This topic contains 4 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by 
BeccaDay 9 years, 4 months ago.
-
Posts
-
Personally, we were kind of hoping they’d disappear forever, but after reading the new guidelines, it sounds like what comes out will be a bit more sensible overall.
I completed some and started doing some other challenges and then it got to the point of why bother! Grabbing a cache because it has a specific name feature or some other random element. I found myself chasing caches that had no enjoyment other than a tally towards completion of the challenge. I think the “souvenirs” emphasis may have pushed me over. I know for many they’re enjoyable and for that all the power to them. Maybe I haven’t found the right challenge yet. How do you create a challenge for caches you truly enjoyed getting? Even going after caches with lots of favorite points seems to miss that all though that has been the closest to an enjoyable challenge for me. I guess I’m just a grinch…
We love challenge caches! It motivates us to visit other parts of the state and we have fun working on them. If you look at our gc profile page we list a few dozen we’ve completed and the challenges we’re still working on. Most of the challenges, for us, have been great, admittedly some others have not been so great.
With the new guidelines, it’s looking very promising for quality challenge caches. We even hope to create a few , IF we can ever figure out how to incorporate into the cache page the required challenge checker. Seems complicated.
Well, it’s not a secret that we’ve done a bunch of them and own a few ourselves. Two aspects related to challenge caches got to us….the proliferation of all kinds of really silly ones, especially the ones encouraging quantity. Alphabet ones, find x number of animals, all that kind of thing. We can ignore that stuff, though, and have done so in the past year or so for the most part. The more troublesome aspect is all the inflated ratings showing up, or loading up certain kinds of things to meet challenges. For instance, I know not everyone loves the control date on our Wisconsin Well Rounded, but that’s why it’s there. The original one in California, older than ours, has kept that control date as well. I know that makes it harder for some folks to accomplish. There are challenges out there we may never be able to accomplish, like multiple Jasmer grids. That doesn’t mean others can’t, though. I also think the requirement that the placer meets the challenge is good. We’ve never placed one we hadn’t already met ourselves.
From reading the new guidelines, some of these things may be less of an issue now.
I think most of the changes in the rulings are good. I never realized how hard these challenges have made life for the reviewers. They’re volunteers and shouldn’t be given such a bad time. I also have no problem ignoring silly challenges, so a lot of the rules don’t really affect me since I wasn’t going for them anyway. The only one that I’m disappointed in is the whole rule about there being a checker. Most of the challenges that I’m interested in could never have come around if this were the case. I like the challenges where we have to get out and discover new things and places. There is no way to make a bookmark list of all of the caches that ever were or will be at state parks in Wisconsin, National Parks, waterfalls, natural features, WI weirdness (except that challenge was to find specific ones), etc. So this disappoints me, I probably won’t do as many challenges now because of it.
Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.