Diary of an Ingress Player [a slip into apathy]

Sivan used to write G+ posts like this, so I'm going to steal that title...

So, I used to love Ingress... it was new, unique, and kinda cool with the hacking and the portals and whatnot.  Then I realized nobody else was playing around town.  So I was free to do as I pleased... hack, link, make fields, and generall amass a hoard of resources (XMP and Resonators etc...).



Literally, I had hundreds of them.  Then the lull hits.  You realize that all that building you have nothing else to do.  You have tons of items, you're no longer gaining AP to level up.  You're just recharging the portals every day.  And as the number grew, the amount of XM needed to keep them recharged just kept building.

Then I realized that if I let them 'die out' I'd get more AP to re-establish the links and fields.  Brilliant!  But it took a while for things to decay.

This was okay across town because I rarely went over there.

Then there was another player... then another... then another.  All Blue Resistance.  They slowly took over the north side as I let them as I'm not driving across town to defend and re-take.

So we stalemated for a while.  The portals in PA weren't very high, which meant that the team was low level.  My portals were pretty high, so they weren't coming down town.  Maybe now and again, and I would 'tease', by only putting a couple L1 resonators on a portal... baits them in to hack / burst that.  They get only 75AP for destroying it, I'll get 125AP for putting it back, and then another 250 for completing the 8th on a portal.

Then I guess critical mass had been assumed by a duo and they spent over 5 hours (and then one went back for another round a couple hours later) as they went methodically throughout each of my portals and destroyed nearly every one.

It didn't take too long for me to go in and re-set things back up.  Then I had the opportunity to go across town and I retaliated and took a few portals.

It wasn't long after that the 2nd wave came.  The 2nd wave wiped every portal but one.  Easily.  And they placed some higher stuff on this time.  It took a little more this time to get some of my portals back, but I was on a bent to return the favour, so I went across the northern divide and tried.

Operative word was tried.  See, with a team of people you can really level up a portal.  They had a couple L5 resonators on some of them, making them tough, and as a solo attacker it was quite hard.  Not only a drain on the XMP, but you run out of XM pretty quickly as the 'retaliation' gets harder.

So I burned through a ton of XMP to make a dent.  They didn't like that as they wiped every green portal off after that.

For the past while I've been licking my 'wounds' as I realize I have very little resources left.  If I do get a portal, pretty soon thereafter it's retaken.  Essentially 'wasting' some XMP and Resonators.  Grr...

I've been able to get SOME back now and they've held for most of a week now (though they usually go and deal the most damage over the weekend as there's been 2 days of 'decay' on the resonators).  But, now I've got NO XMP left.  A few L4 resonators and some L3/L2 as well.

I really need to sit back for a while and collect.  It'll happen... slowly but surely.  I guess.

And then this is where I sit back and say "hey, what am I doing?  this is just a game!"  So I don't go out of my way for it any more.  I'm not planning.  Not strategizing.

It's on my way to work, and I still like to do my bi-daily 'walk about' and that keeps me in the game, but to be honest.  I'm okay if they take everything... sucks... but really, I shouldn't pour more time into this than I would any other game.  There's better things for me to work on.

Sorry Ingress... I'm over you.

I'm not done... just not a casual hangout observer type now.