Cheater, Cheater Pumpkin Eater

I last posted about Ingress banning players who used IITC or Broot Mod while playing and how I didn't necessarily consider those cheating. Here is what I see as the cheating problem in Ingress. Let me define my premise, cheating is doing something outside the the rules or norms of the game in order to gain an advantage. No advantage, no cheating. 

Spoofers

Just to refresh your memory, spoofers are people who use certain applications to falsify their GPS location. With these apps a player could sit comfortably in their home and hack level 8 portals in both Paris France and Paris Kentucky without leaving their couch. 

How easy is it to do???

Apparently pretty damn easy. Just go to the Play Store and search for GPS Spoof or Fake GPS. You'll see dozens of apps. -- And no I haven't done, nor would I do this.

Niantic has done some to thwart spoofing, but it causes another problem. They have put a "speed limit" on scanner activity. It appears that if your speed between two portals is greater than approximately 35 mph, you are prevented from not only hacking, but doing basically any scanner activity which you can gain AP or items from Hacking to recharging. There has also been discussion that this is a safety measure to prevent playing ingress while driving.

In my opinion that is not a legitimate defense against spoofers. It is more a hindrance to real players.  Here is my real life example. In the picture to the right my local team did an event in one van we had 9 level 8 agents, and had more in other vehicles. We would at times have to wait at certain portals a few minutes before we could take any action. This became very frustrating. We weren't speeding, driving hazardously or anything else (okay we had 9 people in a vehicle which seats 8). But this hampered our enjoyment of our day and event. 

I don't know the answer to how to solve the spoofer problem, but the speed limit is not it. 

Illegitimate portals

I believe submitting a knowingly illegitimate portal is cheating. You've probably seen post on G+ like this one where people find illegitimate portals. Some how they got through the portal approval process. In this picture someone actually was successful at submitting their TV in their home. 

Other illegitimate portals include:

• Intentionally submitting inaccessible portals. There is a player in our area who lives in a gated community. The community has fountains, statues, gazebos and a park sign which would all normally be legitimate portals, but they are inaccessible to the public. Even a Level 8 XMP wouldn't reach any of them. So for a while he had his own private level 8 farm as he would invite other members of his faction in to upgrade and hack. Do you need to guess what type of mods this has on it?
• Fake portals. If you follow some of the G+ posts you will see things like backyard playground sets, private garden statues, gnomes, and the like which are not unique or interesting. 

The only reason people submit illegitimate portals is to gain an advantage and as such this is definitely cheating. Sure I'd love to sit at my couch and hack my personal portal in my living room, but that's not what the game is about.

Multiple Accounts
Here's a problem I see first hand and it frustrates me. It doesn't matter if your second account is with the same faction or the opposite faction both are equally bad.

Children's Accounts -  In my area we have a player who has played multiple times under both factions and each time this player also gives their child an account. This player is quite obviously playing both accounts as I see the "child's" username over the COMM at the crazy hours of the morning I play and/or I will see the child's account activity on the Intel Map desktop COMM with no activity from the parent. How ridiculous. This person is either obviously cheating or a horrible parent or both.

If a child wants to play and is legitimately playing, I have no problem with that. Heck, I've been places with many portals before with my son and handed him my phone and let him go hack portals. If I were to get him his own phone and he wanted to play Ingress I'd let him. Even though it is a TOS violation for children to play. If done legitimately, there is no advantage gained other than another player for your faction.

So these cheaters can now single-handedly create L6 (or more with more accounts) portals. Which you will use to hack and gain items gaining an advantage.

Storage Accounts -This is something opposing players in my area were talking about and dare I even say bragging about, having a second account specifically for storing items therefore getting around the 2000 item limit. They swear they don't play with those accounts, they just store items with them. Give me a break...

This too is obvious cheating. The game is set up with a 2000 item limit. As much as I wish it were more or keys wouldn't count or something similar, that's the way it is.

Opposing Accounts - While I haven't seen directly or suspected others of this, I was reading about it. A person creates accounts with both factions, then plays as one fully charging portals, linking, creating control fields, then logs in with their second account destroying what their other account created and rebuilding for the first account to destroy again. These cheaters gain advantage by being able to quickly gain AP and level themselves quickly, or sometimes they spy for one faction, the other or both.

My First Two Encounters with Police while Playing Ingress

Earlier this week I had to go out of town for a funeral. So Monday evening I got in town, settled in, visited with some people. But by 10:00 pm was bored and had nothing planned to do. So I get on the COMM and announce I'm a level 8 player in town and want to help the local community while I was there.

