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Adventure Lab Caches


TwistedCube

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1 hour ago, Hügh said:

I like the idea that CO's should be able to delete finds on their Lab Caches. The ability to appeal should be available to finders, although that could get out of hand very quickly. My logic is that people who found it legitimately would (probably) have sufficient evidence to prove they were present in the vicinity of the Lab Cache at some point, while "cheaters" would be unable to prove their honesty and would simply have to forget about it and move on.

 

That's the hard part though - what sort of 'evidence' would be entirely objective and verifiable? How much work and effort would be necessary to run through the hoops to verify all this if/when the dispute inevitably goes to appeals? It comes down to the he-said-she-said issue again.  There needs to be a reasonable standard by which a judgment can be made for/against as well as adjudicated by appeals if necessary. While signature in a logsheet isn't foolproof, it's certainly sufficient to balance all the concerns; just as, HQ is hoping, locking adventure labs down to the mobile app, which likewise isn't foolproof, but without appeals or CO ability to delete logs, is hoped to be sufficient to provide a reasonably enjoyable experience all around.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

That's the hard part though - what sort of 'evidence' would be entirely objective and verifiable? How much work and effort would be necessary to run through the hoops to verify all this if/when the dispute inevitably goes to appeals? It comes down to the he-said-she-said issue again.  There needs to be a reasonable standard by which a judgment can be made for/against as well as adjudicated by appeals if necessary. While signature in a logsheet isn't foolproof, it's certainly sufficient to balance all the concerns; just as, HQ is hoping, locking adventure labs down to the mobile app, which likewise isn't foolproof, but without appeals or CO ability to delete logs, is hoped to be sufficient to provide a reasonably enjoyable experience all around.

 

Sadly, you're right — there really is no verifiable "evidence".

 

Of course, that brings up the question of where you draw the line for "cheating". Can I get a muggle family member who lives near the Labs to do them for me? Can I get a family friend who lives near the Labs to do them for me? If that's not allowed, could I argue that "they joined my caching team, and they are finding the Labs for the team"; or is that stretching some [unwritten] rules too far? 

 

For now, I'd say that Lab Caches are heading towards failure, but I think that they could be saved.

Edited by Hügh
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On ‎3‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 1:09 PM, HoustonControl said:

I attended the Texas Challenge and Geocaching Festival Mega yesterday in Seguin, Texas.  There were 10 Adventure Lab caches throughout the area and our group did them all during the day.  Looking at the online leaderboard I can confirm that almost every single person in the top three finders list for the caches were folks that were at the event.  That is, they are names of local cachers I recognize.  When I put out lab caches for the Space City Geocoinfest in 2014, several of the FTF's went to armchair loggers from a certain European country, so maybe this is a step in the right direction.  For the event yesterday, the TXGA put unique find codes at each stop that were basically un-guessable gibberish words.

 

HoustonControl, I downloaded the statistics of the Seguin labs.  I've already found about 20 users in Europe and Canada who logged them.

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50 minutes ago, TerraViators said:

 

HoustonControl, I downloaded the statistics of the Seguin labs.  I've already found about 20 users in Europe and Canada who logged them.

 

I guess it's taking the cheaters a bit of work to determine those "Texaican code words"

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5 hours ago, Hockeyhick said:

There has only been ONE legitimate find of all of the labs among over 500 cheaters. 

 

For some mystery and multi-caches the rate is that about 10% of finds are fully completed experienses and the remaining 90% are just signing a point for statistics, but your case is terrible bad. :huh: Does it mean that also local players are playing off-site?

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Sometimes, this discussion looks to me as a dispute between lawyers. (appeal, proof,...)

For me, and I’m not a native English speaker so my interpretation can be wrong, “guideline” looks to me more as “best practice” than “law”.

Can’t we just have fun with geocaching ?

If someone wants to have statistics with high numbers, it is his own problem. There will be enough other players who will enjoy the experience offered by the CO with his cache and who will reward him with a nice log, picture or a favorite point.  (oops, no log, no pic, no FP with ALC L)

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7 hours ago, Hügh said:

CO deletes the log if they feel that somebody has found it illegitimately.

No. Deletions based on feelings are nuts. The CO has to prove that the log is fake. I assume most of the COs can't do it accordingly.

 

Hans

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4 hours ago, p0cy said:

For me, and I’m not a native English speaker so my interpretation can be wrong, “guideline” looks to me more as “best practice” than “law”.

