Dear Niantic, Didact challenge is destroying communities
Dear Niantic, when you announced the Didact challenge, it was clear that it was a copy of the old EXO5 controller challenge. Create fields to accomplish a goal. Back in 2017 though, nobody would have thought of asking the other faction to help them reach their personal goal.
That is exactly what is different about this challenge. There is a XFAC goal to create x fields before the deadline to give us a reward. Because the goal is XFAC, and the bonus AP is given to the destroyer, not the builder, people were jokingly stating they would approach a player from the opposing faction to get this done.
Some people went even further and actually did this together with the opposing faction. "Wintrading". Something like the FS, but with even more AP, and in closer cooperation with the enemy.
Now, our own faction is divided. People that are okay with wintrading and people who are absolutely against it. With this event, you have effectively shattered our communities. I'm kind of amazed nobody is talking about this, but drama ensued in our chats, and I feel it is something Niantic should be made aware of.
Comments
Wintrading is no longer against the TOS. Old school people that believe it is need to catch up with the rest of humanity against the present threat (or some other BS storyline garbage). 😉
If a community is shattered by a 10 day event, the cause is not the event, but the members of the community not behaving like adults.
I would never cooperate with the opposite faction for this type of challenge (I would be open for cooperation in other types of challenges like with the x-fac shards or if there was a challenge to build global MU like a few years ago). But I wouldn't see a reason to get worked up over people who do x-fac cooperation limited to this challenge and don't harm their own faction mates that way.
During this event, my occupied portal was attacked by low level users in other regions.
The area is the area where such a player is rarely active.
You will need the help of x-fac to remove the fields in restricted areas.
It is performed by hiding it as not an explicit crossover operation.
This leads to worse intentions than explicit activity.
If multiple hidden accounts are active instead of just interacting with someone for 10 days, those accounts are expected to be run by users with special local power.
In some regions, the balance between the two teams is broken.
In these areas, it is difficult to keep events running smoothly.
How about thinking that it is the first Saturday of ten days?
I also disagree that fair play should continue and cross play beyond the duration of the event.
Crossplay is allowed during all of the Nemesis challenges, because Nemesis is the enemy against us both.
Whilst there were people that were convinced that colluding with the enemy was not the purpose of this event, someone just asked support. The answer:
Try teaming up with the opposite faction to overcome this threat.
Yes, I asked because I had questions about the win-trading issue. It's a worry and question that I can ask if I've experienced both factions. And cheer for agents from all over the world.
Creating more and more events that actively encourage wintrading is just destroying the very core of the game Ingress and soon people will lose sight of the grey area and assume that wintrading is always a good idea. Nemesis has been invented for the purpose of taking the fun out of the game. Without the battle Ingress will get just as dull and uninteresting as Pokemon Go. Without the battle Ingress is nothing. Of course we can get along, be friends IRL but when the scanner is turned on we're adversaries and I'm not going to call a Resistance agent to come and help me achieve a personal goal. Call me old fashioned but the battle is what I love about the game. But more importantly, what really upsets me most, like JoOlz, is that this causes a rift between players and surely Ingress really can't afford to lose any more agents.
I usually stay out of discussions, but I feel really strong about subjects of coöperation between the two teams... That is: I dont agree with it for it is against lore, it is against team spirit and discourages the real competitive nature that sets Ingress apart from other Niantic games. The competitive aspect of Ingress is the reason I quit the other games,
Against lore: I know, we all have got Nemesis and I was just talking about my wife that we could use a third faction to 'ally' with against a common enemy. But since day one: Resistance/blue/smurfs have always been my virtual enemy. If something is blue, I make it green. Only the skies should be blue. Portals and fields should be green. It does not mean I won't greet irl smurfs, some of m are really nice even: Some. NO matter what lore aspect you want to incorporate like Nemesis, it's unnatural to join smurfs.
Against team spirit: Because of the wintrading aspect, some players take it very, very heavily. They are even more fanatic than I am and well, although I don't agree with their behavior, it does have it effect on local communities, and that is just a shame.
Discourages competitive nature: I love the team competition we get in Ingress. Yes there are cross-faction events like the first saturday, but regular gameplay should be Resistance vs. Enlightened. My node takes good care of the CP's and we have very competitive moments ingame. I love that. The first saturday I guess could be taken as a mini-anomaly, but has grown to a full blow wintrading event. I can abide that one day a month, but please don't interfere with regular gameplay, please do not encourage cross faction behavior. Going out and about with the opponent, jegh. It's unnatural.
