Lore vs Intel
Is there a way to separate lore from intel and intel from lore?
I am Enlightened. I have not changed factions since starting this game. I have fought hard for my faction in RR and on the ground during anomalies. Intel missions and global challenges and shards. I love every minute of it and want my team to win every event against the Resistance.
I am also a Mod in Operation Essex. I assist in gathering lore and positing theories about lore both in Essex and on this forum. Within Essex, there is no faction. It is occupied by both Enlightened and Resistance agents. Factions are not discussed as lore is more important than faction bias.
Usually, lore is easy to see. It’s what PAC posts or has posted on the various medium available to him at the time. His own website, a blog, this forum. Most times, it contains a clue, a passcode to some inventory items. Sometimes it contains clues to much bigger intel. Intel crucial to a factional win. But most times, it’s just lore.
So how do we separate it? Is all lore intel, thereby making it opsec? What if it’s posted on the forum? Is it still opsec? What if there is no intel in the lore? Does it still stay hidden because one side is waiting for the other to post?
It has been known that sometimes clues come to Essex before it goes to the forum. While puzzles and clues found in Essex are free to all agents for them to try deciphering and decoding on their own, the same can not be said in the reverse. OpSec has, on more than one occasion, complained about intel and tessera already announced on the forum being posted into Essex. I have a problem with this attitude. As members of Essex, are we to sit on our hands and not note what may or may not be lore because we have to wait for OpSec to decipher what may or may not be intel? If it’s posted to this forum, are we forced to wait for Opsec to find nothing until they are ready for us to talk about? And what if that forces us to wait until the event is over?
Not all intel is lore and not all lore is intel, so there has to be a way to separate them so that both Opsec and Essex are happy, because this is causing a lot more stress than should be for a game everyone should be able to enjoy.
Comments
while everything that happens in an event is, eventually, lore - during the event it needs to be treated differently. Let's use an anomaly as an example. There are things being done on both sides with the intention of winning the anomaly. Everything that's being done is done with high security. If the moves one side is making get out, the other side will use that information to their advantage. So any information that anyone is privy to HAS to remain secret until the anomaly is over. After that, everyone on both sides can talk about what happened and shout it from the roof tops if they want to. The event's over and the information is no longer going to hurt or help either team.
Granted, the moves that the resistance and the enlightened make during an anomaly might not make it into the lore books but they could. They probably should, at least some of them - but the time for them to be discussed in an open forum as part of the history or lore of the game is NOT while the event is going on. It's after the event is over.
The problem is that some of the players of this game seem to feel that the only thing that matters is the storyline - the storyline is the be all end all, and that it doesn't matter who wins any event, or anything else. All that matters is that they get to fill in more holes in the story.
The storyline is fun, and it's fun to try to guess what's going on - but if the story line vanished the game would go on just fine without it. And I know there are people that are going to read this that will accuse me of treason or heresay for saying that. But the fact is - most of the players don't know about or care about the storyline - they care about the strategy of the game.
And in an event like what's going on now, with the tessara, and the fact that gaining each piece first is critical to who gets the most points, and thus who wins - as long as those tessara have not been found, even if a post is made by Niantic in a public forum, it should NOT be reposted to open groups. Each faction has the responsibility to find those posts and make their team aware of them. It might only be a few minutes between when one faction finds out and starts working on the clues and the other finds out and starts working on them - but those few minutes might very well be all that's needed for the faction that spotted the post first to find the piece and score.
In events like what's going on now, the information is critical and should NOT become part of the lore discussion until the event is over.
And as far as Niantic posting clues in an open to both factions telegram group - that shouldn't ever happen. Yeah, it's fun to have a character show up in chat and talk like they are a real person with real stuff going on - but it shouldn't happen. for a couple reasons - 1. most of the people involved in finding the pieces of the tessara are NOT part of the chat, so it's hardly a fair, open forum. 2. a Telegram chat is NOT an official Niantic channel for information.
If Stuart is going to give out information about where he'll be and how to find him, he should be posting on the Niantic community forums, not showing up in the Essex chat.
In my honest opinion, as of this event, ALL Lore is Intel. Withholding any type of information from the opposing faction is crucial to gain an advantage over them.
I appreciate the work you've done in the Essex Channel, I feel that you're torn between spreading the lore to the community and having to help the Enlightened at the same time.
I believe we need to do focus our actions for the good of the majority, and sorry for saying this, but the Essex community is not the majority.
