VIFS - Portal Density Requirements - Open Letter to Brian Rose
HarleyQuinn42
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*** ISSUE HAS BEEN RESOLVED AND VIFS MCMURDO IS A GO***
Dear Brian Rose @GPC2C @NianticBrian
This evening I am reaching out to you today because of an email that received from Fevgames regarding a First Saturday event myself @HarleyQuinn42 and @Robdoggz are hosting this upcoming Saturday.
Subject: Urgent info required for IngressFS@Home
From: IngressFS FevGames <[email protected]>
Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 1:10 PM
Hello Organisers, Thank you for organising an IngressFS@Home event for June 2020. We are preparing a unique and exciting new passcode challenge for events this month and it requires that your event's base portal is in a portal dense city. We haven't been able to generate the puzzle for your city due to insufficient portals surrounding your base portal. Can you please update the Base Portal on your event registration within the next 24 hours to a portal dense city (at least 100 portals spread out within a 5km radius) and let us know by replying to this email once you have done so. You will not be receiving a Passcode email unless you change your base portal and let us know within the next 24 hours. Solving the passcode puzzle is mandatory for your event to be eligible for the IngressFS badge for June.
This mandate completely invalidates our site for being able to be used. There aren’t 100 portal within 5km on the entire continent. We are hosting our virtual FS at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
When thinking about virtual FS, it became clear this was a unique opportunity. Choosing McMurdo Station was about picking a place most agents would dream of going to but will likely never be able to attend an event at. In my six years as an agent I have realized unique experiences are what makes Ingress fun and sets it apart from any other game. The virtual FS format gave me a chance to host an event with a cross faction friend from the other side of the world. Robdoggz is from Australia and I am in the USA. The ability to host an event with a cross faction friend that I would likely never have a chance to, in a place that both of us would love to go to was just a chance neither of us could pass up; so after carefully reviewing the guidelines, ensuring we could pull this off between the rule set given at the time, we registered on May 10th.
- As Robz and I saw this as opportunity to have a First Saturday in the true spirit of the game; unique experiences in new places. As we can’t actually go to McMurdo, we set up a telegram bot command that gives out random facts about Antarctica to teach agents about the area. Agent @Engrish decide to join our event. He has actually been to McMurdo and shares pictures and stories about being there. Currently he is actually on his way to Palmer Station in Antarctica but will still be joining us from the research vessel he is on.
- In order to accommodate agents from all over the world, the time of 1700 McMurdo was chosen because it was the ideal time to get most agents during waking hours. Placing 2am-4am time slot in the middle of the Atlantic. In order to ensure that everyone could figure out their time slot, four different options were made for people to find this out with a bot command.
- Media was created for this event. A custom event themed tg sticker set, a telegram mask set which agents could apply their own PPE mask and a coloring page for the sign to hold up for the pictures. On top of which, one agent created a Spotify playlist with Antarctica/cold/winter themed songs in which other agents could add too.
- Two more agents were brought on to help with the verification and moderation of the chat because of the overwhelming positive response and so many agents registering for the event. @FeatherCuffs & @AgentSuperior became event "penguin herders" in order to ensure everyone had a good time, we wanted to make sure no matter the hour of the day, there was always someone there to watch the chat. We even set basic rules/guidelines for the chat. However, despite the large number of agent from both faction, our chat has been smooth sailing for the most part. As we didn’t want to violate the Niantic rule of excluding people, in the one instance of an issue, we just gave the agent a one day mute and the issue was resolved.
- Combot was employed in our chat in order to disseminate information and share all the features we had set up. It has had positive feedback with agents being able to access information at the click of a button/tap of a screen.
- One of our event admins even went out and secured a zoom pro membership to make sure we had the capability to host an event with this many members.
A week after registering our event, on May 16th there were accusations made by IFS-UN about our site being a troll on the IFS slack. This being done without directly contacting either of the POCs of the event. Jordon Mizzi even stated there would be a vote on whether or not we should even be allowed to host our event. One of the IFS-UN members accused us of using a flashy portal and bending ToS; saying just because we can we shouldn’t despite them approving our site and having met all guidelines set forth in registration. Other non IFS-UN members advocated for our site in the slack channel Screenshots of those accusations and statements are available if wanted. On May 17th, , a recommendation was made that we should have 50+ portals within in order to crack the code for the badge. On May 23rd there was an announcement made in the IFS-UN that there needs to be 100 portals within 5km. Then today on June 4th, I received that email. Additionally, their email is going out to sites that have over double recommended 100 portals within 5km.