 

My interpretation of the word "guideline" is mostly a "recommendation" but actually it is used as a "rule" whenever someone is willing to justify their decisions based on the guidelines. Anyway, it is not a law :)

 

4 hours ago, p0cy said:

Can’t we just have fun with geocaching ?

 

I have seen this used for and against something. For one person having just fun is something different than the other. In this case it is not fun for the Adventure creators at all.

 

4 hours ago, p0cy said:

If someone wants to have statistics with high numbers, it is his own problem. There will be enough other players who will enjoy the experience offered by the CO with his cache and who will reward him with a nice log, picture or a favorite point.  (oops, no log, no pic, no FP with ALC L)

 

I must agree and in some cases it may be intentional to make an Adventure so easy that everyone can complete it off-site. But it is not allowed to make a Geocache for off-site logging. If a Geocache owner allows 500 found-it logs from overseas without visiting the coordinates the cache the most propably will be archived, locked etc. and all players banned for 7 days. ;)

Edited by arisoft
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16 hours ago, hal-an-tow said:

 

Or - revolutionary thought here - have a container of some kind with a log book to sign ....

 

I just did a quick check:

 

There are over 3,100,000 million non-archived physical containers with a log book to sign.


There are (at the moment I looked) 343 Adventure Lab caches that don't have a log to sign.

Of these Adventure lab caches, they are grouped into 59 tours. That is an average of less than 6 caches per area, with some having only 1 Adventure Lab cache.

 

Adventure Lab caches represent about 0.011% of ALL cache types.

Its hard to understand why people feel threatened by Adventure Lab caches.

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22 minutes ago, igator210 said:

 

I just did a quick check:

 

There are over 3,100,000 million non-archived physical containers with a log book to sign.


There are (at the moment I looked) 343 Adventure Lab caches that don't have a log to sign.

Of these Adventure lab caches, they are grouped into 59 tours. That is an average of less than 6 caches per area, with some having only 1 Adventure Lab cache.

 

Adventure Lab caches represent about 0.011% of ALL cache types.

Its hard to understand why people feel threatened by Adventure Lab caches.

Yes, but for the moment, ALC is just an experiment for 250 test cachers.

Imagine that GS removes the "test" or "beta" flag from ALC and allows every geocacher to create ALC.

Imagine that ALC becomes a significant part of geocaching.

It could alter the way we play today (both for creators and finders).  

Is it a threat for some people ? It may depend on your point of view. 

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5 hours ago, p0cy said:

Can’t we just have fun with geocaching ?

 

If only it were that easy...

 

5 hours ago, arisoft said:

My interpretation of the word "guideline" is mostly a "recommendation" but actually it is used as a "rule" whenever someone is willing to justify their decisions based on the guidelines. Anyway, it is not a law :)

 

In geocaching, it technically is a law, in practice. Don't break the guidelines. I believe they use 'guidelines' to describe them because yes there may always be exceptions, and they're trying to get people to consider following them on principle, rather than becoming legalistic, or being seen as some kind of enforcement organization. Geocaching is supposed to be fun. There are rules, but we shouldn't have to keep going to them to justify certain actions; ideally, our activity should already be in line with these guidelines. But people will be people, and there has to be rules, or it will end up in chaos.

 

5 hours ago, arisoft said:

> Can’t we just have fun with geocaching ?

I have seen this used for and against something. For one person having just fun is something different than the other. In this case it is not fun for the Adventure creators at all.

 

Hey!  Agreed!

One person's fun is another person's aggravation.  And one person's aggravation, unfortunately, is another person's fun.  That's why we have rules/guidelines.  And because not every rule enforcement is automated, that's why we have Appeals.

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The point that I defend is that GS is changing the rules of geocaching with ALC.

I have no problem with new games. GS crrated Waymarking. Very good. But that is another game with other rules, other players (even if you can play both games)

So, for me, no problem if ALC is considered just as another game created by GS. Innovation is good and this new game can have his maket share.

The problem that I see (personal point of view) is that introducing ALC is changing the rules of geocaching and that the stats of "normal" caches and ALC are mixed and not totally separated. 

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So are benchmarks. Same argument could be made for other non-physical types like Virtuals, Webcams, Earthcaches.

 

That said, I'm certainly not disagreeing; I'd rather they not add smiley counts for logging Labs. That's the only stat that's affected though, afaik. But that's one reason I typically don't do them; or at least, I don't log them. I deleted my lab cache finds waaaaay back when they first started.  The stat now especially is relatively meaningless compared to the other geocaching stats and caused other stat analysis problems.