In essence, the Essex is in the bring of experiencing a "hiatus" because of this. My suggestion is that any information that is related to the lore to be compiled and to be published once the event is done.
okay. lets go with your anomaly analogy. There have been times, during past anomalies that intel was released during the anomaly in the form of videos related to both lore and intel. so yes discussing lore during an anomaly does happen at the same time as discussing intel.
And while yes, not everyone like the lore, understands it or even wants it to be a part of the game, it still is. just like not everyone finding tessera is a part of the Opsec group nor do they care to be a part of it. For various reasons. but just like Opsec, Essex has it's purpose. gathering lore and making sure it is available to those that wish to use it in the future for intel related material.
I'll keep my two cents brief: this game is a war. Blue vs green. You gain advantages with information or manpower. Given we're dead even and this game is often called a "calvinball," and the nature of how tessera and advantages are handled in anomalies, this game is leaning more and more towards a pure information war. I believe the only true way to benefit everyone would be to have Niantic provide a distinct separation of lore and intel. If digging into intel provides lore, but also faction specific advantages, that creates a HUGE issue, and that written story will never be shared outside of that faction. This has to change for the story to keep thriving.
I love the work that Flint, Emmett, Raza, Spencer, JRich, the actors, and everyone in creative has done with ingress and I feel honored that I have played apart in the game's lore during the last seven years.
That said, it's a diservice to work of everyone in Niantic's creative team essentially say, "Sorry, the general player population doesn't diserve to participate with the game's story. Only OPSEC TESS players deserve to know what's happening to the characters or even to participate in the storyline/tesselation. Pound sand, because it will never be revealed since it's all top secret even thought the enemy faction has the same exact leads and info as we have."
Fact is, if Niantic did not want Essex Involved in lore, or the Tesselation, they would not be having Stuart Lightner leak info to Essex! Denying players, regardless of which community they belong, the ability to participate in, or have access to, any part of the storyline will hurt the Ingress especially when it's those who are not appreciative of the game's lore who are doing it.
When you have a challenge that relies on arcane knowledge and memory of lore to solve puzzles and find and decipher clues, it seems a very strange time to alienate experts in lore.
OpSec is crucial for competitions and it doesn’t take much experience to know how bad things get when it is missing.
The two don’t seem mutually exclusive to me. Value the expertise and utilize the resources available to help your team win, and acknowledge where those resources are and the effort that has gone into maintaining them.
this event is a different situation, it heavily involves Lore but is a fight between Green vs Blue, ultimately people need to decide where their loyalties lie. If their faction comes first then opsec is very important and posting in Essex or other xfac needs to be avoided until it is cleared that it can be posted.
for those who think lore is more important than faction are free to talk about it in Essex but shouldn’t be in any faction only chat, people put in a lot of effort in the game for their faction and it’s unfair on them that others can happily leak that information
Has anyone considered maybe the game designer's mission? The bigger question is: Is it a "war game" or a different kind of social game?
To me, it is a wonderful game where we can think about these things.
The main issue at hand here is that there are two drawbacks of "waiting for the event to be finished".
The first one is that the event is extremely long, so by the time lore gets to finally be released it may be too late and it's historical significance may have missed context.
The second one is that we have had instances in which lore has never been revealed, even after the events. Off the top of my head, I can think of Devra's briefcase in Exo5. It was supposed to have what she got from the NIA archive when Hank gave her access. So it was a very important piece of storyline because Hank becoming the head of the NIA and trusting Devra was a story arc. We accepted that it could bring an advantage for the upcoming anomaly so we waited. But it never got shown. We never knew what was in the briefcase (so top gun, except that here, the writers didn't plan for people never to know).
3. People who don't like the lore don't get the meaning of it. It's simply like having someone who is not a historian finding an important archeology piece and instead of taking it to a museum or a university for study, they either sell it away to a collector or drop it carelessly. Maybe that piece would have change or add something of historical reference. But the person who found it would just don't know that. This is MAYBE part of what explains the previous point.
Taking these three things into account it's obvious that ingress lore people are edgy.
I don't think it's a matter of "knowing where your loyalties are". I think we can all keep things OpSec for the sake of our faction and want our faction to win but there are a lot of things being kept by the OpSec faction people that don't make much sense:
1. The very Tessera. After the Initial discovery, the people from the other faction goes to collect the tessera as well so they can also have a chance to place it. So, if both faction's OpSec groups do have the same media, why is that media still OpSec?
2. People being punished for discussing PUBLIC data. We learnt of a very sad event of an Essex mod being banned from OpSec groups for posting the public forum posts on Essex. Essex mods usually post PAC's post into Essex in case someone missed it, especially now that the forum is new and some of us are still working our way around it.
