I think, for me, the game falls into the same category as EvE. Fun to read about, but I don't think I could ever commit that much time to it, but it does sound like it's great fun.
So there it is. Ingress. Free. Easy to start. Too easy to incorporate in your daily life. You start doing groceries in the other shop; it's few minutes more of walking, but you pass by five portals on the route. You stop reading Facebook on the tram, you hack portals instead - you'll need all that inventory later. You go out to buy a beer. It'll be only five minutes, you think. Ok, ten, because you need to retake that two portals on your way. You come home an hour later, after flipping the entire neighbourhood.
All those games you mentioned are addictive like hell. Out of them, Ingress has the lowest barrier to entry. It's so small that you can tunnel through it by accident. At some point you just start playing and can't stop. There, you're sucked in for life.
The value of the tutorials is that they show the smallest working set of actions and how they interact.
Two hours later she returned, happily bearing cake, and said "Yeah I got distracted hacking portals". She'd walked something like six miles.
She's certainly keen, and enjoys it, though I've never really seen the point of it myself.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_rCdGYp3nbSUXFG4Ky96RZW1...
1. I really hate the map. 90% of the map is devoted to ocean and Russia, and the interesting bits are crammed into the remaining 10%. It's incredibly easy to misread the map and fuck up a move. Perhaps this is intentional, but it drives me nuts.
2. I didn't know any of the people, so I couldn't judge how honest or deceitful they were being. Maybe this would be better with friends whose tells I know better.
3. Sweet god, you're right, it takes forever - and yet you're feeling rushed the entire time, since you have to make sure you talk to at least the people you're nominally allied with for the next N turns, as well as hearing out potential new allies, and trying to make new ones of your own.
I guess I'm just too casual of a gamer for something like this, but if you think you're interested in playing Diplomacy, I very highly recommend that you try to find someone in your area to play with - there are probably six other people just like you wishing they had someone else to play with.
As for friendships, I think one has to state clearly at the beginning of the game that one has a strong chance to turn against their allies at some point. It's a feature of the game. There are ways to manage this risk for one's sanity. :)