 

But that said, the fact they are counted in stats doesn't really affect me, so I'm not going to go around demanding that they remove the stats from the smiley count. I just don't log them. That's my solution.   They can certainly be fun to do though!  But yeah, it is more like a 'side game' to geocaching. At least Virtuals, webcams and earthcaches share additional geocache properties for statistics. Labs are more like wherigos, or AR, without a physical container - replaced by a digital logging with a keyword.  Keeping track of them? enh.  Playing them? Depends on how well designed the Lab experience is!

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2 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

But people will be people, and there has to be rules, or it will end up in chaos.

 

Control structures are much better way than rules. It is better to build a fence than write keep out -signs. It is better to prevent Found It log to your own cache than write a guideline for the same matter. You may have noticed that there has been some movement towards more controlling during the last years. It is much better to avoid disputes by controlling the game instead of more ruling that most players are not aware. Lets hope that Adventure Labs will reach enough control to solve these issues.

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This isn't a philosophical chat about the effect of rules and enforcement styles on order vs chaos. Obviously HQ has to figure out an acceptable balance of how much to define as an enforcible ruleset in this game.  Yes, there have to be rules.  As it pertains to Labs, they seem to be making objective technology is the enforcement (the app being much better than the web player). In geocaching, there is a hierarchy of authority.

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9 hours ago, p0cy said:

Can’t we just have fun with geocaching ?

As others have pointed out, that would include cache owners too. Owners of epic caches don't seem to have fun when numbers hounds treat their creations as just another +1 in a quest for (thoroughly meaningless) statistics.

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6 hours ago, p0cy said:

The point that I defend is that GS is changing the rules of geocaching with ALC.

I have no problem with new games. GS crrated Waymarking. Very good. But that is another game with other rules, other players (even if you can play both games)

So, for me, no problem if ALC is considered just as another game created by GS. Innovation is good and this new game can have his maket share.

The problem that I see (personal point of view) is that introducing ALC is changing the rules of geocaching and that the stats of "normal" caches and ALC are mixed and not totally separated. 

 

Adventure Labs are not changing the rules of Geocaching any less or more than Webcam Caches, or Virtual Caches, or Earth Caches changed the rules.

In EVERY case, a cacher is supposed to visit the location and perform a task. In the case of a traditional cache, the task is find a container and sign a log. In other cases the task is to observe something and supply the answer(s) to some question(s). Or in one case, a cacher must use available technology (a website & screenshot or photo download) to obtain a picture from the camera located there. Similar in some aspects, in the case of Adventure Labs, one provide answers via technology (an app) to get their +1.

 

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On our Adventure Lab, only one local friend has logged the entire group.

Prior to his visit, over 500 acknowledgments were logged by foreign accounts.

After he did, this account logged it: 

https://www.geocaching.com/p/default.aspx?guid=7d2465e0-8ad0-4f2b-a259-6ccc3e0a5955

Interesting thing is that of the 10 locations, the information for two of them is/was definitely not searchable online. (I am surprised that the rest were found, but the power of the Google is strong.)
Part of me believes that they google stuff, but then there is a part of me that thinks that they have figured out a back-door to the geocaching website.

If this is the case, then my concern goes beyond a fake log, and more into website security, especially as it pertains to financial records.

Please enlighten me...

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28 minutes ago, Hockeyhick said:

Part of me believes that they google stuff, but then there is a part of me that thinks that they have figured out a back-door to the geocaching website.

If this is the case, then my concern goes beyond a fake log, and more into website security, especially as it pertains to financial records.

Please enlighten me...

 

It is an already reported issue. Passcode is verified inside the App which makes it extremely vulnerable against hacking. It should work like the built in solution checker with a Captcha and limited number of tries. ?

Edited by arisoft
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33 minutes ago, arisoft said:

 

It is an already reported issue. Passcode is verified inside the App which makes it extremely vulnerable against hacking. It should work like the built in solution checker with a Captcha and limited number of tries. ?

 

Please, no Captcha. It's infuriating enough indoors on a big-screen desktop trying to tell which tiny fuzzy pictures have buses in them (is that the back corner of a bus or a truck?), let alone trying to do it on a tiny phone screen barely visible in outdoor glare.

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1 hour ago, Hockeyhick said:

Interesting thing is that of the 10 locations, the information for two of them is/was definitely not searchable online. [...]

Part of me believes that they google stuff, but then there is a part of me that thinks that they have figured out a back-door to the geocaching website.

