The COMM is the least well thought through element of the Ingress gaming app. It is just raw.
My top request right now with Niantic is to enable a Block User feature for the COMM. Minus that the COMM has a tendency to degenerate to the lowest common denominator kind of talk.
Also just having an All COMM and a secure COMM for faction chat is not enough. There is room for one more section, one called private COMM: there you only see people you allow.
There are only two global teams possible in the game and that is the way it should be. But every city in the world has at least one local team on each side. And the idea of making it possible to form many, many local teams is not an aside. Making that possible is central to bringing about complexities in the game.
The game has to be kept simple in its basics like it is now. But most of the new complexities and challenges will come from enabling easy creation of new teams. Just like you graduate from building portals to building entire farms the ultimate act in the game is when you build your own team. You don't have to, and most people will not, but that is the ultimate act in the game.
I have a global team in mind. I am going to build the top Resistance team in New York City. And in doing that I am going to build a blueprint with which to build a global team.
The number one thing that has been hindering my team building efforts is a sheer lack of portals in the city. I need my 1,000 portal submissions to go through before serious team building can start. There are people who have been astounded by how prolific I have been at submitting portals, and their reaction is to the 60 or so portals of mine that have gone live. Well, to them I say, wait until I start recruiting people. My portal submissions will pale in comparison to the team building I will do.
In the mean time I get to go on faction chat around 5 PM and swat houseflies. There are about five members of timtomhuze who like nothing better than to pull the conversation on faction chat to the lowest possible denominator. Like I said, I am new to Ingress, but I am not new to political warfare.
