Ingress AMA Archive

A27: A Tessera for the Skeptic archetype recently surfaced, which leads us to believe that Tesserae for the rest of the archetypes will be released over time. We believe that an Archetype Tessera’s color, location on the board, and neighboring Tesserae will eventually provide us insight into Courier’s archetype. But, for the time being, we have no reason to doubt that Courier is Hank Johnson from the 1218 Node, the Explorer archetype.

A42: NIA OPS says, “If there is a sign board for the location and there's pedestrian access to the sign, sure.”

A30: I was told that a “Copy portal location to clipboard" is coming before Redacted is retired. While different than “Navigate to” we'll listen to your feedback on this new feature once it is implemented and continue to iterate on it to help Agents navigate to specific Portals, stay tuned...

A104: I’m happy to hear that Vanguards are helping the community. But that is not their role or the intent of the program. The purpose of the Vanguards are to be a player advocacy group for Niantic. I suppose by doing that, they are helping the community. But I suspect you mean they are helping in other ways. Niantic does not view Vanguards as community leaders. Although, I know several of them fill that role within their factions. Vanguards have no special influence of power over NIA OPS. They cannot review tickets, get someone banned by their word alone, or have any additional understanding of how tickets are adjudicated and processed that has not been made public by NIA OPS. As a sounding board for Niantic and player advocacy group, they have done a tremendous job. Their feedback on a number of issues has been critical for us to make better informed decisions. They don’t always agree with our decisions and they don’t always agree amongst themselves. Which is fine. That’s exactly the purpose they serve. To present their various opinions on any number of topics. I struggle with wanting more transparency with the program but also respecting their privacy and not wanting to put them in a position where they have a target on their back or have to defend themselves to people who don’t agree with them -- or like them. You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Ultimately, I’ve sided with being more conservative and less transparent. This strategy seems to enable a more free exchange of ideas and conversations while protecting their right to express themselves and their opinions how they feel comfortable with. We will be expanding the Vanguard program in the next month and growing it from 24 Agents to 36 and potentially 48 the next year or two. The Vanguards also voted to have term limits so some of them will be rotating out at the end of the year in order to make way for new people. I look forward to what the future has in store for this program. So far, it’s been a great success.

A33: Anomalies aren’t always won by the faction with the most Agents on the ground. But historically this has been the majority (vast majority) outcome. I believe some of these numbers are published via leaderboards and email. Let’s also be honest and not play games… factions have access to most of this information already. There have been some very creative strategies developed and employed by Agents of both factions to maximize point scoring. Sliver fields, starbursts for linking, farming Anomaly Zone keys in advance. If you think strategy doesn’t matter then I would be curious to see what would happen if a faction did no pre-Anomaly work, didn’t divide Agents into teams, did not create their own registration pages, did not farm any Portals for keys prior to the event, etc and see what the outcome is. I would wager a bet that the smaller team if they were more prepared would beat the larger team who did no pre-Anomaly planning. The problem is when both teams prepare for an event there is a bit of parity that happens. The current scoring rules provide the team that is the underdog nine chances to score the most points for a specific game mechanic. There have been upsets and very close scores as a result of scoring being that way. While still uncommon. It is more possible than ever before.

A72: I don’t know to be honest. I personally go back and forth on this topic. On one hand, Ingress is very much all about Green versus Blue. It is largely the only thing that matters. So putting an emphasis on leaderboards may amplify negative behavior that we don’t want. That being said, will it really negatively impact the community to know that I am number 2458 in the world for hacking? If I wanted to raise my rank wouldn’t having that awareness be an incentive to play? Is the opposite true? Is being too low or not on a leaderboard a disincentive to play and does it accurately reflect my contributions? I have no strong feelings either way. If the majority of players want it, I’ll happily advocate for it.

A25: They do hold the function of being community gathering places. But like many things, it is likely to be very situational. They should follow the same guidelines as the Little Free Libraries.

A55: I so badly want to.

A8: On October 15th we released our Ingress Prime developer roadmap - https://plus.google..... The regional scoreboard is designated as being implemented in 2019 (probably early in the year) for Ingress Prime.

A21: http://ingress.com/i...

A52: I spoke to the Product team and you bring up valid points. These points are shared by the team and has influenced the design of Prime. The onboarding for Agents new to Prime will be different than the current version of Ingress.

A82: I think the Vanguard program has been a big success. There were some growing pains early on as we solidified what to focus on. It was the first year and first time we have done something like this. But we have ironed out those issues. The Vanguards have been a great sounding board for us. We have picked their brains about everything from Anomaly rules to Guardian medal and all things in between. I think reevaluating the social media aspect of the program is warranted. Initially the thought was to have a group that served as brand ambassadors and a sounding board for advice. We’ve skewed to the latter heavily. I think a more traditional influencer program could be setup to leverage former. I also want to bring in more people to have a larger sample size for input. In addition, they’ve been able to flag a number of issues and concerns directly to us that might have normally been lost in the noise that is social media. I still think there is a misconception about the role. They are not junior NIA OPS or pseudo-community managers. While some of them might be in a place of influence within their faction, that is not a requirement for being a Vanguard.

