https://niaoops.com/ Recent content on NiaOops Hugo -- gohugo.io Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2023/04/04/profits-over-players/ Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2023/04/04/profits-over-players/ Niantic really outdid themselves with these latest changes to Pokemon Go. Who needs affordable and accessible remote raids when you can make a few extra bucks by making it harder for trainers to participate in raids and raising the prices of remote raid passes? They’re all about making a profit at Niantic, and if that means making gameplay more expensive and less enjoyable for their trainers, then so be it. After all, who needs happy and satisfied trainers when you can have a few extra dollars in your pocket? https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/06/better-bad-ideas/ Sat, 06 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/06/better-bad-ideas/ Yesterday’s post brought to light that Niantic needs help monetizing Ingress. They’re so bad at it that they are willing to sacrifice user experience for cheap opportunities to trick customers into micropayments. Ingress has its CORE subscription, but what do you get for $4.99 US a month? There’s some other stuff, but you are paying for 500 inventory slots. You can spend $4.99/month on 500 inventory slots or get an additional 2,000 inventory for free with a backpack account. https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/05/this-is-an-intentional-change/ Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/05/this-is-an-intentional-change/ Niantic released a version of Ingress with new store buttons in the attack and deploy carousels. It’s a very popular feature and has increased sales of XMP, resonators, and CORE subscriptions because Ingress agents finally feel like Niantic is paying attention to them. Just kidding … Agents have been reporting the new feature as a bug and have been referencing it as the main reason that they are terminating their CORE subscriptions. https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/03/communication-is-dumb/ Wed, 03 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/03/communication-is-dumb/ Niantic appears to have fixed the cycle score last night. The first two scores for 2022.30 remain incorrect, but the four subsequent checkpoints appear correct. Still no communication from Niantic: Nothing in the app Nothing on the website Nothing in the Community Forum Nothing on Twitter Nothing in Telegram Nothing … Ingress agents can rest assured that while Niantic isn’t interested in letting them know what is wrong with the game or when it will be fixed, Niantic is interested in every effort that can be made to monetize the game. https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/02/scores-are-dumb/ Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/08/02/scores-are-dumb/ Ingress agents started scoring cycle 2022.30 today and were greeted with a surprise. Either the rules have changed, and the score no longer includes fields thrown before the cycle, or some bug has screwed up the cycle score globally. It’s classic Niantic. Two checkpoints and zero communication. Update 1 (17:20 UTC): Niantic has communicated twice with the community since Ingress agents reported issues with the 2022.30 cycle score: thia wants everybody to know that the NL1331X badge ticks from Munich have been pushed Level 8 Day is coming! https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/01/10/no-snorlax-on-the-job/ Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2022/01/10/no-snorlax-on-the-job/ In what I hope will be the most extraordinary legal filing in 2022, two Los Angeles police officers have lost their appeal for being fired for playing Pokémon Go. Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell (petitioners), former police officers for the City of Los Angeles (the City), filed a petition for writ of administrative mandate challenging the City’s decision to terminate their employment. A board of rights found petitioners guilty on multiple counts of misconduct, based in part on a digital in-car video system (DICVS) recording that captured petitioners willfully abdicating their duty to assist a commanding officer’s response to a robbery in progress and playing a Pokémon mobile phone game while on duty. https://niaoops.com/blog/2021/12/31/testing-in-production/ Fri, 31 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2021/12/31/testing-in-production/ Log4Shell Exploit In Comm A couple of weeks ago, eagle-eyed scrapers noticed an unusual message in Ingress comm from agent d0gboy. The message attempted to exploit a newly discovered vulnerability in the Java logging library Log4J, commonly referred to as Log4Shell. The exploit uses a Message Lookup Substitution feature to replace specific strings with dynamically generated ones. Some of these methods can download, deserialize, and execute code. https://niaoops.com/blog/2021/12/28/two-years-later/ Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2021/12/28/two-years-later/ It’s been two years since our last update. What has been keeping Niantic busy? First of all, Niantic officially killed off Catan World Explorers in November, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unlimited is being shut down in January. We will miss collecting logs and curses, but Niantic is beta testing Transformers: Heavy Metal in New Zealand and the Philippines and released Pikmin Bloom in November to fill the void. Pokémon Go continues to be a cash cow for Niantic. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/12/25/niantic-understands-recursion/ Wed, 25 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/12/25/niantic-understands-recursion/ Yesterday I was reminded that I still hadn’t reviewed Trusted Reporter 2.0. For those of you who are new here, feel free to catchup on the saga that’s been Trusted Reporters 2019: Agents Lament End of Trusted Reporters World Without Trusted Reporters Krug Provides Trusted Reporter Update It’s Super Effective Trusted Reporter Whistleblower Speaks Will Trusted Reporters Reboot Trusted Reporter AMA Redacted Mods Revealed Trusted Reporter Program Updates According to the Trusted Reporter 2. