Category: Game

Ingress, one and a half year on…

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I have played this for close to 18 months since Terence introduced it to me. Perhaps the only other game I have played longer would have been Tribal Wars. Within this period, a number of friends have also joined this game. They are Ridzuan, DK, Roger, Jean, and Sue and her fiance. Ingress has been quite interesting in the beginning, and it has served to be the only exercise I can get. I also get to meet new people from time to time and it has helped me made new friends. There are also those who are nothing more than an annoyance, but this is not a post about their antics, as those losers are often treated as cheap entertainment, or served as an example what a sorry excuse of a human being would be.

But it has come to a point I have decided to scale down the amount of time I spend on the game, and also to leave the local Resistance community. When I told DK about this matter, I was told that Ridzuan has “retired” from Ingress as well.

It is totally expected, as I have already expect more and more people to leave the game until Niantic get its act together to deal with the rampant cheating in the form of bots and spoofers happening in Singapore. If certain people believe they can gain the upperhand by cheating, then one of the solutions maybe to give it to them. Assuming that one faction controls all the portals in Singapore and the other faction is completely rendered ineffective through cheating, so what? It’s not like one can wear that as a badge of honor or that it is going to earn them some big money like other gaming competitions.

In any case, Niantic has demonstrated that it is completely inept (if not clueless) in dealing with Ganess – the problem at the root of the spoofer / bot issue. It is even more surprising that they have not taken any legal action against Ganess, since its makers are now profiting from something that is free by charging money for Ganess accounts. At times I have even wondered whether any intellectual property laws have been broken if those chaps have actually taken the original Ingress application and modified it.

Niantic claims it is making an effort on that. In fact, that effort is best demonstrated in its enthusiasm in dropping the ban-hammer on players who used clients like “broot“. “broot” contains a number of features which many players actually welcomed. It was a wrong target because the ability to disable some useless features like unnecessary animation has been a great energy and time saver. It would have been better had Niantic shown more enthusiasm in evaluating why the “broot” features are welcomed by players and improve the occiFAIL official client. But very little of those features were implemented, with the exception of portal key count and inventory count (and even that was pathetic attempt). It took them long enough to come up with a mass-recycling feature too. Perhaps, Niantic either has hedge some of its funds in power-generation companies, or those in high places within those companies may have been investors.


Look up, and look harder!
You might find a real bot like this; or
a “spoofer” riding one.

Back to the matter of bots and spoofers. A ban is pointless in addressing the real issue because new disposable email accounts are easily obtained. By the time the cheats are banned, enough damage would have been done in the game to dishearten and disillusion players who had put in footwork and sweat in the real world to play the game. Every genuine Ingress players understand Ingress is a game that cannot be won, because even capturing an anomaly (i.e. winning a particular event) means pretty much nothing as the opposing faction can turn the tables in the future. But all of them expect to be at least able to get ahead at certain times as long as they put in a lot of effort in the game. Bots and spoofers make a mockery of that. What point is there to plan and send teams to several remote locations and work in conjunction, when a cheat with several accounts can reverse days of planning and hours of hardwork by using several disposable accounts in a matter of minutes? Really, no amount of hardwork any player puts into the game can be effective in a fight against a group of players who are running several bots on several cheap Made-in-China devices in the comfort of their home.

The next evil would be multi-accounting, which started off as a minor evil primarily due to the 2000-item limit in the game. Niantic has repeatedly ignored the feedback from players to do something about the item limit. Some players have suggested that portal keys should not count towards the item limit, while some suggested designating a portal as a vault to store “excess items” or items less used, such as keys obtained during overseas vacations. That portal will then be accessible by a designated key which cannot be used for linking nor can it be recycled. Really, the concept of a vault / bank / house is not novel, as they are present in MMORPGs such as Ultima-Online.

Thus, even though multi-accounting is against TOS and definitely against the true spirit of the game, it has more or less become a tolerated evil among some players. Offenders who are discreet about it generally get away with it. Unfortunately, multi-accounting has been taken to the extreme by some players to build level 8 portals with less than 8 people, or to show up alone to crash an opposing faction’s farm with 2 devices (and worse when those devices have more than one account where they can switch on the fly). Just like bots and spoofers, a ban is equally pointless. That’s not mentioning that perhaps even my grandmother could have acted faster than Niantic on the reports on those cheats. In one particular case, one of the offenders who has often showed up with two accounts to crash a Resistance flash farm survived for more than half a year. Even so, I was told his main account is currently only suspended, not banned. To rub salt over injury, Niantic didn’t even suspend all of his other accounts. That’s not mentioning the number of other blatant offenders who are guilty of constantly building high level portals at their own areas of play remained go scot free.

