4 ms·

Ingress is a great idea - but poorly implemented. I have cheated (not with malicious intent - I just wanted to prove that it could be done), and heard of other

by nadams 11y ago

Ingress is a great idea - but poorly implemented. I have cheated (not with malicious intent - I just wanted to prove that it could be done), and heard of other potential cheating cases as well. I definitely wouldn't use GPS as a sole indicator of someone's position for a game.

simonw 11y ago
Do you think that's a solvable problem? I would imagine it isn't, outside of using statistical analysis to spot obvious widespread cheating.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Gamers develop sophisticated cheats, and, yes, multi-player game companies do look for outliers. It's not a solvable problem but it is an advanced arms race.
- troymc 11y ago
  The solution is to use other sources of location information in addition to GPS.
  - cpitman 11y ago
    Unless that source of information is not on the phone, it will have the same problem. And I'm not sure I want cell phone companies reporting in to external parties where my phone is.
  - jklp 11y ago
    Can't those other sources also be spoofed?
    - nadams 11y ago
      > Can't those other sources also be spoofed? It's a lot harder to spoof say for example APs near you, signal strength to a cell tower, and/or IP geolocation - than a GPS signal. If you can spoof all of that - you probably aren't interested in playing a game like ingress. You have your own more interesting game you play...
      - jklp 11y ago
        Ah yep makes sense!
- technofiend 11y ago
  Spoofing was an issue for cheating but so was GPS data quality: spend enough time in a metro area and you're ready to tear your hair out because of constant drift. Combine that with Niantic's shift from freely giving equipment away to forcing players to "glyph hack" (repeat back a series of proprietary symbols) and casual players dropped out of the game.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  I can imagine there'd be a number of mitigations you could do, like detecting impossibly fast travel times between locations. Although cheating then would be a matter of taking it slowly.
k__ 11y ago
The trailers were rather cool, but the game came down to running around and mashing buttons in a rather ugly interface on your phone.
- jtbigwoo 11y ago
  The community and the meta-game quickly became the engrossing part of the game. If you like coordinating with other players and getting together to wander around and mash buttons on your phone, then it's great. You can still play by taking walks by yourself, but that's not as much fun. I think this is pretty common evolution for games. Games from bridge to Magic:The Gathering to softball are as much about the social elements as they are about the actual gameplay.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    It was like WoW or Eve, but in the real world. Which is probably why I quit; I much preferred walking around on my own, rather than trying to coordinate with people. Oh well. It wasn't for me, and in the month or two that I played it, I did see some pretty neat stuff around the city that I hadn't before.
  - numinit 11y ago
    The crypto challenges are fun as well.
- gcb0 11y ago
  agreed. that was the worst case of vapor ware... well not because they delivered... old hackers would call it "spiffy"... but i think the better term now is it was the worst case of Hollywood OS ever.
mrbill 11y ago
I played with Ingress for a couple of days, using GPS spoofing - but they quickly somehow found a way to catch people doing that (multiple location sources, I'm guessing).
- ghuntley 11y ago
  One of the methods of detection is to upload the SSID of WIFI access points around you, including signal strengths. It's pretty easy to spot someone who knows/has pulled apart the client as they usually (accidentally) refer to actions by the internal API method names instead of the UI names. :-)
david-given 11y ago
I played it up to level 8 a couple of years ago, and gave up once I hit 8. My problem was that I thought the core gameplay was really flawed: there was (there may be now, I haven't played for a while) no benefit to holding territory, only taking territory... which means you have a vested interest in letting the other team capture your portals so you can take them back. So after a while each team takes turns capturing the portal and sticking cheap and crappy level 1 resonators on it. You don't want to make the portal hard to recapture. That's not fun. Wandering around cities looking for portals was fun, and got me to find several places in the city where I was living which I wouldn't have found otherwise. (I have since moved city. Maybe I should try it again...)
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  There still isn't - besides of course the claim that you own that area with your name on it. Oh and the game is divided up into seasons, you can see in the Intel screen a history of how much area your 'side' holds and has held historically in the current period.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Gameplay is still really reliant on the "meta" game (local rivalries, meeting up with teammates, etc) for long term entertainment but as far as in-game mechanics, after a certain point, you need to earn badges for different things like holding areas or creating fields over densely populated areas in order to level up. Between that and missions (stuff like "hack these 20 portals in this one historic district") there's still a bit to accomplish. That said, it can still get old fast. King-of-the-hill + geocaching essentially. Claim areas, lose areas, nothing lasts for long, etc. Still, it can be fun to see the opposing faction trying to make a big field to gain points before the end of a cycle and coordinating with other people in your town to knock it down before they score those points. Same goes for the opposite way.
  - david-given 11y ago
    I met a fellow Ingress player once (in, luckily, a public place for a brief period of time). Weirdly, obsessively creepy, the kind of person who stares fixedly at your left ear while talking. I'm sure he wasn't representative, but... Besides, if I wanted to talk to other humans, I wouldn't be playing a computer game! I gave up on Eve for the same reason, once I ran out of early game content and realised I'd have to join a corp to progress.

by nadams 11y ago

simonw 11y ago

Do you think that's a solvable problem? I would imagine it isn't, outside of using statistical analysis to spot obvious widespread cheating.

