All of my reports are answered in just minutes by Lambert. Thanks for keeping it fun. Nothing ever happens to the obvious multiaccount spoofer. I think Lambert is one of them.
I will say I am not the only one getting hammed by Lambert. I can't say **** there because it won't let me. Just keep submitting them no matter what. Terrance will come along sooner or later and drop you a 15 day ban while your multiaccount spoofer does what he always does
Reported same guy for 7 or so accounts spoofing. Years on end now. Lambert says thanks for keeping it fun. I don't care if I got to get 7 real agents and welcome it. I can't play aggainst a guy in his office spoofing with accounts that will be elsewhere when I go take it down. I don't care to and I won't recruit any new players... mostly pogoers. Can't fix it myself and I refuse to do anymore reports because I know it's Lambert answers about how useless the support is.
regarding "why do you think that server-side calls will not have a performance impact? Where do you think the current lag is coming from that we experience? And the performance issues we see when global events start up?"
Ingress development team has never provided a formal anwser for the reason. They simply acknowledged the lag. It could be that they are using economic size when choosing the servers on cloud providers and downsizing the perfomance of the server. I believe I've seen somewhere that Ingress team has downsized the server to save the cost. It's not convincible to assume anything to develop your theory when there is no formal anwser.
When you choose to rely on Volkswagen Golf to load a lot of items it acts obviously worse than Ford F-150 but nobody will say that "it's expensive and thus can't do" to load additional 1 or 2 pieces of items and will have significant impact on the car because why not using the truck?
Agree and my comment was partially tongue in cheek.
What I was trying to say is, players aged 13 to 17 would make up a tiny percentage of the Ingress base. (I can't think of a single active player in that age bracket in my city of 1.2 million people).
What I can think of is a whole bunch of players in my city who do have kids accounts. They generally only play when asked to by their parents; otherwise acting as storage accounts.
A subset of these, we see AP increasing, they are being used for hacking gear.
Full disclosure: I have a daughter with an account. She leveled up past 8 playing herself but with parental assistance. She plays sometimes now when we ask her. Do I use the account without her? No, does her AP magically increase, no. (And stats fully open). It's her account.
If I was Niantic, would move minimum age to 18 and run an age verification process to cull all of these.
I would also remove the option to hide statistics. (Always useless except for hiding multi accounting). I run mine fully open.
It was mentioned in a previous post that portal scanning should be initially done by agents for verification. However, the counter-argument to that suggestion is the low quality of submitted portal scans. Isn’t there an app, software, or even artificial intelligence that can be utilized to help evaluate and filter out poor-quality portal scans? In addition to the portal scans, completion of a walking mission banner (at least 18 missions) can be used to verify new agents. It seems that other methods of verification in this game are through attending an IFS and/or meeting a vetted agent from the same faction in-person. Not all agents have the time in the world to attend an IFS nor they are comfortable meeting strangers, particularly during a pandemic out there.
As for Niantic’s part in detecting spoofing, what is the anti-cheat system that is touting about? The automated manner they handle the spoofing reports by agents can be compared to dialing a customer service number and all you get is an automated response and not a real person which is frustrating to the point that players are quitting this game. Still, Niantic does not listen because this game does not generate enough revenue like Pokemon Go. It seems the focus of Niantic is towards creating its metaverse where it intends to use the latest funding it received from another investor. It is unclear what role Ingres Prime plays in this metauniverse except for the utilization of its players for portal scans, taking portal photos, and participation in Wayfarer-related activities.
Until then, this game appears to be in a state of limbo wherein Niantic is content in appeasing its veteran players through intermittent events such as Kureze effect and Toast-related events while overlooking the important issues plaguing the game. Niantic does not appear to be interested in overcoming the inertia to make some changes to prevent spoofing and handle reports promptly through the use of real person support that provides a satisfying customer service experience that could retain its player base.
