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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Operation Neptune

OPERATION NEPTUNE - MISSION REPORT
Summary:
After 98 days of planning and 40+ agents performing tightly coordinated actions over the course of 56 hours, the Operation Neptune field came to life.
Statistics:
Field Type: Enlightened
Field Life: 16.72 hours (4:09pm til 8:52am)
Square Miles / Kilometers: 54,513 / 141,189 (75.8% of maximal)
Longest Link: 596km (Coffin at Hearst Castle to the Cape Mendocino Lighthouse)
Mind Units: 7,834,618
Take Down Method: Suspected - Falsely representing or altering GPS Location (GPS spoofing)
Field Plan Start: February 6th, 2013
Field Day Begin: May 15th, 2013 7:01am
Operation Duration: 56 hours
Inception:
After the success of Operation [Redacted], a massive Californian control field connecting the original site of the Cape Mendocino Lighthouse with the First State Park in Big Basin to a US Post Office in Groveland, the NorCal Enlightened set its sights on an even bigger project. During [Redacted] the team made hundreds of connections through a web of agents from many regions. These agents excitement, cunning, tenaciousness and spirit of fair play would be tapped to once again bathe Northern California in a long lived, glowing field of green.
Planning:
Planning for the new operation began in the first week of February, 2013.
Cape Mendocino was an obvious anchor. Having been held by Moritz for nearly six months, it had been diligently recharged every day by Weasel, the keeper of its light. The Cape met the access requirements, and the team had keys. Since the end of the last operation Cape Mendocino had come under fire twice, and was twice destroyed. Once after secondary spoof destruction related to the original takedown, and then in a second event, removed from the map completely on complaints from Resistance agents that the actual lighthouse is not at Cape Mendocino but rather 2 hours south in Shelter Cove. While it is true that the lighthouse has moved, the NorCal team filed a request to have the portal restored because the original location of the lighthouse, the location of the portal, is listed in the Historical Marker Database. A plaque has been placed at the site to honor the hardy and long suffering Keepers of The Light. Photographic proof of the plaques existence was provided, and the portal was restored.
Using the Cape as the first anchor, we decided we would try to build a field that was as close as possible to the maximum field size supported in the game. This would mean lighting up an equilateral triangle with sides as close as possible to the maximum linking distance of an L8. Agent BJMartinJr proposed the first tentative field by laying out the lines, east and south, and then Thrakazog, Eidolon, and BJMartinJr crawled over the intel map, looking for portals that would meet our teams more exacting access requirements.
post office in Unionville Nevada was chosen as the second anchor, and a few fallback portals were selected.
Struggling, and failing to find a portal that would meet the teams requirement for permanence, Thrakazog proposed using something at Hearst Castle for our southern anchor. The Castle on the hill closes at 6:30pm, and opens again for tours at 9am.
The team was aware that Hearst Castle was a weak spot in the field. Other locations were discussed, but a consensus was reached.
Agents of both color were disappointed that the Big Basin anchor for Operation [Redacted] was knocked out by a cheat. The NorCal Enlightened know that in this game, nothing lasts forever. Portals flip all the time through fair play. There is a thrill and a joy in overwhelming your opponent and without the battle, you are just farming to an invo cap. In considering Hearst Castle we saw what we wanted, as always, a challenge for the Resistance to take down our field legitimately. Because Hearst Castle can be accessed by more conventional means, we hoped it would be the site of an epic battle where we held or lost our field. Where one Resistance team would claim the glory of having broken our defence, or would ride back down The Hill in defeat at 6:15 sharp.
Operationally we knew from slicing out from Big Basin through Campbell and San Jose that cutting through the Peninsula would be hard. Operation [Redacted]’s west link had cut a considerable distance further toward the coast. Operation Neptune’s link cut right down I-280. We did not expect any trouble on the northern link, and we knew that LacedUp and her crack team in the Central Valley would be able to handle holding the friendlies in check and taking the blue down hard.
The days around Google I/O were proposed as an execution date. Throwing a large field through San Francisco during the event would be the perfect way to bring the glory of Ingress Enlightenment to all.
The groundwork laid, the organization began.
The core team grew in membership as we contacted local agents in target areas. Trouble spots were identified and ground strategies discussed. Localized strike teams began to coalesce.  Thrakazog conducted reconnaissance at the castle on March 8th and when he burnt the Hearst’s portals, “Coffin” gave up two keys. With this bit of luck, the operation’s three anchors had been decided.
As the light up date approached, our execution plans were finalized. For both strategic convenience and dramatic effect, we decided we would try to “blink” the field, meaning we would light up all three connections at the exact same time. Strategically, playing with such long lines, anything slower than an instant linking of all three vertices gives every opponent along the ~600km runs the opportunity to put up blocks. We felt that if we could quietly cut ourselves a clear path in the weeks beforehand, two teams acting in concert could bring this enormous field up by surprise.
Preparation:
We started generating and updating maps with portals that had blocking links.  Google+ groups were notified of local problem areas and link restrictions. On May 8th Niantic’s Operation Bowstring anomaly was announced to also coincide with Google I/O and we wondered what effect a 141,189 km2 Enlightened field might have on the event.
Then the hard grind of blocker control began. This field’s links would cut through many communities, and all of the affected local agents had to be co-ordinated. Agent LacedUp took the role of spokesperson. She began contacting community leaders in the corridors, marshalling their support and cooperation. A delicate balance had to be struck, community cooperation was required, but the details of the plan had to remain confidential. Accidental leaks could undermine all the work, but the northern California Enlightened Community is like no other. All regions responded with support and love. Agents from everywhere networked with other agents. They called in favors and went out of their way to make friendly green portals attractive to the Resistance. Most importantly, lower level agents refrained from linking on the promise that they were helping to build “something awesome.” During this time, most people working on the project had no knowledge of its true scope.
Special credit is given here to the agents who led these efforts.
Agents Mold, Scarabeo, and Technophile headed blocker control for Santa Cruz / Monterey / Scott's Valley.
Agents SYBKing, BlastTyrant, Dextroyrawr, Mercurio, Dran, and Wuzzabear were instrumental in pre-op blocker control in the San Francisco Peninsula. They made target portals very tempting to Resistance agents and supported link restrictions.
Agents Tindron, Frogeegrl, Frizzy, Alm187, and Hades007 controlled pre-op blockers in the Central Valley. The Resistance just would not drop the one green blocker anchored at Woodward Park Regional Library. The portal was seeded with 8s and then linked. Then  knowledge of a potential  lvl 8 portal  was leaked to Resistance agent Jenos. He could not let an L8 happen. He made the trek out and captured the portal, thus clearing the stubborn blocker.
Agent Stolenveil headed blocker control for the San Jose / South Bay area, and also rounded up help in the Reno, Nevada area. Contacting the Reno folks proved to be a challenge, but once contacted agents  PurpleFly, SamuraiSquirrel and Stricnyne assisted gladly.
Agent Undef1ned headed blocker control in Redding. He left the known blue blockers in place for over a week, as he waited patiently for the appointed time. The team feared that known blockers would be replaced by ones that may have proved more difficult to take down.
The NorCal Enlightened also expresses their sincere thanks and recognition to the hundreds of unnamed agents who acted on trust that a big operation was in play. Without their cooperation, this field would have been impossible.
Execution Timeline:
On May 11, Xandorcode, LacedUp, Tindron, and Thrakazog conducted a recon trip to the Unionville PO.
The portal was well guarded, but he accepted HINT caps to let us through.



