"play your own game"????????

MorganzaMorganza ✭✭✭✭✭
edited February 2020 in Anomalies

I was horrified to find this on the anomaly page at https://ingress.com/eventdescription/anomaly/anomaly-2020-munichgermany: "The more you coordinate, the better your odds -- but you always have the option of playing your own game, alone or with friends. "

No.

No.

Oh dear Saint Jarvis, NO.

It's hard enough for faction strategists to deal with a few rogue players who show up from time to time. Inviting players to strike out on their own will lead to chaos.

If you want people to be able to play their own game, do a global challenge. (I dunno, maybe every five hours for a week count how many cells win a given metric. That would be fun and cool.)

People travel thousands of miles to anomalies for the teamwork, not to see cool plans disrupted by a few players "playing their own game".

Starbursts. Shards. Volatiles. Innoculation. Longest link chains. Nothing happens without teamwork. Without teamwork it's just a matter of which faction has more people show up. Just vote for the winner and go to the party. That's not what an anomaly is for.

You may have gotten rid of official POCs but that doesn't mean you can get rid of the teamwork that makes anomalies fun and meaningful.

Post edited by Morganza on
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Comments

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭

    Niantic is out of touch with it's player base. Again.

    The "player base" for which you speak of is demanding that everyone "play 'our' way or don't play at all" and then goes about trying to run off anyone who disagree. That is not good for the long term health of the game and is why Niantic included the comment in their page.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    If we can have and learn to deal with random rogue agent trowing random links over the our cities, we can also be smart and deal with them during anomalies.

    Not everybody like to "have fun" receiving orders and complainments. They can still help with hacking uniques and others goals.

    Making their own game doesnt mean they cant coordinate with the team.

  • DargorHSKDargorHSK ✭✭
    edited February 2020

    OK, let's put it nice and easy for Niantic to understand:

    Ingress is about teamplay. (Been playing since 2013, mostly in off-site anomaly capacities, since kids, work, wife etc.)

    PoGo is minimal teamwork and a lot of individual play. (Uninstalled since a long time)

    HPWU is, in my eyes and sole singleplayer game. (playing sporadically, fan of the universe)

    You cannot impose the approach of the latter games onto Ingress. The player base of Ingress is built on teamplay, building the ingress universe, with anomaly victories which shaped the universe. With portal suggestions.

    And now I might sound like an entitled A-hole, but the Ingress playerbase has enabled the success of the successor games and the last months it seems as if Ingress took more and more of a backseat and needs to be monetized heavily.

    Culminating in the last anomalies, where a few weeks before the anomaly concerns were raised that prime is not performant enough. We were given the "go ahead, nothing to see here, everything is under control" treatment.

    Also Niantic has raised a fee for participation shortly before the anomaly,for maintaining the standard

    We all know what happened, don't we?

    Now, players are encouraged to play their own game...

    Seems as if after 7 years and approximately 15 anomalies it's time to finally shut down the scanner and Intel...

  • When I started playing in August 2016 after giving in to my curiosity after hearing about Ingress from the Pokemon Go community, what I found was a bunch of triangles and blue and green spaces on the map. I would walk a certain round almost every day for the first 2 weeks, figuring things out and trying to make the map around me look greener. The portals would also be attacked almost every day. This is the reason that probably kept me interested and engaged into the game in the first place. I had a worthy opponent that would keep me from slacking, having a challenge to face. After reaching level 7 after around 8 days, I first met fellow agents of my team. There was an anomaly that weekend, one being very close by, so everyone would talk about anomalies. It was very sudden to me since I never heard about those events before and I didn't know enough about the game and hadn't reached level 8 yet, but the month after, I attended my first anomaly. There was a structure behind everything and I would have been lost without it. I didn't know many players yet and teaming up probably wouldn't have happened without the guidance from my faction. I didn't know how to play during an anomaly. I didn't understand the goal or rule set. But being in a team and following a strategy together made me enjoy it and getting the hang of it. I have attended all the anomalies I possibly could ever since then. Planning and executing your every move, being in a team battle against and with the opponent, the well calculated strategic efforts from both sides... that is what I probably enjoy most about the game itself, apart from all the people that I have met and the community that I am happy to be in.

    I did enjoy the hexathlon event in September, and I was surprised how it really made me put some effort into it, even though I was playing on my own. I would attend one again if it would be very close by again, but I don't feel the need to make it happen at all cost like I do for anomalies. I do prefer the "war game" that doesn't just make you walk around somehow doing your thing. And while I also appreciate crossfaction interactions and events, the very essence of the game itself to me is the friendly competition behind it and the team spirit. And anomalies are the best ground for it. If everyone or a considerable amount of agents was to "play their own game", all the team efforts would go to waste. It would not be what I know as an anomaly. I don't think that this sentence was supposed to be so impactful, but it certainly could become this way.

