Kythera - Phase 1 - Final Report
NianticOfficial
Niantic › admin
Agents,
Excellent work in battling for control over Kythera last weekend. The final results are as follows:
Agent-deployed Rare Battle Beacon:
- Point Values: ENL 198,882 vs 215,633 RES
- Final score: ENL 125 vs 135 RES
NIA-deployed Rare Battle Beacon:
- Point Values: ENL 43,267 vs 42,262 RES
- Final score: ENL 700 vs 600 RES
- Result Map
With the Enlightened’s early lead in Kythera Phase 1, we received the following message from K:
Who am I?
Invested. Audit. Crop
1 in a qubit, 2 in a quantum system, but 0 in Kythera.
I speak without a mouth.
Share your investigation results by sharing photos, videos, footage, and situation reports with NIA and other XM Sensitives on social media with hashtags #Ingress #Kythera or the Ingress Community Forum for research archives.
Want to have your location considered for hosting a Kythera Anomaly in May or June?
Please fill in: https://forms.gle/id3vFqXQ1MuEj95E8
For May, apply by Sunday, 24 April.
For June, apply by Sunday, 29 May.
Stay tuned for further updates. We will need your help for the investigation into Kythera.
As always, please remember to be aware of your surroundings. We encourage players to follow local health and safety guidelines when playing Ingress (such as wearing masks and maintaining at least six feet/two meters of distance from other people). For the latest on in-game events and feature updates, be sure to check COMM > NEWS.
— The Ingress Team
Comments
Ok, so ENL win again. What's our punishment now?
Participe en más de 15 balizas y no me contaron
when will phase 2 cities be announced?
I've really enjoyed getting together with other players for the four monthly Battle Beacon events this year, and it's been a great -- gentle yet compelling -- way for agents to come out of the pandemic and back into organized, competitive play. Thank you, Niantic, for organizing this! I also love the way the ornaments displayed in advance encourage newer agents to pay close attention to a world that is not what it seems. However, after four months of basically the same thing, I think it's really important for Niantic to mix things up as we move forward, if they want competitive agents to stay engaged.
I remember the energy that initially surrounded the First Saturday competitions, and how excited cities were to organize them. People took them seriously and worked as a team to get people to come and try, and it was pretty fun. But as time went on, the frequency got repetitive, and the competition started to feel pointless. Now they're a good way for people to get AP and increase their personal stats, but they've lost the competitive spark and teamwork they once had. I don't want this to happen to Battle Beacon anomalies, when they have so much exciting potential.
If Niantic does this right, these distributed anomalies can be a valuable way for agents to build the connections and communities that power the game and keep players generating exciting gameplay for each other through meetups and fields between events. But it's important to keep them fresh and competitive. Some things that will help:
* Variety in site selection. While there's a lot of everyday gameplay in urban cores, having a competitive event in the same large cities every month gets exhausting for the agents in those cities, while frustrating the agents who are excluded or who have to travel. Philadelphia has had events three of the last four months. Why not target other smaller cities in the region? There are many great alternatives to Philadelphia, and many other smaller urban areas are all eager to be involved. (Atlantic City NJ, Princeton NJ, Lancaster PA, Wilmington DE, Harrisburg PA, York PA, Reading PA, Ocean Grove NJ, Annapolis MD, Woodbury NJ, Hoboken/Jersey City NJ, New Brunswick NJ, Toms River NJ, Morristown NJ, Moorestown NJ, Westminster MD, Gettysburg PA...) Selecting places like this instead of (not simultaneously with) the larger cities would energize local communities and build regional connections, in addition to giving city players a break from hosting.
* Variety in event format. This is obviously significantly more work than mixing up the site selection, but alternating beacon events with flash shard events, or events with other rulesets (decoding challenge? largest field? connected cell? events like Tesselation or Hexathlon?), would be really cool and help keep people excited and engaged. Hopefully as the pandemic subsides, smaller numbers of larger anomalies with longer lead times can also be one of the variations in the mix.