They met in Stockton, CA and then drove to Reno, NV where they holed up for the night. Burgers at Mel’s provided sustenance for the next leg and many cookies were consumed. In the morning, the final drive to Unionville was completed. The portal was brought on-line and burned. After a lunch in Reno, they returned to Stockton and parted ways.
In an operation like this friendly blockers are a team's biggest concern. Broadcasting link restrictions will certainly help stop links from coming up, but there will always be unexpected green you have to contend with. In the Monterey Bay area agents Mold and Scarabeo linked up a strategic honeypot to Battle of Natividad by creating a field covering the entire Salinas Valley. This field served as a blocker from the east and at the same time, attracted the Resistance into attacking the anchor out of convenience for AP gain. Beware Resistance foes. Whenever an anchor or field looks too good to be true, maybe, just maybe it is.
On May 14th at 11:34am agent Moritz reported to the team that he had asked a Redding agent to help clear some portals. It was quickly discovered that Moritz had mistakenly thought that the agent was Enlightened when in fact he was Resistance and had leaked the general direction of the north link and the light up deadline to a blue L8 agent. The team scrambled for most of the day to fashion a ruse Moritz could keep up. The agent was contacted again, and told that friendly links in Eureka had stymied our plan and that if at all possible, he should take out theWhiskeytown Lake portal which would allow the SOUTHERN link to pass. Within an hour the team watched Resistance links light up from Whiskeytown Lake up and to the left out to the coast. The Redding agent had fallen for the cover-up bluff but the word had obviously spread to the west because blue links were lighting up in a chain from Garberville north and from Ferndale south down to Scotia.
High level agents Euphoricwmsy and Lignarius from the Eureka team were contacted via faction COMM and Moritz put the word out in the Redwood Empire asking about agent availability to handle the blue blockers thrown in the response to the info leak. Agent ShibaTetsu said he could respond late that night, but then amended his timing to better coincide with the following afternoon’s deadline. He drove from Petaluma to Redway and at 2:42pm he destroyed the link from USPS 3400 Redwood Drive Redway, CA to USPS 536 Main Street Ferndale, CA.
On May 15th two teams were dispatched.  A pair of agents (Mercurio and Thrakazog) started another 7.5 hour trip to the the northeast point of Unionville, NV.


At 8am, Moritz picked up CGnex, then madpickles, then Weasel and headed down US 101 to Hearst Castle. Agents Stolenveil, Tindron, ZydrateVials, KillerBee93402, also made their way to Hearst. They arrived at the visitors center at 2:15pm, eight L8 agents in all.
The team boarded the bus and rode 15 minutes up The Hill. While there was a great desire to all break away and get ready to link, they walked slowly, listening to the guild talk about the three guest cottages and the kitchen. As anxious as everyone was, it was a beautiful, peaceful setting for this super-field attempt. When the tour was over the team was allowed to freely wander the grounds. All 8 L8 agents gathered at the Coffin portal and waited for the go-ahead.
Even with intensive pre-op blocker control, an operation of this size needs concurrent on-the-ground blocker management. The coordination of this effort was expertly lead by Agents Glacial, Brutus258, and Sacrabeo. Though some hard to reach portals made delays seem insurmountable, the team rose to the challenge. At one point in the operation there were teams ready to kill links simultaneously at 5 of the 6 portals that anchored the last blue blockers. These agents drove long distances and spent hours sitting at portals.
Agents PurpleFly, SamuraiSquirrel and Stricnyne  made the trek out of Reno and cleared out blocking links in Nevada for the team.
Agent BunnyJoe drove to one portal and hiked a mile in. He flipped the Helen Putnam Regional Park at 11:33am and then hiked a mile back out and headed back to work. About 30 minutes later, another blocker appeared, anchored on the Marin County Fire Department. The cellular coverage maps indicated that BunnyJoe would have service there, so around 4pm he drove 30 minutes to the portal. Unfortunately he found no service and a portal that was located up a dirt path to a shack marked as private property.
The team threw out suggestions for increasing connectivity but there was nothing, not even a wisp of wifi. The mission was stopped cold until agent Yellow7 said he could drop the link from the other end at Bodega Bay and Harbor portal. The time was 5:10pm. There was a little more than an hour for the blockers to clear and the field to go up before the security at Hearst would round everyone up, and escort them to the bus.
Agent Undef1ned rushed to be in position to drop blockers at William B. Ide Adobe and William B. Ide Adobe - 1 Mile in time after work. Timing here was critical because the Redding Resistance was on alert from the previous misstep. If those blockers came down too soon, it was feared that the Redding blue would throw up new blockers that would be functionally inaccessible
   
