Ingress AMA Archive

A40: The Wayfarer team tells me it does not affect your rating.

A47: This has been answered in a previous AMA. The stars are a five point gradient scale for how accurate or correct the submission and information matches the category. Title isn’t actually binary. Especially if the title of the candidate isn’t overtly clear. In the case of a plaque or known work of art, sure. But not everything has a proper formal name leaving things a bit open to interpretation. In those cases, can you discern what the candidate is by the title? If a concrete statue of a pink elephant was created in October 1999 to commemorate breast cancer awareness month and the title submitted was “Breast Cancer Awareness Pink Elephant Statue”, that should be a five star because it is a descriptive title or official title. If the candidate title is just, “Pink Elephant Statue”... then that might be a 4 star rating. If the title is “Elephant Statue” then perhaps a 3 rating. If the submitted title is just “Cement Animal Statue” that might be a 2. If it is just “Statue” or “Pizza Restaurant”, that might be a 1.

A71: I can unequivocally and with total certainty that Niantic DOES care about its player base. I do not know how I would even attempt to measure and quantify things to determine with total certainty that we read, listened, or captured every piece of feedback ever sent to us across all forms of possible communication. As it relates to Ingress, if Niantic didn’t care we wouldn’t continue to try to close loops that are being used for cheating. In the early days, you could simply enable mock locations on Android, download a GPS application and spoof with impunity. I wouldn’t have been allowed to create the Trusted Reporter program as a way to address cheating reactively to help close the capabilities gap between proactive cheat detection and cheaters if we didn’t care. I wouldn’t have been allowed to create the Vanguard program to gather unencumbered feedback and certainly wouldn’t have been approved to fly those players to San Francisco for a multi-day meeting with internal key Ingress stakeholders if we didn’t care. If Niantic didn’t care, the game would look like it did in 2012 with wireframe models and a sub-par quality of life interface and battery performance that was used to quickly establish a proof of concept product. I know the topic of Ingress Prime is a powder keg, but my subjectiveness aside, objective studies with both veteran players and focus groups with people off the street quantifiably show the Prime interface is easier to use. We could have stopped iterating if we didn’t care. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t have the ability to reset Portals and restore them due to the actions of bad actors. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t have worked with Agent Stats to include a stat export in Prime would be compatible with them. If we didn’t care we would simply sell level 8 and very rare items to generate money. I imagine remote rechargers, intel operators, and puzzle solvers wouldn’t be rewarded with Anomaly medals if we didn’t care as we would only focused on in-person Anomaly attendees. If we didn’t care I wouldn’t be doing this AMA to try to give insight into things, address questions, and add some transparency to the company. If Niantic didn’t care they wouldn’t have sent me on travel 100 days each year to interface with players around the world and gather feedback. I would have quit my job if that was the case because it meant I spent one-third of year away from my family for no reason. Tangible real change has occurred because Niantic cares and listens. To look at the last seven years of the product’s life and suggest things have not evolved for the better is completely disingenuous. Don’t focus only on the few things that broke, you don’t like, or are popular to hate on. There has been A LOT of good things done as well. I won’t pretend that needed change is always timely. I won’t pretend that there haven’t been issues over the last seven years of Ingress’s existance. But the issues are not for a lack of caring or listening. The issues are caused by a variety of factors that we continue to actively identify and address like new people joining the team, limited resources and having to prioritize one thing over another, veteran team members transitioning to other roles within the company, using older technology and trying to leverage it in new ways we didn’t envision, etc. Don’t be an Internet hater and only focus on the bad. To do so dismisses and diminishes the actual good that has occurred and the people who are trying to institute additional future change.

A27: I can’t say for certain that this will happen or when. But as myself and others have mentioned in the past, there is a strong desire to implement features and content like this and some planning has already occurred to flush out ideas around this when the time is right to start working on these sort of tasks.

A62: Report them via the help center with the Portal title and location. Take a screenshot and attach that to your report. Also give them a one star rating in OPR.