* Make medals a little harder to get. It's really cool that Niantic has found a way to engage players who are far from official sites or not involved in organized community through agent-deployed beacons, and I think this is a great step towards access and inclusivity. But having such large windows on three weekends means that badge-motivated agents get the badge early and then disengage for the remaining two months. Alternatively, having some visible marker on the medal (different border?) to indicate if your faction won might help motivate people to stay in the game until the end.
Check back the first week of May. If we haven't heard anything by Friday May 13 then get worried.
Great job, frogs.
We need some blue power over here..
"Who am I?
"Invested. Audit. Crop"
"1 in qUbit, 2 in qUantUm, 0 in Kythera"
"i speak without a mouth"
XXXX
i think i got it solved, with a little help from @Ninjaburger
Who am I?
2! 4! 6! 0! 1!
Oh gods, is it that old?
Great post @Aneristic! In a similar position here in Leeds, UK with the city being used as a site three months in a row (plus 2 other very local sites used in March) and I must admit I'm a bit burned out!
I agree with everything you said about variety across the phases. I'd probably advocate for them being a little more spaced out too, maybe every two months or quarterly. With FS, 2S and the other non-anomaly events such as comic sans etc, it's gone from zero to 100mph and I'm not sure as a community we're quite match-fit for that kind of pace!
That said, it's been been amazing to have events that get us out in the field with agents in real life again, engaging in tactical and brute force battling to get some good competitive action. Some real camaraderie going on within our community right now which is awesome.
"Who am I?
...
"i speak without a mouth"
An echo speaks without a mouth and hears without ears.
I also have the same problem
I deployde 10 battelbecon and got only 1 i tok pic and rappotet it
This is messt up if i have do it again hope nintic fiks it i used 12 battel becon and it fail
For the clues, I get
Share, U and the last one is apparently echo.
SUE?
It reminds me of the glyph phrase “xm portal share your idea”.
Anyone further along with this?
The final result was klue
Congrats, ENL!
Event timing: too much. Skip a month. 2 per quarter gives us time to recollect and rebuild ourselves and our inventories. best schedule yet for Nia-deployed sites. 15 minutes break in the middle is the sweet spot. 2 essentially 8 minute breaks was not a break. Vehemently refusing to not change to Saturday-- not cool. If participation wasn't drastically lower across the board due to holidays (all weekend), then that speaks to the dedication of agents, not the scheduling.
Scoring: better overall with normalization so one or two sites do not drive the entire score. Considering primaries again for more points would be a nice addition.
Site selection: worst aspect so far. Repeated sites, repeated play areas. Really taking the fun and exploration out of game of exploration and fun. Altering the algorithm to sorting by most active cells, then locating a site within that cell that has not been repeated on multiple occasions seems a good path forward.
Share is not, what 3 words mean
Totally agree with @Aneristic and @RoseyMacdoo. I also enjoyed cooperating with other agents in local community in monthly Battle Beacon events this year. However, my city Taipei, just like Philadelphia and Leeds, has had events three of the last four months. Though there are really tons of activities in urban core region, a competitive event in the same large cities EVERY MONTH let the agents almost burned out. As the host of the city, it's harder and harder to find agents to join the Battle Beacon events together. I believe every agent in the hosting city needs to take a rest.
Echoing what everyone else has said already: it's getting tiring hosting anomalies and trying to get local agents excited to participate four months in a row in the same metropolitan area/region (in my case, Massachusetts). PLEASE please please please consider pausing these events in May, or find other sites that have not had any activity this year so far. I will note that there was not a single site in the entire continent of Africa for Kythera Phase 1.
Is there any way for us to retract our submitted hosting application for June (Petaling Jaya, Malaysia)? We made the submission back in March when the sites in April is not known yet, we were then chosen as one of the cities to host the event in the past weekend (Damansara Utama, Malaysia). One event per anomaly series would be enough for us, more than that would be taking a toll on our community, since other than the anomaly we have also some other events going on regularly (first Saturday, second Sunday, medal challenges etc.).