Agent Yellow7 dropped blockers in the North Bay.
Agents on the Hearst grounds waited. Excitement warred with nerves, but morale remained high. The projected hour for the field to go up had passed, but dozens of people were still working hard to clear out the blocks before the castle was closed for the night.  The portals were upgraded to level 8 and the team stood ready to blink the field as soon as the few remaining blocks were taken down.  It looked like success was on the horizon, until disaster struck -- long green blocking links came up from Los Banos to Visalia thrown by Enlightened agents crossing the state on their way to the Ingress Operation Bowstring. The Neptune agents created enticements to bait them into being brought back down.
Returning to Unionville on the following day was unlikely, so a call was made to bring up the top link and hope that it survived the night. Undef1ned took out the Red Bliss blockers at 5:55pm and 6:00pm while Mercurio and Thrakazog, after sitting and fretting for 2.5 hours, were finally given the go ahead to bring the Unionville Post Office up to the required level.
At 6:02pm the 530.9km link from Unionville Post Office to Cape Mendocino Lighthouse was thrown. A secondary link was thrown in frustration from Unionville PO to the Castle Air Museum in the Central Valley. This link served as an unintended distraction as to the true nature of the day's plan.
There was action all up and down the state.
The Hearst team stayed in position until security firmly informed the them that it was time to return to the bus.
They departed without throwing any links. Out in the parking lot, Moritz passed on the required keys so that agent KillerBee93402 could return for a second attempt the following day.
Blocker teams were provided latest target info and link restrictions were communicated again to local communities.
On the road back home that evening, we got the notification that the Cape Mendocino Lighthouse had been taken down by Resistance agent RodKickass at 8:05pm.
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that don't have brains enough to be honest.
-Benjamin Franklin
The following day as agents from both factions made their way to San Francisco for Operation Bowstring, we discovered that the lighthouse and the link were still green. Shaper influence is our only explanation.
We immediately alerted Enlightened agents statewide and the mission was once again a go. Link restrictions were frantically re-communicated across the entire peninsula, south into San Luis Obispo and for the whole eastern Central Valley.
As the rest of the team processed the intel maps, discussed blocking link strategies and kept up the control chatter, a number of core agents from the NorCal team battled with blue at Operation Bowstring.
While Resistance agents significantly outnumber Enlightened agents in the SF area, the Enlightenment delivered a full-body beatdown by their superior organization, more effective communication channels and plans. Scoring 78 to 9, the ground game that won the day was a brilliant fall back plan conceived by agent D0gboy in case the Neptune field was blocked. D0gboy and the SF locals worked hard beforehand to include both local and visiting players and they built in measures to ensure that each Enlightened agent who attended would be able to play a role and help win the day for the team. The resounding victory at the anomaly was achieved with equal parts hard work, team play, and tight communication with the larger Enlightened community.
The post-event party facilitated additional coordination efforts for the NorCal team and served to renew a lot of local community bonds. The field was set to be completed after the end of the first Hearst Castle tour, at 9:40am.
After the anomaly, the Neptune link lines showed a few blue blockers and 0 friendlies.  The plan was a go.
At 8:45am Friday morning, Agent KillerBee93402 waited in line for the bus that would take him up The Hill for the first castle tour at 9am.
Agent Batttie dropped blue blockers in Monterey.
Agents Scarabeo and Turgon handled blockers in the Santa Cruz area.
At 8:22am Agent Explorer7 in Merced took a out a set of blue blockers from the US Post Office Agent LacedUp was on-site to drop the remaining blues in the Central Valley while Agent GaiasWrath sat on the  Merced County Fire Department portal, patiently waiting to throw a protective green blocker.
Everything was in place to go when one green blocking link was thrown from Half Moon Bay to Los Altos at 9:20am. More enticement was collected to help take this down.
5 Resistance blocking links in the South San Francisco area also surfaced at Health Sciences LibraryWest Orange Library, South San Francisco Public Library, and South Francisco Sign Hill.These would be easily dealt with when the time arrived and so at 2:20pm, Agent CGnex drove to South San Francisco to wait on-site for the call to clear the block. .
Some of the blocker control agents who had been waiting all day needed to return to work and with the link from Unionville to Hearst clear of green blockers, Moritz made the call to throw the second leg of the field. Agent LacedUp fired up her scanner to start a take down of some Central Valley blue, but found that her inventory wouldn’t load. Frustrated at first, the team quickly realized that everyone’s scanner was broken. Shaper influence which interrupted the game, but this was an opportunity. It meant that more time would be available to arrange an enticement to bring down the long green blocker that stretched from Los Altos to Half Moon Bay. Doubly opportune, the global scanner load failure assured that while we moved agents into place, no additional blocks could be thrown. 
Shaper influence receded and the inventories began to load. Down at Hearst, Agent KillerBee93402’s status was upgraded to stand-by. Blue links in the Central Valley were destroyed, and the link from Hearst to Unionville was completed within the minute.
The team was energized but that one green blocker in Los Altos remained. Enlightened agents Stolenveil, Auryn and Kaylee arrived on site and joined agent lllllllll in creating 13 links and 8 fields, all connected to The Convolution of a Square. 
The bait was set, and everyone kept their fingers crossed, hoping for an unsuspecting Resistance player to come by, and collect all that delicious AP. The entire team held steady, and waited. There was great concern that the bait wouldn’t work. The team heard rumors that Resistance leadership was instructing its team to steer clear of Los Altos and that they should not, under any circumstances take down that portal.
Agent KillerBee93402 held tight at Hearst Castle, as did all the Enlightened agents from Petaluma to Monterey.
At 3:54 pm, nearly 3 hours after the bait was set, Resistance agent APheartbreaker it seems, could not resist the temptation to destroy so many links and fields and the chats came alive with a flurry of posts that the Los Altos portal was taking damage. A few minutes later, only two resonators remained on the portal. Agent CGnex was instructed to immediately take down the five remaining Resistance blockers that were linked to the Health Sciences LibraryWest Orange LibrarySouth San Francisco Public Library, and South San Francisco Sign Hill portals. For a short time, the intel map lagged behind reality, and it was unclear if the last blocking Los Altos green link had been destroyed. With adrenaline running at maximum and all eyes glued on respective screens, agents who saw no remaining blockers directed KillerBee93402 via Hangouts, Messenger, and SMS, to throw the last link from Hearst to the Cape.
Standing next to Coffin, KillerBee93402’s scanner reported that a 596-km line up the northern coast of California, threaded through the heavily congested SF Peninsula area, was clear to link. He pressed the button on his scanner, and everything went green.
The time was 4:09pm on Friday 5/17, and 7.8 million MU had been claimed for the Enlightened.
The team went wild.  Our goal had been achieved with an astounding effort of will and class.    
As multiple chat clients started to settle down, the flash of victory started to fade the team became nervous about the upcoming battle to protect the field. This had been an epic effort; this field had not only laid claim to nearly 8 million mind units, but also to the hearts and souls of 40+ agents directly involved in it’s planning and execution. The team knew the field would come down, as all fields do, but they hoped that a follow on battle at Hearst might be as epic as is was for the creation. The stage was set for a fair and honorable fight at the castle on the coast.
REMOTE RECHARGE: The Battle After Breakfast
Keys were distributed, power cubes were hoarded. Post-breakfast plans to hangout in XM heavy locations were made to protect the Hearst Castle portal by remote recharge as it represented the weakest anchor in the field. The team spent the night co-ordinating a battle plan. It was expected that the Resistance would seek to destroy this field as soon as it was possible, and the first tour busses depart at 9am with tourist drop off at the back steps starting at about 9:15am.
Moritz pulled into an XM-rich area at 8:54am, He looked at his scanner, and the field was gone
Cape Mendocino had been destroyed at 8:52am.
Pouring over the COMM logs it showed destrustion by Resistance agent SagaOfT.  Checking with the locals we learned that they were from the Bay Area, and that his account had been inactive for some time.
Perhaps his passion for the game was so reinvigorated by the beautiful field challenge that he resumed play, drove for 8 hours maybe up through Ferndale, or maybe through the incredible sight that is the Humboldt State Redwood forrest, out along the sea down Mattole road, miles away from a cellular carrier’s signal, and flipped it blue. Somehow he must have been so low on items to recycle that after running out of XM during takedown and deployment, he had no way to refill.  Perhaps his calendar was tight and he wouldn't be able drive 40 minutes into Ferndale to load up and return before he had to get back on the road and drive another 8 hours home. Perhaps he was so pressed for time that he could not even wait 20 minutes for the portal to respawn. He had no time to blow up any green in Ferndale, or Willits, or in any other town along the entire run of 101, from the top of the Redwood Empire, down to the fast streets of Fremont.
If this implausible scenario is revealed to be spoofing, we call on ALL Ingress agents to help us create a culture of integrity in the game. The game is what we make of it. The community becomes the standards we demand. The work undertaken to plan and and create this field forged deep bonds between many, many people. Agents hailed from all over the western United States, including Reno, NV,  Fallon, Redding, Eureka, Mendocino, the Bay Area, the Central Valley, and San Luis Obispo, The physical distance among this team remains great, but any emotional distance was destroyed in the crucible of this mission. The team has grown closer. A family has been created.  
The collective work on both Operation [Redacted] and Operation Neptune deserved a legitimate take-down. The battle for the castle would have been intense for both the Resistance and Enlightened teams. An epic battle to take an epic field would have been the proper coda to our efforts.
We know from conversations with friendly Central Valley rivals that two Resistance agents were on their way as well as Oakland Resistance agents whiz and pipistrelle. Some had taken the day off work and were on the road to Hearst when the field went down. The suspected spoofing at the Cape likely cheated those Resistance agents out of a fair and true moment of glory.
The NorCal team calls on ALL Ingress agents, Resistance and Enlightened to enforce the ethical standards of this community. The agents who worked with their heart and soul on this field wish to have their work destroyed with a similar passion. It was a beautifully-clean operation, and it deserved a matching effort from the opponents.
The Cape Mendocino Lighthouse is currently blue, but in the hearts of the NorCal team and Enlightened agents everywhere it’s light shines a brilliant green, guiding them into future operations and showing all that anything is possible with dedication and love.  
There is no doubt that the NorCal team will build another big field, and we will again hope that the Resistance reaction is fair. Until that next adventure begins we hopes that you carry the spirit of the Cape within you, to guide your way and light your dreams.
Edit: Second Cape takedown is a suspected spoof.

77 comments:

  1. Good lord, this background makes things hard to read. Congrats on a monumental effort.

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    1. Thanks!

      Sorry the the white text on a black background is hard to read, I was trying to keep to the aesthetic of the game ...

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    2. I love white on black!

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    3. Sorry, my comment probably came out whinier than intended. I love white on black too; it's just that with as much staring at the monitor as I do, it kills my vision when I swap back to more typical palettes. But I have no problem with the stylistic choice in general :)

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    1. I meant try that tool which makes reading easier.

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  3. Jenos - Ah well at least I got mentioned

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  4. Great write up. It's impressive how much effort and coordination it takes to build something like this. Great write up!

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  5. @Jenos LOL, man! I would have done the same thing myself :)

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  6. field is not legit, since it crossed a link
    https://plus.google.com/116096656252052645823/posts/ZN9FikMeFTD

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  7. Sheesh, how many times do we have to explain this?!

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  8. Phenomenal accomplishment. ~ Married to Moritz ;)

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    1. Thank you very much for our long term borrowing of him. We promise we'll return him soon. :-) :-)

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  9. You know what makes both this video and report so disgusting to anyone who actually paid attention to this whole thing?

    The fact that you're so quick to paint a picture of SagaOfT as a gps spoofer (which he may well be), yet you conveniently ignore the even more suspicious circumstances surrounding APheartbreaker's takedown of the final green blocking link.

    You say it's suspicious that SagaOfT only destroyed that one portal. Oddly enough, APheartbreaker only destroyed that one portal. You say it's odd that SagaOfT didn't even rebuild (even though he did). Strange, though, considering APheartbreaker didn't even bother to rebuild. You decry SagaOfT as "robbing" the Resistance of a fair victory; I say APheartbreaker was the one who robbed them of it. The Resistance held strong in not destroying that link; so one of your own had to go do it for them.

    Yet you gladly gloss over these suspicious circumstances when it suits you. How... convenient.

    I'm not implying that all of you know who the second account belongs to. I'm saying that one of you does, and that it's your responsibility to find out who, and report them, before going out of your way to bitch and cry about someone on the other team doing it.

    If your team resorts to dirty tricks to do these sorts of things, expect the other team to, as well. You're the guys setting the standard... Don't be so shocked when the other team follows suit.