Anyway, the fact that each portal key counts towards the limit means that the problem is further exacerbated with the subsequent explosion of portals in the game. Everyone wants more portals to play with, but the lack of quality control in the portal approval and review process has been an ongoing problem for a long time. If anyone wants a quick example of the lack of quality control, one should take a look at these examples[1] [2] [3]. It would have been pretty obvious to even the untrained that these are objects from the same playground which are less than a few meters away from each other. In short, if they are placed at their correct location, they would have violated portal density guidelines and should never been approved. Notice how they are placed apart such that a small sham cluster portals now exists in the otherwise uninteresting location where these portals are located.

There is nothing bad about more portals in general. In fact, for the purpose of farming, clusters of portals near to each other is great as long as the objects truly existed, and they meet the so-called portal submission guidelines. It saves time and effort in obtaining (farming) more equipment. However, sham portals in utterly remote and uninteresting, especially those in private residential areas submitted for the benefit of the lone agent residing there, are not. Even worse are non-existent portals whereby in several instance it took months before Niantic is convinced the object really doesn’t exists. On top of which, Niantic would approve any stone sculptures or signboards regardless how common they have been. Even rubbish bins with some designs are accepted as portals. To put it bluntly, all of these low quality portals completely destroyed the reality of the storyline. Whoever the “shapers” are, they apparently see that their attempt to reach large masses of the (probably) better cultured and more intelligent human population has failed and it would be easier for them to do so through mundane objects. So much for that kind of “enlightenment”.

It is also perculiar that while Niantic has considered kindergartens and private residential areas to be off limits, the same does not extend to military compounds. Niantic is said to be set up by Google to obtain location data to improve its database, and it makes us wonder what Niantic / Google wants to do with the information on objects within foreign military bases outside the United States. It is also a complete failure of Singapore’s Total Defense concept when some servicemen do not take the security of their camps seriously.

Much has been offered by the player community to help Niantic address the portal issues. Players have suggested ideas from regional moderators from both factions to even building portal verification process (for both portal candidates and portals reported to be invalid) into a game. As usual, Niantic has disregarded such offers. Some players have suggested that Niantic do not want players to be involved to avoid accusation of bias, or to ensure the integrity of the location data gathered through Ingress. What integrity of data are we talking about when fake and non-existent objects have been made into portals? Meanwhile, Niantic set up a portals appeal community in Google+, which allows the players to contest a rejected portal candidate or a portal edit that has been rejected.


The allged portal review process

Which leads me to the next point. It is all for show. Because when one go through some of the appeals, one would either find that the so-called portal guidelines are not only as elastic as Mr Fantastic, the process itself is probably run by monkeys. There is absolutely no consistency, which leads to the famous statement: the only thing consistent about Niantic (or whatever that is even considered a process for portal reviews and submission) is its inconsistency. The lack of quality control is obvious whereby objects on a single wall art or many inane objects within the same structure end up as complete sham clusters. Niantic even went so far to say a prior approval / or removal of another portal does not set a precedence. So, whether a portal stays or goes really depend on which monkey (Oops, I apologise!) person is looking at it. Perhaps it also depends on whether this person woke up on the right side of the bed that day, or whether he had great sex the night before or even a proper breakfast that morning or not.

Finally, there is the matter of perceived bias towards the other faction on the part of Niantic. The accusation is not restricted to the Resistance. But from the perspective of Resistance players, the shifting of three artifacts to the designated Enlightened home portal in the current “Helios” anomaly series served as the most tangible evidence of this perceived bias. That’s not mentioning that Niantic has disregarded the clear evidence of cheating through the use of spoofers in one of the satellite sites during the previous “Interitus” series and handed the victory to the Enlightened. In fact, I have even heard the joke that even players with multiple accounts, bots and spoofers are given ‘preferential treatment’ depending on their faction. It maybe true considering how long the various incarnations of the “B00MZ” bot survived before they are banned. Some even believed that portal candidates submitted by the Resistance are scrutinized more stringently and often rejected. Even after those portal candidates are accepted, they are believed to be easily removed when reported by the Enlightened. Furthermore, the fact that even the Enlightened faction logo looked way better than that of the Resistance does not help. Whether the alleged faction bias is real or imagined does not really matter since Niantic doesn’t give a flying fxxk about the opinion of the players, or how some felt about it.