@SSputnik, isn’t it such a surprise that the existence of Ingress Prime was discovered by players ages 13-17 and it is those young players who encouraged their parents to play with them to promote cooperative play and bonding? Through their cooperative play; they were able to experience rewards that came out of completing tasks independently and without being bounded to local communities which are partly comprised of toxic players and spoofers.
It is every individual player’s prerogative to keep the stats private or public because it all depends on how comfortable is one with privacy and safety particularly if they are playing as lone wolves out there. Those agents have been followed and photographed by both factions whether they are fielding or completing missions in the past. What more verification does one want? They were also forced to participate in activities that they are not comfortable doing. In the end, there is the freedom of choice and it is not one’s place to dictate what agents should opt for especially if those agents are paying for service.
I would also remove the option to hide statistics. (Always useless except for hiding multi accounting). I run mine fully open.
There are good reasons for people to want to hide at least their week and month activity stats, but not hiding All just means people would scan and store the All to generate those others.
You've never been s-talked by a **** before, it's clear.
How would one describe an action by a stranger approaching you from nowhere, looks at you from head to toe, then furiously sends a message on his/her phone and you see that person typing in TG? Or an unknown person taking a picture using a phone of an unsuspecting agent who is enjoying a meal in a BBQ spot or who is in the middle of doing a portal scan? Why do you think that those agents are not keen on doing portal scans anymore? How would one describe a near rear-end "accident" by a truck while in the middle of a commute to a park where agents plan to walk to a portal afterward? Nice effort in providing distractors to the real problems plaguing this game.
Oh I have been stalked a number of times. To the point once we drove around a traffic roundabout about 5-6 times with them hot on our rear. Was like a scene from keystone cops. I've been photographed, harassed, had the same players who live many km away circle my neighborhood at all hours, every night for 3 months etc. I've been reported wrongly for trespassing, spoofing and harassment.
How does hiding agent stats prevent stalking or harassment? It does not.
How does hiding agent stats prevent stalking or harassment?
We had one Agent who would be harassed by an ex every time she started to be active again. He'd check her weekly stats near daily, and would start showing up at portals she used and talk on comm about how he can see she's been "sitting at home hiding just recharging", or "I can see you're playing, but you're not on any portals here, why aren't you coming around?" etc.
Being able to hide activity is relevant to stalking while still attempting to enjoy the game.
It just so happen that kids are game and tech-savvy nowadays. A lot of them are very much competitive as well. Now, the challenge is to be able to attract that age bracket and not be turned away due to the problems of this game such as spoofing, toxic behaviors, cheating, and social engineering.
I see only partial mitigation to that with hiding stats. They can't hack an enemy portal, deploy, link etc without it showing in AP gain so... All they could do is silent same faction/grey portals. Not really playing ?
Weekly stats? Just take a screenshot of AP, compare a week later. "Oh you have been active"
But it does give an element of freedom. I'm not personally against no hidden stats, but there is a case that legitimate players will quit because of it, that needs to be raised. There is a purpose, despite what you say, and as I said above, player numbers is the greatest threat to Ingress.
This is one of those spoofer accounts that Niantic is unable to detect.
On a rainy day, he climbed a mountain with an elevation gain of 900 meters and I went to wait for him to come back down to the parking. There is a portal in that parkin, so I stood nearby to watch.
The account attacked, there was no one but me in the parking, I reported, I sent photos, I provided weather information, I contacted vanguards...
It's easy to guess the outcome of Niantic's investigation.
Suggest a cheat fix, or reduction, even a minor one and it's "You can't do that, it will make people quit the game".
Come up with something new then. You're repeating the same things that haven't been good solutions for 10 years. These aren't solutions, they're "Blame the player" claims. This thread hasn't actually posted a new idea that hasn't been rehashed and shot down a dozen times over yet. These are not new ideas, they're just the same bad ideas.
What I'm sick of is the same suggestions, with all their horrible flaws, instead of coming up with new suggestions, such as what I've posed above.
A typical example. Not to mention the fact that after many resultless reports, if you came to the forum and tried to discuss about it, you would probably receive many replies like:
"please do not defame other players"
"it's normal for your videos not being reviewed at all because documents other than public action logs are not convincible because they can be edited easily"
"could it be that you just didn't see him/her but that account is really on the spot?"