    You want honorable and fair play? Stop making fields with portals that are a) bogus, or b) completely out the range of cell coverage, requiring the rental/purchase of non-standard equipment. Stop bragging about your hollow victories like they actually mean anything, and in the same breath crying about people who are adopting your tactics. Stop pulling the "oh Niantic put the portals there, they must be legit" copout. If there's obviously a bad portal, why are you using it? Bad data is bad data... Looking the other way when it suits you (and using the "well, Niantic put it into the game" copout) is just pathetic.

    You guys started a culture of "anything goes" in this area. Don't act so shocked that it has come back to bite you in the ass.

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    1. If I were APHeartbreaker I would WANT to troll my faction because.. well just look at the mentality. I suspect we will have many more RES players not feeling so happy about their side. A 3rd faction is now needed just to allow a second chance for decent players on their side. Enlightened will stay intact, Resistance will split in two.

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    2. FYI Anonymous, we amended the report last night to say that the second Cape take down is a suspected spoof, but you seem to have missed that part, and using two accounts is a TOS violation and is not tolerated by our team. It is much more fun (and entirely legal) to incentivize a co-operating Resistance agent than it is to cheat, and then lie.

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    3. @Moritz: You don't seem entirely interested in maintaining the integrity of your own team; instead of investigating the possibility of a player on your side cheating, you seem content to just let it slide, all the while accusing the Resistance players of cheating.

      Get off your soapbox, clean up your own act, do it legit, without bad portals and dual accounts, and then it can be the accomplishment you're trying so hard to portray it as.

      Until then, you and your group will continue to be regarded as a party of hypocrites, eagerly pointing out the cheating of the opposing team while attempting to hide your own dirty players. You really have no place calling out the actions of others when you can't even regulate the actions of your own "core" group.

      I mean, really. It's the fact that you have the gall to come in here preaching about "playing fair," while utilizing portals that shouldn't exist in the first place, and then saying "well, that's not our fault bad portals exist, we just use them." If integrity of play were as important to you as you seem to want it to be for everyone else, you'd report those portals as being bad, and then go on to use legitimate ones. Not turn around and use them anyway (without reporting them, I might add), then try to pass it off as "well, that's not our problem," despite the fact that we've been specifically given the tools (as players) to report offending portals to keep the game clean.

      Integrity goes both ways. Until you hold yourself and your team to the same standard as you're pushing on the opposing team, no one will take you seriously.

      Until then, you'll be known as that one guy who spends way too much money on this game, and goes out of his way to try to force others to spend just as much on the game, in order to compete. Given your attitude, and the attitudes of all the others in your group, I'm actually kinda glad a spoofer took this thing down so quickly.

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    4. Get off your couch and do something Anon. Keyboard warrior is about the only thing you have going for you :P

      As far as Non Standard equipment is concerned it's in the eye of the beholder, what is standard equipment for one may not be standard for another.

      Why not decry the vast difference in capabilities of Cellphones, carriers, extra batteries, antennas? If the equipment is able to be purchased it is standard equipment.

      Only 1 of the 3 locations is not reachable by the capabilities of my shitty Thunderbolt (which by the way created both Hearst Links).

      As far as the APheartbreaker thing goes, everyone involved with the operation knows how that went down. Using tact, respectful bartering to convince someone to be a traitor is part of the game.

      As far as money is concerned there is a pretty high cost to play this game as there are with many games. Money rules the world, and can afford more opportunities.

      Also Saga and Rockbreaker were easy to spot due to their failure to conceal there locations, somehow managing to travel a 7+ hour journey in less than 3 hours...I'll let you do the math.

      Sure they may have taken a Helicopter or something, but then is that standard equipment? Lets say you use a bicycle to go from portal to portal and I use a Porsche is it my fault that you're less advantaged than I?

      If you don't like the game there are millions of others out there for you to complain about.

      Bad portals can and have been reported by both sides, but while they still stand are free to be used by anyone. Everyone can receive AP bonuses and use them the same. Some will just go to further means to do so.

      Lets say for example a portal is on top of a mountain with no Wheel chair access,should I call the ADA and complain because it's not accessible to me?

      You also seem to fail to realize that everything in this game is short lived, so why harp on and dwell that something awesome happened. I'd love to see the resistance try to organize something like that in California, and I'd be the first in line to offer praise.

      But instead we get keyboard warrior whom instead of appreciating the effort something took wants to bitch and moan, like most entitled brats do.

      Delete
    5. I had a response for "Anonymous" but I think Nick covered it well. The Blues have yet to even attempt anything on this scale on the West Coast.

      Delete
  10. Says the team who continue to allow Johnny Avocado/Zilch (resistances has on a number of occasions reported both accounts) two accounts one on each of our teams and not report, let alone others, e.g. like BU2B/SonOfBU2B who are operating two accounts on the same side. Sorry your "ethics" are matching up ya brainwashed boogers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have no association with either Johnny Avocado/Zilch nor BU2B/SonOfBU2B. If they are running multiple accounts, they should be banned, simple as that. I, and the rest of the NorCal team do not tolerate cheating on either side. When we see it (and it has happened), we manage it, and if the actions continue, we report.

      I will grant you that it is possible APheartbreaker cheated in some way, but he is not known to us. We were as surprised as everyone when he took the Los Altos portal, especially with all the rumors we'd heard about the word being out to stay away.

      I will tell you this though Anonymous, the NorCal team had a co-operating Resistance agent enroute to take down that block. They were expected to arrive at 4pm. APheartbreaker hit it first, but for all intents and purposes, it would have fallen anyway.

      Delete
    2. SonOfBU2B is an awfully cute kid who is very proud to be playing along side his dad BU2B. You should stop by and chat with them next time they are in the area. They are very nice people.

      Delete
    3. Ironically, BU2B is quite active in your area, and yet you've turned a blind eye to his potential dual-accounting, despite your insistence that players of *both* sides take this sort of thing *very* seriously.

      I'm sensing a bit of a double-standard, here.

      As is the case in any time you're preaching to a crowd; if you're not holding yourself to the same standards as you're pushing them to do, you're not going to find many people taking you very seriously at all.

      Delete
    4. Or, I might add, your own dual-accounting.

      Unless, of course, you expect me to believe that gMoritz has no relation whatsoever to Moritz, despite his single action being on one of your "pet portals."

      If you could, would you arrange for the three of us to meet?

      Delete
    5. He is not dual-accounting, I have met him, and his son. Perhaps you should do so to?

      Delete
    6. Or NudeDude[Roy]/NaturistRoy, ShazbotTKC and ShazboTKC...

      Or another ENL revealing personally identifying information about somebody in public comms, AFTER that player was physically threatened by an ENL player for calling the ENL a "F**ing cheater" because he was playing with two phones at the same time?
      ^^^ All of those guys are active in the East Bay, and none of the ENL there or in the peacetalk forums held them up to your "higher standards". Instead, they defended them and harrased the ENL agent until he quit playing.

      You know why RodKickass got banned so quickly? Because Resistance Folks who know him reported him for spoofing right after he took down the Cape Lighthouse.

      We're not perfect either Moritz, but you sure do seem to be throwing stones in a glass house.

      Delete
    7. "harassed the Resistance Agent until he quit playing"

      Delete
    8. When the game entered public beta, the initial invites were only sent to Googlers, and each Googler got 20 invites. I work for Google. Using my corp email address I created the gMoritz Ingress account and sent the very first invite to my public gmail address. From that account, I created Moritz and that is the account I use to play. gMoritz is an L1 agent and has almost 0 AP.

      "you and your group will continue to be regarded as a party of hypocrites"

      You seem to be the only one making this charge, and you are being awfully loud about it. I am starting to think you are unconsciously projecting your own shame of cheating on our team in hopes that it will justify whatever illicit actions you have taken in the past.

      Each and every complaint you've had has been addressed, and yet you continue to spout off. I think perhaps there is some deeper issue here for you personally. Some truth you are unwilling to face. A trouble in your soul you, and only you, can address.

      Delete
    9. "You know why RodKickass got banned so quickly? Because Resistance Folks who know him reported him for spoofing right after he took down the Cape Lighthouse."

      Interesting thing is, I heard rumors that a blue group talked him into letting them use his account to spoof, and then turned around, and turned him in. Pretty cold hearted way to play if that rumor is true.

      Care to tell us more Anon?

