Ingress

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Ingress

As I sit worrying about about employment, sickness, and health during the COVID-19 scare it got me thinking about Ingress.   It’s now been almost 6 months since I’ve played the game.

I am no longer playing.   The game I used to play is gone; there are plenty of resources that let you learn about Scanner Redacted and Prime and the technical challenges faced.    My experience was simple : since the game isn’t fun anymore, I don’t play.    The Prime scanner ruined it.

But Oh My God.   I miss this game.   I used to enjoy going places – real places, you know, in the real world – to find out what portals I could capture, and how I could protect the human beings in a specific place in the real world.    The absence of enemy fields, or better yet a protective field over the area.    The ragtag group of other players – IE, other secret agents – all working together to defeat the other team.     The discovery aspect of going some place you would not normally travel to, just to pick up a portal.    Traveling for whatever reason and you’re standing at a game location, time to take action.

There are all kinds of “Augmented Reality” AR games out there but they all follow a Pokemon Go model.    Here’s that model to me : Go someplace in real life, and take actions on your phone.    There’s no real connection between the place, and the real world.    Sure, you can get that Water Pokemon by finding a river, but that’s only a tenuous connection with the real world.    Harry Potter and Minecraft Earth all struggle to bring the same kind of magic back that exists in Ingress.

It seems like it’s mostly a question of teamwork and planning.   I loved poring over the Intel Map, looking for openings to create this field or that.   I loved coordinating with other players as teams tried to create Big Ass Field (BAF’s) that would cover huge areas.   I managed one covering Santa Clarita and the City of Burbank.   They were GLORIOUS things to do.    I also failed to create one covering the entirety of Southern California, and it was fun in its own way.

Then there were the BAF’s which I participated in for some other players.    They usually weren’t successful, but never because of my group – it was always somewhere else.   That’s a fun record to look back on.    And then there was the time the entire Ingress world was watching me stop a multi state BAF from coming into existence.

Somebody has to bring that gameplay back into the world.    It’s still there, in Prime, but the client is awful for technical and artistic reasons.   But most of all, because it’s not fun playing the game any longer, since the client sucks that bad.

Someone has to design a game that :

• It’s like Ingress
• Territory control battle between teams
• Keep it friendly and competitive, but not angry and vicious (this was a real problem)
• Sense of discovery
• Impetus to travel
• Rewards for cooperation
• Connection to real world
• Enslaving humanity and/or protection of the world
• Bonus points if you can set it up so each team thinks the other one is the bad guys.   Ingress did a fantastic job with this.

 

The World Boss

Tags

Ingress, Summoners War

Having sucked HarbingerZero into Summoner’s War, I expect the rest of you lot, you know who you are, to also give the game a try.   I’m just kidding, but you might like this craziness – for real.

Same for you all from the land of Ingress.   I recently annoyed an ENL player who thinks he owns the entire downtown of Ventura.   But in all honesty I’m not putting in much time to the game any longer.    I’m in a spoiler mode only for Downtown Burbank, keeping the ENL from just having their way with the place.    All kinds of travelers come through and clear the place out too (Thank you all !), but I really would rather do Summoners’ War and work towards the big prizes.

I managed to clear the Chiruka Remains on Hard mode, shortly after Normal mode, and I seem to have unlocked two additional game modes.

The Dimensional Rift, and the World Boss.

The Dimensional Rift claims to give out a ton of additional experience in exchange for a bunch of energy (20 or 30 to enter).    The one time I tried it I played in the Ferun Castle and so took my toughest monsters – who were max level – and was unimpressed with the XP.    The Garen Forest should be a lot easier – let’s try it.

Is it worth it ?

4 energy gets me 3,900 XP across three monsters (Faimon Volcano farmed by Lapis).   20 energy nets me 22,500 XP across five monsters.    It’s pretty close, actually, as for energy spent to XP earned.   The advantage is probably time spent, since the battle was a lot shorter.

The World Boss I have not yet been able to try.   You need a minimum of 10 “Powerful” monsters.    This means something like monsters at level 30 or higher.    When I’ve tried it I only have 7 available, since I’m currently in a grinding creatures up phase.    The rewards should be pretty good for it – various summoning scrolls and pieces and the like –  but only if you can get decent “grades” for the fights.   I expect I’ll get an “F” for my fights and thus get minimal rewards, so I’m in no hurry.