"you may not assume that other players can't do something that you can't"
"keep reporting. The player was not banned does not mean Niantic did not take actions. Niantic has told you in the mail that they took actions, didn't they"
"Niantic will review every report carefully. If that account was not banned or warned (which you do not know) then it means that he/she is not spoofing. Please do not accuse that account of spoofing because it's in your own imagination"
Hehe. While the customer support system regarding anti-spoofing reports are obviously not doing the job effectively as expected, some forum users do have a robust systematic way of questioning and despairing anti-spoof volunteers.
I would argue there has been no feedback from Niantic on many of the ideas.
Deep Learning for instance.
You also ignore that some disruption to normal gameplay may be acceptable for a albeit small reduction in cheating or at least making things more difficult.
SMS verification can be bypassed via bought services, but you are starting to hit cheaters hip pockets and not all would bother.
Also @NianticThia is this thread just going to be one of those "Let them all talk amongst each other and we can ignore them" type threads?
For once I want to share a spoofing incident that was handled fast and well. Two players reported a spoofer for similar reasons (basically he should be here, I am and see nobody, and that keeps going for 30 minutes), the cheater has been banned a couple of hours later. It's a person who already lost 2 accounts to spoofing, so I can imagine that for the third Niantic didn't want to give too many doubt to this case, but it still nice to see that sometimes things are handled quick.
Comments
All of my reports are answered in just minutes by Lambert. Thanks for keeping it fun. Nothing ever happens to the obvious multiaccount spoofer. I think Lambert is one of them.
Call of Duty is now giving players a God shield to use against locally known cheaters... just sayin
Toc toc*
8 days have passed and there is no response from support on the ticket #16127601
Never before has a ticket taken so long to close (for me ).
Does it have to do with the fact that I published it here while it was still open?
Maybe...
I will say I am not the only one getting hammed by Lambert. I can't say **** there because it won't let me. Just keep submitting them no matter what. Terrance will come along sooner or later and drop you a 15 day ban while your multiaccount spoofer does what he always does
Reported same guy for 7 or so accounts spoofing. Years on end now. Lambert says thanks for keeping it fun. I don't care if I got to get 7 real agents and welcome it. I can't play aggainst a guy in his office spoofing with accounts that will be elsewhere when I go take it down. I don't care to and I won't recruit any new players... mostly pogoers. Can't fix it myself and I refuse to do anymore reports because I know it's Lambert answers about how useless the support is.
However - why not implement the idea?
Change for the sake of change is not good. And again, this makes it worse for players, not really spoofers.
It may also impact those running multiple accounts on phones, especially cargressors, slowing them down.
It would significantly impact legitimate players more though.
It would make it tougher for bots as well?
regarding "why do you think that server-side calls will not have a performance impact? Where do you think the current lag is coming from that we experience? And the performance issues we see when global events start up?"
Ingress development team has never provided a formal anwser for the reason. They simply acknowledged the lag. It could be that they are using economic size when choosing the servers on cloud providers and downsizing the perfomance of the server. I believe I've seen somewhere that Ingress team has downsized the server to save the cost. It's not convincible to assume anything to develop your theory when there is no formal anwser.
When you choose to rely on Volkswagen Golf to load a lot of items it acts obviously worse than Ford F-150 but nobody will say that "it's expensive and thus can't do" to load additional 1 or 2 pieces of items and will have significant impact on the car because why not using the truck?
Agree and my comment was partially tongue in cheek.
What I was trying to say is, players aged 13 to 17 would make up a tiny percentage of the Ingress base. (I can't think of a single active player in that age bracket in my city of 1.2 million people).
What I can think of is a whole bunch of players in my city who do have kids accounts. They generally only play when asked to by their parents; otherwise acting as storage accounts.
A subset of these, we see AP increasing, they are being used for hacking gear.