Anyway, there is really nothing much players can do about Niantic. As one of the agents pointed out, this is Niantic’s game and the players can only suck it up. Players can accept those rules (or whatever passes off as rules), or well, accept those rules. Perhaps Niantic may take notice only when there is a negative growth in overall game activities, but by then Google may decide Ingress has served its purpose and wind it down. Meanwhile, since it is a free game, anyone who is unhappy with Niantic can always just leave the game.

Similarly, anyone who is unhappy with how the faction community is run, can also just leave as well. As one of the Malaysian Resistance agent I met recently told me over a friendly cup of tea, no one has any right to tell another player what is important and how to play when it is the player’s own time and effort, and that player pays for his own device and data plan.

Good point. Even though that came after I made the decision to leave the community.

Android Game Introduction – Ingress

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It’s been more than a month since I last blogged. One of the reasons for failing to update is because my office was relocating and a few weekends were actually spent in the office. I fell sick after that, and immediately after I was off to Phuket for a short vacation. But the main reason was that I have been playing Ingress so I have been spending a lot of time after work walking around.

For a better idea of what Ingress is about, you can read it up here. In summary, there are two factions in the game – the Resistance (blue), who believe they are protecting mankind from Ingression of the Shapers, and the Enlightened (green), who are helping the Shapers infiltrate the Earth. Who are the Shapers? Well, the very alien beings who created the portals which both sides fight to control in the game. The Resistance and Enlightened referred to their opponents as “frogs” and “smurfs” respectively and that’s pretty straightforward which requires no further explanation.

If you ask me which side are the good guys… I will only say that the side I play (the Resistance) are the good guys.

A player can find portals in most parts of the world, since I was able to find a healthy number of them in Phuket when I was there about a week ago even though there are not as many portals as Singapore. The number of portals generally depend on how aggressively active players take photo of interesting locations – generally sculptures or statues or even buildings – and submit it to NianticLabs to put them in the game. It’s pretty straight forward because it can be done in game, but how soon NianticLabs will actually approve the creation of a portal is another matter entirely. Also, a player may find more than one portal being created in the vicinity of same place of interest, or at some distance away from the actual location. If a player is really unhappy about it, he can then submit a request to move or remove the portals and that again is subjected to the approval at NianticLabs.

Some pointers for the game. For new players, forget about taking down portals or control fields at the early stage until at least Level 4. Even at that level, it doesn’t mean one can now take on the opposing faction’s portals of all levels. So, find a more advanced (i.e. higher level) player in the vicinity using the faction chat and seek his assistance in the beginning. My experience is that most advanced players (from both factions) are more than willing to help their own newbies advance in the game. Most of the time these senior players will also give pointers on proper deployment of resonators during capture of portals, and linking portals and creating fields. After all, more players means a more even distribution of the “work load”, because there is no way one single player can try and dominate in the game. For example, a Level 8 portal can only be created by the co-operation of a few Level 8 players.


The state of control between the factions
in Singapore as of April 21st, 2013

In-game equipment (such as portal keys, resonators, bursters etc) are obtained by going to physically location of the portals and “hacking” it in the game. So a player who has wheels has advantage since it is more convenient for him to travel to different portals. A portal can be “hacked” once every 5 minutes and up to 4 times within 15 minutes before it is “burnt out”, which means it will not be yielding any more equipment for the next 4 hours. A player can also drop equipment for another to pick up but everyone is encouraged to “farm” for their own equipment. Some of the best locations to do so in Singapore are along the banks of the Singapore River, or near Millenia Walk near Suntec City. It is not very advisable to hack a portal under the control of the opposing faction even though it gives a player 100 APs. The disadvantage here is that it takes 3 times as much XMs (aka Exotic Matter) to hack an opposing faction’s portal, and the portal will “zap” the player resulting in a loss of XMs. With too little XMs a player will not be able to perform any more in-game action except to walk around and accumulate them again. So, remember to check the intel map before proceeding to an area. As of now, the in-game equipment are not purchased, and if the day comes NianticLabs resort to that to get revenue it will be the day I quit playing.

