So here’s the biggest complaint I have about Ingress at the moment — and it’s a complaint I see all over the boards, too.
One side’s won.
It’s a different side depending on what city you’re in. But in way too many cities, the give and take of war and raids and sniping and attacks and retreats and fighting another day has turned into a monochrome. Take, for example, Denver (click to embiggen).
That’s a lot of blue.
The current gameplay in Ingress seems to have a tipping point that turns into a death spiral for game competition.
Let’s look at the Pros and Cons of being a city majority, and how that prevents the other side from turning the tide.
THE MAJORITY SIDE
Pros:
- Because friendly portals give big drops of kit, everywhere is a farm for you. Resonators, Bursters, Shields for all!
- Lots of portals means lots of links means lots of CF means lots of AP means lots of leveling.
Cons:
- Large networks of portals decay over time. It’s difficult to keep them up. (But, then, why do you need to? It just provides additional stuff to do later.)
- Large networks of portals are subject to attack anywhere. It’s difficult to defend every portal. (But, then, why do you need to? See below.)
THE MINORITY SIDE
Pros:
- “A target-rich environment.”
- Hacking nets you 100 AP per portal … great for L1 (climbing from 0-10,000), not so useful for L6 (climbing from 300,000 to 600,000).
Cons:
- Enemy portals bite back when hacked, draining XM.
- Enemy portals give nothing or very little in the way of kit drops.
- Taking a portal and building anything is largely an effort in putting a big target on the map for folks wanting the AP of taking something down.
The last “Con” is probably the biggest thing. The Majority Side is always looking for things to attack, because taking portals is a big part of what nets you AP. And, of course, they have very few opportunities to do so, because they have the majority of portals already. And, of course, all those friendly portals have given them massive arsenals to attack with and equipment to build with.
Result: build a Minority-color portal, and everyone on the Majority-color side is on it like scavengers on the Serengeti. If you build it, they will come.
Which means, of course, that the Minority side can never build up items, or links, or Control Fields. Which means they can’t really get the big AP rewards. Which means they can’t advance enough to take on the Majority side, take back enough of the portals to counter the advantages of the Majority side.
(Note, “The Majority Side” can be either Resistance or Enlightenment. In Denver, the Resistance — blue — has the unshakable upper hand. The Enlightenment — green — has the upper hand in other cities.)
Why is this bad?
For the Majority side it’s bad because there’s little challenge. Going all piranha on the few Minority portals that pop up is all well and good, and the completionists will enjoy building a Tholian Web of links and CFs across the metro area. But there’s not a lot of interesting stuff there, except for OCD types and bullies.
Worse, as the Majority side continues to level, the number of portals that are accessible to low-level types (on either side, but let’s focus on the Minority side) become miniscule. Which means you’ve erected a barrier to new players entering the game (especially, but not solely, on the Minority side).
Now if you complain about this on the boards, you get some people coming up with the following suggestions, none of which resolve the problem for most players:
- “If you are willing to get in a care and drive, you can find low-level portals out in the hinterlands to take over and level with.” Which assumes that any player worth their salt is going to get in a car and drive around to play the game. Which means disposable income, a lack of regard for the environment, and lots of free time. Oh, and dedication, beyond what a casual player is going to have.
- “If you team up with higher level players, you can all cooperate to take things down.” This assumes that players of the game are all gregarious types who are going to join boards, participate in planning raids, and do all that kind of social stuff. (Or, if you’re not, it assumes you should quit.) It also assumes that there are higher level players around. (Which is where you get into the “Invite some higher level players to drive to your city and help clear things out” suggestion. Which can do a short, initial number on the Majority side, but is unlikely to change things around based on stockpiles, and is also not something you can or should count on as a fundamental game process).
- “Wait until the Majority side gets bored and leaves the game. Then you can take back over.” Assuming that will actually ever happen, it’s a rather ugly meta way to succeed. And while you’re doing whole waiting thing, the Minority side is probably going to get bored and leave the game, too.
Which brings this all around to another major point: while Ingress as a whole is a positive experience for some of the Majority (OCD and Bullies) and some players as a whole (people who are willing to team, willing to dedicate lots of time to the game, willing to drive around a lot) — that’s not a recipe for a broadly successful game. It’s possible that’s enough to do whatever data farming Niantic and/or Google are looking to do, but it’s a recipe for Ingress never much leaving beta (or, upon leaving beta, not surviving over six months). And somehow, I think the Powers That Be want something a bit more robust.