A64: Ahhhhh the old I heard from someone who heard from another person that claimed to be John Hanke’s college roommate’s cousin rumors. We live in the digital age of social media. YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit are three of the top five most frequently visited websites in the United States according to Alexa.com. Our staff don’t live in some sort of societal bubble. They are on social media too. Many of them also participate in Anomalies and events around the world. They just don’t advertise or make it known that they are Niantic employees. People were on the same team as the Ingress Product Manager in Washington DC at 13 Magnus Reawakens and didn’t even realize it. This question kind of insinuates that others on staff may not be aware of the product they are working on or playerbase. They are aware. We just had a meeting today (Tuesday) in fact with a group of employees from different departments who played in the recent Anomaly to iterate on ideas for those events. The feedback loop is constant. You are probably asking, then why don’t we have capsules that can be renamed? It’s been a request since they were introduced. Resource constraints and the every day challenge of balancing priorities and business needs -- like any company. I work with a lot of great people who are very passionate about Ingress. Yes, there have been missteps and lots of learning opportunities along the way. That’s life. Things have improved though and things will continue to get better across the board. We are all just as vested in Ingress as you.

A5: At this point, I have to assume the Ingress Nexband is not something that is going to materialize.

A20: I’ve highlighted this to NIA OPS.

A104: There are many things we are looking to to help solve the onboarding issues. Since many are still in development or in the beginning phase or project management I can’t really speak to it. But know that it is something we recognize and want to address.

A17: We’ve already talked about her doing her own AMAs. Since she is located in Japan and writes/reads Japanese, she will be able to reach an audience that I cannot.

A39: According to NIA OPS you should reject hole markers and other locations on the course. They can be accepted if they are in areas where agents can sit and socialize (like cafes or club areas). If it's for the park (and not for the golf course inside the park), submit the signboard for the park instead.

A69: We can’t answer the question of monthly active users. We are preparing, and anticipating, for a wave of new players for Prime. As such, reconfiguring the onboarding and tutorials is a big priority for us.

A28: good idea.

A8: There will definitely be improvements with Ingress 2.0 and if you’ve been paying attention to our job board, we’ve been hiring for ML that will improve that. We work on algorithms every day to identify bots. One of the things with unrealistic times but in some cases, if people have a helicopter, it can be legitimate. Not everyone’s driving. With the advent of ML they’ll build up a DB to tell what normal times are and identify when someone’s doing that.

A5: Maybe towards the end of 2018, their role is to be used as sounding boards for niantic. Led to creation of programs that you have benefited from. I want to get a more diverse set of vanguards both by level and by geographical location. Yes, probably late 2018 as we get ingress prime done and other projects

A17: it requires working with local governments and getting tourism board approval. Ideally we would give you a pending list. I'll write it down. We're at the mercy of being able to use those official channels and sometimes it's 90 days, sometimes it's 48 hours. There'll be a form and better feedback.

A79: It is an interesting idea. We've toyed around with something like this in the past and gave it some thought about doing a quarterly leaderboard of sorts.

A87: Vanguards are Agents just like you and everyone else. They hold no special powers and are not an extension of NIA OPS. They are a sounding board and offer Niantic insight and advice. I wouldn't expect them to be neutral just as I wouldn't expect every player to be neutral.

A103: I think this was my fault for not managing expectations properly. The Vanguard program was not meant to be anything more than a sounding board for Niantic. Vanguards don't get super powers, aren't part of a red faction, don't get L16 bursters, or anything else. I tried to explain that as frequently as I could but it ultimately didn't resonate with the masses to expected more. The Vanguards have provided input on a whole host of topics that have helped shape Niantic's decision making process and outcomes. It's been good so far. I look forward to more collaboration in 2018.

A6: We are exploring a lot of different options to make things fair to both veterans and new players. Reset was probably the wrong word to use.

A27: Depending on their age the one that always works is, "It's like the board game Risk only in real life. So to take over Australia you have to go to Australia." That always gets Ohhhhhs and Ahhhhs

A5: Very satisfied. The group has been a great sounding board already. I'm excited about the future.

A17: Yes. In fact, the whole on-boarding process is being redone.

A1: I've toyed around asking if we can have a quarterly leader board for global stats. I will advocate for it if there is enough interest.

A26: On-boarding.

A37: You know, I thought about doing a quarterly leader board based on various stats. What do you think of that idea?

A53: For general play, I think this could be interesting. For Anomalies, it takes the team element away from the event I think.