The objective of the game is control, and that it is not limited to the control of a portal. When a player link 3 portals and form a triangle, a control field is created and it is considered that all the people (known as mind units [MU]) in that area are thus under the influence of the faction which controlled the field. Currently, MUs are basically meaningless in the game other than a nice looking number and it gives no advantage to a faction so there is no need to rush to create humongous fields spanning the whole of South East Asia to make a point.

The game comes with some checks and balances which prevents a single player from being too powerful. Basically, there are 8 levels in the game (for now), and as I mention earlier it is possible for a Level 8 Player to take control of a portal and but not create a Level 8 portal all by himself. Advancing through the levels quickly is important because a player cannot use equipment of a level higher than his own even though they are still obtainable from “hacking” a portal. The reason for “leveling up” to be able to use higher equipment is self evident, and I will not go into further details here.

Although it is easier for a high level player to capture an opposing faction’s portal and take down control fields, there is also far less APs (Action Points) from doing so. In other words, it is better to simply create control fields. The Resistance players in Singapore generally frown on those who only takes down the opponents’ control fields and not capture the portals, and they strongly encourage fellow players to get the necessary pre-requisites (i.e. portal keys, used for creating links between portals) first and create control fields instead. In other words, it is better not only to take down control fields of the opposing faction, but also to capture portals and then create control fields for your own faction as it brings far more APs and allows a player to level up quickly. However, there is nothing to stop a player from just taking out a hub portal to take down several control fields at once. My personal advice is to at least complete the capture of that portal. Leaving a portal weakened simply makes it easy for the opposing faction to fully power it up again and is generally considered as aiding a player of the opposing faction to level up in the game.

Take care when linking because no matter how far the portals are, the APs obtained are the same. A long distance link from Changi to Jurong may look very pretty, but it may cut across Toa Payoh causing portals there to land on different sides of the link. That may frustrate and annoy other players who are trying to create a control field there, because links are not allowed to overlap. Large control fields are basically meaningless anyway, since the APs are not determined by the size of control field. They may look nice and impressive, but simply a call out to players of the opposing faction to give you a kick in the jaw and take it down. Above which, it takes a lot of time to travel between portals when they are far apart, which is why many Singapore Resistance players advocate creating small control fields where portals are near one another. It is simply common sense since one aspect of warfare is the attrition of resources, which means if it takes a player more time and money to travel between portals, it is to his own detriment even though he may not feel the same way.

Lastly, I have to say that this is only a game and not a matter of life and death. There is no need for animosity against players from the opposing faction. My belief is that the creators of the game wants players to socially interact while playing this game, and that interaction should not be limited to just players of the same faction. Furthermore, active players from the opposing faction is required to keep the game interesting. If all the opposing faction’s players quit, then the game will become increasingly boring since there is very little opportunities for new players for both factions to advance in the game. Calling out players from the opposing faction in the in-game public chat is fine, but avoid quarrels and name calling. All the more so for players from the same faction. One is free to disagree politely, but work together to make the game interesting.

I have seen many social groups fall apart due to infighting and internal politics. So just enjoy the game and help each other, unless the other player insist on anti-social actions such as creating links that impede the game play for players of the same faction, or deliberately weakening portals of the opposing faction in an area where their players are known to be very active.

By the way, I currently have another activation code. So if there’s anyone who needs one, please let me know.

[Game] 古惑仔 Kuwakchai.com – The Review

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After playing the game for a week or so, I must say the novelty has more or less worn off. Since I introduced it on my blog, then it is also my duty to let everyone know how I felt about the game itself. I reiterate: the game is addictive as one tries to up one’s stats to get ahead of the game. And this is when I discover one thing I disliked – i.e. the avenue to donate real money for points.