So, what should Niantic do?
Well, there are any number of suggestions that have been made, many of them contradictory. A few of the biggies that appeal to me:
- Change the Build/Destroy balance. Right now it’s a lot easier to build than to destroy. If it were easier to tear down portals, that would impact the Majority most.
- Give some advantage (or less disadvantage) to the Minority. It’s been suggested, for example, that Enemy portals should drop more Bursters (offensive weapons) when hacked, or at least should drop at the same rate as Friendly portals.
- Give some disadvantage (or less advantage) to the Majority: An NPC third faction, which tends to attack the Majority more often, is an obvious suggestion. Increasing drops to the Minority (or decreasing them for the Majority) is another. Having friendly portals actually suck XM away from you is another.
Of course, all of this has to be done with some care. You don’t want people to not want to succeed for fear of drawing major disadvantages. And ideally you want a system that oscillates between different factions being in the lead, rather than deteriorating to a Steady State / Trench Warfare. And you don’t want people to feel railroaded or too manipulated by the game masters.
But you (and by “you” I mean “Niantic”) need to do something. I’m seeing more and more folks on the boards sounding discouraged or frustrated at being stuck in a permanent Minority, at having anything they capture or build be immediately seized back. I’m currently playing guerrilla warfare — tackling only portals I can take with relative ease that also happen to have a large number of links and CFs hanging off of them, maximizing AP gained as well as visual impact on the Resistance. But that’s not something that everyone can do, and, at best, it’s a way of advancing me but not the overall Enlightenment cause. And, frankly, I don’t know how sustainable it is.
(Oh, yeah — I am doing the “team up with a newbie to help them advance” thing … but only because the newbie sleeps with me …)
(My wife, that is.)
(Ironically, viz the cartoon, I use my wife’s health and dental benefits. But I digress.)
I want Ingress to be a success. Truly. I would say, at the moment, this situation is the biggest challenge to it being so. If Niantic and Google can’t come up with a game with a robust variation in situation (one side winning, then the other, and back and forth) and keep it from becoming an endless stalemate … then Ingress will fail. At least as a game.
I think this is a fair and accurate assessment of the game and it’s stance so far. I believe that if a third faction is implemented, however, is shouldn’t be NPC, but PC. This could add a layer of strategy to the game that would solve a lot of majority/minority issues. If [3rd faction] took over a city, then the Enlightened and Resistance could team up to take them out, and maybe negotiate territory break ups. This could create some awesome roleplaying communities within Ingress and possibly even create major Niantic Project storyline decisions.
Those are my two cents on the issue. Otherwise, well-written, and I look forward to your future analyses.
Thanks, @Derik. I’d be concerned that the same factors that let a 2-faction city shift into a death spiral of Majority Rule would still apply in a 3-faction city. Possibly, if the two declining factions cooperated soon enough (and in a united enough fashion) they might be able to turn the tide. And presumably the actual numbers per faction being roughly equal (not necessarily so unless steps were taken to encourage or force folks into a minority faction) it would be harder to get into a dominant position. But I suspect we would still have this same problem, over time.
The advantage of an NPC faction is that it allows Niantic to tweak unfortunate situations, e.g., by targeting more frequently (or with more vigor, or more success) majority portals, or changing the nature of drops from third faction portals, etc.
[Note from Dave: I just loved this spam pseudoresponse so much I had to approve it, once I stripped off the identifying names, URLs, emails, etc.]
One can find some intriguing points in time in this write-up but I don’t know if I see all of them center to heart. There is certainly some validity but I will take hold opinion until I look into it further. Excellent post , thanks and we want alot more! Added to FeedBurner also
[Attached URL redacted]
It ain’t over till it’s over. See Denver now.
But I do have a major concern that imbalance between two factions will ultimately kill the game, as it has some others I’ve played.
Actually after they changed the droprates the enemy portals give you better drops than your own, the droprate is better for very rare and rare items but theres always the possibility for a hack that doesnt give you any items.
