93: Vainless in Kythera

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Today on the show:

- Kythera Phase 1
  - What is the Kythera Mechanism and its purpose?
    - https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/18786/kythera-phase-1
  - Ornaments showing up on the map!
  - Phase 1 on 15-18th Apr – Rules:
    - Worldwide: BOLO NIA-deployed Rare Battle Beacons on Sun 17 Apr
    - Worldwide: 72-hour of Agent-deployed Battle Beacons
    - Score weighted by Battle Category
    - For more details: https://bit.ly/ING-Kyth-P1-39ND-EN
    - SCORING IS DIFFERENT – https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/18786/kythera-phase-1
- Comic Sans – Tiered Badge Event
  - Tiers are 4 = Bronze / 41 = Silver / 401 = Gold
  - Links shorter than 500m can be created under Fields.
  - Drone cooldown reduces to 41 minutes.
  - Limited-time paid Comic Sans medal will also be available in store for 2500 CMU. (The unknown Comic / toast badge)
  - In addition, Sakura Collection medals will be available all the way to May 2, 0000 UTC. (Cherry Blossms)
- Agent Steak – Cross Faction #MissionProject group that is working to get Ukraine Artwork available for Everyone that’s interested in publishing a Mural related to the war.
  - To Join the group: https://t.me/joinchat/CgqlbEBA_kwFzk-8IWilnw
  - We stand with the global community in hoping for peace and a rapid resolution to the violence and suffering in Ukraine.
    - Niantic’s games are no longer available for download in Russia and Belarus, and gameplay will also be suspended there shortly.
    - Peace doves and other field art
      - ENL dove in Moscow
      - Blue dove in Darmstadt Germany
    - https://twitter.com/NianticLabs/status/1502120716665118725?s=20&t=hJZb4ew4hhGlNDCCFUTKhg
    - Why, Niantic? I am Russian, and I don’t support ANY OF WARS. I don’t want to people hurt each other! Your game and Pokémon in general makes me feel happy. I don’t want to feel guilt for any death in wars! I am even can’t choose president of my country. I am sixteen.
    - I almost cry
- KurezeEffect Phase 3
  - Troubles with DST caused start time issues with Section 14 Battle Beacons – posted new times
  - SCORES – ENL wins Phase 3 and overall
    - Phase 1
      - ENL 1,147,662 vs 1,054,633 RES
    - Phase 2
      - ENL 975,145 vs 963,509 RES
    - Phase 3
      - Agent-deployed: ENL 151,186 vs 136,960 RES
      - NIA-deployed: ENL 567,900 vs 530,530 RES
      - NIA-deployed on ITO EN Portals: ENL 113,780 vs 72,955 RES
      - NIA-deployed on SoftBank Portals: ENL 66,050 vs 48,105 RES
    - Investigation info more info about Berenstein Bears, Gell-o and the Antikythera Mechanism
    - Payoff?
- We wanted to let you know that we are embarking on a project to improve the location accuracy of up to 15K Wayspots
  - These Wayspots will typically be smaller objects and discrete places such as statues, sculptures, signage, murals, and entrance locations to help improve existing and future gameplay experiences that rely on good location accuracy.
  - Location edits are expected to be 20 meters or less.
    - Once we modify the locations, they will be locked from being player-edited until further notice.
    - The work is expected to begin the first week of April through to early May across the following cities:
      - New York City and Tokyo – Early April 2022
      - London UK, San Francisco, and Seattle – Late April 2022
      - Los Angeles and select smaller US cities – Early May 2022
  - Expected Impact
  - Neighborhoods with a healthy density of Wayspots may see a modification or removal of a PokéStop or Gym.
  - This is a normal rebalancing of the game board as Wayspots shift to more accurate locations.

Portal links and fields in Ingress may drop.

Community Scans now active
- 7 and it queues up a Rare Battle Beacon @ the end of the CYCLE
- 13 and a Portal Fracker goes off
Dynamic Links – Share links with other agents & they see the location in remote view (Like with a keys)
FROM BRIAN ROSE Q&A –
- Mission Day Guide for 2022 has been finalized and they’re hoping to be available for Agents to apply in April.
- Stand alone 2020 MDs are contacted late 2021 and Hexathlon MDs will have the chance to host stand alone or in the future along with Hexathlons.
- Niantic Team is less than 20 people across engineering, art, marketing and community.
  - To try new things and share with other Niantic games. “The best way to describe how we work is a build > measure > learn cycle, where we launch then iterate. And the question we always go back to, for every release, is, ‘What should we ship that Ingress Agents will thank us for building?’”
- Niantic has been experimenting with 2-week sprints and 4-week release cadence, in comparison to previous updates every 2 weeks.
- Niantic is still trying to fix lag by speculative fix but having trouble to pin down.
- Premium items will continue to take inventory limit.
- Niantic is trying to re-enable gameplay in Russia and Belarus, lifting a previous difficult decision.
APRIL FOOLS DAY – Glyph Sequences running backwards!
- If you know them it may screw you up
- If you DON’T know the sequesnces you may not notice!
We’re hiring an Associate Producer in Culver City to help us drive product dev forward on Ingress.
- We turn 10 in Nov, and are working on new AR gameplay built on our Niantic Lightship platform.