Operation Apache Ingress is a selfless game when you play as a team. The driver gets no AP. Other operators get a few AP for breaking portals. Three individuals gets hundreds of thousands of Mind Units (MU). Rather than feel a sense of achievement I feel fatigue. The first reason is to do with the hangouts. You have to be serious. When I work in a team I want to be able to joke around.
Google has an excellent reputation for server uptime and reliability. They pride themselves on making processes so efficient that hundredths of seconds after a request is sent the answer. As a result of their very high work ethic and desire to excel logic would indicate that Niantic labs would follow the same work ethic and strive for the same quality of service. Over the last few months of game play I have found they resemble an early twitter.
There are around 220 countries around the world and 150 countries will participate in Ingress Saturday next week. That leaves out about seventy countries.
People love to submit portals and portals add excitement to Ingress. The more portals there are the busier you are. Cities are fantastic places for ingress players for this reason. Geneva, Barcelona, Neuchatel and other cities already have hundreds if not thousands of portals but go to the swiss countryside, the spanish sea side or away from big cities and portals are few and far between. As a result of this rural players don’t have much to do unless they get in a car and create megafields.
Of course it’s geeky but as a result of playing this game I have decided to walk 3650 km this year. That’s an average of ten per day. I know that some days I can walk a greater distance. We will see by how much I overshoot this goal at the end of the current year.
The views as I drove up to this ingress mission were beautiful. I could clearly see the Jet D’eau in Geneva and the streets of Lausanne on the other side. I could see how light was playing with clouds to provide enjoyable views. Gimel is a village/town in the Jura surrounded by forest and fields. The mission is a six kilometre run or walk. At this time of year wear snow shoes as other shoes will get wet.
[caption id=“attachment_2112” align=“alignnone” width=“266”] If you like medieval castles[/caption] The Rolle Ingress mission starts at the castle and has you walk towards the centre. You then walk along the main street and through an arch back towards the lake side. From here you walk along the lake for a short distance before heading back in to town and the last portal. As this mission requires hacks and nothing more it is a perfect farming mission.
Once again I was out in the rain walking around a city. Once again I was looking downwards and then up. I was also looking around and navigating through a city I have been to before but only for a meal and on my way to another place. I went there for a blogobar event many months ago. More recently I went through the city on my way to a Via Ferrata near La Chaux De Fond.
If you’re a geek and you like mobile phones with a data plan then ingress is for you. Over the last two days I walked 18 kilometres playing ingress and winning back the City of Nyon for the Resistance. It didn’t last long. The same evening the enlightened players destroyed my hard work. I will just have to go back and liberate the city later. I have more important tasks this weekend.