But it is still considered cheating according to one of the last 5 AMA's.
Of course this is the case, but it is a legacy mindset from when ENL and RES were actually playing against each other. I really dislike the XFAC road NIA is taking, and it has been cause for discussion in the chats I'm in several times. People of course could act more mature, but when you're against wintrading, and the event suggests wintrading, two camps were formed. When NIA acutally said it's ok to wintrade, the whole thing blew up, and I feel it's really unnecessary.
The fact that it has to be asked to support (whether or not you can wintrade to reach goals during the event) says something imho. Things like rules and guidelines should be clear, not open for interpretation. Rules says wintrading is against the rules, then don't create events that encourage it. There was always a fine line, a moral thing even, to not gain an advantage by playing with the opposite faction. Right now, why shouldn't I recruit a player from the opposite faction to help me reach L16 in no time at all by wintrading all the time?
Saying it can only happen during events?
Anyway, I made this thread to make it known to NIA that their actions and choices are causing some ripples in the local communities. I didn't see any discussions about it, and of course you can disagree, but if I didn't post anything and didn't make it known, I can't **** about it when we become one faction against virtual enemies.
I fully support this post.
What's going to be next? We clean for eachothers BAFs? Might as well remove Jarvis and Ada from the game.
I fully agree with you J00lz, As much as I like most of my competitors, I dont think it is in the benefit of Ingress to collaborate with them. Few years ago with EXO5 agents were warned by Niantic that working together with your opposing faction would be a bannable offense. Niantic is destroying this game. The only solution I can think of is to permafield everyone and disallow the enemy their medals.
It feels spectacularly wrong for Support to be suggesting that people team up with a member of the opposite faction to get this badge.
The bitter interfaction hatred of years past, still alive and well in some places, is something to be stamped out, but Ingress is first and foremost a game with human teammates and opponents, not just some storyline push.
What's next, random involuntary faction changes to make sure that areas are balanced and don't stagnate?
Don't give them ideas. There are players I want nothing to do with, and others I'd be pissed if I could not plot with.
I dont see the problem? the 2x for destroy is so that people who want to field will not have a city where if someone who doesnt care to field atleast can destroy and get double ap for that and then u can field up... this is not win trading....
in my town there is 1 active ENL player and i dont have to play xfac.. i destroy their fields, they destroy mine,, no win trading in that both just get ap for being active player.....
The problem is that wintrading is considered as an offence in Ingress. You can't just meet up with the opposing faction and take turns in destroying / fielding to gain AP. It is considered cheating. During EXO5, people were warned that it would be considered an offence.
This time around, working together for gain is promoted, encouraged. This goes against the fundamental mindset of Ingress (and it's a byproduct of the storyline/objective set for both factions together). Of course you're basically wintrading all the time, but actively seeking out help from the opposing faction is just not done.
I'm wondering if they will start enforcing this after the event ends. I've seen people wintrading up to 1600+ fields, just throwing links, having the portal destroyed and throwing again. The fact that so many people seem to be okay with it is disappointing, really. Of course we can't blame them now for taking advantage of the fact that NIA changed the rules; but I really dislike actively helping the opposition, like other people stated, where does it end? Will we be asking people from the opposing faction to help get up the big fields?
Flip cards are very rare, if we can just ask the opposition to help out, why don't we just remove them from the game already.
I dislike it also, but i dont think this will be accepted once the field global event is over...
If you community is so fragile that it can't handle this, it probably wasn't much of a community to begin with.
I broadly agree that encouraging wintrading is problematic for the future of Ingress. However, with that said, it's not really against Lore for there to be temporary alliances of convenience between the factions in response to an overwhelming external threat. Go back through the old 1218 Lore archives, and you'll see many instances when characters who were nominally allied with one faction worked together with characters from the other faction in order to achieve some specific aim. (Hank Johnson, in particular, collaborated with Resistance-aligned characters many times.) The factions are (or should be) fighting a bitter war over the fate of Humanity, but that war is messy and confusing, and it's not always obvious what will advance one side versus the other. Moreover, the factions aren't always in internal agreement: for instance, many of the Resistance are flatly opposed to all Exogenous entites, while those aligned with Jahan are open to working with the N'Zeer (so long as the terms of the "deal" favor the humans). ADA is another flashpoint; it's not always obvious exactly what her motives are (and what she's willing to do to attain them), and while some RES agents are so devoted to her that they stored fragments of her program in their own brains to preserve her from annihilation, other RES agents think that she's no better than the Shapers (especially after she seemed to become something of an Exogenous entity herself post EXO5). So if you're a RES agent that thinks Jahan is selling out humanity to the N'Zeer, and an ENL agent is working to stop her (if only to deliver Humanity to Shaper mind control), what are you to do? Do you form a temporary alliance to stop the N'Zeer and then hope to stop the ENL before they open our universe to the Shapers? Do you take a hard line against ENL and risk delivering Humanity to the N'Zeer? From a Lore standpoint, this isn't clear, and the characters in the main storyline have had to choose as best they can in often muddled circumstances.