3. Even after the teserae are placed on the board and surrounded by others, they have still been treated as OpSec although the points from it have already been collected. I can totally understand withholding info until you get the point from it. But... Why after?
4. Teserae have been kept locked even when Niantic tells people to release it. What better prove that something is not supposed to be OpSec than when the creators of the game itself send you a message that you should share something? During Hank's live streaming, he said that everyone should watch Enoch's video on memory restoration for simulacra. And yet that video was kept OpSec. At the end, Niantic saw their plea for the video to get shared fall into deaf ears and released all the videos in their YouTube channel. That was clearly not the original idea. If they were calling onto the agents to share it is because they wanted the info to come from the agents not from them, but they were forced to realise agents would not even listen to them on this matter. That is particularly sad. The game developer itself tells you "this is not OpSec" and you still don't believe it.
All in all, it has been weird. I understand Niantic wanting to get more people into the storyline and adding it to the competition. It's not (on its own) a bad idea and it can prove a lot of fun. I want my faction to win, but I also want to keep taking the story seriously and discuss it with others who do. I still want to be a historian, a truth-seeker, an XM researcher. In the OpSec groups that doesn't happen because it's not their focus. I even belong to a Res only lore group but it's not an OpSec group, so I can't post interesting plot developments there until they are cleared. All of this is nothing but sad.
So yes. I would like Niantic to get a communication out drawing a line between OpSec and Lore. Or a specific time frame for each tessera to be relevant. I don't know, something... So we can work as both, member of our factions and XM researchers.
Why do you assume Ingress is a game?
I do understand your points and maybe things are kept secret for longer than they should but then that’s a discussion that needs to happen in each faction.
in this particular case an agent decided that they could decide on their own what they will put into the public/xfac area.
if someone declares that they won’t keep information that the faction isn’t happy revealing yet private then there is no other choice but to remove them from discussions that they might choose to post publicly.
Kick the Can!!! That is a game.
What this game has evolved into, is more of a privileged and confidential scenario. Privileged because it is confidential. That is not how that works.
Privileged and Confidential is a legal term.
Confidential deals with security or restricting knowledge.
Privileged is the problem here, with this Social game based on having a fun virtual war with your neighbors.
Ingress has evolved as a war game in the last 7 years. Mr. Hanke was surprised about the social aspects of this "game". Like the ingress babies that started to happen within a year of this games start up.
That the communities and personal relationships that have begun due to niantic's little research project, and have not evolved with the game mechanics.
We are stuck in little tiny fiefdoms of conflict. Niantic needs to take responsibility for their inaction.
Each community faction can have despots or Mods that control their factions or to control the information. To include or exclude.
Or they can inclusive.
As an example I refuse to go to First Saturday's and it started here.
It is not fun. It would be better if first saturdays were more like mini anomolies.
If the information is public, why shouldn't it be shared? Not everyone is on the forum, not everyone is in opsec, not everyone is on Essex, not everyone is a member of a community.
They more people information can reach using all avenues available should be the best option. And Niantic uses all avenues available to them. The forum, YouTube, portal network, Essex.
I know a good number of agents who aren't in on the forum. More that aren't in Essex, and even more who aren't in opsec. Information needs to hit all agents. Not just a select few who then get to determine who gets what.
So if it hits the forum first, it then gets shunted to the various communities, local, faction, announcement channels, and the various investigative channels thought the world.
But this last one seems to be the biggest problem. A number of agents feel the investigative community shouldn't have access. Because they are xfac. That's it. That's the only reason. Cross faction.
Well let me tell you something. Niantic knows this. They wanted this. They created Essex. And they use the hell out of Essex. If they didn't want Essex involved, they wouldn't involve Essex.
So yes I will continue to shunt forum posts into Essex, because I want it to reach as many agents as possible.
Also a Mod for Essex here and honestly this event has caused so many issues. We at Essex love how much of the storyline is present. We want to enjoy it, we want to get people involved in it but as it has already stated because some are believing everything should remain opsec, it is currently closing off the storyline to new agents. Bits and pieces are missing which just discourages agents to want to be involved.
While, yes, some of this is opsec, not all of it is. I know things can be found in all the data, but it has always been that way, and storyline characters still posted on open forums a majority of what was found. Now the information gets tucked away or people are afraid to post anything because their faction may kick them. While others have no idea what Hank Osiris was saying about Enochs video in the last stream because the factions wouldnt post or share it. Thankfully we were given it the day of the Livestream in Essex.