Not ready for this one, yet.

Other than that, Summoner’s War is very good at mixing up the gameplay for you in an attempt to keep it fun.   This weekend there was a secret dungeon to get a natural 3* unusual creature (Wind Frankenstein), and the Valentine event continues to give either energy as a reward, move you closer or get you a Devilmon (I got mine), and perhaps even get you a scroll (I got a Water Summoning scroll).

Still hitting the Chiruka remains, hopefully I’ll get my Minotauros soon.

The End of 2017

Tags

Idle Heroes, Ingress, World of Tanks

On a personal level, I’m glad 2017 is over.   2018 is looking good.   But we’re here for gaming, aren’t we ?

Ingress

Retirement is going well.    Some ways yes, some ways no.    Things that have changed :

• I am not driving to random places to get that key portal.
• I do not have to hack every day.
• Not charging portals on a constant and mentally ill basis.
• I have viewed the Intel map maybe 6 times in the past two months.   Not daily.

Things that aren’t going so well :

• War for Downtown Burbank.   Supposedly I was going to quit this.
• Wandering an unfamiliar area and Ingressing.    This really is so much fun, despite the time required.
• Niantic did some kind of “audit” on my Operation Portal Recon contributions.   I am now rated poor; I have to do reviews in the hope of climbing out of poor rating, and none of my reviews count towards the badge because I’m poor.   This means I’m pretty much done with OPR.    I might work for free, but not for no rewards whatsoever.   I’m also irritated in that I spent a ton of time on it and I’m rated “Poor”.   Well get bent then !.

Ingress 2.0 has been announced with a 2018 go live date.    Given 1) The state of the software industry in general, and 2) Niantic’s history as a company, and 3) Harry Potter AR game announced previously,  I expect perhaps December 2018 and no sooner.    Harry Potter will probably happen sometime in 2018 but I don’t feel like guessing that one.

Idle Heroes

This is really a fun little diversion.   So fun, I have opened up 3 servers for play.   That takes all the time I can throw at it, so I’m pretty done looking for phone games.

On server #1, I am about to finish the Nightmare mode of the campaign.   Campaigns have four modes – normal, nightmare, hell, and death.   Sounds like Doom 1.    My team is strong and deadly, but I am level – locked.

They have a strange levelling mechanic in the game for no good reason I can see.   All it does is lock you out of some activities until you have spent a certain amount of time in the game.   You can’t even spend your way past it.  Pretty annoying.   I will hit level 125 today, after which I’ll move on to hell mode.   Until I hit (in a couple of stages) the level limit there.

I have lots of good heroes and am only really waiting until “fodder” heroes pop up.   You have to sacrifice heroes in order to move up from one level to another.

Server #2 sports the recent addition of an unqualified god-tier hero (Barea) who has helped me progress through the campaign at a lightning pace…… until hitting the level cap.

World of Tanks

The 2010 game you still can play today, I have jumped back into World of Tanks.   I am now in a semi-serious guild with a bunch of guys who do battles together daily.   The stronghold play is a way to earn some kind of power points towards your clan structures.   I really don’t pay any attention to it, but I do get a clan logo on my tank and people to ask questions to so that works well.

The 50 battle challenge continues in full swing.   I want to have 50 battles in every vehicle that I own, or I’ll sell it.   I am approaching the point where I can see the end of “the list” – except it doesn’t include any of the tanks I have not yet driven.

So far I’ve only sold two – something Japanese and the Russian A-20 which I had rebought for some stupid reason, and hated all over again.   But I have an insanely big account – 190 tanks owned, with 15 vacant slots.   Not much reason to sell tanks unless I really hate them, and I’m a generally forgiving kind of guy.

Looking forward to accumulating credits again for another big sale.   I blew 10 million credits on equipment and tanks with the last sale, and have very few unlocked tanks which I have not purchased.    If I can hold onto a bunch of credits again I may actually start playing the Tier 9’s and unlock some additional tier 10’s.    All my free XP is being saved so that I never have to redrive the VK4502B despite its major upgrade – I hate that tank.   But I need just shy of 200k free XP to purchase the Tier 10 PZ VII; 80k is sitting in my account.

