adios for now, Ingress

Ingress was pretty fun, but I’m done with it for now. Hit level 14 (out of 16).

I liked running into people on the street who were also playing (happened maybe 6 or 8 times?). I didn’t like the idea of getting involved in a local community and like meeting up at fixed times. I don’t have time to join a WoW guild; I don’t have time to schedule meetups to play Ingress.

I liked having a spare moment and using it to hit up a couple nearby portals.
I didn’t like:
- explaining to people when I played it.
- that weird itch whenever I was anywhere thinking “ooh I better check if there are any good portals here”
- losing a lot of time sometimes. “oh, I’ll just hit this portal on the way home.” -> “hey… there’s another one over there that’s well linked, I should hit that one too” -> “oops I’ve been walking around here futzing around with my phone for 45 minutes.”

I liked exploring places! I’ve found like a couple neat nooks and crannies playing this.
I didn’t like usually not finding new nooks and crannies, because I spent all that “exploring” time hunched over my phone.

I liked getting points. The same way I liked getting sweet items in Diablo II.
I didn’t like glyph hacking. You kinda have to do it in order to get enough items and it’s just not a fun minigame. It takes like 30 seconds, which is too long (and it’s too involved) to just do it real quick.

Why I quit now: The Sojourner/“play Ingress N days in a row” badge was keeping me going (if I hit 360, I’d get an Onyx badge, and I’d need two onyxes to get to level 16), but I realized, if I wanted to hit the AP requirement, I’d probably get the Recharging and Glyphing badges first.


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