      Delete
    10. "Interesting thing is, I heard rumors that a blue group talked him into letting them use his account to spoof, and then turned around, and turned him in. Pretty cold hearted way to play if that rumor is true."

      Wow, now spreading baseless and untrue rumors? I have direct information about what happened, and that's completely false. Nice to see those high standards you hold yourself being demonstrated.

      And I noticed you didn't respond to the rest of that post. Cat got your tongue?

      Delete
    11. What else is there to reply to? None of the accounts you mention or actions complained about had anything to do with this field.

      You complaints boild down to

      1) you don't like the unionville portal (Sorry? We didn't create it. Do we need your approval on all portals next time?)

      2) You suspect APheartbreaker is a dual account with no evidence. (Sorry? We also have no evidence, and even if they hadn't helped we had another cooperating RES agent enroute so it seems unlikely to have changed the results.)


      I'm sure we could argue back and forth about random things all day, but with respect to this field and the effort that in to no action by any NOrCal ENL agent violated the TOS.

      Delete
    12. I bring it up because of your call for "ALL Ingress agents, Resistance and Enlightened to enforce the ethical standards of this community. The agents who worked with their heart and soul on this field wish to have their work destroyed with a similar passion. It was a beautifully-clean operation, and it deserved a matching effort from the opponents."

      We've been holding up our side of that for a long time now, yet we still keep running into pushback from NorCal ENL when we ask them to do the same.

      There was no enforcing of the "ethical standards" during the Hayward incident, just a lot of public shaming and 'it's just a game', 'you take it too seriously', or 'you'd just walk away? My friends would call me a bitch if I just walked away'. Even in the peacetalk forums later, Madpickles kept blowing us off about the Harward incident, taking 51Oakland and TurboFish22's word over without question and constantaly trying to downplay their account-sharing and TurboFish22's violent overreaction to being called out for "F***ing cheating" when he was. SYBKing was the player who outed personal information about the Resistance agent on public all comms in an effort to shame him and divert attention from TurboFish22's threat of physical violence. MadPickles and SYBKing were involved in your ops. We can tell they are prominent members of your community. They also regularly 8x8 with NudeDude, TurboFish22, and 51Oakland.

      And on here, how long did it take before Moritz started trolling BS rumors about RodKickAss's banning? And then publicly admitting he had dual accounts for months, "but I never used it'. You know, that's the same line NudeDude used after getting caught in Livermore a week ago. Seriously, if you want to create an ethical environment for everyone but one of your most visible L8 is acting as childish as everyone is saying Resistance agents are acting.

      Even now, in public comms (12:25pm 5/27) one of your Norcal ENL L8s (ProfessorFSU) is claiming to know of a Resistance agent who is cheating, but he won't report it because "I'm no snitch =P". How is that holding up your own ethical standards?

      Hold yourselves up to a higher standard. You brag about your teamwork and communications, which is able to pull off monumentally difficult ops like both of these fields, but whenever somebody calls out other NorCal ENL for Cheating you claim "I don't know them" or "They had nothing to do with this".

      Grow up. Own that you have cheaters on your team (like we do) and do something about it. Don't cultivate a culture of "don't be a snitch" - cultivate a culture with the ethical standards you are preaching and actually work to make it happen.

      Delete
  11. As far as threats go, it's unfortunate that this happened. However there is a player in the Monterrey area that has stalked, chased and nearly run some of our Enlightened agents off the road.

    Society as a whole has people who have issues. Those types of people typically end up either dead or as one of my patients. It's very unfortunate.

    ReplyDelete
  12. As a people all we can do is be responsible for our own actions, consequences good and bad will result from all decisions we make.

    Fair is for kids(to learn a sense and understanding of moral), it has never existed, there are only consequences and actions, do and don't, have and haven't.

    The self reflection into ones own self is the only control we as humans have over the world.

    ReplyDelete
  13. As a matter of fact I care to comment. I know Rod personally and can attest to the fact that there was no group behind his actions, nor did any other agent use his account to spoof. Rod acted on his own, as he always does.
    As far as the reporting part, yes he was reported by a fellow agent after he talked to Rod. That agent was me. Spoofing and cheating is not something myself nor any of the rest of the Resistance tolerate. We prefer to remain on higher ground, and leave the spoofing, multiple accounting, phone sharing, threats of physical violence and all other underhanded shenanagins to the Enlightened.
    You can keep your gray areas and sorta legal tactics. The rest of us will continue keep it BLUE.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your honorable actions. We appreciate it.

      We will continue to police ENL agents too, NorCal ENL has no tolerance for TOS violators.

      And we look forward to fairly dismantling your first large field.

      Good luck!

      Delete
  14. *slow clap*

    Congrats on rationalizing away every discrepancy in your own actions while highlighting the same actions in players of the opposite faction.

    It's impressive, really.

    I'm beginning to think the true mark of the Enlightened player is the ability to hold such astounding cognitive dissonances.

    But please. Continue to look the other way about your own dual accounting while bitching about the cheating of others. I mean, you do realize that reports of cheating from players of the opposite faction carry far less weight than reports from players of the same faction, right? It does explain many of the Resistance cheaters have been banned, while so many of the Enlightened ones remain.

    Seems like, for all your preaching about upholding these standards, you guys are doing a piss-poor job of holding that up on your end... Especially compared to how much more strongly the very players you're preaching to are adhering to those standards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The members of the team (NorCal Enlightened) and any players we asked to help listed in this report made no TOS violating actions.

      The only actions we complain about here is the GPS spoofing that we have confirmed (banning) and suspect (with the given explanation above.)

      I think it's fair for us to complain about actions taken that resulted in banning.

      The rest of your complaints have nothing to do with any part of this field. So I'm baffled where the rationalization you think is occurring? Or what actions we made that were TOS violating?

      Delete
    2. I will respond again Anon when you have a new charge that relates to me or the NorCal team. For now, we have addressed all your concerns. Feel free to continue projecting though, so we might get to the bottom of your involvement.

      Delete
    3. Okay, since you asked so nicely, I present to you, exhibit A: invalid portal submissions by a member of your "team":

      http://www.ingress.com/intel?ll=37.486846,-122.229617&z=20

      Note the following two portals:

      "Old" San Mateo County Courthouse
      San Mateo County Historical Museum

      Note that they both actually refer to the same building: i.e. it's a duplicate.

      The first portal has been in existence since the game was opened up to the "general public." The second, however, was a more recent submission by a green player whose name was one several of the portals as Hearst. It's also a duplicate of the first, a fact that would be readily apparent to a player familiar with the area.

      That is to say, the San Mateo County History Museum is the "old" San Mateo County Courthouse.

      Yet another claim of integrity ("it's not like we submit bad portals") bites the dust.

      P.S. I get the feeling there are several "anonymous" posters here. That, too, should be obvious.

      Delete
    4. Looking at intel: one portal seems to be of a plaque; some kind of memorial, while the other is of the building. But I could be wrong. But these portals from Belmont and Foster City clearly are duplicates.

      Same Belmont hydrants submitted by local Resistance L8:

      http://www.ingress.com/intel?ll=37.51679,-122.278324&z=17&pll=37.51679,-122.278324

      http://www.ingress.com/intel?ll=37.517322,-122.27717&z=17&pll=37.517322,-122.27717



      Same "Three girls on a log":

      http://www.ingress.com/intel?ll=37.558647,-122.271087&z=17&pll=37.558647,-122.271087

      http://www.ingress.com/intel?ll=37.557453,-122.27008&z=17&pll=37.557453,-122.27008

      Delete
  15. I have maintained a log of activity scraped from the intel map of the Bay Area since beginning of February. The purpose was to develop a sort of "heat map" to track an agent's frequent play area and time of activity. In my April logs, I found a Resistance Agent named PSILoveYou who has shown the most activity in the city of Los Gatos, Cupertino (particularly the DeAnza College locale), and occasional activity in Santa Clara, basically the South Bay area. There is an Enlightened Agent, who will not be identified, that fits the same profile. This agent does not seem to be as active, but does fit the heat map areas uncannily.

    And on to the point, when storing my data, each object is basically identified by username which contains portal locations and time, and also the GUID. Searching my logs, I have discovered that PSILoveYou and APHeartbreaker have the same GUID, suggesting a name change.

    You don't have to take my word for it as all this data should still be readily available through the intel map.

    Good luck with your search.