A74: I’ll bite and take the bait. GPS spoofing is not tolerated. Falsifying your location is explicitly called out as a violation of the Niantic Terms of Service. But I think there is a misunderstanding in how complex this issue is. There are an infinite number of transportation options that a person can take to get from point A to point B. Niantic does NOT have the local knowledge of all of the possible paths and ways to get between two Portals using land, sea, and sky. That’s why the reporting system exists. People have legitimately used boats, planes, helicopters, cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, roller skates, and climbed mountains to capture Portals. A common complaint I hear is, “Why can’t NIA OPS just look at Google Maps to see traveling the distance is impossible.” The answer is, besides extreme cases, it is very possible to travel very fast. I’ve had people approach me asking for help because an Account traveled between Portals three minutes faster than what Google Maps traffic said was possible. That is likely a request I’m not going to help with because it is in the realm of plausibility. The issue becomes how do we handle the extreme edge cases that seem to go missed? For that, I wish I had an answer I could give you that would be satisfying. All I can say is we continue to iterate on things to improve our anti-cheat measures. Anyone that has been playing since 2012 can attest that methods required to spoof over the years has been significantly reduced and the level of effort needed has increased. To say we tolerate spoofing is disingenuous and not true. The second issue that often gets overlooked is that you own your device. It is in your possession and you control it. Why does this matter? Android is based on Linux. How Android works is very well documented and known. Customizing your phones operating essentials (yes I’m being vague on purpose) is fairly trivial. This means that just about anything can be faked. In my opinion, banning by IP, MAC Address, Device ID, model, etc is a fool's errand. The same is true for Apple devices and iOS. So we employ much more advanced methods to look for signals of spoofing. NIA OPS always encourages you to report accounts via the Help Center. While we do miss some, this information is very useful in improving our anti-cheat systems. But our system isn’t perfect. No system is perfect. Just because someone has figured out an exploit that we have yet to find and eliminate doesn’t mean we tolerate spoofing. That’s like saying Epic Games tolerates cheating because a few players were banned. Come on…

A99: Josh Stock was curating a historical list. I don’t have the link handy but if I find it, I’ll update this answer with a link to it.

A64: I am told that, the photo from a duplicate candidate is added to the existing Portal to give credit to the other player(s) who have submitted the same candidate. At this time, there are no plans of changing this but we would love to hear any concerns you may have with this feature.

A69: NIA OPS recommendation is to rate each category based on the criteria mentioned in the guide. If you are able to verify the right location, use the ‘Suggest a new Location’ option to move the marker to the accurate location.

A15: This is sadly a very sore spot for me as I was hoping we could update it more regularly. Unfortunately, it requires a small group of people to review the spreadsheet and note what the status of things are. Mapping user submitted feedback to the internal bugs and tasks isn’t quite automatic or 1 to 1 so it takes a bit of time. Give me a bit to work on updating how we can regularly update this.

A79: I spoke to our product and engineering teams about this. Their current plan is to create a tool that would allow us to restore spoofed links by the end of quarter two 2019. We’ll be working on the policy to use this tool and the evaluation criteria for the requests that are made. Much like the Portal reset tool, it will likely not be able to be used for every instance where a bad actor took an action. This will be the case where re-creating the link is trivial and easy to do for example. For Portal resets, we currently evaluate things based on the following criteria with different weights and scores given to each category which all have a sliding scale rating. I envision the same sort of process being applied to restoring links: Is the account banned? What is the distance from the nearest active Agents? What is the terrain like at the Portal and traveling to it? Is the Portal limited access or seasonal? What is the cellular reception at the Portal’s location? What is the cost to capture the Portal? How often is the Portal captured? How long was the Portal previously owned? Is the location a suspected farm for bots?

A3: Saying something looks, acts, and performs as good as another thing is subjective. You may not agree with the following, but there are people that like the way Prime looks and acts. The performance has gotten measurably better compared to when it was first released to the point where most of the critical bugs have been addressed. There are always edge cases that cause things to happen, but 2.17.1 is extremely stable. I can understand the ratings being low for the initial version. But I would hope folks would update their scores as things have progressively improved over the months since launch. That’s the long way to say, no, REDACTED is at its end of life. Prime will be the only client and version going forward at some point in the near future.

