Ingress is the game that enabled Niantic to take the lead in location-based augmented reality. The smartphone game has players roaming the city and the countryside marketing down places of interest to transform them into in-game portals. This database of knowledge is what enabled Pokemon Go to have gyms. This lack of information is why competitors like Delta T to have to rethink the model and make their version of portals a mobile asset instead.

There’s a catch, though. This same heritage of assets and technology needs to be maintained. It’s a pile of legacy code. With Ingress 2.0 on the horizon, it looks like Niantic gets to tackle all that legacy code. This means they will look again at raising the current agent level cap from 16 to something higher. Geek Native has speculated they would do this before and got it wrong. It looks like server upgrades were needed to enable the new feature.

In this video, in an unofficial comment, Niantic’s global community manager Andrew Krug says the Ingress Prime rollout is a two-stage process; smartphone clients first and then the server upgrade. The server upgrade will enable the new levels to come to the game.

This news will divide the Ingress community. Agents work hard to hit level 16, and some like to consider it ‘job done’. With no idea of what progression above level 16 might look like there’s no way to tell if you’re playing the game ‘right’ any more. Are you collecting AP? (the game’s experience point system) Or Badges? Or will there be a new levelling mechanic?

What do you think about the prospect of new levels and other new features arriving by the time Niantic upgrade to Ingress Prime 1.1?