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/11/18/hpwu-update-is-great/ Mon, 18 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/11/18/hpwu-update-is-great/ We are investigating login issues impacting #WizardsUnite players after they download the 2.7.0 update. Please stay tuned for updates. Thank you for your patience. — Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) November 19, 2019 Wizards can’t login if they updated HPWU today. You would think “logging in” is one of those things that would fall on their list of acceptable criteria to test before shipping it but what do I know? https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/11/03/tr-program-updates/ Sun, 03 Nov 2019 21:48:32 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/11/03/tr-program-updates/ Better late than never? Andrew Krug initially announced that Niantic was rebooting the Trusted Reporter program back on August 21st. The program ended on August 26th with a goal to “have the next version of program up and running late next week …” Here we are more than two months later and we finally have an update. Trusted Reporters 2.0 from r/Ingress Why did I choose to link to that Reddit post instead of the original announcement? https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/20/secrets-of-the-brokers-guild/ Sun, 20 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/20/secrets-of-the-brokers-guild/ Yesterday we published Brokers Guild Scandal Day 730 in somber recognition that it had been two years since Cleaningress had published Inside The Brokers Guild. If you were to read Inside The Brokers Guild you might get the impression that the Brokers Guild was only used for guardian hunting. That isn’t true, and the members of Cleaningress knew it wasn’t true. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/19/brokers-guild-scandal-day-730/ Sat, 19 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/19/brokers-guild-scandal-day-730/ October 19, 2017, shortly after 11:30 AM, Cleaningress published Inside The Brokers Guild. Inside The Brokers Guild was an investigation that exposed the existence of a Resistance-only Slack. The Slack had channels with bots that were connected to scraped data. Even more insidiously, their whistleblower had provided them with screenshots that showed members of The Brokers Guild using the bots to coordinate the kill of an Enlightened guardian. The members of Cleaningress had previously leveraged sophisticated campaigns across social media networks to manipulate Niantic into restoring anomaly badges, #rechargeisfamily, for recharge room participants. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/14/why-does-hpwu-suck/ Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/14/why-does-hpwu-suck/ HPWU is notoriously buggy. According to the bean counters at Sensortower, during September Harry Potter: Wizards Undesirables was downloaded 1/10th as often as Pokemon-Go. That’s a big difference, but they also estimate that it’s earning 1/65th as much revenue as Pokemon-Go. These are stunning differences. BTW, if you want to understand the sudden drive to monetize Ingress, just take a look at those revenue estimates. It’s hard to believe that HPWU is struggling after the success of PoGo. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/13/about-that-umbra-anomaly/ Sun, 13 Oct 2019 17:37:18 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/13/about-that-umbra-anomaly/ Enlightened and Resistance POC’s in Dresden Yesterday was a day of firsts. It was the first Prime-only anomaly and the first anomaly that Niantic required participants pay to play. Performance was a fear before the October First Saturday events and those fears turned out to be entirely justified when Niantic’s servers turned out to be scaled too low to handle First Saturday. Let that sink in for a second; Niantic had their servers turned down so low that they couldn’t handle a non-competitive cross-faction event. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/13/our-favorite-tweets/ Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/13/our-favorite-tweets/ This week Niantic renamed Operation Portal Recon to Wayfarer. This is the first step to opening the program to Pokemon-Go trainers. Sufficed to say, Ingress agents aren’t happy about it and Pokemon-Go trainers aren’t happy that they don’t have access yet. Also, as is traditional about a Niantic release, Wayfarer is buggy as shit: The new submission history in Wayfarer shows portals that were denied and never went live as being accepted The new submission history in Wayfarer lost some submissions that haven’t been reviewed yet The thresholds that Niantic uses to activate cooldown are way too low Emails from Niantic now contain a link to the Google storage location for the portal image instead of an embedded image or a link to the portal in intel The math behind the Total Wayfare scores appears to add up if you have reviewed very few, but it all falls apart for most people who have a lot of agreements for some reason Upgrades are being counted as redeemed without actually doing anything The UI was redesigned for Pokemon-Go trainers and is no longer intuitively layed out for agents who already knew what they were doing Anywayz, here’s the agents on the matter: https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/01/redacted-mods-revealed/ Tue, 01 Oct 2019 23:04:28 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/10/01/redacted-mods-revealed/ Developers responsible for mods to the [redacted] scanner have begun revealing what they had built now that it is officially retired and no longer works. This Tweet shows the user interface for a mod that appears to aid in automatically hacking portals. There are options for whether or not to request glyphs and to adjust the accuracy of responding to glyphs. With scanner [REDACTED] being retired it's time to share some details about cheating in Ingress, still amused that Niantic had a hard time detecting the mods we did. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/30/niantic-legitimizes-spoofer/ Mon, 30 Sep 2019 23:24:09 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/30/niantic-legitimizes-spoofer/ If only some entrepreneurial scientist had the foresight to turn the massive amounts of drama generated by shard events into electricity. Ingress agents had almost gone the whole shard event without any drama. Almost … then Shard 12, The Humanist, spawned in Bangalore, India. Initially, everything was going great. Xfac plans had been drawn up to send the shard to the target in South America. The shard moved smoothly through India and ran into a snag in Sri Lanka where the agents of one faction decided a change of plans were in order. