Yesterday I contacted HQ about this issue, as follows:
Earlier this summer I started seeing green circles enclosing numbers (indicating the number of caches in a given area) on the mobile app. You have to zoom in quite close to not see these numbers displayed, and at an overview they cover up a lot of regional info. It's distracting and negatively affects my map view, especially because the info isn't even relevant because these numbers include caches I've already found. I've attached a screenshot example of this; in the area included in this photo there is a power trail where I've found at least 50 caches already - these numbers thus mean nothing and to get to the point where I can accurately see what's still available to be found I've lost the overall sense of where this is. This was not an enhancement to the program and I can't find anything about it online. None of my caching friends has this feature, and they all say "ugh" when I show it to them. Please please please...how do I get rid of these "number circles"?
They responded:
The UX team who worked on this feature implemented it to enhance the loading process of geocaches. Without segmenting them out that way, there are issues with speed. At this time, we do not plan on switching back to the dotted map but I will share your feedback with the team.
My response to that:
Thanks for taking my opinion into account. In addition to the scorn heaped upon this by geopals at events, I also see that there were loads of negative comments posted about the collapsing feature on the Groundspeakforum. If we cached with an 11" iPad it probably wouldn't matter, but with a phone...what a bummer!
And they responded:
Yeah that team reads the forums :-). Appreciate the feedback!