Netizen

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Ingress: Home Territory: I Need My Green Agents

The Level 8 green agents on my home turf and some of the regularly visiting Level 8 green agents just so happen to be some of the very top green agents in the entire city. When I started playing Jackson Heights was 100% SRC turf. On Fridays that guy would just sweep through the entire area, and I wondered how he managed to do that. I just could not fathom. I later came to know about the power of L8 bursters.

Then on my way to L8 I started taking over, and once I hit L8 I wiped out SRC. And I thought I was done. I was not done. SRC had taken the game to a whole new level. Now he was working from behind the screen. He was playing a proxy war game. He was busy leveling up agents. Because he knew the one with more agents will dominate a territory.

I hit L8 before exussum but he went L8 not long after. And then chicory showed up. And once he hit L8, I was pretty much "outgunned," SRC's word. SRC and Henrock are out of Corona, but both are Jackson Heights regulars. Henrock I have been calling the King Of Queens for a while now. That guy has more resonators in the borough than anyone else. Lighthouse0 from Astoria and Zrozue from Flushing and RedJava and Avumede from Forest Hills also visit. Actually I know Avumede visited because Slomar visits within hours: such is the rivalry.

I would not want a home territory that was 100% blue and stayed blue. In short, I do not want a Forest Hills for me. That would be too boring. I want my home territory to stay competitive. So, no, I don't wish my local green agents did not exist, or disappeared, or went inactive. I want a game. Although I do want a much larger territory, as in, many more portals. And I do want a much bigger local blue team. I want do be able to organize L8 farm events just with local blue agents as necessary. And I want a constant inflow of new blue agents, so there are always people leveling up.

Over time I want the core of Jackson Heights to become like Battery Park, a zone that high level agents leave for low level agents who are leveling up. Easy come, easy go.

My home territory includes much of Jackson Heights, some of Woodside and some of Elmhurst.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Ingress: Swatting Houseflies On The COMM

The COMM is the least well thought through element of the Ingress gaming app. It is just raw.

My top request right now with Niantic is to enable a Block User feature for the COMM. Minus that the COMM has a tendency to degenerate to the lowest common denominator kind of talk.

Also just having an All COMM and a secure COMM for faction chat is not enough. There is room for one more section, one called private COMM: there you only see people you allow.

There are only two global teams possible in the game and that is the way it should be. But every city in the world has at least one local team on each side. And the idea of making it possible to form many, many local teams is not an aside. Making that possible is central to bringing about complexities in the game.

The game has to be kept simple in its basics like it is now. But most of the new complexities and challenges will come from enabling easy creation of new teams. Just like you graduate from building portals to building entire farms the ultimate act in the game is when you build your own team. You don't have to, and most people will not, but that is the ultimate act in the game.

I have a global team in mind. I am going to build the top Resistance team in New York City. And in doing that I am going to build a blueprint with which to build a global team.

The number one thing that has been hindering my team building efforts is a sheer lack of portals in the city. I need my 1,000 portal submissions to go through before serious team building can start. There are people who have been astounded by how prolific I have been at submitting portals, and their reaction is to the 60 or so portals of mine that have gone live. Well, to them I say, wait until I start recruiting people. My portal submissions will pale in comparison to the team building I will do.

In the mean time I get to go on faction chat around 5 PM and swat houseflies. There are about five members of timtomhuze who like nothing better than to pull the conversation on faction chat to the lowest possible denominator. Like I said, I am new to Ingress, but I am not new to political warfare.