Points is sort of a second currency in the game (other than the ‘game money’ you earn) for many things – from getting yourself out of jail, to regenerating your activity points – such as energy, brave(ry) and will, to upping your stats – such as strength, agility, guard, labour and IQ, changing it for ‘game money’, buying stuff which you shouldn’t be able to get in an early stage of the game, and even getting NPCs – called Mahchais (henchmen / slaves) – which you can control (a donor’s feature). In short, points is a even more desired commodity in the game than ‘game money’ or items, since you can get almost anything as long as you have enough points!

In other words, the game can easily degenerate into nothing more than something whereby you use you real money to get as far ahead as you can afford. In fact, you can be very powerful in the game by means of a ‘money race’, which is exactly the same reason why I stopped playing Magic: The Gathering Collectible Card Game back around 1997 as a lot of rich kids were able to get a lot of power cards – with one guy boasting he spent $2000 on card purchases over a weekend.

In short, when one can play a game by using lots of real money to get ahead, then it really defeats the purpose of playing it. I would agree that money can be used to get some in-game advantage – like having a more advanced UI (user interface), in-game money getting higher interest etc, but nothing that would unbalance the game so much in the favor of one player. To allow a player to get far ahead using money is about as good as using a memory-editor to hack the money or stats. In my opinion, it takes the joy out of the game completely. What advantage is there to explore the features of the other aspects of the game at all?

But of course, it makes business sense completely to encourage buying one’s way to get ahead. The more people do that, the more profitable for those who runs the game. The case is stronger not to put into kuwakchai any form of game balance – the second thing I want to talk about.

Game Balance

Ideally, a game must be balanced so it remains playable, or so it encourages a n00b (newbie) to enter the game, especially complete n00bs who do not have friends already playing the game, or players who wants to do everything on their own. In this case, a complete n00b – say level 3 – will stand no chance when say, a level 48 player comes whacking him simply for the fact he has been capable of beating another level 3 in the level 48 player’s gang. He also stands no chance whatsoever if a higher level comes beating him up or to mug him of his ‘game money’. On top of that, a new player with help from those which have already gotten far, far ahead in the game, will rise tremendously fast. That is my case as I had help from another player – in a few days I was a level 10 punching way above my weight and beating most of those players of the same level.

This is good as one would want to encourage people bringing in their friends. However for those who brings in their friends and can’t help as much, they would find a lot of frustrated and angry friends who repeatedly get gang-banged and beaten up to the point the game becomes unplayable because they are spending most of the time in the game in hospital. At which time, I would say it’s better to quit – something I am contemplating for myself now after experiencing it in the game.

Anyway, maybe I am being too hard on the game because it is still in beta. In fact, I noticed I can beat up someone in another city without the need to be physically there which means some of the features are not yet working. Whatever the case maybe, I still believe strongly that game balance in the form of n00b protection or handicaps should be implemented to prevent players from getting far too ahead.

For example, a n00b who just joined maybe able to get in-game goodies from his friends who are higher level, but these items should not be usable until they have a certain skill level. That is to say, if given a shotgun, the n00b would miss most of the time because his skills aren’t there yet. On top of which, there should be a cap for the stats like strength, agility and guard. In other words, a level 1 player may have a total of 10000 points of stats which can be spread in different categories, but he can’t just keep buying points until he has strength that defeats all other player’s guard and agility. Is it not ridiculous if a level 1 player is capable of beating someone of level 20 simply because he spent USD100 on the game?

Also, there should be an increased difficulty in promoting to the next higher level. That is to say if 1000 experience points is needed from level one to level 2, then from level 2 to level 3 it should take 2000 experience points instead. It simply reduces the rate of a n00b with help from becoming level 15 overnight.

Next, handicap should be implemented against players of high level from taking it out on players of lower level. At this point of time level 15 player stands no chance completely against that of a level 40 in this game. He has almost no avenue of getting even, and there seems to be no mechanism at all in the game for ‘chance wins’. At least in Tribal Wars, if a player with 300 villages attacks a player with only 30, he suffers a massive handicap in morale. The big player thus suffer an handicap which increase the survivability of the smaller player, allowing him to call for help or reinforcing himself from fellow tribe members. There is no handicap for a smaller player to attack big players in Tribal Wars, however.

Finally, n00b protection. n00bs should be protected from all forms of attack until level 5 or maybe for 10 days in the game. That way the losers who didn’t train their characters well can’t just go whine to their big brother players to come and take revenge on another player who simply played better.