A40: I’m told that there should be a rejection reason for fake image uploads. If you give the Portal a one-star rating it should be an option. Let me know if this is not the case and we may have to look into it. But it seems to there in the quick test I did to verify. It’s labeled as “third party photo” under the rejection options.

A42: I was told that, “If all reviewers rated all items 2* it would be rejected. Not all answers are considered equally so just the low safety rating would be a good reason for a rejection.”

A47: NIA OPS says, “Give the candidate a one-star rating. Choose Text, then Title and Description in the rejection reason.”

A48: NIA OPS told me that they monitor both submitters and reviewers and take action on people who consistently submit low-quality Portals.

A77: I normally would not respond to questions like this. But I have met you, dotsamantha, and I know your questions come from a place of frustration. You aren’t asking simply to be a troll or rude like others. Let me try to unpack what you wrote and address things. There is no way I can speak to, or have knowledge of, every exchange between a Niantic employee and all of the potential community organizers over the last six years. People on both sides are human beings. Humans are imperfect creatures. I can’t say that every exchange has been positive. However, I’ve been involved in Ingress community organizing as a player as far back as 2012 and now as the Ingress Global Community Manager for Niantic. I would not describe anything I’ve witnessed or been exposed to as overt negligence towards any player organizer. It isn’t in our (Niantic’s) best interest to be overtly negligent. It sounds like there may be an issue I’m unaware of or perhaps thought was resolved that is not. I’d like nothing more than to help resolve whatever it is. Feel free to reach out to me to provide some additional context. Making sweeping generalization can be more destructive than constructive. To add some context, Niantic has demonstrated the desire to improve the way they communicate with event organizers and to empower them. There exist multiple Slack teams for various types of events to facilitate direct communication with Niantic employees and event planners. This was not always the case. Event organizers are selected via player nominations and no longer via Niantic networks. Anyone can apply for Ingress First Saturdays, Mission Days, and for the first time ever -- we asked the Osiris Sequence POCs to nominate cities for Anomaly events. Anomaly organizer have a clear set of instructions and documentations to follow. This is something that didn’t always exist and continually gets updated and improved. Mission Day and Anomaly POCs are rewarded with limited edition items like volunteer coins. That wasn’t always the case. Niantic often helps fund faction organized Anomaly after parties too. Last year, Niantic took on the financial and contractual burden of securing hotels for players for Anomalies from Anomaly POCs. Have all of these things happened perfectly and without issues? No… But we tried. Anomaly POCs also get to review the Anomaly rules and provide input before they are published. That never happened in the past either. We ornament the playboxes in advance to ensure what Anomaly POCs requested is what we plan on using. Mission Day missions get fast-tracked. There are lots of examples that demonstrate anything but negligence and shows Niantic not only cares but wants to improve the relationship we have with event organizers and the community in general. Neither party is going to get 100% of what they want. But over the last several years it feels like there has been a great deal of collaboration and compromise that has occurred. Our EMEA regional Community Manager just took a day trip from Germany to The Netherlands to meet with the Amsterdam POCs to resolve a few issues face to face instead of doing it via a phone call to maximize the ability to resolve problems. For the second question you posted, I would advise you to go back and read last month’s AMA. I address the original purpose of Ingress, it’s history, and how vested Niantic is in its success and future. I also include a recent direct quote from John Hanke on the topic. We don’t want it to fade away. Nor is it being neglected either. There are software updates that come out every two weeks for Ingress Prime. It is in active development with a team of dedicated engineers working on it. A feature roadmap was posted months ago. This was another first and something we did to communicate more directly with the players and to manage expectations. We now publish detailed release notes that show what changed and what we are working on. We are collaborating with players and created an active feedback loop by establishing the /r/IngressPrimeFeedback subreddit. I hold monthly AMAs dedicated to Ingress and clarifying issues and adding a layer of transparency. This isn’t a product that exhibits any sign of being shelved and fading away from a corporate support point of view. Quite the opposite. Are we perfect? No. But to say we don’t care and aren’t trying is just simply not true.

