Ingress farming enemy portals
Feb. 20th, 2015 10:09 amWhen I was low level, I was excited to see any portal. I found a portal! And I hacked it! I'd go for a walk ambling round whatever portals were close without worrying about who controlled them or anything.
Now I'm conscious that I want lots of Lev 7 and 8 equipment in order to do other things (mainly capturing enemy portals to get AP), and if I'm playing, there's a lot more incentive to find Lev 7/8 portals and hack them intensively.
I have to consciously re-attune my mind to try to just go a walk for the sake of it.
However, I'm thinking about how high level enemy portals should work. It makes sense that low level players can hack any portal and get worthwhile equipment. Up to level 6 I never worried about levels of portals -- there were so many 5s and 6s around Cambridge just hacking whatever I found gave enough equipment. But now, finding L7 portals matters more.
Which is unfortunately creating perverse incentives. There's an enclave of enemy-faction players nearby, and the portals near work are usually level 7 enemy faction -- which is actually really convenient because you can play the glyph game (long-press on "hack") and get lots of level-appropriate stuff without needing to coordinate with own-faction players. But that means, I'm rewarded for not attacking them (except for pride).
It used to be worse when IIRC enemy portals gave you better equipment of some types. But it doesn't seem to be rewarding "building up portals" the way it should :) I'm no sure how it should work. I guess, people are incentivised to build up portals near where they are, so there's definitely an incentive to build. (And a big incentive to build lev 8s). And not incentivised to destroy enemy high-level portals unless you get lots of points for it. Maybe that's actually a reasonable balance? (Else, two players within range of the same portal would just stalemate forever...) But it feels like there's something missing. There is an incentive to destroy enemy portals to deny the opposition equipment which matters at high levels, except most people are playing so much they won't really run out...
However, the alternative doesn't seem better. If you could only hack friendly portals of high level, then once one faction got ahead on high-level players and portals, it would create a feedback loop of staying ahead. IIRC you do get LESS stuff from high-level enemy portals, but I'm not sure if it's significant if you glyph-hack, or not?
Now I'm conscious that I want lots of Lev 7 and 8 equipment in order to do other things (mainly capturing enemy portals to get AP), and if I'm playing, there's a lot more incentive to find Lev 7/8 portals and hack them intensively.
I have to consciously re-attune my mind to try to just go a walk for the sake of it.
However, I'm thinking about how high level enemy portals should work. It makes sense that low level players can hack any portal and get worthwhile equipment. Up to level 6 I never worried about levels of portals -- there were so many 5s and 6s around Cambridge just hacking whatever I found gave enough equipment. But now, finding L7 portals matters more.
Which is unfortunately creating perverse incentives. There's an enclave of enemy-faction players nearby, and the portals near work are usually level 7 enemy faction -- which is actually really convenient because you can play the glyph game (long-press on "hack") and get lots of level-appropriate stuff without needing to coordinate with own-faction players. But that means, I'm rewarded for not attacking them (except for pride).
It used to be worse when IIRC enemy portals gave you better equipment of some types. But it doesn't seem to be rewarding "building up portals" the way it should :) I'm no sure how it should work. I guess, people are incentivised to build up portals near where they are, so there's definitely an incentive to build. (And a big incentive to build lev 8s). And not incentivised to destroy enemy high-level portals unless you get lots of points for it. Maybe that's actually a reasonable balance? (Else, two players within range of the same portal would just stalemate forever...) But it feels like there's something missing. There is an incentive to destroy enemy portals to deny the opposition equipment which matters at high levels, except most people are playing so much they won't really run out...
However, the alternative doesn't seem better. If you could only hack friendly portals of high level, then once one faction got ahead on high-level players and portals, it would create a feedback loop of staying ahead. IIRC you do get LESS stuff from high-level enemy portals, but I'm not sure if it's significant if you glyph-hack, or not?