Some might object that, as mere boots on the ground, we are not much involved in these Grand Doings of XM (TM). There's some truth in that. But I do think the above is enough Lore-wise justification for Niantic to have occasional events in which the factions must make an alliance of convenience against a dire external threat. What would become problematic would be to make a habit of it, which would both lose the thread of the XM war and would as a practical matter make Ingress into "Portal Pokemon." Only without Giratina. FWIW, I think there is also a fun Lore-based argument for agents who are offended by this to protest/interfere/virtually blow stuff up so as to stop the cooperation. That's a totally reasonable thing to expect, Lore-wise - not ever agent is going to be OK with collaborating with the enemy, even on a temporary basis! So in that sense you can have your cake and eat it too. If you think this sucks, you can think of yourself as a loyal faction member who is unwilling to compromise principle for convenience. If you think the event is positive, you can think of yourself as a pragmatist who is doing whatever it takes to advance your faction's long-term objectives. And you can in either case think of people in the other position as fools who Just Don't Get It. It was ever thus in the real world. And thus it is in Prime.
If you want PvP Ingress, you need to take out the spoofers. Nobody is going to waste their time / money so another guy can undo everything in 5 minutes at a computer. Yes, spoofers are still active, they rise up like mushrooms after a rain in our local high density area. For months they've been running wild with no consequences, and reporting is not a solution. You maybe have 60% chance of getting one of the obvious ones banned, which in turn encourages other players to do it too, because what's going to happen if you're careful with it?
So yeah, cross faction events are now a thing because it's easier / cheaper than dealing with spoofing.
I stopped worring about the MU score months ago and was the best thing I ever did. My cell have 2 very obvious spoofers that collect keys with extra accounts for theirs main and rebuilding large fields everyday if destroyed. And nobody has time and money to waste just check if they are really there at 2am everyday.
Agreed. Multi account players are as bad for this game as the spoofers. I see players throwing 100+ links a few weeks on end, also making fields from portals they farm with 2 vr hack mods but always seeming to get 30+ keys. Not to mention the extra gear from farming and passcodes.
People on the other team are not « the enemy ». They are competitors, your competition. Maybe changing the mindset would change the tone.
This I agree with. AMA & Support should at least be on the same page!
My local area didn't have any drama like that, because we only let functional adults into our communities.
If you think someone is cheating in Ingress, the adult thing to do is to report it to Niantic. If Niantic agrees, the cheater will be reprimanded. If not, you may not like the outcome, but at least you didn't wreck your community by crying wolf.
Fico triste com a falta de cooperação.
A
rivalidadeentre facções cria brigas desnecessárias.So... is the game destroyed now? No-one I know asked the opposition to coordinate. In one situation, I waited for another Agent to finish fielding, but that was purely a selfish choice, because I went and had lunch, then came back and got more AP destroying, because there were more completed fields. Teh dramaz are realz.
It caused friction. And yes, people that were previously more xfac than others and also accused of wintrading before did indeed meet up with the opposition to farm ap. Someone quit all together but other than that it was pretty manageable.
I do wonder how much some people will wintrade now after the event because they know how easy gaining ap is in that way.
Glad to hear nothing went down on your end though, wish I could say the same. Regional chats are dead where I’m at since last week.
Ingress não é co-op! Precisa de competição. Não é a rivalidade que que causa brigas, é a infantilidade e birras. Algumas pessoas não aguentam a brincadeira e se acham donas do mundo.
Um dia a passeio por um bairro que nunca fui, fiz um limpa e garanti alguns uniques a mais. No outro dia tinha criança no meu bairro fazendo sujeira... Pelo menos pude refazer os Fields novamente, já que nem capturam direito 🤣
I don't understand wintrading..... How can you win at a game that never ends?????