A4: We’ve already started having deep conversations on how to do better and some changes have already started to occur internally. Your point is valid and not lost on us.

A27: Currently, the best thing is to visit https://www.reddit.c.... That subreddit was created by players who are curating feedback for us and inputting into a publicly accessible spreadsheet for tracking and transparency. We are monitoring it and it has been a great resource for us.

A46: There are ongoing discussions about new features. Nothing have been decided yet though.

A55: Releasing it as an update ensured that all of our users have a seamless way to receive Ingress Prime. It also makes the inevitable force upgrade possible and painless. We also retain all the feedback and ratings so people understand what it is about on the app stores when they discover it.

A70: Almost daily. When users flagged the issues with attacking and linking we immediately started to investigate this and added it to our priority list of things to fix. We might not always comment on things. But we are watching it closely and the moderators are doing a heroic job curating all the content. Their passion to help make Ingress better is extremely appreciated.

A139: Three is considered neutral. Anything less is negative and anything above is positive. 1 being the most negative and 5 being the most positive.

A5: According to NIA OPS, “If it is only for K12 age children, it should be rated with a one star. If it is for adults and kids it can be rated based on the other criteria.” They also add, “We are updating the guide based on these questions and discussions we see in the OPR G+ Community. Post in the G+ Community if you have not already.” https://plus.google....

A7: The guidance from NIA OPS that I received is to review the candidate as per the rest of the criteria and use the location questions to address the safety issue.

A4: I spoke to NIA OPS, and they said your point of view on the situation is correct. If the location is currently in use as a private residence then the candidate should be 1* even if it has historical or cultural significance.

A47: Please read this post from NIA OPS for reference: https://plus.google....

A18: They are completely different products so it is hard to compare them. The Quality of Life (QoL) improvements made to Ingress Prime are fantastic though.

A46: NIA OPS said, in general, if the image does not relate to the overall Mission content (title/description/waypoints) it could be rejected. If you are creating a Mission series, consider integrating the text as part of the banner image instead of using individual characters per Mission.

A64: NIA OPS recommendation is to view the scale this way. 1 = strongly disagree. 5 = strongly agree. So a 4 star rating might be for a candidate that you agree should be a Portal but is not necessarily a super high quality Portal. They are going to review the training and tips and add this clarification where appropriate.

A1: I spoke to NIA OPS, they said, “Depends on the Portal candidate. If the candidate is associated with the business and meets our criteria (for example a hyper-local cafe), this would be ok.“

A28: I am told that we are going through a few processes and upgrading parts of OPR. We are making progress but it will take some additional time before things are all final.

A31: The OPR team has told me, “We have begun and will continue to adjust the frequency of assigning candidates from outside of ones normal OPR areas. It will take some time but this should help with areas that don't have enough OPR participation.”

A69: NIA OPS says it is based on the candidates they analyze, not your submissions.

A72: Thanks for this question. I has spawned a discussion internally and we are working on a plan to do something.

A23: I want to make Ingress First Saturdays big events. Not Anomaly big. But where a couple hundred people can come together and enjoy the game in a non-competitive atmosphere with both new and veteran players. My big asks would be for a tiered medal for participation and merchandise kits that we can send to POCs to reward players that come. I still like the fact that the community is involved with organizing them. I’m not sure I would want to take things away from Fev Games, who I think have done a great job. But I think Niantic can provide more logistical support than we previously do and scale them up.

A6: At launch, yes. We will migrate to our new platform in late 2018. That will be phase 2, migrating it onto the pokemon go backend - phase 1 rolling it out.

A38: In my experience, people are doing things too quickly, so take your time. Even if you make your decision in a few seconds, just take your time before you actually push that submit button, otherwise you’re probably going to flag something.

A4: Google has fixed the Android Operating system: https://security.goo...

A41: Good idea. I'll pass it along.

A75: I can't. I'm not involved in the development of the system so I don't know the magic sauce myself.