Desired Features

Cities – Make this feature work as soon as possible. It is ridiculous if someone in PeeJay is beating me up in Muar – several hundred kilometers away without him even being there. Allow players who own cars to drive them instead of forcing them to take the bus too, but maybe implement certain random events when they drive – like traffic fines or mishaps – so their game money can be depleted.

NPCs – Currently there is only one NPC feature. The usage of the ‘Mahchai’ to beat up high level players when one can’t beat them on their own. This is nice as it actually introduce some balance to the game, and it deducts from one’s daily number of attacks which is good as it prevents certain players from getting more attacks than the rest. Unfortunately, it is only available to donors.
I would personally like to see this being made available also to players who plays it free and an expanded usage of NPCs, maybe even the hiring NPC Assassins against higher level players.

Limit the number of attack and refills – In real life, you have 24 hours and I have 24 hours. Which means it shouldn’t be possible for one guy to be able to beat up more people simply because you have a higher level. And to allow someone to refill his number of attacks – even when they must be used by midnight – means the cost for high level players to bully low level ones is almost negligible. I won’t go so far to call for a penalty in experience gain when a high level player beats up a low level one, but well, the attacks must worth differently to players of different levels so they wouldn’t misuse them.


Read yet another review of the game.

[Game] 古惑仔 Kuwakchai.com

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Introduced recently to yet another addictive text-based browser MMORPG called 古惑仔 (古惑仔 or kuwakchai is the Cantonese equivalent of samseng [三牲仔], gangster or mafia). I find it even more addictive than Tribal Wars and it reminds me of MUD (Multi-User Dungeon).

The game is based in the towns of Malaysia so you will see many Bahasa Melayu terms like Merempit, Pudu Jail, Jahat, Lu Punya Kerja, Skolah and Pasar Malam in the game, along with some Cantonese terms like Mahchai [马仔, meaning: Henchmen].

This can be a good game for students, or those who are working. The reason being that it will take time for certain stats like Energy, Will, and Brave to regenerate, and it usually can take up to an hour while in at most 5 minutes, your commands would exhausted much of your stats. This simply means for the rest of the hour you will be waiting for your stats to regenerate. For e.g. Your energy level regenerates at about 8% every 5 minutes so you can return to work while you leave the browser idling at a corner.

However, since the each of the stats has a different regeneration rate, it means you can come back in every few minutes to try and do those things utilising a different stat, provided another player hasn’t come around to give you a beating to land you in the hospital. And thus this is what makes the game addictive so please remember not to let it impact your performance at work or divert your attention from your studies!

So, what is the game all about? Basically you do as what the mafia would do. You start small, doing the Jahat (naughty) stuff like bully kids, sell pirated DVD and stuff, to the big time stuff like killing a model and such. You can also do some ‘Biaomei’ * (prostitutes) trafficking to gain crime experience and dexterity as well, or go around beating or mugging the other players – provided your attributes are better than theirs – or join a gang or even form your own. And of course you must train yourself to have better attributes (strength, agility, guard, labor and IQ) using your points, which is hard to come by, or your energy level.

Do remember these attributes are a factor in calculating whether you succeed in a particular task so do not neglect any one attribute too much, but concentrate on strength and guard, which both puts other players in hospital or prevent yourself from ending up in it. If this sounds too confusing for you, do not worry, the admins of the game are friendly so you can email them. If not, you can always click on the section called ‘Announcements’ to look up what each attribute / stat does for you in the game and how to go about obtaining them.

Currently, 5 – 6 of my blogger friends have joined me in the fun. However, I must remind you that I am in no way responsible if you are lacking in discipline. You and you alone are responsible for your own performance at work or your grades in study. So, if you know you succumb to addiction easily or if you don’t have any discipline, my personal advice is not to play the game. I am reminded that I have heard of how some under-graduates destroyed themselves for their over-indulgence in MUD.

For the rest who would venture to try, I’ll leave you to experience and enjoy the game on your own.


For those who are interested in joining please put this under your referrer code: http://kuwakchai.com?REF=2654.

Biaomei: 表妹 (cousin) in Mandarin. Because the word 表 and 婊 (prostitute) is pronounced similarly, it generally means an illegal immigrant you tried to pass off as your cousin while you pimp them.