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/24/trainers-opr-concerns/ Tue, 24 Sep 2019 05:22:57 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/24/trainers-opr-concerns/ Zeroghan at GoHub is concerned that Ingress agents are boycotting OPR over Niantic’s announcement that anomalies will require a $15 ticket to attend. The article surmises that without a Pokemon version of OPR, Ingress, Pokemon Go, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unleashed will all suffer because OPR is the only way to get new portals, stops, and inns approved. You can submit new portals in Ingress, and new stops in Pokemon Go, but only Level 12 Ingress agents can access Operation Portal Review to vote on whether or not a submission should be added to the network. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/23/shards-cause-drama/ Mon, 23 Sep 2019 03:44:39 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/23/shards-cause-drama/ Redditor mablesyrup took to Reddit yesterday to complain about the fact that the Shard in Romania hasn’t moved and there are agents in Romania actively working on stopping it from moving. Hey Romania! from r/Ingress This global shard event should be a lot easier than it has been. A few years ago, without xfac support, a Shard could spawn on one half of the globe and get scored at a target on a different hemisphere in four jumps. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/22/our-favorite-tweets/ Sun, 22 Sep 2019 21:57:37 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/22/our-favorite-tweets/ Earlier this week we covered how Niantic cancelled the global Mewtwo Legendary Raid Hour after they failed to start it on-time. The event has been rescheduled for October 8th and trainers, many of them had to take time off of work in order to guarantee that they could join their raid groups on time, are not happy that the event has been rescheduled so far into the future. Additionally, many of them felt that they deserved compensation from Niantic for their troubles and that a three hour raid day isn’t too much to ask. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/21/trusted-reporter-ama/ Sat, 21 Sep 2019 16:16:18 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/21/trusted-reporter-ama/ Redditor clientBlob has posted an AMA in the r/Ingress community that will allow former Trusted Reporters to anonymously respond to your questions about the program. I was a Trusted Reporter, AMA from r/Ingress Over a month ago Andrew Krug announced that the Trusted Reporter program was being shutdown and at the beginning of September he postponed the monthly Global Community Manager AMA until October 7th. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/21/state-of-the-oops/ Sat, 21 Sep 2019 16:03:36 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/21/state-of-the-oops/ This last week has been our biggest ever with over 10,000 visits to the site. The uptick in new traffic was driven by visitors reading Niantic is bad at shards and Niantic dissapoints. Thanks to everybody who helps with the site, everybody who links to the site, and everybody who visits the site. And, of course, special thanks to Niantic. Without you we wouldn’t have anything to write about. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/20/will-tr-reboot/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 13:12:24 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/20/will-tr-reboot/ Wednesday, unceremoniously, marked the one month anniversary of Andrew Krug announcing that the Trusted Reporter program was being rebooted and we still do not have any details about the program that was supposed to replace it within a week or two of the announcement. The last update that we did receive was two weeks ago, the initial deadline for replacing it, when Krug said it was “taking longer than anticipated” to establish the new program. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/18/niantic-disappoints/ Wed, 18 Sep 2019 12:09:43 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/18/niantic-disappoints/ Methinks today is going to be a rough day around NiaOps. First Niantic failed to make the first jump for the current Ingress shards event last night, and now the Legendary Raid Hour with Mewtwo has been cancelled globally after it failed to start in the GMT+12 timezone. Like they did with the global shards event, someone at Niantic kicked off the Legendary Raid Hour after they became alerted to the delay. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/17/niantic-is-bad-at-shards/ Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:45:24 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/17/niantic-is-bad-at-shards/ A few hours ago another global shards challenge began. It’s the first one we’ve been asked to tolerate for a while. But, in a twist, it’s the first one we’ve had to be cross-fac friendly to win. Three shards have spawned in this latest shard game. We just passed the first jump window and none of them were successfully moved. According to the rules the shards should jump between any two L4 portals, or higher, that are linked together. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/17/shards-jump-late/ Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:41:19 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/17/shards-jump-late/ Shortly after NiaOops published Niantic Is Bad At Shards Andrew Krug announced, “We are looking into the shards not jumping. If it can happen we’ll force a jump to occur momentarily.” And then the two shards that should have jumped did. Oh Snap Someone should have probably stayed up late and monitored the scheduled job that was running for the first time in a long time. That probably would have meant paying someone overtime though. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/15/our-favorite-tweets/ Sun, 15 Sep 2019 23:20:14 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/15/our-favorite-tweets/ Would be nice... I've mistakenly spun stops so many times and got those unwanted 5km eggs :( pic.twitter.com/BKK5YMpQcf — 𝙒𝙃𝙔𝙇𝘿𝙀 (@Whylde_) September 12, 2019 Fear its unending power! pic.twitter.com/h58qKyTRNN — Andres Bordoni (@BordoniAndres) September 9, 2019 WTF!! pic.twitter.com/KLwQqTkzwu — Supaa801 🔥 (@Supaa801) September 13, 2019 That’s just horrible. And cringey pic.twitter.com/MqcYdsMmnl — Mitch (@pizzalover4189) September 13, 2019 no! i was planning on beating old grandmas with a metal bar https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/13/umbra-by-country/ Fri, 13 Sep 2019 04:19:56 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/13/umbra-by-country/ Agents worldwide are announcing that the anomaly registration fee, announced by Niantic today, is too expensive and they won’t be able to afford to participate in their local recharge rooms. NiaOops has researched it and the average agent in Mexico will have to work seven times as long as the average agent in the United States to afford to support their faction. This graph shows the number of hours that the average agent will have to work in order to afford the UMBRA registration fee in their home country: https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/12/pay-to-play/ Thu, 12 Sep 2019 23:16:30 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/12/pay-to-play/ Niantic opened registration for the UMBRA anomalies today. Among the changes, there is no longer a free ticket option for participation. Agents have to pay at least $15 ($13 to Niantic, $2 in service fees, and $? in taxes) to participate on-site or off-site. Off-site participants include members of recharge rooms, decoders, and intel operators. Registration for the UMBRA #IngressAnomaly is now live! We also have some updates on events and ticketing, to learn more visit https://t. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/10/bold-strategy-cotton/ Tue, 10 Sep 2019 23:10:54 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/10/bold-strategy-cotton/ Niantic has decided to send [Redacted] away with a bang. Agents, Nemesis has become emboldened by the outcome of Aurora after your victory over Myriad. In one week they will attempt to alter humanity through the use of 13 global Shards. Capture them to save humanity! Check this link for more details: https://t.co/FSceRXV4c9 pic.twitter.com/fEMwgCdQfh — Ingress (@ingress) September 10, 2019 That’s right kids, the last two weeks we get to spend with [Redacted] we get to spend with Shards. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/09/can-niantic-stop-scrapers/ Mon, 09 Sep 2019 23:47:18 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/09/can-niantic-stop-scrapers/ In a ruling against LinkedIn; an appeals court has found that scraping a website doesn’t violate US anti-hacking laws. Additionally, the appeals court upheld the lower court order that prevents LinkedIn from using technical measures to block the scraping. Some legal experts think that the ruling could impact options that Niantic could use to restrict collection of data from its servers. Like Niantic, LinkedIn’s terms-of-service prohibits scraping. The court ruled that data that isn’t protected by a password requirement isn’t actually protected by the terms-of-service. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/07/tr-whistleblower-speaks/ Sat, 07 Sep 2019 18:46:09 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/07/tr-whistleblower-speaks/ Early this morning a whistleblower published the “Requirements & Expectations” for Operation Trusted Reporter. The document outlines the guidelines for being a trusted reporter. The document appears to be legitimate according to agents who are familiar with the inner workings of the Trusted Reporter program. Trusted Reporters: A brief overview from r/Ingress https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/07/our-favorite-tweets/ Sat, 07 Sep 2019 02:09:16 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/07/our-favorite-tweets/ To be frank, getting 10km egg is one hard thing. Second, 10km hatching is anything but Unown. 😓 — Nataly (@TheGenuineZ) September 5, 2019 So disable that annoying message in front of EVERY SINGLE RAID! — The Chad (@C_Stratto27) September 4, 2019 None yet. I’d love an Unown T, so Eevee can take a break! pic.twitter.com/0ykL8c9Cxc — Bobby ❖ PKMNsnaps (@pkmnsnaps) September 5, 2019 Same time as the Nintendo Direct. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/06/krug-provides-tr-update/ Fri, 06 Sep 2019 23:01:54 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/06/krug-provides-tr-update/ It’s been 16 days since Andrew Krug confirmed the rumors that the Trusted Reporter program was being rebooted. This morning he provided a brief update on the new program: Update on Trusted Reporter program from r/Ingress The original announcement promised that there would be a new Trusted Reporter program, “up and running late next week or the week after at the latest.” Those deadlines have passed and, like most Niantic rollouts, today we were informed that there would be a delay. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/06/its-super-effective/ Fri, 06 Sep 2019 11:18:46 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/06/its-super-effective/ Since the Ingress Trusted Reporter program ended one of the NiaOops investigative reporters has been scouring Reddit searching for examples of the effectiveness of Niantic’s new heuristic, automatic, anti-cheating algorithms that they are rumored to be deploying to Ingress. The theory is that these algorithms would have already been successfully deployed to Pokemon Go. Now they are receiving trending alerts from Reddit about posts in r/PokemonGoSpoofing and r/spoofertrades. Electrike lure party✨ from r/PokemonGoSpoofing 10 New Shadow Pokémon ! https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/05/nice-try-trolls/ Thu, 05 Sep 2019 20:06:29 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/05/nice-try-trolls/ Here’s one example of a troll trying to spread a rumor that the Trusted Reporter program is still active: Card On August 21st Andrew Krug confirmed that the Trusted Reporter program was being rebooted and that there would be a period of time between the end of the current program and the start of the new-and-improved program. The original program was terminated on August 26th. The Slack was shutdown and all Trusted Reporters lost their ability to escalate support tickets. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/04/world-without-tr/ Wed, 04 Sep 2019 23:31:29 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/04/world-without-tr/ Without trusted reporters spoofers are, once again, running rampant. Today’s example comes from Montana; we first heard about this account on Tuesday, September 2nd. It had reportedly been killing Enlightened fields and elderly portals. Another Obvious Spoofer NiaOops reached out to contacts around the world and nobody can find any indication that the account is more than a week old. Agents have supplied us with data that indicates that it’s been in Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Montana. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/03/android-10-released/ Tue, 03 Sep 2019 23:51:30 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/03/android-10-released/ The latest version of Pokémon GO, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Ingress Prime all support Android 10. Please visit the Play Store and ensure your app is up-to-date to continue playing uninterrupted. Keep in mind that Scanner [REDACTED] doesn't support Android 10. — Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) September 3, 2019 A handy-dandy Android 10 support reference for you: Niantic Product Support Pokémon GO Yes Harry Potter: Wizards Unite Yes Ingress Oops Am I mistaken in believing that Niantic is the only game publisher who thinks that their applications support the OS and not the other way around? https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/02/redacted-retires-in-pdt/ Mon, 02 Sep 2019 01:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/02/redacted-retires-in-pdt/ Niantic is pushing notifications to Ingress clients that their favorite scanner is being retired on Monday, September 30 (PDT). Dates displayed without times aren’t typically displayed with a timezone. Nice Clarification In other news, we have only heard reports of this being displayed in Prime. … Yeah, Niantic is only telling the agents already using Prime that Redacted is being retired. #badatretiringsoftware https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/01/krug-cancels-september-ama/ Sun, 01 Sep 2019 17:26:15 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/01/krug-cancels-september-ama/ On Friday Andrew Krug published his answers to the August AMA. He also announced that the September AMA was being canceled: Due to this being published on August 30th, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to hold another AMA in just a few days. There are a lot of changes coming in the month of September and I think it would be better to hold off until October 7th for the next AMA for those to be implemented so we avoid speculative questions and you have a chance to update Ingress and see the enhancements. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/01/trainers-thrilled-research-breakthroughs/ Sun, 01 Sep 2019 14:34:41 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/01/trainers-thrilled-research-breakthroughs/ Niantic has announced that Research Breakthrough encounters for September and October will be with Eevee wearing flower crowns. Trainers also have the chance to encounter a shiny Eevee wearing a flower crown. The encounters for July and August were legendary Pokemon Latias, Latios, Kyogre or Groudon. Chance encounters with shiny variants of any of the four were also possible. Many trainers have taken to Twitter to argue that Research Breakthrough encounters with hippie Eevee’s instead of legendary Pokemon is a step backwards: DELETE THIS. https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/01/agents-lament-end-of-tr/ Sun, 01 Sep 2019 01:23:17 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/2019/09/01/agents-lament-end-of-tr/ Reports have started to come in from agents who are having difficulty getting obvious spoofers banned. They blame Andrew Krug’s decision to reboot the Trusted Reporter program for their troubles. They counted on Trusted Reporters to take their reports, provide honest feedback, and prioritize tickets with NiaOps. Agents are back to feeling ignored by a system that closes their tickets without any feedback. Today’s report comes from an agent who is disappointed because they had been involved in a BAF operation over a large urban area. https://niaoops.com/blog/hello-darkness-my-old-friend/ Thu, 29 Aug 2019 23:40:10 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/hello-darkness-my-old-friend/ It’s clear from the majority of the replies to these posts that this is a very popular move with the community. We’re announcing that Scanner [Redacted] will be retired on Monday, September 30. Thank you to all Agents who joined the ongoing global fight for Mind Units and control of the Portal Network. Going forward, Agents can continue to access Ingress by using the Ingress Prime app. pic.twitter.com/mmDioCdDSO — Ingress (@ingress) August 30, 2019 REDACTED LEAVING SEPTEMBER 30 from r/Ingress https://niaoops.com/blog/events-missing-from-ingress-calendar/ Thu, 29 Aug 2019 14:07:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/events-missing-from-ingress-calendar/ Agents are concerned today because Mission Days for October, and possibly other events, are missing from the event calendar. While the events aren’t showing up on the calendar, their event pages appear to still be available on the site. The missing events include: Tucson, Arizona, USA on October 5, 2019 Guadalajara, Mexico on October 13, 2019 Sacramento, California, USA on October 13, 2019 Pucallpa, Peru on October 19, 2019 Zion National Park, Utah, USA on October 26, 2019 https://niaoops.com/blog/whats-wrong-harry-potter/ Tue, 27 Aug 2019 20:35:40 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/whats-wrong-harry-potter/ [storyboard_disappointed_0006_badatgames_week2_intro_content_00] [storyboard_disappointed_0006_badatgames_week2_intro_content_01] [storyboard_disappointed_0006_badatgames_week2_intro_content_02] https://niaoops.com/blog/friendly-tr-reminder/ Mon, 26 Aug 2019 07:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/friendly-tr-reminder/ Andrew Krug announced last week that the current Trusted Reporter program will end today, August 26th, and that Niantic intends to replace the program with a new one featuring “more clarity and ability to address issues at a larger scale.” We’re writing to confirm that your report has been carefully investigated and we have taken appropriate action as per our