The main focus of this post is an issue with the game design of Ingress. Not to be confused with UI design, game design is about the rules of the game.
So, let's start with the game itself for those who have never heard about it: It is a location based game that utilizes Google Maps. Your role in the game is an agent of one of the two big factions (green and blue) who struggle with each other to control humanity. (More info) Your goal is to increase the number of humans under your faction's influence, which is basically done by establishing fields over areas and destroying the fields created by the opposing faction.
This is the theory. The practice is: You go around, try to find portals, hack them for items and AP (the local variant of XP) so that you can level up and use better stuff, and when you have a lot of good stuff, you can attack enemy portals. There are several ways to get AP: Hack or attack enemy portals, conquer grey (unowned) portals, upgrade or link friendly portals.
Portals can be conquered by installing resonators on grey ones. When you attack an enemy portal, you actually damage the installed resonators, and if you are able to destroy all of the installed resonators on a given portal, it becomes grey. Resonators also loose energy over time, and you need to recharge them to prevent them from destruction.
So, my first statement about the game is that it is fun. Not in the sense that you would spend hours with the game every night, but it's good fun, and it is something to do when you go to work, or doing some similar boring stuff in the city. Yet, I think, there is a fundamental problem with the game design.
It is quite easy to see what. There is only one question you need to ask yourself: what is the point of recharging a portal? And the answer is: Nothing.
The rules of the game are created in a way that you are interested in hacking enemy portals more than hacking friendly ones. You are also interested in attacking enemy portals, taking them down, making them your own. Because all of this will yield AP for you. What you are NOT interested in is defending your portals. Actually, you want them to be taken from you, so that you can attack them again.
When you reach the maximum level, your focus shifts. There is no point of earning AP any more, and all you need is simply more stuff. You start to play for the joy of attacking enemy portals.
In either case, what you don't want is to have a lot of portals around your frequented places which are owned by your own faction. You need enemy portals. So you stop recharging your own. You don't install portal shields any more. You don't even upgrade the conquered portals to the maximum level.
You are working for the enemy.
Seems to me the only people who hit level cap must be cheaters, there's no way someone can legitimately get 1.2 million AP in a couple of months without cheating.
ReplyDeleteI don't cheat and i've leveled to 7.3 in little over a month. My track record can be viewed at endomondo here: (most of it anyways) http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/150044607
Deletepeople can legitimately level up quite quickly in crowded urban areas.
DeleteIt depends a lot on your location. Where I live, the portals are rare and far apart. Where I work, there are about a hundred of them in a mile (most of them enemy portals too) so I can easily hack a lot (can visit them several times a day, even) and with the collected bursters and resonators I can also conquer at least one or two every day. (I could, to be precise, I am too lazy for that)
ReplyDeleteSo, it's not impossible, but also it is not possible for everyone.
I'm level 4, this is my 4th day of playing. I currently have 55,101 AP.
ReplyDeleteI'm unemployed with this thing called a Car. Amazing feat of engineering, allows you to look up online where there are lots of portals and travel to them. You also get a lot of AP when destroying connections to the portals, on a good portal this can be almost half the level from 1 -> 2. One of my group members ended yesterday's run with just over 131,000 AP gained.
I'm sorry if some people have other obligations in life. However children, teens, and young adults don't usually have appointments or other things to keep, and as long as you live halfway close to a city with a bus or train pass, you can easily gain a level a day with good strategy.
As for the portal upgrades and such. The higher level portals, obviously give out higher level items. The idea behind recharging and upgrading portals is 2 fold;
1. It increases the range of the portals for longer links to cover more area.
2. Item Farm - While you are correct, you won't get AP from hacking a friendly portal, you do get a good amount of items, and don't have to run the risk of having the portals zap away all your XM while waiting for the cool-down to end.
Now, all this being said, please remember that this game is still in BETA. Shouldn't you hold off on knocking a game until its done being developed and tweaked?
-LinuxGizmo - Enlightened Member
I am aware that the game is still in Beta. So there is no better time to point out a weakness, while there is still a chance to get it fixed. :)
ReplyDeleteA lot of people mention that you get better yield from friendlies. I did not observe this, but if it is true, than it's a good motivation to have a few of them close.
I'll write a follow up post with the comments and observations that this topic received on Google Plus, there is a lot of feedback pouring in.
The points of keeping a portal recharged are thus:
ReplyDelete1) If a portal decays, it costs the other team fewer resources to claim it as their own. Yes, they don't get the AP for destroying your resonators/links/fields, but that means they can save those XMPs for use on your faction's stronger portals. A well-supplied enemy is a dangerous enemy.
2) If the portal decays, you have to spend your resources reclaiming it, instead of simply spending XM (which is recharged by simply walking around with the game open) to keep it charged. Those resources could be better spent claiming your enemy's portals. A poorly-supplied ally is a weak ally.
3) If a portal decays, all the links and fields going to or from that portal are lost. Remember that THAT IS THE POINT OF THE GAME. The point of the game is not to get that little AP number as high as humanly possible, the point of the game is to CONTROL TERRITORY; AP is simply a means to that end. Keeping your portals charged maintains that territory for your faction, and especially since the algorithm was changed to make portal keys -- which are required to make links -- rarer items, reforging those links after you have reclaimed the portal can be difficult and time-consuming.
I play in New York City, which may be different from playing in suburbs, but we actually go to great lengths to defend our portals, because friendly portals yield more items than enemy portals. We pool keys and XM to recharge, defend, and upgrade our "gardens" so we can keep the items flowing.
ReplyDeleteAttacking is more important on less crowded areas where you can take down an enemy portal to establish a good link and defend that.