When a team is not a team

Ingress is a team-based game.
 Certain restrictions, like how an agent can't set a portal to match his own level, turn this game design ideal into game mechanics.
But today, when I helped a couple faction-mates take over part of what I call "my territory", I noticed this may not be as evident for some as I thought it would be.

I must confess that some of my teammates act in an incongruent way to the mechanical goals  of the game and what can be defined as "winning" it.
And I fear the opposing faction advantage over us rests securely on these attitudes.
But tonights I'll only deal with this peculiar event that surprised me today.


As I was saying, a couple faction-mates started taking portals offline and capturing them.
I was intrigued by three things that I noted sequentially:
1.- Although they set 3 resonators on each portal, they didn't link them. I found this at least intriguing.
2.- Being levels 6 and 7 themselves, the highest-leveled resonator they deployed was 4, and many portals were saturated with these L1 shits that break if one sneezes too loudly.
<<You'll notice I find this practice less that useless, but that'll be another night's topic>>
3.- None of the portals had resonators that belonged to both agents.

When i realized this last piece, I noticed that these two agents weren't working as a team. They simply had convened to play, each by himself, in the same place and at the same hour.
Half an hour later, I met with one of those two agents.... while the other was 3 miles away, doind his stuff. After working together for over half an hour and planning a series of nested fields, this "partner" (airquoted because there was no partnership among them) appeared. Riding a bicicle.
Then I understood the root of the problem.

Among the stories I've read surrounding Ingress, the ones that draw my attention the most are those telling about the sotial relationships that are born around thie game.
People celebrating birthdays and weddings. People paying homage to dead friends. People celebrating a victory.
But all of this require, naturally, that these people spend time together, realizing little immediate goals as well as huge long-term ones. This requires people to be near and support each other. To be on the same level and focused on the same activity.
And one walking, another riding a bicicle and a third driving a car don't meet this condition.

An agent can activate a portal at up to level 5, field and control millions of MUs, as long as he has the time and resources.
But two agents, working in unison, save 50% of the resonators when setting portals, raise it 1 level higher than they would by themselves, and take a third of the time to set the same ammount of fields. If they're coordinated, they can get almost 25% more AP with minimum effort ("I set up from here, you close from there").
But sometimes this flies over our heads because we're too used to play by ourselves.
Sadly, we seek all the glory for ourselves, not realizing that we achieve more if we share.