Category: Ingress

Because, dagnabbit, while I was not going to spend all my free time on my business trip to Glasgow playing Ingress, I’d be darned if I didn’t burst at least one St Andrew’s Blue portal in honor of my St Patrick’s Green forebears and for the Glaswegian Enlightenment.  And because I enjoy using the word “Glaswegian.”

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:

1. “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.
2. “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).
3. “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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

 

“In the heart. In the head. I won’t stay dead. Next time I’ll do the same to you. I’ll kill you. And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn! Stopping the bad guys! While somewhere, something sits back and laughs, and starts it all over again!” — James Kirk, “Day of the Dove”

I’ve been playing Ingress for a month now.* It’s been fun, even exciting. It’s gotten me walking even more on my lunch hours, helped me learn more about downtown Denver (and some of the ‘burbs), and introduced me to a new set of online comrades.

But, even as the game slowly makes its way through Google’s Beta process, I can see a problem, summed up, perhaps inadvertently, by one of the lead players in the Denver “Enlightened” community:  “This game wasn’t designed to have a winner, just a constant ongoing battle.”

Yeah, that never ends well.

Because it never ends.

“[W]e’re a doomed ship, travelling forever between galaxies, filled with eternal bloodlust, eternal warfare.” — James Kirk, “Day of the Dove”

Granted, most MMOs, for example, never end. The world sometimes changes, but neither Horde nor the Alliance will ever triumph in World of Warcraft. And even if they did, there are plenty of other challenges and challengers out there.

But in WoW, the gameplay changes. Characters advance. New alts get brought on. Different races get played. Different mission tracks get followed.

But aside from a very basic leveling mechanism (that treats everyone the same), and the slow entry of additional portals into the game … there’s no real change going on in Ingress.** And that’s a problem.

Interminable wars with neither side able to win are, ultimately, meaningless and/or boring (cf. trench warfare of WWI, repeated taking/losing/retaking of hilltops in Korea, and ST:TOS eps “A Taste of Armageddon” and “Day of the Dove”). I can see that as, in not too long a time frame, a problem Ingress will face as it currently stands. How will Google/Niantic address that over time?

• They could shake things up by having the rules/conditions change at various times, making the strategies and tactics necessary for success evolve to keep up. That might help a bit.
• A bigger change might be new factions; a rumor has been circulating of an iOS version of the app, but that Apple players would be a separate set of factions (yellow and red?) competing against each other and the existing two factions.  That would complicate the dynamic, some.
• A third NPC faction would be a fine addition to the game at some point. By being a computer-based faction, Google could change behaviors to keep folks on their toes.

“Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier that never questions orders.” — James Kirk, “Day of the Dove”

Another direction to explore might be some other method that (a) changes the dynamic between Enlightened and Resistance and (b) provides some milestone “success”/achievement/reward beyond incremental AP increases. The excitement — the value add — in current game mechanics really stops when portals are linked and a Control Field (CF) between three portals is created. At that point, besides adding more links from the same portal (often with more difficulty but no greater payoff) there’s no advantage to maintaining what’s there aside from “Yee-haw, look at all that Green/Blue on the map.” Nothing changes in the world if the Resistance takes back my portal, except, once it happens the hundredth time I just shrug and, yes, “Well, there’s something I can hack for some AP.” (Yes, the game as it stands actually incents the other side taking your portal, so that you can get credit when you take it back in turn.)***

So, yes, there could be some benefit to rewarding maintenance and preservation of things (maybe an incremental boost to AP each day for each portal, based on level, a person still has in place), as well as some actual in-game effects from having links and CFs built and maintained (perhaps increasing a portal’s strength when it’s linked to another portal, or when a CF is in place, or extra XM creation under a CF).

Or maybe you make it (more dangerously to player satisfaction) a negative — you forfeit (reduced over time) some of the AP you got from putting up a CF or link (or even a portal) when it gets taken down. Or maybe that zorches some of the XP you’re carrying (which might be trivial if you’re on the road, or might be a real bummer if you’re actually in the field trying to hack).

And whatever advantages (or costs), the game makers need to be sure that they also maintain a balance for players of all levels.  Right now we have everything running around from L1s to L8s. It seems far too easy for newcomers to the game to feel like there’s little they can do — no portals they can possibly budge, but can only hack at slowly over time for the AP that activity gives. It feels — at least at the moment — like it’s far more expensive to tear down than to build up, given normal drop rates from hacks.

On one level, that’s the way it should be (it’s futile to build if it gets immediately destroyed), but it also creates a barrier to beginners, or even continue-ers (it’s futile to try to destroy if you’re too weak to do so).

“Out! We need no urging to hate humans. But for the present, only a fool fights in a burning house. Out!” — Kang, “Day of the Dove”

Now, to be sure, Google’s point with Ingress is not to make the perfect game, by any means. They have some very pragmatic reasons for the game. But if they want that to be more than a short-duration series of data points, they will need to do something to keep people engaged and interested.

*That was actually a week and change ago. I’ve been pondering this post for a while.

**Yes, it’s beta. I know. I can only judge things by where they are right now. In beta.

***In some ways, it feels more like one of those Cold War / “Great Game” types of films, where the Station Chiefs for the opposing sides contest against each other, but with the understanding it that it should be kept gentlemanly and not put either side too far out of shape.