policies. By all accounts the Trusted Reporter program was very successful. https://niaoops.com/blog/hpwu-are-they-mocking-me/ Sun, 25 Aug 2019 18:39:00 -0600 https://niaoops.com/blog/hpwu-are-they-mocking-me/ Resets In: 6 Days I’m aware that complicated concepts like calendars are the type of problem that computer science has failed to master. Or has it? The screenshot above displays a calendar for a month that doesn’t exist (at least not August 2019). However, the real salt in the wound are those 100 coins that I could earn by logging in on August 32nd. I could really use those. https://niaoops.com/blog/br-sets-the-record-straight/ Sun, 25 Aug 2019 17:53:51 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/br-sets-the-record-straight/ Brian Rose responded to theories that Niantic was using the Aurora Global Glyph Challenge to increase sales in the Ingress Store: Card https://niaoops.com/blog/real-goals-behind-aurora/ Sat, 24 Aug 2019 06:39:00 -0600 https://niaoops.com/blog/real-goals-behind-aurora/ With only two and a half days remaining it’s painfully evident that the Ingress community is going to fail at the Aurora Global Glyph Challenge: Aurora Global Glyph Challenge If successful then Ingress agents will earn a 33% increase in the drop rate from glyph hacking, a 1.5x AP reward for glyph hacking, and several new glyphs would have been unlocked. Failing will result in a 33% decrease in the drop rate and those glyphs will not be unlocked. https://niaoops.com/blog/krug-confirms-tr-reboot/ Wed, 21 Aug 2019 20:15:59 -0600 https://niaoops.com/blog/krug-confirms-tr-reboot/ This afternoon Global Community Manager Andrew Krug (RedSoloCup) addressed reports that Niantic was planning to end the successful Trusted Reporter program on Monday, August 26th: RedSoloCup's League of Ingress Agents So, there you have it. Niantic is NOT ending the Trusted Reporter program. Niantic is planning to release a new version of the program sometime late next week or the week after that at the latest. <sarcasm> Everybody familiar with Niantic release strategies is confident that they will hit this timeline. https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-suspends-successful-program/ Wed, 21 Aug 2019 17:15:59 -0600 https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-suspends-successful-program/ We learnt from several well positioned sources that the current form of the Trusted Reporter program will be ending on Monday, 26 August. The Trusted Reporter program has existed for some time now, perceived by players as a way to escalate tickets for spoofers in a speedier way than the usual failed process. Most of the folks that are TRs are diligent in their efforts to identify and report bad actors in Ingress. https://niaoops.com/blog/no-consequences-in-ingress/ Mon, 19 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/no-consequences-in-ingress/ In an effort to generate more clicks, the geniuses at WizardsHubUnite.info published Why NOT to Use Self-Correcting Quills: An Update on Cheating and Consequences including the following: The most well known example of breaking the ToS would be the month long suspension of Brandon Tan, arguably the most hardcore Pokémon GO player to date, who was temporarily suspended for offering a Mewtwo farming service. While there has not been such a high profile case in Wizards Unite or Ingress, Niantic certainly made their point when they suspended the account of a widely known player. https://niaoops.com/blog/aurora-hacking-challenge-broken/ Sat, 17 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/aurora-hacking-challenge-broken/ Video proof that you can retry a failed Glyph Hack and get a point in the second attempt from r/Ingress https://niaoops.com/blog/ingress-store-price-increases/ Fri, 16 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/ingress-store-price-increases/ Brian Rose made an announcement today in the Community Forums: Hi, your friendly neighborhood Ingress producer here. I wanted to share an update about recent changes I’ve made on the Store: I added a new bundle with common Heat Sinks for the Aurora live op for players who could use just a bit of extra help perfecting their glyph hacks. I’m also in the process of updating what items are available on the Store, and at what prices and quantities. https://niaoops.com/blog/anomalies-1q-2020/ Wed, 14 Aug 2019 02:34:46 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/anomalies-1q-2020/ In a surprise move Niantic released the list of anomaly sites for the first quarter of 2020 today. Excited agents taking advantage of discounts for booking early reserved their airfare. Here’s the list of dates and cities for the upcoming anomalies: Date Cities 2020/02/22 Bratislava, Slovakia Christchurch, New Zealand Colombo, Sri Lanka Fort Worth, TX, USA Macau, Macao Minsk, Belarus Sao Paolo, Brazil St Louis, MO, USA Valencia, Spain 2020/04/11 Los Angeles, CA, USA 2020/04/18 Kobe, Japan 2020/04/25 Edinburgh, United Kingdom Late in the afternoon Krug posted to the community forums: https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-notifications/ Sun, 11 Aug 2019 00:32:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-notifications/ Niantic has a long history of worthless notifications. The most famous example is “toast notification”: The toast notification was the source of inspiration for Niantic’s April Fools day prank in 2019 where they added a toast glyph and sold toast beacons in the store. You would think that all the experience with Ingress would have led to improvements in their quality control but here are two examples of similar issues with Harry Potter: Wizards United. https://niaoops.com/blog/aurora-unique-hacks/ Fri, 09 Aug 2019 02:16:38 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/aurora-unique-hacks/ What’s this? Did one of the interns accidentally activate the next event? It’s bad enough that they are going to make us glyph hack, but uniques? Just bring back global shards already! If you’re going to make us skip work and ignore our families at least give us a sense of accomplishment. https://niaoops.com/blog/ingress-item-seller-bans/ Fri, 09 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/ingress-item-seller-bans/ NiaOps announced today that they recently banned 8,000 accounts that were being used to farm gear meant to be sold online. They made assurances that every appeal is manually reviewed and claimed that 99.6% of “enforcement decisions” have been upheld. https://niaoops.com/blog/welcome-back-brian-rose/ Sun, 04 Aug 2019 04:42:31 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/welcome-back-brian-rose/ On July 24th Brian Rose tweeted that he was returning to Niantic as a Producer: Excited to share that I’ve joined @NianticLabs as senior producer on @ingress. +13 Urer’f gb znal zber nqiragherf ba sbbg jvgu sevraqf. 