Ingress AMA Archive

Q1: I wonder do You, as a part of your job's duties, have to play Ingress for given amount of time (or given AP, etc.), or review some number of portals in OPR? :)

Q2: Is the an actual list from the Vanguards?

Q3: I am wondering if you could shed some light on the TR program by any chance? Mainly, what it is, what TRs can and can't do, and what type of actions they report on.

Q4: Dear Andrew, since there is a lot of misunderstanding who can be a POC for an anomaly or who not, why can't +NIA Ops release a list clarifying what makes you eligble and what not? Some better communication by Niantic would be nice instead of just kicking POCs without a clue.

Q5: How do you think about a medal for the attended Anomalies (just like the MissionDay and NL1331 medal).

Q6: Can we submit and accept cinema Halls?

Q7: How come a report for an invalid portal needs to be submitted only through the scanner to be rejected for lack of evidence and appealed with further evidence to possibly get rid of it...... yet, one agent making a batch of reports about opposition assumed scraping leads to a ban, with NO evidence whatsoever and appeals are closed with a "tough luck" response?

Q8: When will we have the addition of new ambassadors in the vanguard program?

Q9: Is the Monte Cristo the most delicious sandwich ever created by humans or a Shaper weapon sent to Earth to destroy civilization through heart disease?

Q10: Does the new "NL-1331 Meetups" medal include NL-PRIME, or just the smaller vehicles? I'm assuming it's the latter, but I want to be sure.

Q11: Can you tell us which dates belong together to a series? And can you state which of the sites will be primary/satellite or whatever?

Q12: The New NL-1331 meetup badge seems to be impossible to me made Onyx in a reasonable period of time. Are there more NL-1331 vehicles coming? Is the ammount evaluated? Will it ever become possible to get it onyx :-)

Q13: Good Morning Andrew, with the anomaly dates published so soon in advance (thanks a lot for that), have you made up your mind where you will be going? We would love to welcome you back in europe this year!

Q14: since you can't trust the German weather, do you know if something is planned for the camp at Schloss Kaltenstein if it's raining? Where are the projects gonna be installed?

Q15: What anomaly sites on October 20 are primaries? (i guess Frankfurt will be HUGE)

Q16: Do you know that at least two ENL agents are still suspended after the DF suspend wave two month ago?

Q17: Since we've had +Fumi Yamazaki come on board as an APAC Community Manager, can/will we see her coming on board to assist on these or even run some AMAs from time to time (after she's a hit more settled in to things of course) +Andrew Krug

Q18: When a city is chosen for an anomaly are both factions asked if this is ok or is it sufficient if only one faction/the first contact agrees to it?

Q19: With Ingress Prime around the corner, have there been any thoughts around a public bug tracker or similar for reporting issues?

Q20: More than 8 Weeks after the DF and RIOT suspend wave no second suspend wave has happened.

Q21: When portals with bulidings or architectures were rebuild or dismantled(not relocation), should be portals deleted? Keeping portals after rebuilt is worth for historical point, I think.

Q22: Could it be possible to make mandatory to answer all criterias when rejecting a portal on opr ? It would help to have less 1 star rush.

Q23: Good morning, Andrew. Once a person is chosen as an Anomaly point-of-contact, what kind of things can they provide Niantic that will make the job of running these events easier?

Q24: Hi, any reason why the continent of Africa was overlooked as possible anomaly sites?

Q25: How you like the idea of a temporary glyphing event in which 6-10 (or more) glyphs needs to be memorised? So maybe just double the amount of glyphs to 2/4/6/8/10 :)

Q26: Why Ninatic neglect INDIA from special events of ingress?Only Anomaly and mission day are the only special event happens in INDIA. Why NL-1331 never comes in INDIA?

Q27: I like doing OPR reviews but three month ago my performance dropped from ‘great’ to ‘poor’ within a single day.

Q28: Any news about portals in limbo? It is a bit frustrating waiting 6 months (for now) without answer.

Q29: The lastest investigate was posted on Feb 16th. Where is PAC? Is he killed by Shaper or N'zeer because he knows too much? We miss him very much!

Q30: with the leak of http://cakemod.wordp... - CakeMod some further questions came up. 1. It is mentioned on the wordpress webside that NIA was informed about this "tool" but didn't gave any feedback on it. Is NIA aware of this issue? 2. Is using this mod/tool considered cheating, gaining an unfair advantage in the game, and is it against the tos? 3. Is it possible for NIA to identify agents using this mod? 4. What is NIAs strategy regarding those third party (ISTKit, Ganess, cakemod, etc) tools? 5. Some agents of the current cakemod list where listed on other tools/platforms before and got penalty for using tools like drunkenfrog. What will happen next to that agents?

