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I believe this thread has now been officially stolen… 😕
On the Left Side of the Road...Starting again with my usual disclaimer that this is just a game, yada yada yada…
The difficulty rating of puzzle caches is based in large part on the player solving the puzzle. And I know ratings are important to people because, as we learned from the time we placed our first cache, people aren’t shy about offering opinions about difficulty and terrain ratings. At least no one’s ever said to us, “gee, your rating is awful high for this cache.”
That’s part of the frustration of puzzle-tours and why they’re a slap to those who have truly earned the rating.
So, I might suggest a solution. The found-it smiley is used by those who earned the find. Those who sign logbooks as tagalongs, we get a new icon made for them.
Perhaps a rose icon, after Rosie Ruiz.
On the Left Side of the Road...Keeping in mind this is just a game, cache the way you want to, yada yada yada…
s|s’s original point is that it is frustrating to spend a ton of time putting together a cache only to have someone short-cut it, so why encourage that behavior? (A “tour” being substantially different from a collaboration.) And in the context of the game, it shortchanges the players who made an honest find, as defined by the way the cache-owner intended the puzzle to be solved or cache to be found.
Then the subsequent point being, if this happens enough, will placers become frustrated with putting out challenging and rewarding hides, because what’s the point if a bunch of drive-by cachers descend on it and deposit a bunch of TFTC logs? Think of what has made this game more popular than other alternatives like letterboxing. In large part it is because of the feedback mechanism between placers and seekers. And being told “There it is!” by your tour leader just doesn’t make for the same feedback in the log, grounded in a worthwhile experience, that solving the puzzle yourself does.
As far as I’m concerned, wandering along on a tour and the variety of other shortcuts I’ve seen done/logged on caches just to move on to the next one means you didn’t “find” the cache in the context of the game any more than a muggle stumbling into it would. Yep, you held the container, signed the log…whoop de friggin’ doo. What did you accomplish?
But that’s just my opinion. It’s worth about as much as any of our “find” stats are in the scheme of things.
On the Left Side of the Road...We definitely will. It would be nice to have an earthcache in GB and nice to have a new cache come out that’s not a puzzle. Oh wait, that’s us placing the puzzles… 😈
On the Left Side of the Road...Hmmm…never placed an earthcache before, only have a rudimentary idea from the info and guidelines on the earthcache.org page. I don’t know thing one about geology so it would be a ground-up learning opportunity, which perhaps is the point of it all…
On the Left Side of the Road...I wonder if UW-Green Bay would be open to an Earthcache. Many know that the university had all the caches on the arboretum trail pulled because of the “uniqueness” of the Niagara Escarpment. Perhaps the escarpment would be worthy of an Earthcache?
On the Left Side of the Road...You’re definitely not alone and your comment about “competition” is right on. Numbers are fun, we track them, and it’s easy to get caught up in them, but when we meet someone who feels they are God’s Gift to Caching because they have 000s of finds, you gotta shake your head. Same goes for taking people on cache tours to “find” difficult puzzles and cutting corners of multis, climbing fences and trespassing through shortcuts rather than taking the intended path, logging virtuals (or even physicals) you haven’t found–all to get a number. Are you going to inscribe your find count on your tombstone?
Ok, that rant’s way O.T., but the word “competition” struck a chord. So I’m really done now. Promise.
On the Left Side of the Road...My impression of this whole thing in general is…”what’s the point?” Ok, it has the “cool” factor but it seems to be an odd mashup of activities. We find walking in the woods to seek a cache interesting enough without having to interact with virtual characters along the way or play a game that’s one more step removed from reality than hunting tupperware in shrubbery already is. We already spend enough time with our head down looking at the little arrow without worrying about following a complicated game on a device as well.
There, my rant is over. Ultimately, geocaching has a little something for everyone and does constantly evolve, so I would guess there’s a community of players out there that would really take to this.
On the Left Side of the Road...@Team Deejay wrote:
For what its worth, they don’t seem to be too interested in combining wherigo with geocaching. I think they see this as a) an opportunity to JV with Garmin, and b) an opportunity to build a profit stream by developing “cartridges” for tourism councils, businesses, etc. The “play” aspect of this is more of an easy entry point than a reason for being, that is, get the geocommunity to build play and tour modules to work out the bugs, then start marketing to the “real” customers.
Looks like they just made the combination by creating a new cache type. Now of course, you need either a whereigo-enabled PDA or GPSr, and the only one of the latter is the Garmin Colorado.
So technically, to get this particular cache type, you need to outlay $$$, which sounds suspiciously like the “commercial” caches that are prohibited. Yes, I know you have to pay fees to enter some parks. And yes, you do need to buy a GPSr to hunt most caches. But this new cache type requires you to purchase specific equipment.
But since groundspeak owns whereigo, it’s a case of those who make the rules are able to do with the rules as they see fit.
On the Left Side of the Road...Hey, we haven’t put one out this week (yet)…
On the Left Side of the Road...Ah, I suppose I should have connected the dots on that one. I just didn’t know if there was a super-secret protocol I could have followed to get the cache type changed rather than having to archive the old cache and “place” a “new” cache…using the exact same container…in the exact same spot.
On the plus side, it was a new GC number for people to log, en so?
On the Left Side of the Road...Caution: Thread-Stealer alert!
A MGB potentially for sale? My first reaction, “when can I pick it up???” A ’75 MGB black-bumper was our first British car…then a ’62 Triumph TR4…then a ’58 TR3….
Then we had child one…
Then we had child two…
Now we have no more British cars!
But for your bemusement, here is child one, aka daughter-cacher, in the ’58, about 8 years ago. Man do the years fly by…
On the Left Side of the Road...@kbraband wrote:
I have modified my “What in the World Happened?” cache (GC14Z32) from a puzzle to a traditional.
Might I ask how you were able to modify this? I ask because I had wanted to change a cache type a while back and was told by the admin that I couldn’t do it because (paraphrasing) “it messes up peoples’ stats.”
On the Left Side of the Road...I’m thinking we ought to make that a new contest ala the Lonely Cache game. How many times can you hit the refresh button in your browser to move yourself to the top of Marc’s Premium Cache visitor list. Maybe someone could write a macro… 😉
On the Left Side of the Road...Unless you smash Canadian coins–there it is not legal. So go to Canada to buy your drugs, then come back here to smash your leftover Canadian pennies.
On the Left Side of the Road... -
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