Full disclosure: I have a daughter with an account. She leveled up past 8 playing herself but with parental assistance. She plays sometimes now when we ask her. Do I use the account without her? No, does her AP magically increase, no. (And stats fully open). It's her account.
If I was Niantic, would move minimum age to 18 and run an age verification process to cull all of these.
I would also remove the option to hide statistics. (Always useless except for hiding multi accounting). I run mine fully open.
Apologies if I offended earlier.
It was mentioned in a previous post that portal scanning should be initially done by agents for verification. However, the counter-argument to that suggestion is the low quality of submitted portal scans. Isn’t there an app, software, or even artificial intelligence that can be utilized to help evaluate and filter out poor-quality portal scans? In addition to the portal scans, completion of a walking mission banner (at least 18 missions) can be used to verify new agents. It seems that other methods of verification in this game are through attending an IFS and/or meeting a vetted agent from the same faction in-person. Not all agents have the time in the world to attend an IFS nor they are comfortable meeting strangers, particularly during a pandemic out there.
As for Niantic’s part in detecting spoofing, what is the anti-cheat system that is touting about? The automated manner they handle the spoofing reports by agents can be compared to dialing a customer service number and all you get is an automated response and not a real person which is frustrating to the point that players are quitting this game. Still, Niantic does not listen because this game does not generate enough revenue like Pokemon Go. It seems the focus of Niantic is towards creating its metaverse where it intends to use the latest funding it received from another investor. It is unclear what role Ingres Prime plays in this metauniverse except for the utilization of its players for portal scans, taking portal photos, and participation in Wayfarer-related activities.
Until then, this game appears to be in a state of limbo wherein Niantic is content in appeasing its veteran players through intermittent events such as Kureze effect and Toast-related events while overlooking the important issues plaguing the game. Niantic does not appear to be interested in overcoming the inertia to make some changes to prevent spoofing and handle reports promptly through the use of real person support that provides a satisfying customer service experience that could retain its player base.
@SSputnik, isn’t it such a surprise that the existence of Ingress Prime was discovered by players ages 13-17 and it is those young players who encouraged their parents to play with them to promote cooperative play and bonding? Through their cooperative play; they were able to experience rewards that came out of completing tasks independently and without being bounded to local communities which are partly comprised of toxic players and spoofers.
It is every individual player’s prerogative to keep the stats private or public because it all depends on how comfortable is one with privacy and safety particularly if they are playing as lone wolves out there. Those agents have been followed and photographed by both factions whether they are fielding or completing missions in the past. What more verification does one want? They were also forced to participate in activities that they are not comfortable doing. In the end, there is the freedom of choice and it is not one’s place to dictate what agents should opt for especially if those agents are paying for service.
Btw, apology accepted.
I would also remove the option to hide statistics. (Always useless except for hiding multi accounting). I run mine fully open.
There are good reasons for people to want to hide at least their week and month activity stats, but not hiding All just means people would scan and store the All to generate those others.
You've never been s-talked by a **** before, it's clear.
How would one describe an action by a stranger approaching you from nowhere, looks at you from head to toe, then furiously sends a message on his/her phone and you see that person typing in TG? Or an unknown person taking a picture using a phone of an unsuspecting agent who is enjoying a meal in a BBQ spot or who is in the middle of doing a portal scan? Why do you think that those agents are not keen on doing portal scans anymore? How would one describe a near rear-end "accident" by a truck while in the middle of a commute to a park where agents plan to walk to a portal afterward? Nice effort in providing distractors to the real problems plaguing this game.
Hm, in my experience, it's been the adults who got their kids into the game, not vice versa.
Oh I have been stalked a number of times. To the point once we drove around a traffic roundabout about 5-6 times with them hot on our rear. Was like a scene from keystone cops. I've been photographed, harassed, had the same players who live many km away circle my neighborhood at all hours, every night for 3 months etc. I've been reported wrongly for trespassing, spoofing and harassment.
How does hiding agent stats prevent stalking or harassment? It does not.
How does hiding agent stats prevent stalking or harassment?