Q31: Hi Andrew, here in Hyderabad India, we have only one faction players doing OPR and there's a backlog of over 1000 and growing, Such large backlog is creating problem of duplicate submissions (which probably at some point will affect our OPR rating) . Any plans to handle such situations!

Q32: With the recent release of the locations of the anomalies for this year and early next year, is there any news on the name of the series and how will it be grouped?

Q33: what is the plan for item stores selling in-game items such xmps

Q34: I would like to know where can I send a document reflecting some questions regarding toxicity among the community, just to let someone know that this is a problem.

Q35: Some investigation spawned a theory that locations that have had a portal removed earlier prevent new portals from spawning close to where the removed portal was located, around 500 meter, or within a certain cell level using the S2 google library. Do you know if there is any truth in this claim?

Q36: I have noticed that cats often leave their homes for many hours at a time in all types of weather, day or night. Further investigation has turned up research that suggests they travel within a 2 mile radius, often recrossing their own paths and randomly stopping for minutes at a time. Does Niantic have any stats on how many Ingress agents are cats?

Q37: If I downvote a portal and it gets accepted I guess my opr value will drop, but will it rise if we report that portal and gets removed? Because I'd be right after all, it shouldn't really be a portal.

Q38: 80% of my candidates reviewed is difficult to determine approving or rejecting. It made my performance waved between poor and good for more than nine times. I hear that give a candidate two star, then it will be calculated to agreements if approved but won't cause me to poor even if it was rejected. Is it true?

Q39: Hi Andrew! What are the acceptance guidelines for disc golf courses? IMO, these should be accepted as long as the submission is for the overall course, and not individual holes. However, I think some agents are applying the criteria (reject) for golf courses to disc golf courses, which to me is unfair. IMO, disc golf falls under the criteria of public spaces that encourage players to walk and exercise. One issue for disc golf, is most courses don't have a sign for the overall course. For example, I submitted a picture of the first tee sign, while the description states the submission is for the course as a whole. The course is in a public park, and is free to play, but the portal was rejected. Is there an official stance on how disc golf should be treated in OPR?

Q40: I have fulled the form to get packs from Bruge by post. Since the form I have not received any communication from Nia. Support closes the cases without any reply. How can I get the packs I paid for?

Q41: Is it possible to have more connection of the investigation and the background to the real game？It could be intersting to have person like PAC interact with investigators maybe once a week or once a month like this AMA.

Q42: I am interested in some Ingress analytics/stats. Do you think you can help to get them on a global scale and disaggregated per level and period (week/month)? #Total number of agents #Total number of active agents (in scanner) #Total number of agents banned (split per types of ban: multi-account, GPS Spoofing, other) but also a scatter plot would be great to see the evolution of the bans #Total number of new agents

Q43: What information can you give us on what your planning with regards to future if First Saturdays?

Q44: My question is about mission icons. I have been agreed to use a fan-art of the anime ‘is the order a rabbit?’.But when I submit them as my mission icons, I just got reply that I can't use them because‘any kind of 3rd party images which are watermarked, copyrighted characters or images, Movie posters, Anime, Cartoon or Gaming characters are not allowed in Mission Images.’ Then I read the mission criteria. It has nothing to do about anime or cartoon or anything else. So I just want to know if it is time to rewrite the mission criteria or it is alright to use a fan-art that you're agreed to use.

Q45: If a mission/banner has had a portal removed and the creator has stoped playing how can we change the mission/banner to make it completeable

Q46: Invalid portals - we know this is age old question, but in city were we play we have some portals, that are...let just say questionable, like some furniture shop outside city where portal pictures are furniture from inside, sculptures that are sold n years ago and etc. or some "artist" graffiti that is gone long time ago. There portals have no historic, visual or any other value. We want to clean cities from these no value portals. Could it be done, that when we are reporting portals like that, we could add photos from location, or video link from that place from youtube. Any way, we could provide more data.

Q47: I’m looking forward to joining a brand new XM Festival event in Fukuoka next month. Combined with Mission Day, is there any change to the flash shard game compared with previous ones ?