Sometimes this isn't necessary, because you can quickly find the solution through trial&error. I don't know your ALC, but if you ask for a number, which is definitely not available on the web, then it's sufficient to have a rough idea about the possible range of that number. If you have to count something => just work your way up from 1. If a year is to be found, which is clearly not too far in the past, start with 2019 and go backwards. Within 15 minutes, you can check hundreds of numbers. That said, I don't think there is a true backdoor is really necessary. Only "holes" in the API which allow to circumvent the "linear game play" and very quick brute-forcing of answers (both has already been reported to GS).

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On 3/14/2019 at 12:50 PM, igator210 said:

 

Its hard to understand why people feel threatened by Adventure Lab caches.
 

"Threatened" is a strange choice of words , I do not feel threatened by caches of any kind, but would invite any other contributor who feels threatened by lab caches to mention it here so we can reassure them ....

 

The whole point and principle of geocaching is to be there, where the cache is, what was the phrase Groundspeak used a while back ? "The language of  location" ? A type of cache which has a giant loophole allowing hundreds of people to not be there but still  'find' it is a nonsense. Imagining some sort of magical handwavium will foerever heal that loophole is vastly underestimating the technical expertise and group will of people who enjoy the sort of mildly subversive problem solving  involved here . Subverting the spirit of geocaching whilst staying within a strict interpretation of the guidelines just adds a little extra frission to their fun. I know people  like that, smart, well paid computer people, engineers, problem solvers. The ones I count as friends who are also cachers get involved with solving puzzles rather than hacking ALCs I'm happy to say. 

 

I can appreciate that an event like a mega can benefit from a limited number of lab cache style temporary virtuals near the venue  to entertain and engage attendees whilst not creating a maintenance or log verifying  problem for the organisers (who may be from some way away), but apart from that specific unusual case, a straightforward virtual cache or Wherigo does exactly what an adventure lab cache does, and without needing another app. 

Maybe that's the reason for these AVCs, the bottom line  ... enlighten me, are there adverts in the app.  ?

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On 3/14/2019 at 12:18 AM, Wet Pancake Touring Club said:

 

I think the CO should be allowed to delete bogus finds, and the finder should have the right to appeal that.

 

A reasonable point, with which I agree.

 

But ...  my suspicion is that the shift to the CO having no control over the logging for these caches has been made with the intention of cutting out the whole appeal and dispute resolution thing. It takes staff time, it therefore costs money, plus it cannot be a pleasant and sought after occupation for any volunteers.

Having no log deletion mechanism at all makes groundspeaks job easier.

That it makes the cheats job easier is just one of those unintended consequences it seems no one at HQ anticipated, or perhaps they thought it simply wouldn't matter to anyone.

It does matter to owners though, as we can see from the messages some have posted here.

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21 minutes ago, hal-an-tow said:

Imagining some sort of magical handwavium will foerever heal that loophole is vastly underestimating the technical expertise and group will of people who enjoy the sort of mildly subversive problem solving  involved here . Subverting the spirit of geocaching whilst staying within a strict interpretation of the guidelines just adds a little extra frission to their fun. I know people  like that, smart, well paid computer people, engineers, problem solvers.

 

Yep, and I'm confident that there'd be a whole lot more frustration ans possibly less users if COs weren't allowed to delete logs of certain very common country-based loggers who attempt to 'find' virtuals and earthcaches without having been there. How many times have COs been curious about some suspicious logs to find single-day sets of logs posted from that one account spanning FAR more territory than physically possible?  In many of those cases, I'd guess those couch-loggers are banking on lazy COs not bothering about checking or deleting false finds, and those are the finds that helps boost those users' stats.

 

Point being, people are still attempting to take advantage of the current system in geocaching itself by posting false finds. Today. The difference is, attentive COs can deal with them.  In Labs, there's no such ability. So it's goign to continue to be super-prolific, if the app-only process doesn't make it super-hard or not worth the effort for such people (wherever they may be in the world relative to the posted location).

 

Just now, hal-an-tow said:

my suspicion is that the shift to the CO having no control over the logging for these caches has been made with the intention of cutting out the whole appeal and dispute resolution thing. It takes staff time, it therefore costs money, plus it cannot be a pleasant and sought after occupation for any volunteers.

Having no log deletion mechanism at all makes groundspeaks job easier.

That it makes the cheats job easier is just one of those unintended consequences it seems no one at HQ anticipated, or perhaps they thought it simply wouldn't matter to anyone.