We had one Agent who would be harassed by an ex every time she started to be active again. He'd check her weekly stats near daily, and would start showing up at portals she used and talk on comm about how he can see she's been "sitting at home hiding just recharging", or "I can see you're playing, but you're not on any portals here, why aren't you coming around?" etc.
Being able to hide activity is relevant to stalking while still attempting to enjoy the game.
It just so happen that kids are game and tech-savvy nowadays. A lot of them are very much competitive as well. Now, the challenge is to be able to attract that age bracket and not be turned away due to the problems of this game such as spoofing, toxic behaviors, cheating, and social engineering.
I see only partial mitigation to that with hiding stats. They can't hack an enemy portal, deploy, link etc without it showing in AP gain so... All they could do is silent same faction/grey portals. Not really playing ?
Weekly stats? Just take a screenshot of AP, compare a week later. "Oh you have been active"
Hiding stats doesn't protect you.
Hiding stats doesn't protect you.
But it does give an element of freedom. I'm not personally against no hidden stats, but there is a case that legitimate players will quit because of it, that needs to be raised. There is a purpose, despite what you say, and as I said above, player numbers is the greatest threat to Ingress.
I'm tired of arguing this.
Everyone's like "Cheats are killing the game, people are quitting because of cheating"
Suggest a cheat fix, or reduction, even a minor one and it's "You can't do that, it will make people quit the game".
People generally accept these days that for an improved experience and security, some extra jumps are required. Like 2FA for account protection.
An example of what I will not report because Niantic has let me down in similar situations:
An account captures a portal from inside a stadium at 11:40 PM and places the resonator right in the middle of it.
That's just trolling. Geez. Would report.
This is one of those spoofer accounts that Niantic is unable to detect.
On a rainy day, he climbed a mountain with an elevation gain of 900 meters and I went to wait for him to come back down to the parking. There is a portal in that parkin, so I stood nearby to watch.
The account attacked, there was no one but me in the parking, I reported, I sent photos, I provided weather information, I contacted vanguards...
It's easy to guess the outcome of Niantic's investigation.
Suggest a cheat fix, or reduction, even a minor one and it's "You can't do that, it will make people quit the game".
Come up with something new then. You're repeating the same things that haven't been good solutions for 10 years. These aren't solutions, they're "Blame the player" claims. This thread hasn't actually posted a new idea that hasn't been rehashed and shot down a dozen times over yet. These are not new ideas, they're just the same bad ideas.
What I'm sick of is the same suggestions, with all their horrible flaws, instead of coming up with new suggestions, such as what I've posed above.
A typical example. Not to mention the fact that after many resultless reports, if you came to the forum and tried to discuss about it, you would probably receive many replies like:
Hehe. While the customer support system regarding anti-spoofing reports are obviously not doing the job effectively as expected, some forum users do have a robust systematic way of questioning and despairing anti-spoof volunteers.
I would argue there has been no feedback from Niantic on many of the ideas.
Deep Learning for instance.
You also ignore that some disruption to normal gameplay may be acceptable for a albeit small reduction in cheating or at least making things more difficult.
SMS verification can be bypassed via bought services, but you are starting to hit cheaters hip pockets and not all would bother.
Also @NianticThia is this thread just going to be one of those "Let them all talk amongst each other and we can ignore them" type threads?
Also @NianticThia is this thread just going to be one of those "Let them all talk amongst each other and we can ignore them" type threads?
Absolutely.
And Lambert will continue reading our reports faster than license agreements
.
For once I want to share a spoofing incident that was handled fast and well. Two players reported a spoofer for similar reasons (basically he should be here, I am and see nobody, and that keeps going for 30 minutes), the cheater has been banned a couple of hours later. It's a person who already lost 2 accounts to spoofing, so I can imagine that for the third Niantic didn't want to give too many doubt to this case, but it still nice to see that sometimes things are handled quick.
But in common cases support is still useless. Keep you informed.
That's why I said "for once" yes. I know how things usually go.