days we all used to meet up at a park and play and hang out. Walk city areas micro fielding. Creating farming clusters to get gear. Now nobody walks and nobody ever needs to farm for gear. It's simply a game to play while driving. It's changed. There's only a few players left so no reason to really have team stuff. As the player base falls there's less team to work with. It's become a solo game. Without a team it's gotten really boring. Just playing on the way to work or on errands. So cargress is simply the new norm. Call it a consequence of a waning game.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Player behaviour with regards to meeting up has changed.


    Before glyphing was a thing we would all walk around a park together to hack gear


    When Glyphing was a thing we didn't talk as much when we did the same loops, or over Sunday brunches.


    Wheb Frackers came in, we would just stand around for 20 minutes.


    But even so in the past we would be meeting up, solely because we needed gear.


    Then covid-19 came, and so did the Drone. Even as the world got back to normality, meeting up for farming gear just died. Because anyone could farm by bouncing a Drone around.


    The Drone had a lot of potential for greater gameplay, but hasn't been realised. Instead it is used for farming and Sojourner Hacks.


    Today, we have Kinetic Capsule programs to produce an unlimited amount of gear. Except portal keys.


    There is no viable solution other than to remove bonus items from Drone glyph Hacks. 😢

  • VenomousToadVenomousToad ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think cargress is the main deterrent to the game growing. Nobody wants to play a game that wastes so much gas especially with these prices. Big fields win cycles, micro fields do nothing for the score. So people drive large distances to make big fields. It's why I've always thought there needs to be another type of scoreboard. Add an AP gained scoreboard and more people would start microfielding instead. Thus allowing people a different metric to track. With two metrics that both add fifty percent to an overall score you could stimulate both fields and activity. Causing less of a desire to cargress and a combination of walking and playing. Create a reason to stop the cargressing and the game may actually grow.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    Today, we have Kinetic Capsule programs to produce an unlimited amount of gear. Except portal keys.

    KC's do not produce an unlimited amount of gear. You still need to acquire the KCs, then the ingredients, then walk 8km to get the program output. And you can only do it 3x before the KC is destroyed (barring the common one). Hardly the gear generator the QCs were, which could passively generate stock without you needing to lift a single finger.

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭

    I think the point of the OP isn’t that cargress wasn’t a thing before, it’s that Machina has added yet another “feature” of the game that hurts footgress much more than cargress. So it just tilts the incentives even more (much more in some areas) than before towards playing in a car over on foot.

    That much should be indisputable.

  • VenomousToadVenomousToad ✭✭✭✭✭

    That is true. I'm my area the game is only played by car. Nobody walks. So machina hasn't changed anything.

  • This was the point.

    I cargressed before. But when in a city tried to footgress because that is what I was always told Niantic meant for the game. But Machina has just driven the point home that Niantic WANTS cargress.

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭

    I don’t think it means Niantic wants cargress, I think it means Niantic barely thinks about the implications of its decisions.

  • IcyBlueHeartIcyBlueHeart ✭✭✭✭

    I think Niantic is using Machina to shake up a stagnant game. I like the new adversary and believe it is still a work in progress that is being evaluated and adjusted. The fact that Machina portals are now decaying to neutral and dropping links supports the work in progress idea.


    Please note, the game is changing. However, the sky really is not falling.

  • So much cargress vs footgress talks, there's gotta be more bicyclegressers out there, than just in my region, no?

    Someone did a larger field over my city using trains to get to those diff places. And for the first time in a long while after I had to do recovery from some stuff, I went on my bike and cycled to another town on the outskirts to break the field, took me like 6 hours to get there and back all together(might have been a bit much after so long of not), but damn I felt accomplished. Not only with breaking a larger field but also the journey, exercise and even going into a direction I haven't really explored much in the past. Found a lovely path I'll definitely have to bike on again as a bonus c:

    Works pretty well with destroying them pesky machinas too, tho some other much more... Stamina ready folks on their bicycles take a lot more part in that stuff.

  • joecainjoecain ✭✭✭✭✭

    Too bad prime (lower case to show disrespect) suuuuuccckkss compared to Redacted for cargress.

  • NysyrNysyr ✭✭✭✭

    Maybe they should lower the speedcap down to like 25kmph from the 60 its currently at. I see people in intel driving while playing and not stopping so much I'm shocked there's not been a handful of accidents yet.


    Just make lock timer expire after a minute, should be enough to stop cargressers

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