    By the by, doing a name change allows users to reclaim the old name so expect 'PSILoveYou' to be recreated shortly after this posting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You realize that collecting and using that data in the manner you suggest is a TOS violation right? Not to mention that you would almost certainly have to use some sort of 3rd party process to collect and sort it all. I mean I suppose you could do it manually but that would be a full time job.

      Delete
    2. Finfid is correct. Specifically, it is forbidden to...

      (d) extract, scrape, or index the Products or Content (including information about users or game play);

      Thank you for confirming my suspicions, Anon. I think it's pretty clear now that you lash out at us, because you aren't playing by the rules.

      Delete
    3. Ironic, given that that IITC was heavily used during the planning and execution phases of this operation.

      IITC also violates that very same clause to which you are referring. If we're going to consider his use of the data cheating, yours is, as well.

      Protip: You might want to work on your diversionary tactics a bit more. He posts evidence of a cheater in your midst; you respond by saying "oh so you're cheating." Of course never acknowledging your own players' cheating.

      The more posts I see from players defending this operation, the more I must assume you're all, quite frankly, insane. You ignore the data that that goes against the picture of immaculate purity you're trying so hard to paint, all the while highlighting the same sort of data when it paints a bad picture of the other team.

      What a bunch of clowns you guys are.

      Delete
    4. IITC was not used in planning nor in execution of any part of this mission.

      We do not condone the use of IITC in NorCal ENL.

      (But that thing is so widespread sigh. No idea what to do. Still, long term heatmaps of every player in the game? Tracking them across name changes, that's some seriously creepy set of actions.)

      Delete
    5. "We do not condone the use of IITC in NorCal ENL."

      Boy, isn't that an easy general statement to make... I hope nobody currently out there is naive enough to think anyone says this with a straight face, let alone meaning.

      This ball has been in Niantic's court for a while now. Let's not even try to use IITC as a counter example of TOS violation for either side... really. :)

      Delete
    6. "IITC was not used in planning nor in execution of any part of this mission."

      There's no possible way you could have said that with a straight face. None, whatsoever.

      Also, I'm pretty sure exporting the data to something that lets you render long links accurately (and therefore highlight blocking links) also counts as a ToS violation.

      But yeh. We can do this all day. You'll continue to brag about your absolute purity (lol) and we'll continue to highlight things that you've said/done/used that go in the face of that.

      This particular reply, and the subsequent responses it has gathered, has been particularly illuminating.

      "Hey, so here's some data that very strongly links APHeartbreaker/PSIloveyou to a particular green player." (without naming names, which is more than you guys have done)

      The reponse?

      "You must be cheating."

      LoL. Just.... LoL.

      Delete
    7. "There's no possible way you could have said that with a straight face. None, whatsoever."

      It's true, As one of the planners I've never installed IITC ever.

      "Also, I'm pretty sure exporting the data to something that lets you render long links accurately (and therefore highlight blocking links) also counts as a ToS violation."

      I agree. We also have not done that.


      Delete
  16. I'd like to step in on behalf of BU2B/SonOfBU2B and say that they are a father/son duo, not dual accounts. While I could understand suspicion of a dual-wielding accounts (similar name, always together), to see accusations of cheating being made of them is rather appalling to me. I have met both of them once, and seen photos of them, so I can attest to their legitimate play.

    -Technophile

    ReplyDelete
  17. a disgruntled little cricket has whispered to the ears of smurfs that gMoritz is quite a lively account for Moritz

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For the record, the gMoritz account has been deleted and only Moritz remains.

      Delete
  18. If anything is to be gleaned from this thread, the casual use of the words "legitimate" and "fair play" in such a flippant manner as the OP only serves to bite both sides in the ass, should any "truth" ever come of any of the allegations.

    Be careful what you say/gloat about... and how you say it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was pretty obvious from the start they're just doing it for the "international recognition." It's not about the spirit of "fair play" and "legitimacy" and the like; it's just about getting views.

      And nothing grabs more views that a juicy bit of drama, mm-mmm.

      Delete
    2. Honestly we'd have been happy if there was no drama.

      But a confirmed GPS spoof (for a link? just a link) less then 2 hours after it goes up? In the middle of I/O right before the Anomaly?

      Honestly, it's like they wanted to get caught.

      The 'legitamate' or 'fair' we complain about in the OP is GPS spoofing.

      Which has been the only confirmed method that RES has deployed against our fields.

      I'm mean sheesh, how about you guys go make a big field? For once. RES in Europe, Utah, sure to be able to. Even SoCal RES has put up some pretty fields.

      Or continue to spew bile and slander here.

      Shrug.

      Delete
    3. Thrak, I have to ask you, honestly...

      Has it even occurred to your that your actions, as a faction, have been so deplorable that people don't even want to play the game so long as players like that are playing?

      You guys make this game terribly un-fun, what with the workplace calls, false reports, harassment, and cheating. What's worse is that you demand a level of "fair-play" that you're refusing to even meet yourselves, and aren't afraid to report blue players for even the slightest infractions, while turning a blind eye to the players on your own faction who are guilty of far worse abuses?

      I mean, really. If you want this whole "spirit of fair-play" adopted by everyone (or even taken seriously in the first place), you really need to start by enforcing it amongst your own.

      How about you go back and replicate that other poster's work (it can be done by hand, yes), and find out who APheartbreaker/PSIloveyou belong to, report them, and get them banned? Come back here with proof of having done so, and maybe people will actually take you seriously, instead of just writing you off as a bunch of players with crippling inferiority complexes.

      Delete
    4. APheartbreaker is unknown to us and while their actions may correlate to PSIloveyou, we don't have a heatmap from stored game data to dig through.

      When we saw no additional activity beyond that Los Altos takedown, something did not seem right and so I reported them to Niantic as being a possible second account.

      It would bum me out to learn that it was not a baited Resistance player, but again, they are not known to us, did not act at our request and their suspicious activity has been reported to Niantic to investigate.

      While I hope that it was just a gullible blue agent we tricked, the continued absence of any activity by that agent tells that me that it is likely APheartbreaker is a second account, in which case, appropriate action should be taken by Niantic.

      Delete
    5. Just to clarify:

      APheartbreaker === PSIloveyou

      Someone went through a namechange, probably to avoid raising suspicions.

      Someone else posted that they're fairly sure they know who the green player who owns the account is. I'm curious if they'd like to weigh in on whether or not said player was directly involved with this operation.

      Though I must say, this is certainly quite the drastic change in stance over the whole APheartbreaker issue... A near 180 from the OP's description of the events.

      Delete
    6. "Has it even occurred to your that your actions, as a faction, have been so deplorable that people don't even want to play the game so long as players like that are playing?

      You guys make this game terribly un-fun, what with the workplace calls, false reports, harassment, and cheating. "

      Sigh. Sorry. Sure, feel free to hold me personally responsible for every action taken by any ENL player in the world. I did personally ask every ENL player to take every action they have ever taken in the game.

      Sorry. Anything I can personally do to help you enjoy the game again?



      It is the inherent nature of a zero-sum game where opposing actions are advertised at you. Everyone feels like a victim of the terrible actions of the opposing side. Shrug.

      I will continue to hold myself and the players I interact with to a very high standard. And I don't think any actions that I have taken as a player have made the game un-fun. But I may be wrong. Sorry.

      Delete
    7. "Though I must say, this is certainly quite the drastic change in stance over the whole APheartbreaker issue... A near 180 from the OP's description of the events."

      Not really,

      "At 3:54 pm, nearly 3 hours after the bait was set, Resistance agent APheartbreaker it seems, could not resist the temptation to destroy so many links and fields"

      That is a factual description of the events as far as we are aware of at the time that the post was written.

      We still have no data on whether a APheartbreaker is or is not a dual account for a ENL agent. And the only data we have now is that there is (seemingly) no other activity by the player.

      We continue to hold ourselves to high standard and if this was in fact a dual account of an ENL we would be very unhappy.

      We'd rather have failed with only two links up then have a tainted success. (Honestly, I was pretty sure this mission was going to be only the partial success after the issues on Wed.)

      Delete
  19. Thrak, you, and any other Enl player proclaiming "fairness of play" without reporting their own cheaters is going to be held accountable for it.

    Those of you who look the other way when someone on your faction cheats, or don't bother to look into suspicious events when they're in your favor, are going to be frowned upon.

