Anyone playing Ingress? A co-worker is playing and he fires it up when we go to lunch and hacks portals on the way. It’s frankly annoying as hell so I joined just to see if I could fsck with him. It seems to be alright. If I traveled for work still, I think it could be fun as most of the portals are landmarks or points of interest (like restaurants). It has potential I think, but I have enough computer stuff vying for my attention to really get into it.
I have it.
Couldn’t figure out what the point was so it’s sat idle for months.
I had never heard of it before you mentioned it. After looking at their website, I was curious but no less clueless. I added it to my phone and will poke at it next time I’m out & about.
Yes, but I’m doing a fair bit of travel courtesy of work so it makes visiting random places more interesting.
It helps you find interesting places when you’re somewhere new (and sometimes somewhere you thought you knew). Otherwise it’s just another time waster that also happens to help you drain your phone’s battery faster…
I play, though I only generally have access to one portal during most days, since they accepted the one for my workplace. I’ve kept a firm hold on this portal for the last few months, but leveling is slow when you only have one portal and don’t have any enemy portals in your normal routine to blast.
Ok, so I’ve been poking at it for the past few days. (geez, week already?) The challenge to visit and conquer new spots around town is fun, and I successfully annoyed the crap outta my girlfriend with it when I went with her to the outlet mall on Saturday. But after the novelty wears off, I can see it potentially failing to hold my attention - if it is tedious and pointless, I’ll get bored with it. But for now, it’s fun!
Update, since I just re-discovered this thread:
I’m still ingress-ing. I’m at Level 8, and one badge away from Level 9. A few weeks ago, they added new levels, 9 - 16. I got hooked up with some other Resistance players in my area through Google+ & Hangouts. The camaraderie is great; it’s sooo much more fun playing with a team.
I’m still only Level 4…
Cow-irker is level 8. He’s always playing when we’re driving to and from lunch. He’s green though. I was blue when I was playing just to try and screw with him.
What color is everyone here?
From what I understand, it varies by region, but around Houston, the green “Enlightened” faction (frogs) is full of jerks. The blue “Resistance” faction (smurfs) is a much friendlier, less militaristic group. Although I am a biased blue, the same sentiment has been voiced by some who chose poorly.
On another note, I actually made it on the leaderboard for my cell, number 21 of the top 25. Not too shabby for a work day.
A side effect of being a lot more active in the game is that my MPG dropped. I was getting 25ish around town. Since I’ve been doing a lot of trolling, the average is down to 22.8. But, I’ve also walked a whole lot more in the past month or two than I used to. I haven’t made enough progress to post about it in the Reduction group, but based on how sore I was on Monday and Tuesday of last week, it should be helping.
Aaaaand it’s 1am, so I should go to bed now. See ya!
Edit: Oh, and I heard a rumor that they may add another faction (red) around the time it is released for iOS. I’m not sure I’m real keen on that idea, nor how they’re going to weave that into the game mythos. (Basically… Aliens want to take over (enslave???) the human race. Enlightened think that means evolving to the next plain of existence, to which they say, “Bring it on!” While Resistance say, “Eff that.”)
I went on the “wellness walk” here at the office and I hacked a L5 fitness trail marker along the route, and then I got this pink thing, and a movie. but I kept walking so I have no idea if I was supposed to do something else.
There is an abandoned grain silo just out of reach from the road I might have to hit, looks like only one person has ever been there or something, I dunno.
Lol, the pink thing was probably a resonator - used to take possession of a portal for your faction. The movie is not quite as important - the media items sometimes have actual useful info updates, but mostly contain an ongoing narrative of the backstory. Honestly, the soap opera politics and pseudo-science of the backstory don’t interest me all that much. But for gameplay… There is a lot of good information on Decode Ingress. The Intel map is a really good tool, too, to see what’s in an area before you go there.
Yeah, it was a resonator. I was being purposely obtuse for comedic effect.
Still haven’t done much, so the descriptions of items are all I have to go by. But I already feel teh urge to take a walk. Maybe this is my fitbit.
1 Like
I just had an idea for a added reality ap.
Spy vs. Spy. Set virtual traps for each other, in places where the other team/person goes, and if they are walking through all fat and happy they die. Add traps to items based on contextual menus. If I’m looking at a door with my phone then I can wire the doorknob, or put a bucket of acid at the top, or a a chair, or section of floor. If you have your ap on then you get a chance to see it or disarm it.
Someone with more brains actually build it, I’ll just sit here and wait for my royalty check.
I just picked Ingress up again last week, and been much more active than I was previously. Captured several portals in the past couple days and already had one of them stolen from me. There’s a couple nearby with only a single high-level resonator on it that I’m going to attempt to chip away at.
Most of the ones around me are all full with level 7 and 8 resonators. And I still have no idea what I’m doing.
Ayup. I’m getting close to level 3, and I’m hoping that as I level up, I’ll be able to do more stuff more effectively by virtue of havening more XM to spend at a time.
Would also like to figure out what the various mods that you can install on a portal do. And if there’s any benefit to me putting my piddly L1/L2 resonators in empty slots on L6-8 portals.
oooh, looks like there’s some decent beginner stuff here
Yeah, Decode Ingress is pretty good.
Quick breakdown of mods:
Portal Shield: Adds a layer of protection to the portal and its resonators (less damage taken per XMP attack)
Link Amp: Extends the maximum link length for a portal (Adds the portal’s base length in extra distance per link amp)
Heat Sink: Reduces cooldown times between hacks (cuts it in half, I think)
Multi-hack: Increases number of times a portal can be hacked before burnout (default is 4 in 8 hours or so)
Turret: Increases portal rate of attack on enemies when being attacked
Force amp: Increases damage portal deals with attacks to enemy players
And by all means, place those resonators! Even if they don’t do a whole lot up front, you get some AP for placing a resonator and it does bring the overall level of the portal up slightly (since a portal’s level is determined by the average level of all 8 resonator slots, with an empty counting as L0 if I recall).
It’s taken me a long time to get from low levels up to (just) level 6. It was frustrating at first, but getting away from an area entirely dominated by either side helped a lot.
Of course, if I played more regularly I might level up faster 