f13.net

http://www.ingress.com/

Anyone actually look into this? I have no clue where something like this would fit on the boards, so I ask here. I got a buddy here who is playing. Sounds fairly interesting and might actually get me out of the house with something other than aimless wandering.

edit: Thanks kind sir. I guess it is technically an MMO.

I believe this would fit into the MMOG category.

I could swear I've heard of something like this before -- "go to location, push button" isn't terribly complex as ARGs go.  Cool to see a niche genre getting backed by Google, though.

Yah, I'm playing with it a bit.  It's definitely fun and a nice excuse as any to take a walk outside. Being able to lay claim to Canton and Patterson Park for the time being also is amusing me to no end.

That looks neat. Too bad it's just Android.

Invite only so far. Too bad, I'm really curious.

I signed up but haven't gotten an invite yet.

Yeah same. My buddy playing here in Pittsburgh says it is pretty active around town. Sadly, I was hoping Pittsburgh was just coming on board with the invites. No dice there... so I'll wait. Also allows me some time to upgrade my phone and kill this Verizon plan. Word is, the game is a little rough on the battery.

I wonder if it's a copy of ShadowCities? http://www.shadowcities.com/

Sadly, SC is only on iOS.  "Shadow Cities is a location based multiplayer game for iPhone. Become a Mage and take over your streets and neighborhoods with your team."


Edit:  http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/19/googles-ingress-is-more-than-a-game-its-a-potential-data-exploitation-disaster/

 :tinfoil:   :facepalm: :roll:

(edit) By which I mean to say not that it's not very likely that they'll find ways to leverage this into improving their other services or selling ads or whatever, but rather to say, duh.

It is an INGRESS into our PRIVACY. (  :oh_i_see: )

I keep hoping they'll expand the gameplay a bit.  I like the look of it (they definitely capture that MovieOS feel visually), but it could use some more depth.  At least the two sides seem more balanced after launch -- in the internal alpha, the Resistance outnumbered the Enlightened like 5:1.

Re: data gathering tinfoil hattery (or not), note that once installed you have a new "share" option for photos (NIA Super Ops) which allows you to submit location tagged photos and descriptions for "new portals" -- smells like a handy way to collect interesting landmarks: http://support.google.com/ingress/answer/2808254?hl=en

When is open beta? This waiting for a closed beta invite while my buddies here in the Burgh are running around doing shit is making me twitchy.  :awesome_for_real:

Finally got time to run through the tutorial, it handled the fact that I restarted it several times pretty well.  First impression was that gathering xm is a good excuse to take a walk, and probably a good way to get arrested for trespassing (I didn't trespass, but there were a few juicy clusters I could have picked up if I had). 

I have noted a distinct lack of portals away from downtown and college areas.  Given the rules, this seems inescapable.  Not a lot of distinct archtecture, statuary, or local businesses in the suburbs of Generica.

--Dave

I got a beta invite a couple of days ago and it turns out to be useless where I live.

I'm in a small, northern UK town with very patchy mobile data coverage and low population density surrounded by hills & fields. Walking around there's almost zero XM to be found and when driving it just doesn't seem to update so there's absolutely zero XM. Not seen a portal yet outside of the tutorial.

Interesting idea, currently pointless if you live off the beaten track.

Finally got my invite to this last week, Dec 31st to be exact; also came at the exact same time as the first freezing snap of the year so I was out and about catching my death of cold trying to figure this out. Small reaction after a week:

1. As a level 1 in a world of level 4-7s: this sucks major ass. As a level 1, you can't really do shit against portals held by the enemy. Hack it and move on. Can't attack - well you can, but it is not worth anything since you won't do dick to it. Might be better if there were like levels in portals and players around, but watching higher levels come by and wipe portals in your neighborhood without being able to do anything...
2. Grindy as hell. Again, as a lvl 1, all you can do is hack enemy portals for AP (xp in this game). You could try and find a portal without a full 8 resonator compliment to place a resonator or a shield, but those are few and far between and mostly stacked with lvl 4+ resonators. 10k AP till lvl 2 where I am sure I will not be any more useful than I am now and then it is a 20k AP to hit lvl 3. Not sure why they made the AP per lvl requirement like this but it is a punch in the balls trying to get to a point of relevance.
3. Definitely feels like an MMO, but one that requires me to leave the house. I am ok with that and finding some cool stuff at the portal points, but if you live in the boonies, well fuck right off. Hope you have a car to get somewhere. And even then, prepare to be useless for a good long time.
4. I like the game itself, but it is absolutely horrible to level and without the levels, you are basically playing tourist. After a week of this, I am sorta losing interest. I am in an area that has a ton of portals around, but they are all lvl 4+ . Be nice to have some beginner portals around because having to create a lvl 1 and be thrown into Northrend to gather herbs only is a huge cockstab.