I have personally watched people argue that nothing should be shared until April and honestly, while I know Essex will probably find a way to discover most of the storyline Intel, if things dont get out until then it's just going to bludgeon the storyline for new agents. Please either find a way to release the Intel when both sides discover it or please clarify on the rules that this is in fact Factions vs Nemesis so that the point of opsec is mute.
To bring to point something with storyline and game....
Every anomaly we have had to this point has revolved around storyline, in fact a majority of the anomalies happen due to storyline.
The entire tessellation is storyline. Every single Tesserae is a piece of the current storyline and advancement that has happened in it. So for anyone to argue that this isnt important to the storyline isnt really paying attention to the "game" they are playing right now. The tessellation is representing the entire storyline for Osiris/Prime right now. Without that storyline, there wouldnt be a game board for everyone to be arguing over it. So for the comment that the game could go on without storyline, yes it could, but currently the entire theme of this event is a game board based on the storyline which Most agents are pulling the information from investigation forums and Essex. Those who have dedicated themselves to storyline and yet some how that information isnt allowed to be shared anymore? We arent allowed to discuss in our investigations forums at all theories cause it may reveal something? No. I will state anything is allowed in Essex, any one can post their theories, their ideas, their guesses, whatever and if the factions decide to ban these agents then Essex will welcome them with open arms!
If you think that everyone in Essex needs to be banned, then please leave our chats. We have plenty of agents that have been able to balance opsec in the past, many agents that have been able to work with the storyline vs intel and many that still do. This hasnt changed, this isnt us picking our priorities here because there is still information out there that hasnt been posted by agents that are both part of essex and opsec. This is us seeing information in mass that clearly has lore in it, not being shared and if it is, seeing agents getting banned from their factions for it even if it is publicly posted.
As regards The Tessellation, what happens if the Resistance scores the most points? Enlightened? Nemesis?
We've usually known, up front, what was at stake with these challenges and competitions, and that knowledge helped inform discussions about what can be shared with whom and when.
Is there a way to separate lore from intel and intel from lore?
Practically speaking, this is up to Niantic and the gamemasters to clarify. If agents can't be certain that some piece of "lore" will never factor into "intel", the only choice is to keep it as "opsec" until the end of time. Which would be sad for Essex, but The Tessellation seems to have broken the implicit understanding we had of the relationship between the two.
Because that is the category it is in on the App Store and Play Store?
I hope someday Niantic puts even half as much forethought, effort, passion, and resources into in-game events and their effect on actual play that the players who love this game do.
Yep, they want you to believe the scanner is a game. Its working.
Greetings Professor Falken
Hello.
A strange game.
Kind of reminds me of why countries have patent law. It's good for a country as a whole if technology described in patents is published so others can learn and improve upon it, but the inventors should also get some benefit to profit from the with they put into to their invention. The government gives the inventor a limited term monopoly on the invention in exchange for the inventor publicly disclosing how to reduce the invention to practice.
Information can then have a lifecycle enforced by the NIA: private release until it's longer gives a competitive advantage, then public release. You can't rely on players to release info, because they don't know the lifecycle. Releasing info also boxes NIA in so that they can't use it again later, and the public release signals to players that it is no longer useful - which itself is a clue to ongoing puzzles.
So I think the integration of lore and intel can be managed, but I don't think the players should be expected to handle managing there separation of lore and intel. In fact, it's probably safe to assume players should hide intel indefinitely as the value and lifecycle is unknown until the NIA eliminates the value with a public release.
It’s important to remember that Ingress is a game built on trust, whether it’s as small as not giving away location for socials or bigger when you are planning BAFs it’s all the same principle.
while I do understand the frustration of the OP there is reasons why both sides are reluctant to give information away, people are spending time deciphering clues, asking people to be at specific locations, factoring in time, petrol potentially entrance fees to get to portals so it’s important any advantage either team has is kept only within their own faction.
this event is also strange that Niantic want as many people to be involved as possible but then that creates issues with Opsec, the more people with information makes leaks/accidents more likely. At the end of the day though if they want certain information in the public/xfac channels that is a decision they can make on their own, they have all the clues and if they are meant to be seen by everyone then they have their own methods of putting them into Essex
As for the Essex chat: If Niantic chooses to post in there it becomes an official source of information (and a very established one at that..) And like with intel from the forum it will find it's way to everybody that needs to be involved (and happens not to be in the chat/on the forum)
Since Essex has been open to everybody (from both factions) for years it is not only more than fair but an even more fun way of releasing intel...
(Remember fun? It's why we started playing games in the first place. That, and exploring and learning new stuff.. ^^)
I'm noticing that this thread seems to be a one-sided discussion, and most of the people here are talking with dislikes, rather than actually replying to the arguments that are being made. It's pretty clear which side is completely replying to points being made against them. Make of that what you will.