It does matter to owners though, as we can see from the messages some have posted here.

 

Yep, spot on.

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I have 3 questions:

1. It appears that there is no reviewer required to 'publish' an ALC. So how does GS prevent inappropriate content in ALCs? 
2. Is there an official way to link an ALC to an existing cache type? eg set up a mystery cache where the ALC provides the coordinates? Similar to an AR cache?
3. It sounds like to me, that a 5 waypoint ALC will give you 5 "finds" is that correct? Seems odd to me. If I do a multicache with 5 waypoints - I get 1 find.
 

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1.  A limited review of ALC's is performed.  With regard to content of the ALC, that's analogous to the review of a Wherigo cache - the cartridge is not reviewed.  This hasn't been a huge problem over the years.  Inappropriate content can be reported to Geocaching HQ, if that should happen.

 

2.  Yes.  See the Help Center.

 

3.  Yes, each location in an Adventure counts as a separate find.

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10 minutes ago, Smilch said:

Is there a place to provide feedback on how the software works? Having used it I wanted to provide my impressions.

Thanks.

 

The Release Notes thread that Frau Potter posted would be the best place and other release notes threads in that forum section have been used for that purpose quite often.

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My Adventures Lab app says that I found 5 in Nova Scotia which is correct. But on my totals under lab caches on Geocaching.com, there are two. Worked well in other places. How do I get them to show up?

 

I'm curious if anyone has had this problem occur?

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(google translate)

It's here interesting discussion ...
For and against arguments ...
Localization? GPS fake app.
Who wants to cheat, find the way.
Geocaching is about people and their own conscience.
The irony of the whole endeavor is, if CO ALC is just such a cheater.
He got a reward because he has a lot of "finds"
This is also geocaching ....

Edited by Condorik
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On 4/24/2019 at 7:52 AM, OhioRider said:

My Adventures Lab app says that I found 5 in Nova Scotia which is correct. But on my totals under lab caches on Geocaching.com, there are two. Worked well in other places. How do I get them to show up?

 

I'm curious if anyone has had this problem occur?

Maybe you're looking at the wrong place? In your profile I'm seeing that you have found 70 lab caches.

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19 hours ago, baer2006 said:

Why do you assume you get a "credit" to create an adventure?

 

Why not? It's a question of fairness and equal treatment. Everyone should get these opportunities.
The technique and the practice has been tested. Now there are results of the tests and further plans for the future.

 

 

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29 minutes ago, Team KarlZink said:

Why not? It's a question of fairness and equal treatment. Everyone should get these opportunities.
The technique and the practice has been tested. Now there are results of the tests and further plans for the future.

 

"All geocachers are equal, but some geocachers are more equal than others"

 

I suspect that lab caches will be offered same way as before. This testing phase was something extra.

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22 hours ago, Team KarlZink said:

The beta period is almost over. Now I'm looking forward to accessing the labbuilder and some credits to create an adventure.


Yup, the beta period is almost over. That doesn't mean it is going to be released to the masses. Many things in life go through beta testing, sent back for redesigns and then enter beta testing again.

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1 hour ago, igator210 said:


Yup, the beta period is almost over. That doesn't mean it is going to be released to the masses. Many things in life go through beta testing, sent back for redesigns and then enter beta testing again.

... especially when the first beta test phase has revealed some serious issues. In my view, the biggest problem is that changes to an Adventure Lab Cache are not always and reliably downloaded by the app. I.e., the ALC owner has changed the question for a location (for whatever reason), but the player might still see the old one.

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48 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

... especially when the first beta test phase has revealed some serious issues. In my view, the biggest problem is that changes to an Adventure Lab Cache are not always and reliably downloaded by the app. I.e., the ALC owner has changed the question for a location (for whatever reason), but the player might still see the old one.

Intrrestingly, this is the same issue with caches and offline data. If you don't have the latest info, you might have problems finding the cache, especially if it's moved to different coordinates which you don't have.

The bigger problem though is that the app could register a Lab completion with an out of date keyphrase, which wouldn't work online with a new one, giving two conflicting completions (someone mentioned a weird stat conflict in another thread due to this process).  The only way around this though would be to have a kind of hash check or last update check before starting a Lab to find out if there's been a change, and download the latest if there has.

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26 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

Intrrestingly, this is the same issue with caches and offline data. If you don't have the latest info, you might have problems finding the cache, especially if it's moved to different coordinates which you don't have.