Overall, interesting game design, but horrible implementation with the lvl gradations.

Apparently the GPS in my SG3 went to shit and this game goes wacky.  I'm still in the tutorial.  Should go for a walk with the wife later.

Looks like a great way to absorb all that extra time that the childless have.

I don't live near anything remarkable so if I get in I might submit a bunch of things from my yard.

I don't have an Android device but I got an invite - someone want mine?

One of our newspapers had an article a few days ago that people already got arrested for hanging out suspiciously in front of police stations and such. I so want to play this game now just for the chance of that happening.

Alas, our police isn't that retarded yet.

Yeah, I wondered about that.   I know of a few locations where I could set-up a portal on a "public" area that would still get you shot because, hey, rural Kentucky.

That's one way to get rid of the competition.

Except being one-shotted in Ingress has a new level of seriousness. Damn permadeath. Google really needs to tweak that ruleset.

I just got a key for this; I'm on a business trip and staying in downtown SF, so when I actually have a chance to take a walk, I expect it'll be amusing. I figure it's also an interesting way to go sightseeing when I get back to Berlin next week. A glance at the map shows that my neighborhood is pretty barren, but the Potsdamer Platz <-> Alexanderplatz area is wallpapered with points-of-interest. That's only a 10 minute subway ride away, so win.

Spotted one unclaimed thingie down near where I'm working this week; pulled over this morning and grabbed it, and it gave me double the points I'd gotten in the prior 2 days for hacking enemy portals while walking around to get my morning bagel/dry cleaning/etc.

Yeah, I am finally starting to be able to do shit in this game. Still grindy as shit, but it's starting to come around. Made two fields today and got a shit ton of AP.

 Been in for a week. Almost level 4.  This game has some brutal metagaming in New Orleans and stories of multi account guys walk I g around with a messenger bag of phones makes for  :uhrr: :ye_gods: :awesome_for_real:

Being rural in the us is not a death knell. Look for post offices, fire departments and museum, even low rent ones.

FFS how? I been playing for 10 days and only am lvl 2. Most of the ports by me and on my way to work are friendly so AP is rough to get.

I'm a green dot in a small pond of blue, with lazy people setting up fields and not minding the portals.  I take them down enough for the fields to drop, wait to rebuild and relink then hit them again. Add in some routine hack runs and it adds up.
 

That and running the results of three seperate google map searches through a copy of a UPS logistics program to get the most  efficient route to discover untapped portals. I've set up at least ten so far, and look to set up another ten on my Sunday head clearing driveabout.

People are already cheating all over the place in this game.  We have one guy in town here who showed up, pretty much hit level 6 over a weekend, and started wrecking everyone else's shit at all hours of the day.  Then people started noticing that he was moving from place to place faster than humanly possible, hitting places across town in ten minutes when it takes thirty to make the drive.  Later people witnessed resonators from him appearing out of thin air at portals they were attacking, without another soul in sight.  Pretty much everyone who witnessed him doing this has reported him for cheating at this point, but he's still running around with no sign of being banned.

Have you considered that he could be...

(http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120913010725/dcmovies/images/b/b9/JWS_Flash.jpg)

I just joined this and noticed the area seems pretty one sided. Does the thing work best being in the majority, minority, or does it not matter?

Minority if you want to level fast. Hacking friendly portals gets you nothing. However, creating links and fields (which you can only do with friendly portals) nets you some nice AP if you can set them. If you are already saturated, those links will probably already be there and will take forever to degrade. Every enemy portal hacked is 100 AP. I'd say go for the minority - but be warned, you can't do shit to those enemy portals for a good long while.

I got an invite a few days ago and I'm really enjoying this. I think there's about a dozen people playing on Cape Cod and we're evenly divided. I'm really glad I do support for the police department though because we're a small town and I'm regularly pulling into parking lots, punching buttons on a device, and moving on. It does look pretty creepy.

I was actually in a parking lot hacking a neutral portal when it turned blue. So one of my teammates was in another car idling there. I might be creeped out by that if I wasn't so starved for contact with anyone else who games. (I live in a place where you can go to a meeting with 20 other IT critters and not have a single person who knows what WoW is other than "something my kid plays.")