🏃‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/99PUNWbYwE — Brian Rose (@brianrose) July 24, 2019 Today, responding to criticism that a recent ban wave had swept up too many legitimate agents, Brian promised an update next week. No word on what will happen with any falsely banned agent’s Sojourner. https://niaoops.com/blog/embedded-reporters-psych/ Fri, 05 Jul 2019 04:09:30 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/embedded-reporters-psych/ Today Niantic asked for Embedded Reporters to apply: MYRIAD #IngressAnomaly #EmbeddedReporter applications are now open! We're looking for a few folks from each Faction to help us gather and post photos and videos from then Anomaly! Apply at https://t.co/NHYZaeuOQj pic.twitter.com/4zegVTC7OF — Ingress (@ingress) July 5, 2019 Unfortunately, they forgot to make the page available for anybody to actually submit their applications and had to tweet an acknowledgement of the issue: https://niaoops.com/blog/portal-photos-missing/ Thu, 25 Apr 2019 04:00:02 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/portal-photos-missing/ In my day we didn’t need to submit portals through [Redacted], in my day there was only one way to submit portals and it was called EMAIL NIANTIC AND HOPE THEY READ IT! That’s right! You’d stand in front of some statue and keep taking photos of it and emailing them to Niantic until it appeared in the scanner! That’s the way it was and we liked it, we loved it! https://niaoops.com/blog/bug-in-2.21/ Wed, 24 Apr 2019 03:57:58 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/bug-in-2.21/ Niantic discovered a bug in Prime version 2.21 after they started rolling it out. It wasn’t a big deal though because it only affected agents ability to make links: Agents, we discovered a bug in the Ingress Prime 2.21 release that affects the ability to make links. We’ve decided to stop releasing 2.21 and roll features and bug fixes from this release into 2.22. Thanks for your understanding! — Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) April 25, 2019 https://niaoops.com/blog/erratic-portals-and-frackers/ Mon, 04 Mar 2019 03:50:53 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/erratic-portals-and-frackers/ Some portals continue to look like they have frackers on them well after the frackers have burned out. It’s okay though, NiaOps is all over it: Agents, we've confirmed reports of unintended and erratic Portal and Fracker behavior. We are actively working on resolving these issues and will report back once we have more information. Thanks for your patience. — Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) March 4, 2019 https://niaoops.com/blog/forced-to-upgrade/ Wed, 23 Jan 2019 03:47:32 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/forced-to-upgrade/ Did you disable updates as soon as you heard that Niantic had updated Ingress 1.x to Prime? The good times are over. You need to upgrade to Prime or start using [Redacted]. Attention any Agents who are still using the original Ingress app: starting today we will require you to use Ingress Prime or Scanner [REDACTED]. This change will allow for server improvements and new features for Prime. Thanks for your understanding. https://niaoops.com/blog/batter-saver-mode/ Tue, 15 Jan 2019 03:43:48 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/batter-saver-mode/ Ingress Prime isn’t using more battery or anything. But, if you think it is, you can enable the new “Battery Saver” mode. But you don’t need to because it doesn’t drain the battery any faster than [Redacted]. Trust us. In the coming days you will receive an update to the Ingress Prime Scanner. We’re excited to announce it includes the beta rollout of a new optional Battery Saver mode that can be enabled in settings! https://niaoops.com/blog/locked-medals/ Wed, 12 Dec 2018 03:39:46 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/locked-medals/ Scanner updates to support the Year 6, Ouroboros, medal changed the agent profile screen and presented locked medals that agents had never had the opportunity to earn. It’s okay though, NiaOps is on the case: Some event medals recently appeared on your scanner as locked even if you have never participated. Based on your feedback, we’ll be changing these to not display unless you have already participated in the relevant event. https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-releases-redacted-for-apple/ Wed, 14 Nov 2018 03:16:04 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-releases-redacted-for-apple/ After being stuck for over a week in Apple’s review process, Ingress [Redacted] is now available for iOS devices. https://niaoops.com/blog/prime-login-issues/ Mon, 12 Nov 2018 03:34:38 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/prime-login-issues/ Two days ago Niantic announced that they were aware of the issues Prime users were having logging in to their scanners: Attention Agents, we are currently working on resolving a technical issue impacting your ability to access Ingress Prime. We will update you as more information becomes available. Thanks for your patience. — Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) November 11, 2018 Today Niantic announced a 2xAP bonus to make up for any losses agents might have incurred while being unable to login to Prime: https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-releases-redacted-for-android/ Tue, 06 Nov 2018 03:15:59 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-releases-redacted-for-android/ Following widespread outcry over the, forced, upgrade to Ingress Prime, Niantic has released [Redacted]. [Redacted] is the Ingress 1.x that we all had grown to know and love. In addition to launching #IngressPrime today we’re excited to announce that Scanner [REDACTED] will be live for Android tomorrow, and on iOS later this week. For more info on Scanner [REDACTED] you can read our FAQ here. https://t.co/1XhnhqKqQ6 