Pretty soon I had a few replies. The other faction had a pretty large level 8 farm in a neighboring town, they were looking for some help taking down then they also needed help building their farm. I'm always in for blowing up enemy portals. So I offer to help do that. I was well stocked with several hundred Level 8 XMPs and dozens of power cubes thanks to the recent doubling the drop rate for cubes. I got on the road and headed to their farm.

I was blowing their portals up with ease. I went up one street and down the next attacking away and introducing Ingress to my younger brother (unfortunately he's an Apple guy and cant get him to play). I get to one street and even though I'm not familiar with the area I can tell the portals are in a park. I, legally, park on the side of the road in a marked parking spot and start firing L8 XMPs. Combining where I parked and the range on the XMPs I could hit all the portals in the park. By now, I've taken out half of the portals and then...

I saw the unmarked car pass by the first time and didn't make any mind of it. But a minute later he came back from behind be and the lights came on; including spotlights.

The officer approaches, very kindly, and tells us were in a park and the park closed at sunset.

I apologized and told him I didn't realize the street was in the park, but I would leave.

He was friendly and said the sign was not easy to see at night, but the entire street passes through the park and the park continued up until the next street. He thanked me and turned away as I pulled away. I unfortunately had to leave some of those portals, while damaged, still in the hands of the other faction.

I continue driving, my brother holding the tablet and navigating me through this unfamiliar territory. I knock out another couple of portals. I then come up to this church that has 3 L8 enemy portals on it's property. I park on the street. Once again I'm parked legally, on the street, in a marked spot in front of this church directly under a streetlight.  I'd been there for a minute or two then comes the same officer again. He pulls in the parking spot beside me, rolls down his window and asks me, "Are you playing that Google game where you have to go places to claim portals for your team and blow up other team's portals?"

I tell him yes as I show him my cell phone.

He goes on about wishing Google would delete the game and that they have gotten some reported possible burglaries that end up with people playing that game. He concludes by telling me that this is a small, sleepy old town that basically closes up completely at 10:00 pm and asks me to call it quits for the night and come back in the morning.

From my best knowledge, he had no legal reason to ask me to stop, I just thought it better to tell him I would stop. While I do not believe he had the legal authority to have me stop. Since I had left the park he admitted was poorly marked, I had done nothing wrong. But arguing was not something that could have any positive effect for me. Besides it was getting late and I think other than the chit-chat and catching up my brother was over playing with me.

In hindsight, I was an easy target for the officer. I was basically the only person moving around in the town, I had an out-of-state license plate and I was stopping frequently and probably seeming strange to anybody who did see me.

But note to others: If you are approached by police, be calm, be polite, tell them exactly what you are doing, and obey any instructions they give you. It's just a game. This officer very likely did not have the legal right/authority to ask me to stop, but is it worth the argument or discussion? No to me, that is not a booger I'm going to pick.

Decode Ingress has a good post about encountering law enforcement you may want to read if you haven't already: Ingress[tip]: Contact with Law Enforcement.

Happy and Safe Hacking!

Ultra Strike - New Ingress weapon

I've been wanting to post about this for a while. In Episode 19 of The Ingress Report it was announced that there is a new weapon available for +Ingress . The Ultra Strike is a weapon designed to be used against enemy resonators. You can strategically target resonators for an intense burst on a resonator. This burst will have limited range. Ultra Strikes will come in various levels like resonators and XMP Bursters and presumably will be most effective on resonators of the same level or lower. We have been told these items will be pretty common.

And the fans go wild !!!!!!!!!!!!!

But, it was also announced that this weapon can only be hacked using the 3 new Motorola Droid phones...

Oh, not so excited anymore...

But all is not lost, sports fans. While it is still only available to be hacked by the new Motorola phones, they can be shared and used by anyone. Yes, it still makes the majority feel like 1st runner up in a beauty contest it's not all that bad. I personally see limited use for this as a L8 XMP Blaster is highly effective and will destroy so much more.

Initially I was disappointed that these would only be available on the Motorola Phones. But lets look at the money trail. Ingress is done by Google, Google owns/has substantial stake in Motorola. Samsung (The current largest mobile device manufacturer that runs Android)  is testing their own OS, Tizen, in what is seen to move free from Google/Android. So they want to get people to put their money in their own pockets. And honestly I would prefer them making money from Ingress this way versus allowing people to stock up on items by buying them like they are able to do on many games like Farmville.

If/when Ingress starts selling gift cards like this , I will probably be out...

Happy Hacking!