+Clayton Murray said in General Chat today:
Why is it that most of the 8's on your side knock things down and build it, are you guys just hard pressed to find overlapping times to work together?
I will answer your question.
There isn't anyone else
Congratulations are in order, I suppose. You guys were behind at one point, and have managed to turn the tables around by playing as aggressively as you possibly can.
Unfortunately, that's also painted you into a corner that the Resistance simply cannot fix.
See, by playing so aggressively, yes, you've managed to get the upper hand. Yay.
It's not because you're better at recruiting.
It's not because you're better at organizing.
It's not because you're better at mentoring newbies.
It's certainly not because our 6 high level players are taking AP opportunities away from other people…
Nope.
It's because you've managed to drive away every casual player on the Enlightened side.
Even me.
All the Enlightened have at this point are Hardcore players and Newbies. The Newbies either graduate to Hardcore, or they quit.
Hussain and I have talked about this and we agree on these things.
* Ingress competes for our limited recreational time against every other form of entertainment available.
* To continue as a viable form of entertainment, Ingress needs to be the most fun option available for the individual player.
Here's where that aggressive play fucked up the entirety of the Front Range for you guys.
* You focused SO heavily on smashing Scott that you made the game completely UNfun for anybody and everybody else. Scott can't help anyone because anyone he helps gets their shit pushed in immediately, because you target him with such a laser focus. So, you can't blame the guy for continuing to do shit solo, or with just a couple other high level guys. You destroy anything he touches like it would drop secret nazi gold when you pop it, so he might as well make it as hard for you as possible in the process.
EDIT Scott isn't bad at math, and he doesn't/wasn't/didn't "spike" portals with resonators for spite. For a time there was a hope that a L8 would keep you guys from bashing the fuck out of it for at least a few days so some lower level people could farm it. Instead, it drew you guys like moths to the flame. Wups.
* In the process of learning to smash Scott in Monument, you took over Colorado Springs. Now the Enlightenment can't catch a break there. They're basically stuck farming Blue Portals for 1/10th the stuff that drops for the Resistance. Lemme tell you, at Level 1 and 2? That sucks balls. Hardly anyone in the Springs has any spare anything to give new players because farmable greens of decent level are so impossible to find. When Green DOES get a decent farm, it lasts just a few hours. I'm pretty sure that there are now more "former" players in Colorado Springs than there are "current" players. And being a new player in Denver is hard. It's just about impossible in CoSprings. Lots of new players spring up down there, last about 2 weeks, then are never heard from again.
* Even those of you who aren't engaged in The Hunt For Red Godzilla are so ridiculously aggressive that it's not fun for anyone else. I've got four portals that are less than 90 seconds out of my way to and from work. I have quit even bothering with them because, whenever I do manage to knock them down, they're taken over before I can do anything with them at all (read: farm, even once) – frequently within an hour…and therein lies the reason that the casual player abandons Ingress in the face of the Resistance.
The aggressive playstyle that 'typifies' the Resistance shines a bright spotlight the shallowness of Ingress 'gameplay'. It's a game, and your actions have zero consequence. Except that having anything you do destroyed and reset within 12 hours points out immediately how futile your actions are and "meh, fuck it" sets in, and within short order watching another Simpsons rerun is a better use of your time.
Now, here's where the Resistance has truly painted itself into a corner.
WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF
If you keep playing at the level you're playing, you will continue to dominate until you get so bored you quit – and you will continue to drive away every casual player that the Enlightened recruits.
And it's too late to dial back. That smacks of "letting" us play – and in reality, that's exactly what it is. It's sandbagging, and it smacks of "feeling bad for you", and people quit because "fuck those arrogant assholes, 'letting me play' my ass. I'd rather watch paint dry.'"
Tada!
If you play at 100%, you're fucked.
If you don't play at 100%, you're fucked.
You win. Congratulations.
That said, I’m taking an indefinite hiatus from Ingress. Might be a few minutes, a few days, or a few months. How ever long it takes for Ingress to become more entertaining than sleep.
Discussing it this evening, I found out that there are quite a few other Enlightened players (some quite hardcore and some quite high level) who are considering an extended hiatus, as well.
I’ll probably continue to drag my toe in the sand whenever the tide washes in out at DIA, but as far as being an “active” player?
I am certainly not alone in saying, “Yeah, Ingress. I got better things to do with my time.”
P.S.
4:10PM *NilesGrey:* @Weaver hah where was that attitude when I started, and the enlightened dominated the area. Everytime I did something 4 level 7s (Ducs, Theriac, Steez, and Lamp) would rush out and crush it, followed quickly with trash talk by enlightened players
4:12PM *NilesGrey:* As the tables turned the trash talk has turned as well and fewer people on the enlightened side like it… until a huge field is thrown up then they all love it again
If you didn't like being 'abused' when you were the underdog, why are you choosing to perpetuate the 'abuse' now that you aren't the underdog anymore – and against people who weren't even playing back then???