This requirement is baffling to me and this is why I am writing to you today; asking for your advice and help on this subject. We have over 180 member in our telegram channel and over 200 registered for the event. Our event admins don’t want to let them down. Agents who have basically retired have become engaged again. Newer agents have something exciting and different to experience to keep them going while staying at home. Even former vanguard @Claudija and community manager @halette joined in our telegram chat.
Now, more than ever, is it important for agents of all walks of life, cultural, racial and ethnic background to come together. Even if it is just for an Ingress social event. Agents in our tg chat are constantly discussing different foods and portals from all over the world. Sharing pictures of where they are. At any given hour of the day you can pop in the channel and people are just sharing things about their local areas or discussing music. Nearly every morning I wake up to one agent saying “Good evening from Malaysia”. Agents from the Netherlands are sharing their weekend adventures to boating portals. To deny them this event because of lack of portals is not something I would want to be a part of. It was not in the guidelines when we registered and the guidelines kept changing without ever stating that the portal density is mandatory. This is very discouraging for our members and had it been a rule and not a recommendation, stated at the time registration was opened, I would not be writing to you this evening.
Respectfully,
HarleyQuinn42
PS: Below is a sample of content generated for our event. Please feel to dm me on telegram or even join our event channel. Thank you for your time.
Useful Links
Registration & RSVP List
Telegram Chats & Channels
McMurdo IFS Announcement Channel
Timezone Conversion & Calendar Link
Event Media
Comments
It is ULTRA CRUMMY of the IFS team to exclude the McMurdo site from eligibility after all the work has been done.
Yeah, stop discrimination against penguins with low portal density!!
@NianticBrian @NianticCasey is there any way to fix this ASAP?
Come on, Brian!
More gatekeeping and, " policing the game" that's really just exclusion and the demand that every ounce of enjoyment in the game be reserved for a select minority of players? Isn't that what's always held us back? Don't you know that's the worst part of the Ingress community? You're allowing virtual First Saturdays, but not on the continent of Antarctica because.. portal density? You're draining the life out of a group of players who dream of place that maybe you don't dream of, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that doesn't harm or bother anyone and only allows enthusiasm to flower outside the control of the same cliques.
Just let us have our Virual First Saturday in McMurdo. Can you just let us have this please?
Thank you,
JT
To be fair... it’s the agents of IFS-UN gatekeeping. I’m asking for help from @NianticBrian
My outrage gets the best of me.. I'm sorry @NianticBrian
I'm honestly struggling to see how this could even be a troll event. Talk about flimsy justifications...
Well said. It would be one thing if the event was registered after the restrictions were put in place. Even so, it wouldn't be that hard to make one acception during such extraordinary circumstances. If this would have happened last month, this wouldn't be a problem. There are alternative ways to come up with a passcode. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've been looking forward to this all month. Moving the goalposts at the last minute like this is beyond ridiculous, especially after all the work the organizers put in to make it happen and make sure it complied with all the rules.
This event is everything an IFS should be, bringing together so many people from all around the world. Our Ingress communities are a lot bigger than the people who are living in the same city, especially during social distancing. It's part of the joy of playing a truly global game. That's why there's absolutely no reason not to let these events happen everywhere on the globe.
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone 24 hours from now. Getting a badge or not doesn't change that.
Well it was a prerequisite for the Passcode Challenge that there are (at the beginning 50) 100 portals around the MeetUp Portal. This does not only concern the McMurdo FS. So to start a campaign against Fevgames here now is a bit exaggerated. You are not the only orga which received the mail.
I have rather the feeling that it is less about the IFS spirit and more about pushing through its will.
For what it's worth, there are members of IFS-UN who have reached out to us privately and expressed their support for the event, for which we are both grateful. This, however, doesn't take away the frustration of the ever moving goal posts.
Sorry, you are incorrect. It was a suggestion, not a prerequisite. We are also aware that we are not the only site affected, we've been in contact with several other hosts and they are equally dumbfounded.
From what I understand, the event rules were updated much after registrations opened and hosts put in a lot of effort. Consider implementing these rules from July instead so that people don't apply for sites which will have these issues.
Hi. Since you decided to post an open letter, I'll rejoin to post here.
(deep breath....exhale)
No one said NO.
