The futility of war in Ingress
Feb. 13th, 2015 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It reminds me of Crowly and Aziraphale in Good Omens. I had a lot of Chesterton portal keys already, and on the way home from work captured the unshielded opposite-faction portal blocking most of the potential links, and then captured the golden hind and linked them all to that. And then did it all over again at least once as some high-level players I hadn't known were inside knocked it down as fast as I could build it.
Which makes the exercise a bit pointless in terms of maintaining a friendly field over the area, because they would always win. But I couldn't help but notice, performing an entirely futile action twice, got a LOT more points. I stopped when I ran out of keys, I didn't want to stand there all night re-capturing and re-deploying. And I was out of lev 6 and lev 7 resonators and running out of lev 5. But fielding twice over got a bunch of points.
I've noticed before, there's two senses of progress: if you capture and hold area for your faction, your faction does better; but you personally get points for capturing things. A highly contested area gets you more points than an area you've "won". Which makes sense, both in terms of keeping the game fun and keeping people playing. But it seemed like a metaphor for business or war when it looks like a truce would be better, but individual people may be better served by ongoing conflict...
Which makes the exercise a bit pointless in terms of maintaining a friendly field over the area, because they would always win. But I couldn't help but notice, performing an entirely futile action twice, got a LOT more points. I stopped when I ran out of keys, I didn't want to stand there all night re-capturing and re-deploying. And I was out of lev 6 and lev 7 resonators and running out of lev 5. But fielding twice over got a bunch of points.
I've noticed before, there's two senses of progress: if you capture and hold area for your faction, your faction does better; but you personally get points for capturing things. A highly contested area gets you more points than an area you've "won". Which makes sense, both in terms of keeping the game fun and keeping people playing. But it seemed like a metaphor for business or war when it looks like a truce would be better, but individual people may be better served by ongoing conflict...
no subject
Date: 2015-02-14 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-17 06:04 pm (UTC)(Also, what we say here is: "Everyone thinks they are Sun Tzu, but really they're Wile E. Coyote."
no subject
Date: 2015-02-18 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-18 12:09 am (UTC)