Q48: Hi Andrew! First of all thanks for the amazing AMAs. I wanted to ask you about a situation we've lived in the past and we really think is quite unfair. In the past few months we've an agent that created many banners, and when the opposing faction were doing it, that agent unpublished a mission and leave those agents with nothing. Quite unsporting and faction-biased. Is there anything that you can do about it? Like for example, if an agent unpublish an already published mission, create a delay of 48hs for the mission to go offline? Or another solution of that kind. Anything to avoid this kind of behaviour to ever happen again. I think missions and banners, once created, are for everyone to enjoy, in a 100% faction-less manner.

Q49: Does the Ingress team see any inherent balance problem where players who have been playing for greater than 1 year are at a SIGNIFICANT advantage over players who have played less than 1 year? (Considering ADA/JARVIS and Quantum Capsule drop rates have been reduced. Longer term players possess multiple quantum capsules filled with ADA/Jarvis from when hack drop rates were greater, and less than 1 year players just can't hack those at the same rates anymore.)

Q50: Fake news has been rampant in US and around world, having real consequence. In Ingress community, many experienced players in communities enjoy preaching and boasting new players about unverified claims, rumors, folklores about inappropriate actions of other faction agents. Do you have a comment on this issue which could have very real impact on player relations?

Q51: Why are so many (multiple) agent codename changes accepted when the FAQ clearly states that "Codename changes are only allowed for players that accidentally input their real name or their activation code." and "Only one faction change is permitted per player."?

Q52: What do you think about the benefits and the feasibility of having selective alerts. For instance selecting a couple portals to get attack notifications but having the majority of portals shut off for notifications.

Q53: hope that Ingress Prime will have an option to set an Item-Hacking Level-Threshold just to avoid the establishment of a recycler badge...

Q54: Heyo, as per http://reddit.com - Could Niantic please livestream the next Agent Olympiad on Twitch or YouTube instead of Niconico?

Q55: I'm confused why Niantic would release a "full" list of anomaly events thru May 2019, and then a week later separately announce an Anomaly Event in Fukuoka about 4 weeks away. Can you add clarity -- will there be other "unannounced" Anomaly events between now and May '19?

Q56: Please can we have something in Dubai, it is the perfect place for an event in the middle east, the only things we got are 2 MD since ingress started in the whole middle east, 1 was in dubai Dec 2016

Q57: Given the increasing number of agents that openly admit to have used their own rules to judge in OPR rather than sticking to the rules set by Niantic, as well as the increasing frequency of bias-accusations of agents against each other and against the other faction, can you give us a perspective of how and when this OPR-mess is going to improve?

Q58: We believe there are persons who are one starring every portal submission with the sole purpose of preventing any new portals (or Pokestops/gyms) in our area. They are also submitting invalid portal requests specifically where the portal is a popular gym in Pokemon GO with the purpose of spoiling the game. Is Niantics working on a solution to this?

Q59: Some months ago, there was #WhatDoesIngressMeanToMe. In that spirit, what does Ingress mean to Niantic? As a business proposition? As a creative endeavor?

Q60: Will NL1331 kits,XM Anomaly rare/very rare kits support more payment method such as Unionpay,Ailpay or Wechat pay in the future?It's hard for some people to buy paid kits in China because people almost have Unionpay cards but they don't have a visa/master card .Thank you!

Q61: Good morning, Andrew! I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. I have a question about an event that my local cross-faction has hosted for the last couple of years. The Dayton, Ohio area has coordinated a cross-faction starburst to help connect the Ingress community. This year, we feel as though we need it more than ever, but also, we want to give back to the Dayton area as well. We are considering holding a raffle to raise money for a local charity (at this time the most popular suggestion is Artemis House, a place that provides support and information for victims of domestic violence and their children.) the prize would be to knock down the starburst. Team members are concerned whether this would be allowed or not. Please, could you give us some feedback? Thank you.

Q62: I was hoping Niantic would consider a “trusted agent”-type program for portal appeals. If a portal edit request is not approved, perhaps a trusted agent in that portal’s area can submit any additional information so Niantic can confidently make the requested portal changes. For example, a portal request to remove a statue because it no longer exists, a trusted agent can go to the location and submit a new photo or video of the location.

Q63: I have a few queries about Niantic Ops. Could you share if there are any governance checks to ascertain if they are discharging their duties effectively. There is a perception that the support tickets are closed without much due diligence. Assuming there is a governance framework, is there an avenue through which agents are able to provide feedback on the investigation (or the lack thereof) carried out by Niantic Ops and where this feedback is reviewed by a separate governing body.