Megabump, since I just remembered this game existed and remembered to grab a beta invite.  It's surprisingly good.  DEFINITELY an MMO in the truest sense, which is a pleasant surprise from other mobile games.  The depth of theme is also a breath of fresh air; between the few novels that already exist (i'm reading one now) to the weekly Niantic reports - which are pretty well produced.  Much of the game is hidden in secrecy, easter eggs (which generate AP, items...), etc. which is a nice touch also (if you're the puzzle type).

Kind of reminds me of a fairly no-nonsense territory-control browsergame (forgive, the name escapes me) I played not too long ago.  Only this is more "for reals yo."  The dynamic comm system (which is based on range) is a serious bright spot in the design also.  Imagine google maps with a comm layer that only shows chat at the range you have the map; very nifty.  Makes planning a helluva lot easier with most people not using a forum.

There's just enough player separation to not have to get 'physically' within contact unless you really wanted to.  The regen. times are long enough that coordination doesn't necessarily mean everyone has to link up at the same time, though you risk it being defended.

My tips as a newb:

• Get a suction dash-mount and mobile charger for your phone; as the best way to discover new portals (which for a beginner is your best shot) is to drive.  Jack the volume up and 'listen' for the nearby portal; it'll make a buzzing noise.
• Dont spend more resonators then you have to, to get the job done.  e.g. learn to control your resources - if you have a campaign planned and you want to setup a half-dozen portals, dont blow all your resonators on the 1st one or you're in for a long night of hacking.
• Remember, lvl 1 portals will not show up on the intel map (www.ingress.com/intel) until they're discovered; and will only show on the intel map if near-max zoom.  So when looking for low-level nme portals, make sure you're zoomed-in.
• If you have the portal key, you can remotely top off the XM.  So no, you dont have to drive/walk out to every portal you're maintaining.  Distance and lvl increases xm cost though.
• See a friendly portal?  Hack it, regardless of the AP gain.  They drop resources that are sometimes very rare, which you'll need later.  (for instance, I just got a rare turret today).  Also, the main layer of the game revolves around portal keys - which you'll need.
• Target friendly portals that arent 8/8 resonators and fill the gaps with your own.  Good AP gain there.
• If you've got a high(er) lvl portal key to a particular portal, try and link it with you've discovered (and have the key for) as that'll increase its defense, etc.  Always link from higher lvl to lower lvl, as higher lvl portals have greater range.  ex. my recently discovered 'rustic inn' portal as a lvl 1 only has about 150m range whereas the 'bass pro' portal has a 40km range. Be sure to re-hack to get back the spent portal key.
• Download "Ingress Portal Calc" (a bit powergamey, so what) from Google Play and use it to calculate resource needs ahead of time to pull certain things off, like the above linking.
• Make friends with your local faction through comms; many times they'll direct you to valuable AP gain areas (save some for you, etc.).
• If you're a walker/jogger, you'll need a backup power supply to play effectively (a laptop, belt supply, extended life batt, whatever)

Anyways, there's a lot more meta to the game and I fully anticipate a good release this year.  The thing has a lot of nice touches to it (at least at this point), that a lot of devs leave out.  Stuff like making sure beginning players get infohack drops that catch them up with developments are nice touches...  Lot to talk about really.  More later.

edit:  Just realized that niantic will notify you if a portal you own is under attack.  (as soon as a resonator is brought down).  Supposedly it does this through the 'droid pulldown, not just the app.  Kinda neat.  So one can defend while being attacked by topping off the XM (if they have the key), or physically going out there and laying items.   :why_so_serious:

Travian.

That's not it, but I see the comparisons.  Parallel Kingdoms is probably closer to Travian though.

In (un)reality the game is just a giant, themed geocaching engine with territory.  Which (I dipped a bit into geocaching a while back) is pretty cool.  There's a lot of meta they can dip into; for instance, players are just now discovering they can actually drop items that persist in the gamespace for 12 hours. 

Tweaks seem pretty heavy-handed at each push though; it's definitely a beta and I definitely would not have liked it at 0.1.

I enjoyed it for a while, then the main opposition player dropped out and Green collapsed on Cape Cod. Refreshing portals that never get attacked is just not all that exciting.

Right now there's a big push for beta invites.  I've had a few people apply and the invitation is instantaneous, so I'd expect some newfish to own soon.   As for the Cape... it's a Cape.   :oh_i_see:   Soon as you cross the bridge I'm sure things are different.

I picked this up, it seems pretty fun, I may actually hop on my bike and go out hunting portals some time.

Being in a massive city helps though I think; things seem fairly split here. My only gripe is that starting out at level one, most stuff around me is too high level to take down. Fortunately managed to find a cluster of unclaimed portals and build them up and link them to get to level 2.