UPDATE: (Told you I’ve been pondering this for a while.)  A few other thoughts:

1. The game needs to be both solo- and team-friendly. Right now there seems to be much more effectiveness in teams of players, in terms of resources (blasters, resonators, keys) available. That’s fine — for some. For others (cough), teaming is less likely because of other restrictions. That can make the growth curve a lot more difficult.

2. 

   That having been said, right now team play is rather crude.  The person who does X gets all the credit for X.  If Google wants to encourage team play, there should be some sort of bonus for it.  E.g., anyone within the 30m sensor range of a portal gets some fraction of AP credit for events that occur regarding that portal (destroying things, deploying things, linking things), or perhaps only if they’ve done something against/with that portal (other than hacking) so far. That would encourage people to team up, and would also make it easier for higher level folks to mentor newbies.

3. Google continues to change some of the game parameters to meet what it thinks is competitive play. In the time I’ve been playing, we’ve seen a drastic reduction in key drops, a couple of trial changes in how XMP bursters do damage, and (since I stated this post) a reduction in burster range. In general, it’s made the game more difficult, in terms of taking over stuff — which might fit into some play balance problems elsewhere, but which I, in general, have found to make things less fun.
4. One could argue that the “variety” in the game comes from the metastory — all the clues and websites and this and that about what the portals really are and Niantic and Enlightened and Resistance and puzzles and all that.  And … one would be wrong. Because, as far as the game is concerned, that’s all flavor text. Some folks are into the story and the puzzles. Some aren’t. I think Google wants both groups.

5. 

   The biggest challenge seems to be when one side or the other gets a lock on territory — the majority or near totality of portals in an area.  This is often accompanied by high-level portals being established as anchors, and “portal farms” that are milked for drops. The result is that attempts by the other side to take anything back tend to be short-lived — the majority group has the resources and a small number of targets to apply to them.  The result is one side feeling completely outgunned, and the other side — well, frankly, getting bored (and thus doing counter-intuitive things like letting their portals decay so they can take them back again). This imbalance can change slowly (if people decide to switch sides — though they can do so only once), and can also be changed by broad changes in strategy by the “out” side, but it still seems to be something that could easily unbalance the game. (This is another area where a third faction — esp. an NPC faction that tended to go after the majority, would be of some advantage to the game.)

I am still having fun. But I can also see this, right now, very easily as a game that one day you just suddenly say, “Y’know the heck with it,” and either greatly cut back on playing or quit. And I don’t think that’s the model that Google is looking for.

Margie and I went to Downtown Disney in Anaheim last night as a “date night,” scheduling a very nice dinner at Catal for 8 so we could be on the balcony to see the fireworks at 9:30.

Margie’s been very funny about Ingress with me. On the one hand, she kind of mockingly pooh-poohs it as “marking territory” (when she’s polite) and derives great amusement at my being involved in it, she’s also been unexpectedly supportive of my doing it. So whenever we’ve gone out while here in SoCal this vacation, she’s driven so I can hack at passing portals (and has been known to swerve into a parking lot if they’re a bit too far from the roadway).

On Christmas, she indulged me in heading to my folks’ house by way of Glendora Ave., which had several portals between the freeway and downtown. I was just a fraction away from Level 4, and between going and coming back, I managed to level.

So last night we were at Downtown Disney. It should come as no particular surprise that Disneyland itself is full of portals, the majority of them player submitted, I assume. I would guess there are some players who work at the park, others who have annual passes, and the rest are vacationers and visitors passing by and adding another layer to their holiday experience.

Downtown Disney is open to the public, being a shopping / restaurant hub between the parks and the Disneyland hotel. And Margie appeared to have fun encouraging me to hack as I liked, and even standing by while I attacked and took a couple of the portals — the funny hat by the hotel, attacking the blue portal at the Rainforest Cafe, taking the portal at the fountain in front of the House of Blues, and struggling with the very powerful one centered on the trumpeter at the New Orleans restaurant there.

We even walked beyond the Disney Store (past the blue portal at the tram fountain) to the plaza between Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure.  There was a whole series of green portals there which I was able to hack at for fun and prizes. And enough stray XM in the air to recharge me no matter what.

The best was that there was a portal right outside Catal, so I could sit there and hack at it every five minutes from our dinner table until it burned out. Then I took it over for the Enlightenment and netted many more AP.

I also chatted a bit on the Comms with the locals, including one guy who is moving out to Boulder in the summer. I told him there was a pretty vibrant Enlightened community in the Denver area, which he was happy to hear.

On the way home Margie took me (unrequested) by a post office we hadn’t gone by previously (the portal was mid-building, though, so we couldn’t hit it), and then by the Ralphs near her folks’ house, where I took back two of the portals that had been turned back to blue, and reinforcing the green ones that had been attacked.  (Fortunately, the prowl car with two of Villa Park’s Finest decided we were not suspicious parked in the lot with the engine running.)

So I’m a third of the way through L4 now, which was unexpected, and I had fun, and I think Margie had fun (copious thanks be unto her). And, yeah, it’s just a game, but it’s a nice little add-on to what was already a very nice evening.