Caching Connoisseur

[CheshireCrab]

3 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Why give points for any basic find at all? The whole point is to focus on the theme. Draw attention to a certain cache property or attribute or experience. Makes the effort seem pointless if you can qualify with enough of any cache whatsoever. That's not incentive to earn the souvenir, that's telling people they can get the souvenir even by just ignoring it caching normally. Nothing special about that

 

As someone mentioned earlier, the whole reason for these souvenirs is brought by marketing to encourage people to go out Geocaching. I personally have refrained from Geocaching these several months because I wasn't feeling as excited logging a traditional cache just to get my find numbers up. I instead strayed into other priorities in my life.

 

However, I still go out when there is a souvenir to be earned. When this recent souvenir became available, you better believe I made some time to go out there scouting for 4 containers with high favored points.  Out of the ~200 finds logged so far, the last 4 were definitely some of the most memorable hiding spots. Heck, even these past couple of souvenirs got me going out to my first CITO and do my first EarthCache, and I am definitely planning on going to my first GIFF event coming up.

 

I suspect that's whom Geocaching is trying to gear souvenirs towards. Not for the die-hard Geocachers who can collect 100 containers in a day or will make a special vacation overseas to do a find, but more to encourage those who like to Geocache but need a little bit more incentive to go and explore what it has to offer.

Edited October 22, 2018 by CheshireCrab

[+thebruce0]

10 minutes ago, CheshireCrab said:

As someone mentioned earlier, the whole reason for these souvenirs is brought by marketing to encourage people to go out Geocaching.

 

You probably didn't mean it this way, but whenever I see "marketing" mentioned like this it always seems like it's eeked out of the corner of the mouth with disdain.  GS is a private company that does in fact need to pull in revenue, so it doesn't bother me at all if anything presented is a "marketing gimmick", as long as it's enjoyable and helps my hobby to thrive   (generally speaking)

 

12 minutes ago, CheshireCrab said:

I suspect that's whom Geocaching is trying to gear souvenirs towards. Not for the die-hard Geocachers who can collect 100 containers in a day or will make a special vacation overseas to do a find, but more to encourage those who like to Geocache but need a little bit more incentive to go and explore what it has to offer.

 

Absolutely. I don't think anyone disagrees with that...  the issue is more that, well, you can run a souvenir campaign that addresses that portion of the geocaching population without leaving out the other end of the scale -- only if you don't look at having some rewards being unattainable to anybody as a Bad Thing.  We're wondering how much GS actually sees "difficult souvenirs" as exclusionary and doesn't want to run them (despite being more attractive to the much more active portion of the community).

 

They've tried tiers, and despite still being overall pretty simple, they seemed to fair better with the hardcore crowd by giving at least a bit more of a challenge.

 

IMO, if it's a mere quantity challenge, there has to be tiers. If it's a challenge intended to raise awareness for something geocaching-related, then the qualifiers shouldn't accept any find whatsoever towards qualification (and the challenge is more likely to appeal to greater audience anyway because it's not about numbers/quantity as it is about theme).

[+on4bam]

As usual this souvenir means nothing. I got it for just doing what I always do and I wouldn't have been aware there was a souvenir if I hadn't read about it on these forums. Anyway, like the other promotions, it's gone (or better, hidden) on my souvenir page.

I tend to stay away from "promotions" anyway (not only on GC).