Q64: Could Niantic consider providing the ability to toggle on and off missions already completed when viewing the missions available list?

Q65: FUHA) - Once Ingress Prime is fully up and running, backend included, will we have a way to access our inventory details from outside the scanner, eg. an official web page? (Could be very useful for key management).

Q66: Recently in our town we had the badge artwork for 26 missions deleted and replaced with the default suitcase icon. The badge art was created by the mission maker and was chile peppers shaped into the letters of the English alphabet on a plain white background. There was no explanation. We can only speculate that the art was deleted because agents (myself included) were using the letters to create profane messages on their Ingress profiles. Is it fair to punish the mission maker because of the way certain players use his lettering?

Q67: Do you think websites, such as this one run by a Seattle local (ingressfacts.com) are keeping with the community spirit of the game?

Q68: As far as Niantic is concerned, do parking lots (with or without entrance lock gates) fall under the “no trespass” rule for after-hours Ingressing? i.e a park that is posted as open from 5 am to 10 pm. An agent drives into the parking lot and, without exiting their vehicle, kills the nearby portals that otherwise would not be reachable from, say, the street the parking lot accesses. Many agents believe that not exiting your vehicle is some sort of “safety net” when it comes to after-hours Ingressing and therefore doesn’t count against trespassing.

Q69: Does our personal approved or declined OPR submissions play a role in our OPR rating or is it solely the candidates we analyze?

Q70: Are there faction's specific glyphs sequence? (Sequence that the other faction can't have)

Q71: How is a POC elected and what are his functions? Is there a difference between the POC and the local leader

Q72: What are your thoughts on reopening a submission appeals community with the caveat that rejected submissions entered there must fall under the NIA Ops recommended 5 star rating list (gazebo, playground, etc.)? It is getting very frustrating to have the OPR reviewers fail to follow the recommendations and use their personal opinions on what a portal shouldn't be.

Q73: You've stated earlier that scraing should be reported to NIA, but the form for reporting cheaters only allows the following offences: Multiple accounts/account sharing Accounts buying/selling GPS spoofing Which option should be used for reporting scraping?

Q74: Are there any limitations to vehicles? We need to clarify what vehicles are allowed to play Ingress? Is it only allowed to play from a ground vehicle (car, boat) or is the use of helicopters, planes and other air vehicles (Gyrocopter, Balloon, Ultra-Light-Plane, Parachute) allowed, too?

Q75: I have some packs from past anomalies with characters badges... I am waiting to get all my Onyx medals in order to release those badges to my scanner (TOC issues), but I'm not sure if with Ingress Prime those previous passcodes will still be available when that happens. Should I use them now or are they gonna work with Prime? Ty.

Q76: It would be awesome if we could report bad behavior from inside the app. World of Warcraft did a similar thing where you could right-click the name of an offending player to open a support ticket directly from the client. This only helped players report spam and harassment more easily. Do you see a more streamlined report/support process happening moving forward?

Q77: After the enthusiasm of running a first sat, we are about to apply for a mission day, and have realised we might be able to get it to coincide with the UK national video games festival. Hypothetically, if we can pull this off, do you think you, or anyone from niantic would be interested in attending the video games festival? And how would we go about contacting the right people?

Q78: The Ultrastrike is listed as "Very Common" on its card, yet drops less commonly than Common Shields etc. Given the massive amount of duped Aegis (often from a seed of bought items) out there these days, can we have the US drop rate reassessed? My suggestion would be about one quarter of the Xmp rate, so 25 US8 for every 100 X8s etc.

Q79: Is there some limit to how many banners and/or missions can be submitted in an area (relative or not to the number of local players)

Q80: How do you feel about following opposing agents? What in the TOS would apply to this issue?

Q81: Are there any plans to revive the Ingress Report, either prior to or after the release of Ingress Prime?

Q82: RE: Property Owner Portal Removal Request. Where should a property owner write to if the would like a portal removed off their property?

Q83: If we wanted to conduct our own anomaly, similar to, for example, Paititi or Ultimate in South America, Niantic could support us officially? For example, create special shards or some tools for counting the results? Maybe the "Community Events" line on http://ingress.com - Ingress Live Events is designed specifically for this? I really wanted to hear the answer to this.

Q84: Why First Saturdays are not considered win trading and therefore against tos ?