There's plenty to do as a lvl 1.  Dont listen to folk who say otherwise.  And even though you might not be able to take something down, you can sure dmg. it and gain AP from doing so.  It's at least 100AP every time you hack an nme portal (in a small city this means a lot of easy AP just from walking/jogging).  Setting field and claiming MU are the main points of the game and give the most AP...  so use the intel map and strategize 3 portals you want keys from then set the field (this will also keep nme links from happening - which is the main strat. layer to the game).  The sending portal is the one that needs the range, so you can set from high to a low lvl portal you own no problem (which will boost its defenses, supposedly).  So basically take your lvl 1 portal and link it with 2 of high(er) lvl.  There are apps that'll help you pre-plan the ranges.

Yyyyyeaahhh, if you don't like people this is not the game for you. (which is likely most of f13)  As big as the game is, it's a pretty exclusive bunch - and you will get to rubbing elbows with regular teammates and enemies alike if you wish to be effective.  Turf gets staked out, the cream rises to the top, and so forth.  G+ is used heavily as well.

I'm already just about lvl 4 with minimal work.  Walking/jogging in high-density areas and gaining permission to piggyback on someone else's fields (extending friendly geometry) has been the key.  Once u hit lvl 3 you can really start taking people out, especially if their resonators aren't maintained. 

Advanced tips:  learn to drop your resonators in tough to reach locations (like inside a building).  XMPs are aoe attks that falloff at range (especially at low lvls), so blowing them on top of a target is key. (dont just stand on the portal)

Anyways, the game definitely needs a few tweaks before it can release.  The endgame is a bit hazy and territory control doesn't have any tangible reward except faction MU (which gains you nothing).  There are strange things happening with the puzzle meta, but I'm not real sure how that works yet.  If I had to guess, the recently found glyphs can only be used if you've got links in the same shape.  So essentially, you crack the glyph language, then go out and link portals that'll spell out a particular message.  Kinda cool...  but definitely not for the muggles.   :oh_i_see:

So I got an invite -- and it looks like it's not on iOS, which makes sense.

Bumpity bump.

People in here still playing this?  I play as Grebong in south shore MA.  Last night we covered RI in layered fields.  Was fancy and shit.

I tried this multiple times but the horrid reality is that the GPS of my phone is not working properly so I just can't. I was interested though, and so here's a real question:

How is this fun?

I know it sounds weird, but please if you can would anyone who is playing it try to explain to me what are the rewarding parts, how do they manifest, and how exactly do you experience fun while playing this? Is it because of the huge "meta"? Is it because of what appears on screen? I know I could research a bit more, but since we are here I'd be willing to hear from someone from f13 what's like to have fun in Ingress, and what are your long term goals in a sense.

Long term goals.. basically working together to build huge fields and earning the badges I guess.  There is scoring now, every 5 hours there's team scoring and there's individual agent scoring based on the fields you build.

I think it's cool playing a game out in the real world against other real folks, actually going places and such.

The main barrier to having fun in ingress is thinking you can own anything.  You can't.  There's no way to defend your stuff.  Any other properly geared L8 out there can smash anything.  It's more about building stuff, because you know what you build will be gone in a few hours or minutes, especially if it's huge.

It wasn't fun for me. It was an interesting concept, and a really good excuse to actually take my lunch break and walk around the neighborhood before the worst winter ever set in, but it never hooked me. FWIW, The areas I'm in felt really active, with stuff always being attacked and flipping multiple times per day. I was playing at the neighborhood level, walking around on my lunch break at work and walking up to the local produce stand a few times a week instead of taking the car grocery shopping.

It worked as an incentive to get out and walk.

It seems, from my non scientific research, that people have a lot more fun with this if someone they know gets them in to it.

It is still grindy as fuck and now that there are a ton of lvl 7 and 8s out there, your stuff will get smashed almost instantly. I played till I got about lvl 4 and was already soured on it, but then winter set in and fuck standing outside freezing my balls off tapping my phone. Never went back and there really is no incentive.

That said, I am on a G+ group who regularly meet up at a spot and drive or bike around town and flip nodes en masse. They seem to get into it and now have 15-20 lvl8s in there collective. I just can't get into it for some reason.

Honestly, I thought it was a great game but there comes a point around lvl 5 wherein you really need to ask yourself if you're willing to devote the time and literal energy/gas.  I couldnt mentally do it anymore and stopped.  The high level play will suck your life away worse then any organized raiding guild you can think of.  This is before even considering all the metaplots and puzzles google puts out once a week, some of which morph into real in-game "events" in various places.

