Google's Ingress

[01101010]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[JWIV]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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

[Falconeer]

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

[Draegan]

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

[01101010]

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.

[Soln]

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/

[Samwise]

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

   

(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.

[Ingmar]

It is an INGRESS into our PRIVACY. (  )

[Quinton]

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.

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

New Portal Submissions

Help us fill out the play field by locating, photographing and submitting candidate Portals.

Steps to submit a candidate Portal:

    Make sure your GPS on camera app is enabled (Open Camera > Settings > Store location > ON; you may also need to turn on Settings > Location services > Share Picture Location, if available).
    Snap a photo with your Android phone with the standard camera app
    Select the Share option for the photo
    Share to NIA Super Ops (with the Ingress logo)
    Enter a proposed title for the Portal and touch OK.
    This prepares an email to our Niantic Ops team with the photo and location of the object.
    Send the email.
    Our operations team will review the picture and object location and then add it to the game database if it meets our general criteria for Portals.

General Portal criteria:

    Should be safe and accessible to the public
    Example types of objects:
        Statues
        Unique architecture
        Outdoor murals
        Historic buildings
        Special outdoor buildings
        Unique local businesses

Decisions on whether or not a Portal will be accepted will occur within 2-3 weeks. Expect a Portal to go live 2-3 weeks after it is accepted.

[01101010]

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.

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

New Portal Submissions

Help us fill out the play field by locating, photographing and submitting candidate Portals.

Steps to submit a candidate Portal:

    Make sure your GPS on camera app is enabled (Open Camera > Settings > Store location > ON; you may also need to turn on Settings > Location services > Share Picture Location, if available).
    Snap a photo with your Android phone with the standard camera app
    Select the Share option for the photo
    Share to NIA Super Ops (with the Ingress logo)
    Enter a proposed title for the Portal and touch OK.
    This prepares an email to our Niantic Ops team with the photo and location of the object.
    Send the email.
    Our operations team will review the picture and object location and then add it to the game database if it meets our general criteria for Portals.

General Portal criteria:

    Should be safe and accessible to the public
    Example types of objects:
        Statues
        Unique architecture
        Outdoor murals
        Historic buildings
        Special outdoor buildings
        Unique local businesses

Decisions on whether or not a Portal will be accepted will occur within 2-3 weeks. Expect a Portal to go live 2-3 weeks after it is accepted.

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. 

[MahrinSkel]

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

[apocrypha]

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.

[01101010]

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.

[Draegan]

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.

[Yegolev]

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.

[Viin]

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

[Tebonas]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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

[UnSub]

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.

[Yoru]

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.

[01101010]

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.

[sigil]

 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 

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

[01101010]

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 

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.

[sigil]

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.

[Kitsune]

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.

[UnSub]

Have you considered that he could be...

[eldaec]

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?

[01101010]

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.

[Numtini]

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.")

[Ghambit]

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.  

[schild]

Kind of reminds me of a fairly no-nonsense territory-control browsergame (forgive, the name escapes me) I played not too long ago.

Travian.

[Ghambit]

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.