Zigurd 11y ago
Gamers develop sophisticated cheats, and, yes, multi-player game companies do look for outliers. It's not a solvable problem but it is an advanced arms race.
troymc 11y ago
The solution is to use other sources of location information in addition to GPS.
- cpitman 11y ago
  Unless that source of information is not on the phone, it will have the same problem. And I'm not sure I want cell phone companies reporting in to external parties where my phone is.
- jklp 11y ago
  Can't those other sources also be spoofed?
  - nadams 11y ago
    > Can't those other sources also be spoofed? It's a lot harder to spoof say for example APs near you, signal strength to a cell tower, and/or IP geolocation - than a GPS signal. If you can spoof all of that - you probably aren't interested in playing a game like ingress. You have your own more interesting game you play...
    - jklp 11y ago
      Ah yep makes sense!
technofiend 11y ago
Spoofing was an issue for cheating but so was GPS data quality: spend enough time in a metro area and you're ready to tear your hair out because of constant drift. Combine that with Niantic's shift from freely giving equipment away to forcing players to "glyph hack" (repeat back a series of proprietary symbols) and casual players dropped out of the game.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
I can imagine there'd be a number of mitigations you could do, like detecting impossibly fast travel times between locations. Although cheating then would be a matter of taking it slowly.

k__ 11y ago

The trailers were rather cool, but the game came down to running around and mashing buttons in a rather ugly interface on your phone.

jtbigwoo 11y ago
The community and the meta-game quickly became the engrossing part of the game. If you like coordinating with other players and getting together to wander around and mash buttons on your phone, then it's great. You can still play by taking walks by yourself, but that's not as much fun. I think this is pretty common evolution for games. Games from bridge to Magic:The Gathering to softball are as much about the social elements as they are about the actual gameplay.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  It was like WoW or Eve, but in the real world. Which is probably why I quit; I much preferred walking around on my own, rather than trying to coordinate with people. Oh well. It wasn't for me, and in the month or two that I played it, I did see some pretty neat stuff around the city that I hadn't before.
- numinit 11y ago
  The crypto challenges are fun as well.
gcb0 11y ago
agreed. that was the worst case of vapor ware... well not because they delivered... old hackers would call it "spiffy"... but i think the better term now is it was the worst case of Hollywood OS ever.

mrbill 11y ago

I played with Ingress for a couple of days, using GPS spoofing - but they quickly somehow found a way to catch people doing that (multiple location sources, I'm guessing).

ghuntley 11y ago
One of the methods of detection is to upload the SSID of WIFI access points around you, including signal strengths. It's pretty easy to spot someone who knows/has pulled apart the client as they usually (accidentally) refer to actions by the internal API method names instead of the UI names. :-)

david-given 11y ago

I played it up to level 8 a couple of years ago, and gave up once I hit 8. My problem was that I thought the core gameplay was really flawed: there was (there may be now, I haven't played for a while) no benefit to holding territory, only taking territory... which means you have a vested interest in letting the other team capture your portals so you can take them back. So after a while each team takes turns capturing the portal and sticking cheap and crappy level 1 resonators on it. You don't want to make the portal hard to recapture. That's not fun. Wandering around cities looking for portals was fun, and got me to find several places in the city where I was living which I wouldn't have found otherwise. (I have since moved city. Maybe I should try it again...)

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
There still isn't - besides of course the claim that you own that area with your name on it. Oh and the game is divided up into seasons, you can see in the Intel screen a history of how much area your 'side' holds and has held historically in the current period.
soylentcola 11y ago
Gameplay is still really reliant on the "meta" game (local rivalries, meeting up with teammates, etc) for long term entertainment but as far as in-game mechanics, after a certain point, you need to earn badges for different things like holding areas or creating fields over densely populated areas in order to level up. Between that and missions (stuff like "hack these 20 portals in this one historic district") there's still a bit to accomplish. That said, it can still get old fast. King-of-the-hill + geocaching essentially. Claim areas, lose areas, nothing lasts for long, etc. Still, it can be fun to see the opposing faction trying to make a big field to gain points before the end of a cycle and coordinating with other people in your town to knock it down before they score those points. Same goes for the opposite way.
- david-given 11y ago
  I met a fellow Ingress player once (in, luckily, a public place for a brief period of time). Weirdly, obsessively creepy, the kind of person who stares fixedly at your left ear while talking. I'm sure he wasn't representative, but... Besides, if I wanted to talk to other humans, I wouldn't be playing a computer game! I gave up on Eve for the same reason, once I ran out of early game content and realised I'd have to join a corp to progress.