    The only reason you're getting personally targeted is because you've associated yourself with this group, who, on one hand proclaims fairness of play for all, but in reality only wants "fairness of play" when it's in their favor.

    Moritz had multiple accounts, another player's been submitting bad portals, another has been circumstantially linked to APheartbreaker/PSIloveyou, and yet you're all part of the group that's insisting the Resistance be held to a higher standard than that. If you really held the players you play with to a "higher standard", these players would have been reported long ago... And yet they remain active, all accounts and behaviors intact. You can see why there's reasonable doubt as to how well you guys are actually self-policing and/or actively looking the other way.

    As to the APheartbreaker thing... lol. When this was written, there were just as many things suspicious about that takedown as there were about the field takedown; and yet you ignore the one in favor of the other. What did you think would happen... people wouldn't notice? You're getting called out on it because you deliberately downplayed the oddness of the circumstances in a bid to play up the suspicion surrounding the other event. You're (collective you) are being called out because of that. Don't whine about it or make excuses in response; it just makes it look that much more deliberate.

    But hey, you got your 15 seconds of fame on the Enlightened Report again. Congrats.

    ReplyDelete
  20. [First time poster - none of the previous Anonymous posts are from me.]

    I offer a little compare and contrast between two teammates, Thrakazog and madpickles:

    "I will continue to hold myself and the players I interact with to a very high standard. And I don't think any actions that I have taken as a player have made the game un-fun." - Thrakazog

    "If I were to stop playing with anyone who acted like a 12 year old on the COMM I would be playing with about 5 people." - madpickles, March 13, when challenged on why he organized a level 8 build with confirmed cheaters who were known to him to have made violent threats.

    That is a very telling confession from within the ENL team about the state of their OWN team and its behavior in this area. According to madpickles, in the entire area, there are only about 5 people he could associate with if he held himself to high standards like you do. I'm guessing Thrak associates with more than 5 people, so I guess madpickles was mistaken or behavior has gotten way better since March.

    Let me give you another quote from him, where he actually pats himself on the back for the company he keeps.

    "Maybe you, iminyourportalz and others feel ostracizing is the way you teach someone a lesson, but IMHO education and setting an example is far better."

    I guess not everyone has high standards like you Thrak. And you've got no problem with him, apparently. Him and gMoritz are examples of you having high standards for who you'll go around with?

    In the thread above, someone made the point that, quote, AS A FACTION the behavior has been deplorable. You can't even dispute that this is true, so all you CAN do is deflect by saying you're not individually liable for that. The person never claimed you were, they quite clearly wrote "as a faction." So, I mean, you've got pixels below their pixels, but no actual rebuttal to this fact. The deplorable behavior has driven people off.

    I believe you when you say you'd rather have failed honorably than have a tainted victory. Unfortunately, what I'm telling you is that a good many of your accomplishments in the area are tainted, because your thug cheater harrassing teammates have chased a significant number of RES players right off the field and out of the game. You don't get to get on here and gloat about how the other team hasn't accomplished some acheivement of your choosing, without having to face the facts of where some of the most active, ambitious-planning players from RES went and why they left.

    Not to mention - you don't get to post on here stinging the pride of local opponents about how they haven't been able to do X or Y, and then in the same thread claim you've never done anything to make the game un-fun. Can you maybe see how those 2 things are in tension? It's one thing to celebrate your own accomplishments. You took it a step farther and did the inverse, you rubbed the other team's lack of those same accomplishments in their face. You don't get to claim innocence, keeping-it-fun, and high road when you do stuff like that.

    Signed,
    TheCurmudgeon
    Long time Ex-Ingress player
    and totally not anonymous anymore because your thug teammates decided drop my identity on comms as a way to harass and intimidate me in violation of the ToS.

    ReplyDelete
  21. In fact, reading over the original blog post, I see that you actually call out SYB King by name for special thank-you, as someone you coordinated with on this project.

    Meanwhile, SYB King is exactly who posted identifying information about me and the workplace where I could be found and assaulted during working hours, to comms, in violation of the ToS, immediately after his teammates threatened to assault me. So let's put it to rest that you only associate with the innocents here, Thrak. Your post explicitly acknowledged that you succeeded with him playing a major role, meanwhile, he's an egregious, banning-offense violator of the ToS, and the people whose blocking links he needed to clear have stopped playing playing in serious number.

    Now, c'mon Thrak, I haven't been playing for months. I'm operating on scant information, and even on my old and incomplete information, I can demonstrate that your claims to associate only with the good guys are false. How many more of these names would I be able to go through and demonstrate bad behavior from if I was actually an active player?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Who was confirmed fot GPS spoofing to make a link..? News to me..

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  23. Excellent video and write-up. Awesome to see you guys in the Ingress Report, looking forward to the next "big one"!

    And don't let a couple grumpy smurfs get you down, remember, the team that's having the most fun is winning, and if the bitter people in this thread are at all representative of Bay Area resistance players (I don't actually think that's the case, the vast I have encountered seem to be super cool, well-adjusted, happy people), then we are winning by a larger margin than we did at Bowstring :)

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  24. @ Anonymous or to Whomever it may Concern, and/or assorted traitors & villainous double and triple agents, double-double agents, various sleeper cells, agents coming in from the cold, etc. [haha]

    Please allow an elaboration on what's happening here, from an almost disinterested bystander. It’s given tongue-in-cheek, with wry humor, and all that [haha]:

    Muphry's Law [sic]: says ..if it can.. it will..
    btw.. Murphy was a real person involved in the high-speed rocket sled experiments in the 1950s.

    See: Edward Aloysius Murphy, Jr. (January 11, 1918 – July 17, 1990) an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems. He is best remembered for Muphry's Law [sic]: an infamous variant of the 2nd law of thermodynamics - aka the law of entropy. Murphy’s definitive version is also known as the 4th law of thermodynamics, but actually there are only three. So I take it that’s a standing joke of sorts. [ha] ;)

    Okay so Muphry's Law [sic] states, "If anything can go wrong, it will. In 1952 Capt. Murphy [USAF] helped carry out a series of rocket acceleration tests. He worked on crew escape systems - also known in USAF parlance as "EGRESS SYSTEMS" [funny that term being used..] on some of the most famous aircraft of the 20th century, including the F-4 Phantom II, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the X-15 rocket plane. In the 60s he worked on safety and life support systems for Project Apollo. So he was one smart dude. [ha ha indeed]

    Murphy famously blamed a failure of some tests involving humanoid crash-test-dummies on one of his assistants. After one particularly dismal failure Murphy said, "If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will." He is also quoted [or misquoted] as saying "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then he [the assistant] will do it that way."

    See also: USAF Dr. Col. John Stapp, a flight surgeon working with Murphy. The phrase "Muphry's Law" [sic] first received public attention at a press conference when Dr. Col. Stapp was asked how it was that nobody had been severely injured during the rocket sled test misshapes. Stapp replied, it was because "they always took Muphry's Law [sic] under consideration."

    See: "SNAFU" and "FUBAR." [just for giggles, haha]

    And finally… also look up: McKean's Law, a variation on Muphry's Law [sic]: Which says, "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error." [so sorry for any misspellings or crappy grammar in my post] haha.. just kidding ..Come on guys!

    If it is possible for a vile, underhanded, sneaky, immoral, shady, motherless, sub-human creature, troglodyte and lummox, to create a bogus-agent account, then it's has to be seen as part of the game. That’s all there is to it - Re: Muphry's Law” [sic].

    ..Kind of like the game of life itself [yeah..?].

    Alternately, I suggest maybe finding a new pastime. What I’m really saying is stop crying in your beer. Please! It only ruins the taste of a perfectly good glass full of Heinikens, and it ruins the atmosphere at the communal table so to speak. ..I’m talking about proverbial turds in an imaginary [android] punchbowl! Gosh..!

    Maybe it;s all Murphy's fault after all! Let's find that guy's grave site and turn it into a memorial portal.

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  25. [added]
    As I understand it, wherever games are played excluding zero-sum games of which few really exist, whether in sports or for simple amusement purposes or in real life, such as at work, people will eventually cheat. It’s simply just what they do. And that would be for a whole myriad of quaint and silly reasons. It's just how it goes, that’s all.