You and Brendan both.
4:26PM Hazslsack: If you can't handle trash talking then there are two things you should stay away from 1. the internet 2. anything competitive. For all the shit I give Jake, I'm sure he's a decent enough guy and he always seems to take the trash talk as what it is. Talk.
CM: "You guys did it to me first!"
BD: "If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen"
Really?
Not cool and Not. Fun.
And it's another of the reasons the casuals quit.
If I want trash talk, I can get that on my Xbox for free.
So there you have it. That's what's up. You guys win the internets and a huge side dish of "this is boring as fuck". Grats.
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So I understand your perspective, now here's mine: I'm a gamer at heart, and I don't beat around the bush. I enjoy trash talk, it inspires me. It challenges me, to rise above my current level. As quoted, many of the enlightened trash talked me as I fought through the levels to gain my AP. I used that to fuel my growth, it's what drove me to enjoy the sweet feeling of success each time I crested to a new level even more. Ducs said that was a part of the game he didn't enjoy and so attempting to respect his enjoyment of the game I ceased the trash talk. That question was an earnest question, not meant to be trash talk, and if you received it as such, well then you obviously don't know me, or what I've done and offered to do to help the enlightened.
Let me explain a little about my time in Ingress since you've pinned so much on me: I started December 12th, and Denver was mostly green, I watched Steez, Lamp, Ducs, and Theriac rape the Art Museum 'Training' area and spike the portals with level 6 and later 7 resonators. I watched them drop resonators at minimum 2 higher than anything I could use on the portal next to my apartment, and any other portal they touched. I watched them smash hours of my work into oblivion within minutes of completion, followed by the slow obliteration of all that work. The enlightened then forced the resistance to be aggressive in our play because without getting aggressive we faced the same issues you do now. As soon as blue portals sprang up, they were squished, now it's reversed, but I don't max level every portal I hit, I make it easy enough to take back.
I've given over 300 xmp, and 350 resonators to enlightened players, including Deadling, Metal Monkey, Dumanis, Conti (sp?), and a few others. I've helped them gain levels by letting them claim portals that I blew up and repeating the effect. It wasn't to be a dick, it was to help them get a jump start in the game. I've provided advice to any ingress player I come across, regardless of side. I leave a wake of level 1 to 2.5 portals behind me in most areas. The few exceptions are the farms, and raid zones where the enlightened control over 90% of the portals in the area and have a strong presence, for example Boulder, Longmont, and Loveland.
The enlightened unleashed this aggressive play on us before Christmas. Maybe we got lucky with the right personalities together on our side and we fought hard to get where we are now. The problem is that if we back off even a little bit you're top heavy power will crush us, Steez, Ducs, Jake, Mmighty, Katzenjammy, and Rezdog, (and Lamp if he's still out there) are just as aggressive with their play as we have been, so please don't just pin it all on us, and "our aggressiveness."
The secondary issue is that as soon as Jake comes through the enlightened target a farm and hit it hard for two or three days, but never bother to set one up for themselves. It's you're turn to adapt to our play style, just as we were forced to adapt to the previous enlightened play. The only reason we're dominating is that we continued to push despite the odds and gained levels and confidence as we went. You can blame me and others on the resistance all you want but I've encouraged many players on the enlightened side to get out there and do something. What bothers me most is that Ducs hit a very selectively set of portals today. Portals that hadn't been recharged, and had a massive quantity of links to them, purposefully. Parker and Quincy as an example had 16 links and 8 control fields on it and was under 50% charge. I haven't recharged anything except a farm portal for over a week. Really my question should probably have been, "Why the fuck would a level 8 take all that AP from a level 4/5/6 instead of softening it slightly and letting them finish the job?" Ducs has continued to pound away on his mini rampages instead of linking up with other players, and helping them acquire the AP they need and I was curious why since you had 15 people at the capitol farm attack on Sunday, but apparently you don't have any players…
If you believe that I have driven your players away, I'm sorry it was never my intention to drive a player away. Even Theriac, who was a huge dick in comms, but I've also offered to give an invite to someone interested in enlightened, and if your players don't have the competitiveness then I'm sorry, but you can't blame it on our play style because we had plenty of people join and stick it out in the same environment reversed. We did lose some, but those were mostly the ones that didn't want to get off their couch. Ingress isn't a game you can play at home, to obtain level 5, 6, 7, and especially 8 you have to get out and do stuff. Which everyone sees as "aggressive", but really it's just playing the game. Every time a resistance player has been called names in comm (examples: I've been called a prick, an asshole, and a douchebag in comm; Valeo was called a dick, Haz was called an ass just to name a few), it's been at a planned operation, OR when they were helping a new player learn the ropes to the game.