I echo the feedback on spacing them out to more than once a month if this event format is going to continue after the Kythera series, especially since a number of sites have been repeated 3 times. More spacing out would capture more of the special event magic and avoid organizer burnout.
Please put one in New Jersey, We have tried everything you have asked. We have xfac submitted multiple sites, we have DENSE portal areas, we will get all of our Res and ENL teammates from NY and PA, and we have battled and beaconed our hearts out to get your attention. What does it take?
good question, for example in scandinavia sweden got 5 cities, finland got 5, norway 1 and denmark which is a very active cell didnt get a single.. i dont understand that.... same when i saw usa, alot in the middle not a single city chosen... weird logic not everyone can afford or has time travel hours for BBs....
Dear @NianticOfficial ,
I would like to give feedback of our experience with Fase I. You selected a heavy Res City in our country (The only City selected). We were out numbered but manage to amass many players from different cities, in my case I drove a total of 998Kms just to go there for the day, since monday was a labour day. We organized our squads, had an intel operator and were ready to Go, I had previously participated in other anomalys.
To me and many of my fellow agents, playing an onsite anomaly is like a big Football Match, we have rules, timers and results, we believe in fairplay. However what we experienced that day tainted a bit the experience. You see as soon as the battle beacons started we started having irregular situations.
For example we saw the opposing team with agents playing with 2 accounts (2 phones in hand), we had spoofer activity which was corroborated with our operator since the number of accounts playing was not according to the amount seen, our operator even noticed how a player jumped 7 blocks in under 1 min into a mall just to flip a beacon with an Ada and then return to battle beacons were he once was. There was a squad of the opposing team playing in an SUV which had 4 persons inside but at least 7 accounts were marking activity and as bonus the amount of capsules that were dropped was incredible (mule accounts).
But what really infurated us was the fact that the opossing faction manage to create an exploit. You see we either used an ada or a jarvis depending on the situation to later withhold the beacon and play defence. The portal was inmunized, we had specific agents for recharging, deploying and modding, suddenly when the timer had 30-20 second left for the next fase the scanner froze and no one could do any actions, and 5-10 second later someone yells its blue but our game still showed it green, then the scanner updates and we see a full lvl 8 full aegis portal and lost the phase. At first we thought aah maybe its heavy latency, lag or even maybe our carriers are failing, but this exact situation happened in 7 different beacons, portal inmune, scanner freezes, portal turns blue. So then it stopped being a coincidence and something is going on, this was experienced by all Enl Players in those respective BB.
At the end of the day we still managed to win through persistency and team work, but it is really disappointing and frustrating to play without a referee. We have made our internal reports for the players who blantly were cheating, but these anomalys need urgently more vigilence on your part @NianticOfficial I know its not the same to watch over 10 cities worldwide as previous anomalys than this Kythera phase that had 100, but an anomaly is in an anomaly, and either you win through effort or lose with dignity, but cheaters are a thorn that must be plucked. Always Fairpaly.
cc: @NianticBrian @NianticCasey
I second this!
New Jersey is the most densely populous state in the United States, so it would make sense to have a Kythera site there - not only is the state easily accessible by many people, but it also contains a solid density of POIs that could be great places for battle beacons.
Having an event in New Jersey would also take off the hosting burden on New York City and Philadelphia. While those two cities have done a great job hosting events, it would be great to have them take a break from hosting and be guests to a Jersey site instead.
New Jersey is very easy to access and is serviced by multiple airports, bus lines, train lines, and highways, which means that it's easily for Agents to travel to (and within) the state. For those who have to fly in, multiple airports means more opportunities to buy cheap flights.
New Jersey has temperate weather, so many Agents will be comfortable playing there. Also, much of the state is at sea level, so many Agents won't have trouble with high altitudes.
New Jersey has solid cell phone coverage for most major US cell phone networks, so Agents will not be left out based on cell phone coverage.
Also, the pizza joints here are ideal places to have XFac gatherings after Kythera events. Awesome company deserves awesome pizza!
So yes, New Jersey would be a mad awesome place to host a Kythera event (or any other Ingress event).