GirlWithTheIngressTattoo actually lives not far from me.  Her and her bunch are fanatical.  They roll out at least once a week and maintain a daily up-to-the-minute presence across SoFla.  It's nuts.  To penetrate that level of play (where the real fun is) you've got to be willing to be fairly social, including investment into google infrastructure.  The game is linked to SMS too, so yes, it (including chat) invades your phone even when the app is off.  I've had to 'scramble' quite a few times to defend or re-take nodes.  It can get tense.


This is categorically false.  Of course you can "own" stuff.  As well, you darn well sure can defend it.  If you've got the material you can lay defense just like most tower defense games, even if there's a lvl 8 around.  Especially with the newer stuff you can lay down like virus' and so forth. If you've got the energy, you can also boost your nodes while they're being taken down - I've done this myself against a squad trying to take my turf in downtown lauderdale.  I ran around, collected juice, and bumped my nodes remotely until they realized I was defending and didnt want to waste the resources.  It can go as far as even conscripting others in real-time to defend/rebuild nodes that are being attacked.  Is it harder to do against an 8?  Of course.  But it's supposed to be.  I think the issue is defending in real-time; most people wont invest that kind of JIT response to a game... so grinding mats and flipping nodes becomes their only option.

Aside from that, if you play enough you will quickly develop a reputation and a noted AO.  Recall, chat is also cross-faction, so smacktalk is a part of the game too.    People routinely target people they dont like.  It's a very tit for tat game.  Realize though, you may very well run into the opposition physically - kinda creepy.  I caught a guy skulking in his car once.  :ye_gods:  Another in the pub next to me having lunch.  In dense public areas like malls (Bayside MIA for instance) it literally is close-combat battling via phone... organized groups will have farms pre-made, and farmers to grab and drop resources nearby for extended campaigns, and on and on.   Gets pretty involved.

Like I said, too involved in some ways.  

Google finally released an official IOS version this week. I haven't played since I got the iphone and I was surprised to find myself missing this when I was out doing errands at somewhere I knew there was a portal.

Arise!

I got into this game yesterday and found it has made my walk interesting. Would any of you limike to give it a slin? Game is still going strong.

I'd like to recruit new people Gmail Style. PM me your e-mail if you want a copy!

Eh.

Android auto-correct.

What is "slin" supposed to be though? Shot?

Shorthand for needs more sleep.

I quit the game, not great for an obsessive mind. I can't believe I didn't catch that.

If you'd read through the thread, I'd already warned about it.  :grin:   It's a good game, mind you, just can get too involved in a real-world sense.  Whether that's good or bad, depends on your perspective.  For a lonely geek with a monotonous 9-5 go-nowhere job or no collegiate social-life aside from pornhub, it's probably a nice diversion.

I've been playing around with this.  It's kinda fun.  Documentation is absolute crap but I'm slowly figuring out the min/max tricks.  Will probably lose interest when I hit the level cap.  

There's a lot of interesting potential here -- as an example, imagine if you could create puzzle-based challenges on portals you owned and "hacking" a portal for the first time required doing a minigame to solve the puzzle.  A little more work on the asynchronous PvP aspect would make this thing incredibly sticky.

They already do sort of have a minigame with hacking tho (if i remember correctly, hold the HACK button down for a few seconds to start the hack to activate the Glyph minigame for a chance to earn  bonus stuff when hacking).

They have their own newschannel that updates very frequently; loaded with easter-eggs that give ingame bonus' or shwag, whatevs.  I do believe sometimes a particular link geometry will do something special as well.  The game has a lot of depth; even for the endgame.  To cap out though, as Samwise says, requires good commitment.  You are not 'casual' if you cap out.

Well, you technically are not going to "cap out" for a VERY long time, since the levels progress well past the numeric soft cap of 8 (for your levels of Tools like Emps, resonaters and the like), and each level requires something like exponentially more exp then the last.  Pretty sure there are people out there at level 16+, which is pretty crazy.

When I gave it a run over a good chunk of the middle of the year, I played it what I would consider to be "casually" (ie, I hit only the 8 to 10 portals on my bike ride to and / or from work, depending on how much free time I had.)  Would have worked out to about ~10-20 minutes a day.  I got lucky, and had a "double EXP bonus week" in there somewhere, and I managed to hit around mid way through level 6 before winter set in and I basically said fuckit, too cold for this shit any more.

I got halfway to L8 then I had to put it down for good. It has strong hooks, but I repeatedly came across issues that were hard to ignore. I applaud them for making Glyph Hacking a compelling mini-game, but as has been mentioned, so little of the game is documented or intuitive, and some of the progression objectives are, to put it mildly, horseshit.