A110: Because there are business inputs and goals that need to be considered. If we didn't care about operating costs or making a profit we could hold a popularity contest and simply have events at locations that win whatever contest is used. But there are real world business costs associated with holding live events that cannot be ignored in favor of "Hey this city did great during Ingress FS - let's give them an Anomaly."

A156: I don't know. I am rarely privy to that sort of information. For good reason.

A177: Why are they allowed? They are not allowed. Niantic does not grant spoofers permission to ruin the actions of others. In fact, we fight quite hard to quell spoofer activity on a daily basis. If the question is how can they still spoof - the answer is that cheating, and spoofing specifically, is a very tough thing to control when the user controls the platform, device, operatings system, etc.

A181: I have concerns about Agents colluding to rate submissions in a similar way. If a person is doing this and their rating drops to poor... I think the system is working as intended.

A187: It can be frustrating. But keep reporting them. They will eventually get caught.

A12: Any agreement that occured while your performance rating was Poor will not count towards your Recon medal. To improve your rating, review the training materials and re-evaluate how you are analyzing candidates based on the criteria.

A16: Playgrounds that are within a park or a community gathering area are acceptable candidates. They fall under the criteria of public spaces that encourage walking and exercise. Currently, our policy is that Portals on Military bases should be given a one-star rating.

A39: Yes.

A5: No, the photo quality can be taken into account in your first impression when answering “Should this be a portal?”. An otherwise acceptable photo that is just low quality will be able to be replaced with a better photo in the future.

A7: This sounds like something worth considering. There are many reasons you may have a poor rating in OPR. The best way to recover is to continue to analyze candidates and follow the criteria and guidelines to the best of your ability.

A19: Unfortunately, this is subjective and everyone would have to agree on a single order.

A28: If your rating has ever dipped below good then some agreements may not be have been counted during that time.

A41: OPR performance takes many factors into account including abuse detection. The best way to ensure your rating stays high is to take time to carefully analyze each candidate.

A2: I understand the frustration. I'm sure, in time, things will be tweaked.

A33: The short answer is, yes.

A6: Yes. Let me see what I can do.

A55: Left its seeds while I was sleeping...

A13: The accessibility rating should always be about be for the actual location of the object.

A35: I am against it and feel like it is against the spirit of the tool.

A8: That's not a bad idea. I have no idea what the level of effort is to implement this though. But it could be good feedback.

A40: I don't believe it is discarded.

A30: My fear with creating a badge like this is that we would be flooded with low quality missions similar to what happened with the Seer badge. I'm sure there is some creative way to do this, maybe by the number of people that complete a mission and it's rating? But just for creating a mission would be bad in my opinion.

A92: Depending on the issue you can report it via the Portal Appeals Community or the Help Center at support.ingress.com.

A95: Happy Bursterday in advance. Due to other travel I have scheduled for November I won't be able to make it to Dordrecht. Maybe next time.

A9: I've been known to walk around town with my volume up to 11 so people can hear the Resonator destroyed sound. Yeah... I'm that guy. So destroying probably if was forced to pick and it didn't include operating or strategic planning.

A14: My personal opinion is on the record. Intentionally cooperating during the course of general game play should not occur. This does not include special events like Mission Day, First Saturdays, Anomalies, or even special fielding missions to make art. I don't know how NIA OPS interprets this though and this is just my opinion.

A18: Send me a message with what ideas you have. At this exact moment in time, I am not aware of anything specifically for Africa. But that doesn't mean tomorrow we won't.

A25: As I understand it, it is 5 minutes between notifications until your resonator is off the portal. Then you'll get no more notifications. So if multiple people are on a portal, only the last gets the notification. But I am not aware of situations with no notifications at all. Can you send me the recent details in a private post?

A12: We've talked about it. I think other priorities are taking precedent at the moment.

A31: Well hello Dan! Nice to meet you. Legos really are the bane of parenthood. If you are reaching out for help, there are better ways to ask than an expletive laden post on an AMA. Shoot me a HO or TG message and I'll see what I can do. I know the process can sometimes be frustrating. But if we treat each other with respect we'll accomplish more.

A13: I would not recommend only submitting extreme ratings.