Happy new year !

And now, retirement

Tags

Ingress

The idea has grown on me.  A game like Ingress really becomes a part of your life.   No matter what you’re doing or where you go, you want to think about scoring the big MU and protecting humanity.   But can you literally do this, forever ?

I think, for my sanity, the answer needs to be no.  Two and a half years of hardcore really is a lot.   Everyone I know bugs me for the amount of messing about with my phone that I do when I’m out.   And I have acquired some pretty bad habits when I’m at work.

I remember when I started playing the game, and just didn’t get it.   No map.   No idea where the portals were.   What is the point of the game anyway ?   And I went out to this park, taken by a player about level 12 or 13, and I fired off my Level 1 bursters and nothing happened.   And I left.   Frustrated.

How does my “professional” career end ?  At the EXACT same park.   With the exact same player killing a portal.    Which I then took away from her (so says the rumor mill, I’ve never met her), fielded and achieved the goal.  Ten days to Onyx Sojourner.   And finally getting Onyx Illuminator.

And my current profile

Looking good on the Cell MU score.

I’m reminded of my first thoughts about the game when I was starting out.   Do just one thing a day to help out the war effort.   Now, this will do very little considering the small playerbase of the game as it has shrunk over the years – but it will do something.   So that’s my goal, and my prediction.   Let’s see if I can manage to stick to it.

But you can’t just abandon your team either – these friends you’ve made along the way.   So I’m still there, to blue up whatever area I can manage, or to help the RES do their thing.

Plus, I should be in time for the Harry Potter game rumored to be coming next !

The Final 100k

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Ingress

Having gotten the idea, I find myself very happy about the idea of “Retiring” from Ingress.   But first – I need my Onyx Illuminator.

November 6th.

I have been keeping large fields east of Via Princessa Street in Santa Clarita.   I have a couple antagonists knocking them down, including one guy who is very regular about it all.   Every monday, he comes and kills things.   Sure enough, early evening, he killed the layered field I had set up.

Two of the portals are hard to access, with the other(s) inside of Santa Clarita proper.   So I rethrew the field such that, if he knocked it down, I could quickly get to a portal and set it up again.    And this throw pushed me over the edge of 3.9 million MU scored.

Sure enough !   He did exactly what I figured he would.   He came back, killed the field again on his way home.  So after the family got into bed, I sneaked out and threw fields.   In other words, I threw the field twice on the 6th.    3,934k MU is scored.

November 7th

The ENL do not cooperate by giving me easy fields.   Neither does my family – I have to be home and help with homework instead of gallivanting around throwing links.  I throw a little bit in Burbank at lunch.    3,936k total.

November 8th

Having set things up in Burbank, I proceed to throw some scoring fields.   The hills of Burbank are a beautiful blue.

3,946k scored.

November 9th

Burbank ENL disappoint, but I have an hour in the SCV to finally get up north of Bouquet Canyon.   Almost all of Canyon Country and a good chunk of Saugus gets covered.

3,967k scored.

November 10th

I head out to Magic Mountain and do a few things in the SCV.   No big fields are making themselves available.   I’m ready to head home…….. when the key SCV portal, holding up all the fields above, goes down.    My heart’s in my throat as I head to the park; I was just down the street.

Nobody’s there.    The agent jarvised the portal down, and killed a lot of MU worth of fields.   But now…… I ultrastrike all the mods, kill it and rebuild it, start throwing keys, and then the chase is over.

Onyx Illuminator

I’m kind of amused… I get this one before I get Sojourner.    I have 10 days to go.

Now, it’s time to retire.   Be a casual player – if I can, that is.

Game Analogies and Ingress

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Ingress

Ingress always contains a certain (American) Football analogy.

• Teams play for a limited time to score as much as possible (Cells)
• The macro games adds this activity up for a win (Global Score)
• Everything resets after a few days for another cycle (Seasons ?   Individual games?)
• Hit and smash a lot.   Just like football.

But I have discovered – to my dismay – that the Poker analogy also fits.

Imagine a line drawn with Many Players, and going to Two Players.    On the two extremes Ingress is Total War, versus a Poker Game.

Ingress is a total war ?