pic.twitter.com/lQu6tOETeT — Ingress (@ingress) November 5, 2018 However, Niantic was only able to release [Redacted] for Android. https://niaoops.com/blog/prime-released-ahead-of-schedule/ Mon, 05 Nov 2018 03:04:21 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/prime-released-ahead-of-schedule/ Earlier today ingress.com was relaunched including a coded message. Decoders from both factions went to work and soon discovered that the decoded message was: Ingress Prime Releases Nov 18 However, despite all the effort of relaunching the website and including an encoded message, someone at Niantic hit a button and Prime was released as a forced upgrade for Ingress 1.x on all Apple and Android devices. The wait is over. https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-3-errors/ Thu, 25 Oct 2018 03:00:59 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-3-errors/ The link emailed to many of the Beta Wave 3 participants doesn’t work for most of the agents who signed up. An email has also been delivered to all of the Beta invitees informing them that they are no longer under NDA. https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-3-invites-delivered/ Tue, 23 Oct 2018 02:58:24 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-3-invites-delivered/ Beta Wave 3 participants received their invites today. According to the email: This link will be available to you at approximately 2 PM Pacific on Thursday, October 25 and will not be accessible earlier. Beta Wave 3 participants were chosen at random from the agents who participated in the Cassandra Prime anomaly series. https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-2-released-2/ Wed, 26 Sep 2018 02:43:08 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-2-released-2/ You know those links in the Wave 2 Beta invites? Yeah, the ones that resulted in the 404 errors. They work now. https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-2-released-404/ Wed, 26 Sep 2018 02:37:10 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/beta-wave-2-released-404/ Niantic began sending out invites to Beta Wave 2 participants today. There was only one problem, the link in the email doesn’t work. It results in a 404 error. Before sending the emails to the Beta Wave 2 participants, Niantic announced to the POC Slack: Invites for the second phase of beta, that was delayed two weeks, are going to start going out in batches starting today and spanning the next few days. https://niaoops.com/blog/ios-is-all-better/ Mon, 24 Sep 2018 02:34:03 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/ios-is-all-better/ Niantic has released an updated scanner that corrects for the problem with glyphing on the iPhone X that was caused by correcting for the incompatibilities with iOS 12. We've released an update to Ingress that addresses the iPhone X notch and has adjustments for screen resolution on retina devices. If you continue to have issues please reach out to our support team via this link: https://t.co/EWr6uMYbTM — Ingress (@ingress) September 24, 2018 https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-is-aware/ Thu, 20 Sep 2018 02:32:28 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/niantic-is-aware/ We are aware of the screen resolution issue impacting iPhone X users regarding the notch and glyph interface. We are currently working on a resolution. We appreciate your patience and will let you know when an update is available. — Ingress (@ingress) September 20, 2018 https://niaoops.com/blog/iphone-release-1.133.0-cant-glyph/ Tue, 18 Sep 2018 02:27:53 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/iphone-release-1.133.0-cant-glyph/ Niantic released Ingress version 1.133 today with iOS 12 support. iPhone X users are unable to glyph hack because Niantic didn’t account for the notch in the phone. We’ve released an update to Ingress that includes iOS 12 compatibility. If you continue to have issues after upgrading, please reach out to our support team via this link: https://t.co/EWr6uMYbTM — Ingress (@ingress) September 18, 2018 https://niaoops.com/blog/ios-12-soon-to-be-compatible/ Mon, 17 Sep 2018 02:14:45 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/ios-12-soon-to-be-compatible/ After previously announcing that iOS 12 would be incompatible with the current version of Ingress, and offering soon-to-be affected agents an opportunity to gain early access to the Prime Beta by signing up for an upcoming anomaly, Niantic backpedaled again and promised to release an update that would support iOS 12. Which, is good, because iOS 12 was released today. We're happy to say the current version of Ingress will soon be compatible w/ iOS 12. https://niaoops.com/blog/ios-12-incompatible/ Wed, 12 Sep 2018 02:00:18 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/ios-12-incompatible/ Niantic announced via G+ that Ingress 1.x is not compatible with iOS 12, the latest release of Apple’s Operating System for it’s flagship smartphone. As a result, Niantic promised to provide any agents who use iOS and registers by October 5th for the anomalies on October 20th access to the Ingress Prime Beta at least one week before the anomaly. On September 7th Niantic announced that the 2nd Wave of invitees would be delayed up to two more weeks. https://niaoops.com/blog/prime-beta-delayed/ Fri, 07 Sep 2018 01:30:19 +0000 https://niaoops.com/blog/prime-beta-delayed/ The Ingress Prime Beta (2nd Wave), initially promised to be released by private invite on August 31, 2018, has been delayed by up to 2 weeks. Niantic announced this via email to agents who registered for the beta and signed the NDA. Niantic announced the 2nd Wave of Beta invites in a G+ post on July 19th: X group of people will receive Prime beta access no later than Aug 31. https://niaoops.com/about/ Fri, 07 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://niaoops.com/about/ We view the world differently. We are reminding the world’s leading augmented reality company to focus on augmented reality games by telling them what mistakes to avoid AGAIN. We see a future where our technology paves the way for new entertainment experiences without failures, advanced robotics that avoid stupid bugs, and scaled adaptive computing — and games are where we incubate some of our most audacious thinking - not that it’s very hard with the level we have to deal with.