Category: MMO

You learn interesting things while on vacation.

I mean, it’s a pain in the butt when you get back and all those fiddly little habits of the day have to be relearned.  “Wow, it’s been a few weeks — I almost forgot to do the dishes.”  You know — that sort of thing.

But sometimes that’s a good thing to have happen. It can make you aware of habits you don’t want to re-acquire.

Like obsessively playing Ingress.

I decided, on returning, that I really don’t want to spend all my commute time on the train hacking portals at each stop.  I don’t want to spend my lunches tracking down farms to harvest from or links to smash.  I don’t want to have my phone on at my work desk hacking at the portals in the building below.

I’d rather read. And walk. And work.

Plus, I’ve gotten tired of the Ingress app’s big memory footprint — a footprint that ensures that if you do almost anything else on your phone, Android will swap out Ingress and when you go back in to play you’ll have to restart the app.  A minute or two later …

When I’m reluctant to check Twitter — or answer an IM — because it will interfere with Ingress running on my phone, there’s a problem there.

Now, all that having been said … Ingress is still fun. And I enjoy the community, and enjoy talking about the game, and have been enjoying building up the portal infrastructure around the Denver area.  I’m not quitting the game, or uninstalling it, or anything like that.

But, for now … I’m still on vacation from it.  For the time being.

On 8 December 2012, I got my invite from Niantic to participate in the beta of Ingress. I joined as “@Star3D”.

On 30 April 2013, I hit the level cap at L8.

It’s been a long, strange journey, as they say, and largely a positive one. I’ve been doing a lot more walking (especially on business trips), and broader afield (I know downtown Denver a lot better, esp. the various piece of art and the historic buildings), than before.  While there have been frustrations, there’s also been community.

And now I’m at the level cap. Well, the present level cap: Niantic says levels beyond 8 will exist in the future.

But what about me for the future?

So for one thing, it’s not like Ingress runs out of “content” at L8.  You can still play, you can actually use L8 items you couldn’t before, and there’s certainly plenty to do.  It is, though, more of the same (only in a more powerful state), and there’s no further leveling (yet), only watching the AP odometer tick upwards.

Here’s how I see things changing:

1. Less obsessive gameplay:  I’ve had a lot of advantages in my gameplay — I work in a building which has some portals in range (I submitted some of them, but they’re all legit), and I ride the Light Rail to work past an ever-growing number of portala (some of which I submitted, too).  But while I haven’t been the “go out on sub-zero night to join a bunch of people turning Fiddler’s Green into an L8 farm” kind of player,  I’ve spent a fair amount of time here and there — at lunch, riding the train, and driving on errands — hacking and linking. Some would say an excessive amount of time, though I’ve tried to stay within certain bounds of what seems like rationality.

Nevertheless, I will be easing back on the frequent-to-constant gameplay. If nothing else, my reading time on the train has suffered  mightily (esp. as more and more of the stations have gotten their own portals).  It would be nice to take reading walks at lunch that aren’t punctuated every five minutes to try and take an enemy portal.

I don’t believe I’m going to vanish. But I don’t think I’ll be battling compulsively for the “Ghostly Trio” portals every day. I will probably still go out (at least in Pasadena) in the evenings while on travel (great exercise to counter business  trip meals), and I do have a neighborhood portal that I will be guarding diligently.  But I might not always take 90 minutes to drive the 20 minutes from my comic book store back home on Wednesdays, or things of that sort. I might fire up the client on the train — sometimes — but I won’t wail and gnash my teeth if I ride through a station and miss hacking something because I was enrapt in a particularly good chapter of my book.

2. But the Artistic/OCD side will continue: One of the most enjoyable aspects of the game to me has been submitted portals to Niantic (and submitting portal corrections, too).  It brings out both the artist and the OCD in me. I don’t see that changing.  (Now, if only Niantic actually rewarded someone for doing so …)

3. Community rules:  The +Ingress Colorado Enlightenment group on Google+ is a great bunch of people, and I plan on staying in conversation with them.  Or meeting them for beers at the Ghost.  Or …

4. Mentoring Margie:  She’s gotten up to L4 (as “@Kazima”), but doesn’t play that much. But we’ve done a few partnering things, and working with a higher level person is a great way to get some good AP. So we’ll be keeping that up at a low simmer.

So, that’s the plan! But regardless of how it works out, I’ve enjoyed the Ingress (Beta), and look forward to its eventual release into the wild.