• Two teams dedicated to complete domination of the other.
• Destroy the other team’s stuff
• Not usually personal; just wreck or build.
• No one person is critical – notwithstanding that the important gameplay is accomplished by all the folks sinking many hours into the game.

And yet, with two players, Ingress gets more head gamish.

• Goal is to get the other guy to quit.    Sort of.    Then you can have your way with the map.    But it might get boring, thus the “sort of” qualifier.
• Start by making as much of the map your territory as you can.   The other guy will too.   You both mostly hope the other guy will go away, but he doesn’t.   What next ?
• Don’t do what the other guy wants you to do.    Well, what is that ?    It varies depending on the personality of the player.    Thus, over time, you have to learn how to read the other guy and divine his “tells”.
• React as appropriate.   If you frustrate/bore the other guy well enough, he quits.   You win.
• Don’t forget the nastiest opponent of both teams – Entropy.   Portal decay.

The middle ground between the Poker Game and the Total War is interesting.   Now you have more of a Massively Multiplayer Chess Match going.   Somewhere between putting the most effort to dominate the map, and winning the head game, is a question of balancing these interests most effectively for your team.

Ingressers take great delight in playing against specific enemy agents.   Most of the information we get about what the agents are doing comes from the comms system.   Agent X has captured portal “The Eiffel Tower”.   Agent X has linked “The Eiffel Tower” to “Big Ben”.    Agent X is attacking your portal “The Chunnel”.

Personally I am on the low end of this spectrum – I play more of the game map than “the other guy”, but there are a large number of passionate agents who go out of their way to play something more like poker, and play “the other guy” instead of the game.    Things like :

• Finding someone’s guardian portal and killing it.
• Follow your nemesis.   Undo everything they just did.
• Bricking your nemesis’ favorite portal.

And I get it.    To play the game map, at least to some degree, you do have to play “the other guy”.

I hate playing poker.   To me this is the perfect anti-game, and yet now I realize I am indeed doing that to a certain degree.    I guess this means I’m growing as a gamer.    I still feel a bit dirty about it, to be honest.    So I’d rather play Massively Multiplayer Chess or Total War.

Ingress 2.0 Thoughts

Tags

Ingress

There’s something about the software tools that Ingress was built with that isn’t sustainable.    So Ingress 2.0 is “coming soon”, probably built with the Unity engine.   And it’s their chance to change up the game a bit.   But there is NO COMMUNICATION – as usual – from Niantic about this.

I thought I’d speculate.

High level goals would include :

• Keep the things about Ingress 1.0 that everyone loves.
• Better monetization.    Profitable games continue, others don’t.
• Remove kludgy things done because of the code previously written.
• Tweak the key system.

And so, start with Ingress as currently created.

Niantic makes money from

1. Anomaly Events.    You would want these to continue.
2. In Game Store.   Needs serious expansion.
3. Corporate Sponsorships.   I think these should continue.

The corporate sponsorships have to be a great deal for the companies.    I will assume most players are like me, and I have been exposed and gotten curious about multiple brands I had never heard of because of their sponsorships.    I would only stop at 7-Elevens at one point; now I attempt to stop at Circle K’s because of their sponsorship. I am aware of MUFG, AXA, Softbank and Lawson now, where I never would have been without Ingress.   The tiny bit of marketing I know suggests that Ingress is a good penetrator but only hits a very narrow band of people.   That’s a good deal all around as it’s been practiced.

I would revamp the in-game store more in line with the typical “free to play” and Pokemon store.

• Frackers and Beacons would stay in game.
• No item store purchases would count towards your inventory limit.   This is the single biggest reason I have bought a paltry $2 worth of stuff.
• Inventory base would be 2000 items.    All the long term Ingress players have multiple accounts and/or backpack accounts – for additional storage.    So the store should sell additional item slots to help stop “backpacking”.    I would sell them like this :
• 100 extra slots for $X – this brings the players inventory to 3000, ie, after you buy 10 inventory expanders.    To get 3100 the cost is instead $2X.    3200 is $3X.    Et cetera, either infinitely or to a 5000 item cap.
• There are almost an unlimited number of ways to slice that pie; my attempt is just an example.    How would you do it, dear reader ?
• Capsules are fantastically useful but are too small.    I would do away with “capsules as more inventory space”, and instead have them for players to organize items or give them to other players.    Buy a capsule in 50, 100, 200, 300, or 500 slot limits, and do away with free capsules from hacking.
• Capsules as “Interest Bearers” probably go to whichever bank sponsors the game.   I would consider also a cash shop item that multiplies your interest level.