You point out that we targeted Scott allow me to illuminate that a little:
Scott is the most aggressive player in Colorado. I personally have met Scott twice now, and think he's a decent enough guy. The reason we tend to focus on Scott isn't because "we think it'll drop secret Nazi gold when we pop it", it's because we learned in the past that if we allow level 6 portals to stand for any length of time then we watch the hard work we've put into building farms get decimated quickly, and we have far fewer high level players than you do. I encourage you to setup a level 5 portal, I'll leave it alone as long as it's not in the farms we've staked, just as Scott has staked Centerra, I can't speak for others but if you do get 4 setup, I can promise you that within 24 hours the capitol building will get attacked 3-5 times, ignoring the AP opportunity right next to it (WITHIN A BLOCK!) of the Art museum, by someone. If not the Capitol it'll be CDot (our very first farm), or Fiddler's Green. It happens every time, and I'd guess it's because level 5 farm portals drop level 7 xmps and you're level 7 players focus on "if we deprive them of gear, we might have a chance" but it's too late for that now.
You do realize the with the number of portals in DIA you could provide 72 hacks a day of equipment from decently leveled portals. Which equates to an influx of nearly 150 (minimum) items a day for enlightened players (assuming you hack just the 9 in the main terminal to burnout before and after work). If you add in hacking on lunch it adds about 36 hacks and about 72 more items that you could share with people in Denver to help them establish a secondary farm. Yes we might knock it down, but does it really matter? You could have it back up on lunch.
Valeo and I know the pain of starting out without any decent level farms pretty well, but to add to it, Valeo was told "farm green portals" to his face by enlightened players because there wasn't a blue portal in the area, and everything from the Springs to Loveland was green with one or two portal exceptions in Louisville. I'm not from the Springs and haven't interacted with anyone down there at all. I have yet to make a trip there because Shaken has banded the people down there together well. Loveland however has been ground underneath Scott's heel so bad that the people there were low on morale. So we're trying to keep them involved.
You want a simple answer to Colorado Springs, have Scott supply them up, have them save the gear for a week or two so they can get good and stock, get in contact with Shaken, I'm sure he'd be happy to had over xmps to your new folks. Ingress is about teamwork, and anyone not interested in teamwork isn't ever going to see anything past level 4 or 5. Build a community that focuses on meeting the new players and talking with them. Explain to them the game, and plans to retake things and how important they are to those plans. How many new players have you met? I've met 6 from my side, and 10 from yours. I put it out in chat weeks ago that anyone that wanted help leveling should come to Babi Yar, right after I spent about 30 minutes helping Termat, Metal Monkey and LarryD. It wasn't about being arrogant, or a prick, it was about helping the community, and building up both sides to keep the game fun, I'm not worried about boredom I will travel for work and know that some of the areas I'm traveling to have an awe inspiring enlightened community. Since then Babi Yar has been level 1 so I can farm it for lower end gear to give to people. I haven't seen a single enlightened player at Babi Yar since except to knock out just 1 resonator which is pointless. So you tell me is it hard or is it really pride that makes it hard?
Yes at times I have been "ridiculously aggressive" generally when I'm close to a level and pushing, the rest of the time I could care less about a green portal unless it's a critical portal, or it clears a path for Scott to drop a huge impossible to break field again. Honestly the point of this group was to help the two sides discuss exactly the issues you've pointed out, and blamed on us, and have an opportunity to rebuild the community. The enlightened didn't want to talk to anyone about it when they controlled Denver, instead they tried, and failed to keep us oppressed.
The enlightened of the past dug your graves, but unlike them I'm trying to do something about it. You don't seem to want help though. You're pride makes you unwilling to try to find a way to balance the cities, to discuss options which if we take the spirit of the game is a war between the resistance and the enlightened you're right we've won and now you have to switch to guerrilla warfare. You rail on me for talking trash but when I encourage people in the comm it's taken as sarcasm. I personally like the trash talk but you incorrectly assume I don't, I was pointing out to Weaver that it's interesting that you guys are opposed to it unless you have the upper hand, or manage to accomplish something bigger. It's funny how fast the tides turn. When I said I won't apologize for the inability for the machine to transmit my tone, I meant it.
Between you and Ducs, I've reached a conclusion however, obviously my trash talk, and courtesy isn't wanted, so instead I'll be happy to accept the unconditional surrender of the enlightened in the Denver area on your behalf. I backed off the trash talk when Ducs said he didn't care for it, even though he was one of the biggest perpetrators of it when I started. Weaver continued to comment about it so I responded. You won't have to worry about me trash talking, or helping your players anymore though since that too is me being a prick, and trust me if you thought I was being a dick before; well, you were wrong.
I am sorry for the wall of text, and enjoy you're break.