    Some do it for fun, or out of boredom, some for another ulterior motive like monetary gains or imagined enhanced prestige. But so what..! Nothing is perfect, neither are most people I know of. Some will cheat because they are no good dirty low life scumbags, some will cheat just for the mere sport of it, or they’re looking for a reaction. But the point that should be taken in all this is it’s merely a game, no more perfect with Ingress players than with anything or anyone else in life.

    So if there are weaknesses in the game's rule structure which can be exploited, then it will be sooner or later by someone, for whatever reason. OMGosh..! Is this a real newsflash to anyone?

    Please.. go watch a baseball or football game some evening. Players [all professional athletes] cheat right in front of the cameras. And they get away with it 20-25% the time, in missed tags, illegal tackles, and so on ad infinitum. Whenever caught on camera, though missed by the overseeing officials, we all just laugh it off and admire the culprit(s) in our own private secret anti-hero kind of way.

    I’d like to suggest putting time and effort into petitioning for a practical/pragmatic rules change, as in other gaming situations, i.e. baseball, football, hockey, basketball, yacht sailing, golf, dodge ball, tennis, and so on. Otherwise, just as the old wise sage Captain Murphy [USAF] once said "If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he [or she] will." And yet life still goes on. Yeah, s..it happens, but things move on. At the end of the day it's eventually Miller time somewhere. What else can anyone do?

    P.S. @ Anonymous, how is anyone among the Ingress community able to "enforce" anything, regarding the game or its agents? Purely a rhetorical question, at the very least..

    en•force /enˈfôrs/

    Verb
    Compel observance of or compliance with (a law, rule, or obligation).
    Cause (something) to happen by necessity or force.

    Synonyms
    force - compel

    [maybe] just for the record:

    The choice of that particular word – enforce – suggests that agents/players of the Ingress game, singularly or collectively, have some sort of mandated capability to "cause-and-effect" how other people play, how they might choose to play the game. In other words, its usage suggests agent/players, or the Ingress originators, have some magical empowerment at their disposal to compel someone [anyone] to follow a specified set the rules. I don’t think so.

    Alone or as a group it seems from my place in the bleachers there are no police or magistrates, no umpires, no referees, empowered with the rule of law and order to enforce anything, let alone the way the game gets played by anyone – other than by the individuals as a matter of example. So how are you going to "enforce" anything? This also begs the question does anyone among the players realize that this is merely a game, an elaborate electronic/physical geographic amusement. And everyone is playing at present strictly voluntarily; any so-called rules are at best only arbitrary since there is no such thing the Ingress police, official umpires, or a professional Ingress Player’s Association.

    And, as for that lowlife, scum sucking swine-hearted imbecile ;-) , aka ‘AP heartbreaker’ ..my hat's off to you my friend if you did what you’re accused of doing. Otherwise never mind if you’re not guilty and didn't do anything. There are much more important things to worry about; so take care, and keep your proverbial electronic [android] powder dry. It's only a game don't-cha-know. Or hasn't that occurred to anyone? ..Just my 2 cents. Thanks to all for allowing.

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    1. Good read and good to know I'm not the only one that doesn't get too worked up if someone cheats. Live you stated, it's inevitable and a bit of cheating during beta may actually be a good thing as it will provide Niantic with valuable data and hopefully allow for implementation of features designed to identify and reduce cheating prior to general release to the public.

      What does bother me are things that affect people in real life. Creepy heat maps by stalkerish players with anger issues, real life threats, calling a player's work, etc. have no place in the game.

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    2. I'll take you up on your rhetorical question...

      The same way churches do. The same way manners work. You enforce it through peer pressure. It's a team game, and if you get excommunicated from the team the game is pretty much over.

      But of course, you're not going to do that because your moral compass has already decided that cheating is acceptable and people who don't do it are just losers.

      Lastly, it *is* just a game. What is so important about it that it warrants cheating? It seems to me that that cheaters are the ones taking it too seriously.

      Oh, and since you're so fond of dictionary definitions:
      so·ci·o·path - Noun - a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

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    5. You said: "..The same way churches do. The same way manners work. You enforce it through peer pressure... you get excommunicated from the team the game is pretty much over."

      Bad logic!

      In church the "game" is said to go on for "eternity" while "excommunication" is only the beginning, eternally speaking, for the average Joe pew-sitter. Besides, historically churches have been notoriously bad at setting example in the first place – i.e. Roman Catholic pedophile scandal, Vatican Banking irregularities of late, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries [his use of street prostitutes] the Spanish Inquisition as another from the more distant past. There's more the list is long.. [it's just bad logic and a bad example that you draw on]

      You said: "...you're not going to do that because your moral compass has already decided that cheating is acceptable and people who don't do it are just losers."

      I very clearly alluded to the use of power of example to thwart cheating in one of my original posts. It's there in plain sight. :-)

      And I never said that my moral compass accepts cheating, not ever, not once! I don't remember saying anything of the sort. Show me where I said it. I said: [loosely] that people cheat, and what of it? Why get your panties in a knot over it? That's all! I absolutely agree about peer pressure and leading by example. I even said as much.

      You said: "What is so important about it [the game] that it warrants cheating?" Also agreed...

      I don't condone cheating personally for myself, while you're saying I do. ...Excuse me..? I tend to avoid that temptation every time I can. I'm probably successful about 98.5 % of the time.

      Some folks are up-standing self-starters, while some are just lying down up-starts. ..Sadly true. I try to be the better one. And, I try not to -judge- too much if I can help it. Mistakes get made, which is why erasers are on the other ends of the pencils we buy at Office Depot. Try to imagine a word processor without the cut-and-paste, or a delete key options. :-)

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    6. [added]
      Not all cheaters are sociopaths. There are many levels of cheating and it's not a dialectic kind of thing. Cheating comes in many forms [let's say 0 - 10]. Sociopaths are on the higher extreme end of that; it’s very one dimensional. And there is a big difference, a pretty simple concept really. [haha]

      That said, those who believe they can or they must control other people to suit their version of reality may come under the larger heading of being a narcissist [just a possibility] or at least on the narcissistic spectrum somewhere – if you get my drift.

      You really can't control varied outcomes summarily, especially based on other people's behaviors. Fact is.. you/we/me have very little control over others [nearly none]. We only have control over ourselves – hence the concept of "leading by example." Me, I don't always have a lot of time to see that everyone else is in formation and on the right heading. I just don’t! I have enough trouble seeing to my own correct navigation and compass settings. :-)

      Don't forget, people in the throws of playing this game are acting in a group mind-think kind of way. Often discriminating personal moral sensibilities are pushed aside for the sake of the group-think, especially in the heat of the moment. Why condemn someone to an eternity of fire, melting brimstone, and devilish pitchforks for a simple mistake? That's the job of the closest narcissist preacher down at the 1st Church of the Gooey Death and Discount House of Worship. [haha]

      We're all adults, give credit for adult behavior. Most are capable of it given the chance. Or more bluntly, if needed, get off the soapbox it's about to collapse under the moral weight. Again it's only a game! :-)

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  26. 1) Spoty Portals and an Invalid Portal with no cell coverage :

    Pinehurst Post Office Portal

    2) Invalid Portal a few blocks down :

    Squirrel Light Portal - A porch light really?

    Papa Smurf and baby smurf knows that both spot has no cell coverage , and yet the smurf insist on using it to anchor Links/Fields.

    Do hear us crying about it? No.

    The anonymous should eat his own words for crying about how we pick portals to create fields, he don't cry about it when his agents does it. Don't contradict yourself. You know who you are, The big crybaby. Grow up to be a pappa smurf , you are not a baby smurf anymore.

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  27. Pinehurst Post Office portal has AT&T coverage. Multiple Enlightened players have been there and have taken the portal.

    I guess I could go there and get a picture taken of me holding my phone showing one or two bars of coverage and that day's newspaper in my hand, but I'm too lazy. Disbelievers are welcome to drive out there and verify that it is indeed a legitimate post office, transacting the Postal Service's business during standard business hours. No sat phone needed.

    As for the Squirrel Light, I'll check it out. It may be more laughable than "SYB Roots" in Oakland.

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  28. Sorry for the Necropost but I am curious: Why not simple use a flipcard on the portal that APheartbreaker had to take down? An ADA on a lightly linked portal would not have attracted as much attention...and even if it did, the links were being cast... the race was on.

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