Having said all this about the cash shop, I think Niantic is treating Ingress now as their development laboratory, and favored hobby.    I doubt they make *a lot* of money from it, it’s more on the lines of “This brought us Pokemon Go our cash cow”.   Again, these things tend to end at some point.

Are more levels needed ?   Probably not.   I don’t think the levels are big draw for most players, and the one expansion from 9-16 was clearly designed so no one would reach it…… and then the game continued long enough that it DID get reached by most players.   That said, it would be simple enough to add 16-32, and then smooth out the progression a bit (as in, reduce the requirement for 16, then make progression linear after 15).

Instead, I would expand the badge system with multipliers.   And then players have a 2x showing inside the badge if they have passed the requirements twice.   Et cetera.    You could do this with the lower tier badges as well, to give people more sense of progression.   I may only have bronze, but I have a 5x bronze Illuminator badge = 25,000 MU scored.   Not enough for silver, but it’s more than bronze.    This would give me personally a 10x Onyx Recharger badge, for instance.

People really want the ability to reorder their badges.   I’d build that in but make it a cash shop purchase.   That, and mission badges.

Additional badge ideas (Obvious, but I wanted to list them) :

• Portals Neutralized
• Enemy Links Destroyed
• Enemy Control Fields Destroyed
• Enemy MU Killed
• Portals Filled (As in, deploying the number eight resonator)
• Portals Maximized (As in, deploying the last LVL 8 resonator)
• Elevation Change.   How many players walk in the City (trekker), versus who carries their phone and climbs a mountain ?

I would make sure I’ve got the bug fixed that results in “empty fields”.   Make sure you can update the population base for the game as time goes on, since it appears it’s the same as at launch.   It’s really annoying to field a new subdivision with thousands of people and get +1 MU.

Not a whole lot different.   Just a few tidied up pieces.    Let’s see if I’m anywhere close to what Niantic comes up with.

 

Thoughts on Ingress Retirement

Tags

Ingress

Now having successfully reached 3.75m MU scored, I find myself wondering how long I’ll play “competitive Ingress”.

Oh, sure, you can continue to grind out medals forever.    I look at people who started day 1 and see them without “all Onyx” medals.    But the gap I’d have to cross is huge.    I’m also starting to get tired of that type of gameplay – getting the next goal that you made up.    Keeping up fields and keeping humanity safe, is pretty insanely boring too.    Glyph without end, and charge portals for an hour or more – providing you have enough cubes – and you’ll find yourself bored.

Entropy is a powerful opponent.   Each portal decays 15% per day, thus leading to towns developing by this formula : The more contested the area, the more small fields and spiderwebs built.    The less contested the area, the more portals are overfielded as players try to minimize what they need to recharge.

I tend to pick up the big MU from scoring 10-20k fields multiple times.    This is because you want to have fields stay up over your area – plus the thought being to discourage their destruction by building them up again as fast as possible.     So I’ll put up a field.    Greenie knocks it down.   I put it up again.   Rinse and repeat.   But this gameplay requires you to dash off to strange places and I’m getting sick of it.   So maybe the Onyx Illuminator is the right time to pull back and become a filthy casual.

If I became casual, then Santa Clarita would remain with little change.    It’s a very blue town most times, but a few greenies still challenge for the area.    Burbank’s greenies would probably rejoice to have me quit spreading out from Downtown.

So – the Onyx medal chase includes

• Sojourner.    336 days active.    This one is an easy pickup.
• Illuminator – 3.75m scored, the final 250k will come.

Other interesting medals, but still working on Platinum; don’t even think about looking at the Onyx requirements

• Liberator.   900 portal captures to Platinum.
• Builder, 8k to go.    Purifier, 30k to go.   Connector, 4k to go.

So here’s hoping that 4m comes during November along with Sojourner.   And then, maybe, just maybe, I can pull back a little or a lot from Ingress.