  • NineBerryNineBerry ✭✭✭✭✭

    This text has been used to describe anomalies for several years. It's not new.

  • Getting agents to cooperate is the measure of a true strategist.

  • This is correct. I'm not gonna spend too much time digging up old anomaly pages, but the screenshot in this post is from Darsana Prime Atlanta.

  • Players are honestly saying "what's wrong with playing it your own way"?

    Imagine you are trying to play baseball, or soccer, or any of a million other team sports.

    You're playing at the highest level. You've spent months on gear, equipment, coaches, you've flown half way around the world to compete, just for a few hours.

    In the middle of the game, someone runs onto the playing field - claiming to be for your side - and kicks the ball into the stands, giving the ball to the other team. Because, you know, they wanted to play the game their own way.

    How is this even remotely fun?

    It's fun if you don't think the game is a team sport.

    I can only believe that it's not that "Niantic is out of touch with their player base", it's that Niantic does not believe the game should be a competition between two factions. By removing the POCs, and stating the game should be played "however you want", and reducing the number of anomalies to one in favor of hexathaons and first saturdays ( which are not faction oriented ), they are working to shift the game away from faction play. Perhaps they are doing this for the money, perhaps they have a philosophical reason. I'm not sure. I know it's what I like about the game, and why I don't play Pogo or WizU.

  • I think everyone who's played in or helped organize an anomaly has experienced some kind of damage from bad actors, and wishes Niantic could do something more about them. That said, I'm more concerned about the impact of server issues and GPS spoofers in a tournament situation than I am about rogue players. Community organizers are accustomed to dealing with the latter without Niantic's involvement, in any case, and I think many prefer it that way.

    I've played and organized enough anomalies to know I don't want Niantic picking teams for me. I also have serious reservations about Niantic picking the people who pick teams for me. I don't think it's bad that they offer a reminder that we're all free to choose who we play with.

    I wouldn't be surprised to discover that Niantic is intentionally choosing to become less involved in player politics. "No official PoCs" likely saves them time and effort. If I had a magic wish-granting Ingress genie, I'd love to see those resources reinvested into tournament play in the form of dedicated gamemasters and/or server infrastructure. For me, basic support of the team-based competitive game begins with ensuring tournaments be reasonably fair and free of technical glitches that could impact their outcomes.

  • MirthmakerMirthmaker ✭✭✭✭

    Agreed. Anomaly is the World Cup of Ingress. It should not be decided on penalties.

  • Perhaps Niantic could include contact information for faction Orga, so that newer agents could get connected with their faction and learn the benefits of team play? That might be one way to incorporate the wording in a more positive way. (Yes, there should still be local organizers for an Anomaly. )

  • The process of identifying the "official" contact for a given anomaly site is, I think, exactly the sort of player politics that Niantic is trying to stay out of.

  • It's clear that Niantic is looking to monetize Anomalies more. Unfortunately they don't really even understand how their own game works. It would be like if Superbowl ticket holders could just come into the field and do whatever they want during the game, or better yet, if the coaches in the Superbowl just says, do whatever you want and told the QBs they were on their own.

  • HarleyQuinn42HarleyQuinn42 ✭✭✭
    edited March 2020

    But I need the terribad swag and rectūm themed badges

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    hjow are they supposed to make any money with only 1 anomaly coming this year? and given the corona virus now who knows if that anomaly might get canceled... bad idea gather thousands of people if WHO says its bad if people are big crowds gather etc..... and germany has strict laws etc.. so niantic better make a good decision long before its supposed to start.

  • MorganzaMorganza ✭✭✭✭✭

    They do include the global org websites for Enl and Res teams.

  • Just so wrong.

  • Dirtyjoe619Dirtyjoe619 ✭✭✭

    I am really surprised that all they have come up with so far was the virtual first Saturday which I'm sure cost them more money than anything because there only seems to be the classic Hank Johnson package that they could have probably sold with or without the FS event. It also seems the creative energy is just not there anymore. The fact that it took this long to realize that their two other game had the mechanic of the Apex and that it was missing from Ingress is a little bit troubling. I'm not sure if it was fear of backlash or being oblivious to the situation for years at this point now. Niantic really needs to innovate like they used to (or at least how they do with their other cash cows) and quickly.

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