We discouraged the low portal density locations because it breaks something really special that was being made for the passcode challenge. Remember a couple of year ago when IFS was much smaller? Remember that passcode solving was harder, more localized, more special for each site? Well that takes quite a bit of work to create with 100% volunteer Agents/Organization. However, when IFS scaled up to 300 to 400+ events, we did not have the staffing to do that anymore. We barely had time to generate ciphertext in various flavors and try not to repeat ciphers at the same site each month. Again, that takes careful work. So I've seen the posts in IFS slack about "boring old hexadecimal again" and the like, so this month, finally, some very very giving agents, out of love for ciphers, passcode challenges, and to give you all something more challenging to collaborate on - the Passcode challenge was made mandatory and the method to encrypt the code was changed. Its really cool and I look forward to helping my local IFS with it.
Low portal density doesn't "break" that method, but it makes it MUCH harder for the sites. Hopefully you'll get to see it. We warned you out of kindness and concern because we didn't want the cool thing to suck for you all. 💙💚 ♨️
agent: guamwatt
A chance for Niantic to claim having had international events on every continent; a great story to tell for years to come, and maybe get into the news media; satisfying a group of agents who were willing to work this hard for it, developed a great community, and got people re-involved; an absolutely unique set of circumstances so no one can claim that you have set some kind of precedent: this is a win- win and possibly the most Ingress thing I have ever heard of! There must be a way to let this happen.
@NianticBrian
I'm excited about this idea even though I'll be doing my IFS in Nebraska.
Please don't misunderstand but if you want to participate in this part of the event you have to meet the requirements, doesn't sound like a suggestion/recommendation to me.
At the last FS Events there were always problems, new things were tried out, I remember how much had to be cleared during the last event and how disappointed everyone was that the Passcode Challenge was dropped. Surely it is annoying for your event. I can fully understand that. What I don't understand is why they delayed until the last minute and waited for the hint with the fence post (mail) before they tried to clarify it, the requirements have been known for a while now and IFS-UN members are among your participants. If the communication fails, was someone too proud, too stubborn or why couldn't discuss this before instead of being pilloried here?
So who is to blame - Fevgames, who change the rules at the last moment, or Niantic, who outsourced the organization of the FS?
Niantic has the final say on this, hence the appeal for them to get involved in trumping the committee.
I see, thanks for the clarification
Damn and people wonder why Niantic doesn't put themselves out in the forums more often, this is quite vile. People demanding Niantic take back IFS, people saying FevGames is "gate-keeping".
Let me let you all in a little secret. Doing something for free for the entire world helping out Niantic is a burden more so than fun at times. Imagine every city and agent constantly in battle. We are talking some true abusive behavior - agents registering cities before others to control the location of it. Agents spam registering malicious agent names on events. Agents constantly messing up information, ignoring emails to correct it. Agents reaching out in private channels to compete staff against each other, hoping that one will change something.
O boy, then remember the badge release. What became some work was now x10 work - the email server was now being marked as spam due to abusive folks. We had to move to Google, but even then we escaped the free tier! Now FevGames has to pay for the success of IFS for the world and you think folks would work together, but no.
Don't worry, it doesn't stop there. Imagine one month you just don't care - come one, come all! No rules, let all the cities go!
We gone down that bridge and guess who gets in trouble! The free labor that helps put in on, because there is this disease in Ingress where anything good must be abused. We had multiple cities that literally were spoof farms - hundreds of accounts flocked to multiple sites **** AP, knowing that double AP would speed their leveling. It was disgusting, but that is folks for you.
I respect so many names in this thread, but my god. People can be so toxic. I have no idea if this event is valid or not, but I just couldn't see this thread and not post anything.
[/novel]
90% of what you are complaining about doesn't apply to virtual FS. Thanks for the feedback though.
We attempted discuss in the chat and got accused of using flashy portals, trolling and bending ToS by multiple members of the IFS-UN. . Even when other FS orga said they liked the idea of our site (and some are attending), there was no budging.
I don't care who's to "blame". Now that it is clear this is a legit IFS, it should be easy to just allow it and everyone can go on about their business and cancel the faux outrage. If not, well then we'll all be there anyway but no badge. Not the worst thing in the world IMO.
If it's that much of a burden, why do you put yourselves through it?
Just let our community manager handle-- ehhh disregard that.
Issue has been resolved. Antarctica is a go. Much thanks to @guamwatt
Thank you for resolving this, @guamwatt. I greatly appreciate what you, IFS admins, and First Saturday organizers all do to bring the community together, and I'm looking forward to trying to decode your passcode challenge at our local IFS event in SoCal. Volunteers like you make First Saturday possible. Thank you.
Not McMurdo, but another one of the U.S. Antarctic year round stations from this morning (June 10th) at 8:45am