The Game has Changed in Ingress

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Ingress

I went out today to run an errand around town in the SCV.   I looked on the intel map, and couldn’t find anything that I wanted to do for Ingress.    90% or more of the town is fielded.   The local greens have largely given up – including my nemesis and his wife.   It’s either a strategic move, to bore all of us blues, or they’re just done with the game.

The new opponent we face in Santa Clarita is entropy.   Keeping all these portals charged up and not letting them decay is a challenge.   Farming gear takes on a whole new meaning when you need hundreds of cubes.   Fortunately, I have generally saved and never used the Lawson / Circle K cubes which I have acquired and it doesn’t take too many of these things to fully charge – after eating all the cubes I have in my inventory, that is.

Resonators and weapons get destroyed to clear inventory in the hope of getting more cubes, and keys are used not for their intended purpose but as micro batteries.

I think, this is what victory looks like.

A few greens in the middle, but the exterior is covered.

Now Burbank is another story entirely.    Burbank has continued active greens, including my local nemesis.   They’re getting stronger.    I’m getting more work.   These things all result in a greener Burbank, and I can’t even keep up with Downtown that much anymore.

Just after I refielded those fields between 3rd & Glenoaks.

I find it interesting how victory in one area, keeps me from assisting as much in another.   Less micro fields and more charging to keep the larger fields alive.

All in all, Burbank is dominantly green.

 

1 1/2 Times To 16

Tags

Ingress

I once thought I would never reach 40 million AP in Ingress.   Hah.

Got almost exactly 60 million.

Now, I’m half again that mark.   Looks like it took around eight months of gameplay.

The only real fun statistical thing to chase is MU.    2.55 million MU are scored, and 3m does not seem that far off.    4m is the Onyx badge.    I think it will/would be fun to count up from 3m to 4m, but I have 450k MU to score first before I’d find that out.

Everything else is just impossibly distant.   Onyx mind controller (Fields) badge is earned at 40,000 fields; I’ve just passed 10,000.    I have many gold badges inching their way to platinum.     Feh – Ingress 2.0 will be here before I onyx all of that stuff.

Blue dominant.

Santa Clarita is pretty firmly in RES control.    It’s a nice feeling.   The caveat being that normal gameplay has restarted today since the Magnus badge is finished.   Determined players on either side can either fill in all that blue, or knock it all down again.    It tends to creep blue slowly, both because that’s my natural game style, and because most other RES agents play that way too.    The greenies in the area fight over their neighborhoods and try to deal with being very outnumbered.

Battleground Area

Downtown Burbank just gets flattened, then blued up, then flattened, then blued up, and even greened up then flattened by the RES then blued up.   Citywide things are much bluer than they have been, which is a nice thing to see.    With a bit more ENL activity it would probably be 80%+ green – except Downtown.   Maybe.

Then again my only contribution to Burbank is Downtown.   And either drawing ENL to the area or just making them sick of flattening it and they head off elsewhere.   But the RES is much bigger than any one agent, and the team does a great job with Burbank all things considered.

I’ve seen multiple new portals in SCV and have hit most of them – and not a single new one in Burbank.   I think it’s slim pickings in Burbank anyway, seems that everything possible is already a portal.    I’ve added many deletion requests to the queue and we’ll see if any of them actually get deleted.    So far, I believe my deletion record is one, for the Cow Sculpture in Glendale in someone’s front yard.   And four new portals exist because of my submissions.

The Ingress lifestyle doesn’t stop.    Real life moves on.    I take my daughter to school every day, meaning that I rarely get a chance to leave at 4 am because of XYZ game reason.   Instead I arrive at work and wait for break time.    Then again, summer is fast approaching….

Most nights – as always – I don’t have the opportunity to run out and field/burn any areas, but I take them as I can.   And I run every errand my wife wants.   She’s figured me out, but she doesn’t seem to mind half as much as she used to.

It probably helps that I’m much more engaged in vacation/getaway planning nowadays.   I actually have ideas about places to go now !    As in portals I want to hit, uniques to collect, downtowns to wander, and weird tourist attractions to visit which just happen to have lots of portals.

Will I reach Onyx Illuminator ?    Or 100m AP ?   Only time will tell.