Your argument has a few issues. First off, videos that Niantic pushes during anomalies publicly are very obviously lore, and will end up distributed and treated as such. Even if they have intel, these were initially given out publicly in the scanner. Keeping them classified serves no purpose.
Saying that opsec and essex both have their purpose, and that "not everyone like the lore, understands it or even wants it to be a part of the game, it still is" serves to only show how one sided your argument is. Just because Essex exists does not mean any of us should be compulsed to share information to it. Sharing anything to Essex is not a requirement, it is done by those who wish to share information with it. It is not a requirement for either side to do, and using that as the basis for your argument won't get you anywhere. If anything, Niantic should be sharing this information more publicly through their channels of communication (this community page and telegram).
Also in general, use the quote button, or directly quote people's messages. Proper chat etiquette, please.
I agree, the creative work has been fun to watch unfold.
"Fact is, if Niantic did not want Essex Involved in lore, or the Tesselation, they would not be having Stuart Lightner leak info to Essex!" you've got it backwards. Niantic is giving out pieces of information publicly. Part of it is being released publicly. This is an information war. Saying some of the information is public, so all of it should be made public just makes no sense! "Denying players... the ability to participate in, or have access to, any part of the storyline" our community is not the issue here. We were given rules within a sandbox and it is both of our goals to win within these rules. If anyone is denying you access to the storyline, Niantic is by not making all of this story public for people to follow along with. Demanding players of a game release advantages because some information is given out by the game master and it hinders your ability to read along and interact, and then doubling down that this is the fault of the playerbase makes no sense. Not a damn **** of it.
It's like you didn't even read the posts on this forum that you posted to discuss people with. Kinda weird you didn't read the replies to your discussion. @crystalwizard pretty blatantly states "And in an event like what's going on now, with the tessara, and the fact that gaining each piece first is critical to who gets the most points, and thus who wins - as long as those tessara have not been found, even if a post is made by Niantic in a public forum, it should NOT be reposted to open groups. Each faction has the responsibility to find those posts and make their team aware of them," and he's 100% right. The game is an information war. That is not the fault of the player base. We did not decide the rules of the game of tessellation, we decide how we work within them. How the enlightened are working within them is clearly working, so why would we change that? It makes no sense to ask a participating party to change how they are playing a game if they are already winning.
"But this last one seems to be the biggest problem. A number of agents feel the investigative community shouldn't have access. Because they are xfac. That's it. That's the only reason. Cross faction." You say that as if it isn't a REALLY BIG ISSUE. "Yeah, the two human sides of this battle come and talk about story. So what?" have we already forgotten what happened when a throwaway telegram put a map to a tessera inside xfac comms? The resistance got it. And then did NOT share the intel they got from it. So yes, that is absolutely a huge issue. No "so what"s about it, sharing anything that could be intel through xfac communication channels is a huge risk, and we've seen that demonstrated before, outside this event and inside, multiple times.
"Well let me tell you something. Niantic knows this. They wanted this. They created Essex. And they use the hell out of Essex. If they didn't want Essex involved, they wouldn't involve Essex." If they wanted more information to get to essex, they could just share more information to essex. And that is the issue nobody seems to be able to wrap their head around: Niantic needs to change how they handle lore. Period. You cannot continue harassing and whining at the players for being players. Why would we do something that runs the risk of putting us at a disadvantage with no real reward? Pushing the storyline forward holds no strategic value to the green or blue side. Period. That's a fact, not an opinion. If you want story to come out, it will need to be done by Niantic, the game master here. Not the players. Niantic, and only Niantic, knows what can and cannot be publicly distributed. And they really need to start using this knowledge to help Essex, because the players stand to gain no benefit by helping a community proceed with the story.
"So yes I will continue to shunt forum posts into Essex, because I want it to reach as many agents as possible." This is Niantic's job. Not yours.
Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with how a lot of people have been carrying themselves within this discussion, but I'm more disappointed with Niantic for allowing this to spiral out of control within the game. The storyline should be shared by them, period. @NianticBrian please please please take note of this. It's absolutely unreasonable to expect either side to publish their story findings throughout the whole game, because either side can never be certain something will give the opposing one an advantage. Niantic needs to get it together and make everything that can be open open if Essex is to be able to keep up with the story. Neither side will ever "get better" at distributing lore, because, as @OXIIISIXAS and many others have said, "ALL lore is intel." We have no idea what we can share and never will, so it is much easier to simply never take the risk for a community who wants to read along with a story.
No HQ, they are in Essex with me