They could just alter the probability of drop on the appropriate virus, and the cost to actually use the virus to a function of the MU’s held by a side…..and it would _help_ the situation a lot. In other words, once the minority side got a lot of color flipping viruses and started using them…..then the majority would have to work a lot harder to keep things their color…=)
Well said.
Google has invented a defensive game. Defensive is boring and doomed, unless they do some not really major changes and get it into attack mode.
When kids lose interest really fast it’s your sign.
I think if people could switch sides without loosing all their gear, that would help even things up. I’m in a green city and didn’t realize I basically picked the winning team when I signed up. Put work into leveling up and dont want to loose everything, as per Niantic.
As far as I can tell, there is and always be an imbalance. One team may win for a time because they have decided to play harder. I am in the ONE city out of 15 or so within a 6 hour drive that is firmly Enlightened. Not long ago it was almost uncontested Resistance. We fought a long fight and supported new people. The enemy decided to horde AP among a few high level people. Eventually we managed to tip the scales and win the roughly 350-450 portals in our city. Now we help the surrounding area.
We have been having a few issues with people becoming bored because they don’t understand the game. No we don’t need to destroy as many portals and turn over is slow and only happens when active people want a break from driving all over the city or remotely recharging for a few days. My point is that the other team has roughly the same amount of people but supported a style of play not conducive to winning.
If your problem is numbers or gear either recruit or ask for assistance from nearby communities or both. Submit hard to get to portals. Do what ever it takes. That’s what we did. It continues to make it entertaining. Knowing how long it took to make the city green and what we have to go back to makes me enjoy the game more by holding it. Now I get to help other communities and take pride in doing so.
I hacked a level 5 Blue portal and got 7 items yesterday without playing the Glyph game. What I believe Resistance are doing in my city is stocking up like we did. They seem to also go so far as to try and switch the allegiance of a susceptible level 8 on our side. This even if he doesn’t defect has already served to weaken morale on our team by bringing up this very issue on our G+ group. It caused a lot of drama and even my posting here may have consequences for myself and other players. Issues such as defecting on purpose and or neutralizing polarized conversation. It is a concern this issue but only if the perspective is that because one side is winning there is in fact a problem.
Resistance in our city has had and still has the choices to make that could make my game play more interesting. I’m not going to do it for them. No one did it for me. High organisation portals should be hard to take out as they were hard to put up. The point of a game should never be to reward a stalemated position. The point of the game is may the best players win. To end… The imbalance comes from the collective imbalance on any team in any place vs the other side in that same place. You begin to see how far a group of people will go to achieve a goal. There are losers. Those who have lost can change at any point their tactics to regain control. Don’t be lazy.
R
P.S. I like the game the way it is. If it must be changed please change it in an impartial way or focus on neutral recruiting/portal discovery.
A third faction would do the trick, especially if there was no difference between what portals dropped to friendly or enemy hacks
If all this were true then revolutionary movements would never succeed.
I disagree that portals should be easier to attack. I’m finding portals rediculously easy to attack. I was able to take put L5 portals at level 2.
A few months ago NZ was mostly green, now it’s mostly blue.
The balance does change, just not quickly. As a minority player I have less to lose and lots to gain. I am having fun … but I guess that makes me OCD or a bully right? There seem to be an awful lot of us OCD bullies. But I think the article misses the point of the game.
The game does not just assume a social orientation, it demands it. If you are unwilling to socialze, then do not play the game: you will find it boring.
The game does not assume you are able to travel, it demands it. If you are unwilling to travel, then do not play the game: you will find it boring.
The main fun in the game is actually in the meta aspects. If you do not enjoy meta gameplay, then do not play Ingress: you will find it boring.
If you do not like any game, if you find the game boring, then you should stop playing the game. Fair enough to point out what you dislike, but does it make sense to complain that Doom is a fps? That is pretty much what you’ve done here.
A game does not have to be for everyone.
Now that would be boring!
Typical LAZY frog. Wants the game rigged in favor of HIM, the underdog…..
Ingress is what it is. If you are willing to work together. Travel as needed. Spend the time. Then Ingress will reward you with success! If not…it will push you down into the fog until you get bored and quit!
Ingress players take the game very seriously, some too much….
There are many things which could be improved about Ingress, balance of power is NOT one of them!