That's right. But with a normal cache listing, I can always explicitly load the latest listing (provided I have an online connection), if I suspect that I'm working with outdated info. OTOH, I don't know a way to force the Adventure Lab app to download the latest version of an ALC.

 

29 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

The bigger problem though is that the app could register a Lab completion with an out of date keyphrase, which wouldn't work online with a new one, giving two conflicting completions (someone mentioned a weird stat conflict in another thread due to this process). 

I know an ALC not too far away from my homebase with exactly this problem. Players complete all 5 locations, but then find out that they got less than 5 lab cache finds on their geocaching.com stats.

I ran into a similar problem, when I had to move the "bonus cache" of my ALC. I had placed the bonus coordinates in the final "journal" message, but after updating the message, several players still got the old coordinates.

 

32 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

The only way around this though would be to have a kind of hash check or last update check before starting a Lab to find out if there's been a change, and download the latest if there has. 

This is the obvious, and relatively simple to implement solution. Because of that, I'm sure GS is already working on something like that. Because if permanent lab caches (as opposed to the short-term temporary ones at Mega/Giga events) are to stay, there must be some protocol to properly handle updates to an ALC.

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3 hours ago, Team Bear-Cat said:

Just completed our first Adventure Lab, 100 Years of Olympic Games, in Atlanta.  It did not trigger a Find count, nor does it show up in the list of Recent Activity.  Are we missing something?  The app shows this Adventure Lab Completed... 

 

Did you check the number of Lab caches completed from your statistics?  https://www.geocaching.com/my/statistics.aspx

 

 

 

 

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Having just done my first Adventure Lab Cache here's a few thoughts:
 

  • I seem to have to login to the app (Android) every time I start it, it doesn't "remember" me. I don't know whether that's a feature of the app, or something I have set on my phone but all my other apps remember I'm logged in and don't require me to do it every time.
  • There doesn't seem to be anywhere that I can go to see all the available ALCs on a map, if I were planning a day out and wanting to go for and ALC I would want to see where they are, and what other caches are in the area, so I could target a town/region.
  • There's nowhere to "write about your experience", I like to write something about my finds (most of the time) particularly if there was something memorable about it and I often look back through my old logs. Also when choosing which caches to go for I will often read others' logs (particularly those of friends) either to get an idea of whether it's going to be worth going for, or in the case of the one I did there was some ambiguity about a question and typically in a multi/Wherigo etc there would have been a comment from previous finders along the lines of "I had problems with Q2, but found that only 2 words were required"; none of this is available on ALCs. It also means the ALC creator gets no feedback from finders via the logs.
  • I got 5 "finds" on my account for doing just 1 ALC - IMO that's wrong, we don't get 1 find for every stage of an old fashioned Multi so why do we for ALCs? I can see this feature being abused by the numbers cachers down the line by creating ALCs with many easy stages just so people can ramp up their find count quickly.
  • It seems wrong to me that the ALC finds appear in some parts of my stats, but not in others. I know it's always been this way and when I previously logged some of the old Lab Caches I ended up deleting those finds to make the numbers match but it seems I can't do this with the ALC finds, I think that if I could delete those 5 finds from that one ALC then I would do so.
  • The is no way that I can see which ALCs I have logged from the website, only from the app.
  • I don't like the fact that you must be online with a data plan to play. While this wasn't a problem for me doing a cache in London but I can see that it will be a problem in remoter areas or places with intermittent reception, which will ultimately exclude many great places from getting ALCs because there is poor  mobile coverage, or it will lead to frustration from cachers doing ALCs and finding that they get stranded part way round due to reception issues.
  • Clearly I've only done one ALC so I don't know the full capabilities of the player but everything I've seen seems to be like the one I did - go to a place, answer a question, go somewhere else, etc. It seems the gameplay is nowhere near as rich or capable as Wherigos.
  • I won't get into the "fake logging" aspect as I don't really care about that either way, but one way round it  might be something radical like,... oh I don't know,... having a physical container at the end with a logbook to sign ?

I know that GS gave up on Wherigos a long time ago, and a comment on a recent podcast suggested that ALCs were a replacement for them, but I would ask that GS please don't ditch Wherigos, the capability for really interesting and entertaining gameplay is so much better.

 

All in all I've found ALCs a bit underwhelming  so far ?

 

 

 

Edit to strike out a couple of statements that I have just discovered are wrong, but leaving them there for the record. I've found out how to link to the ALC finds, and have deleted all but 1 find from the ALC I did yesterday, so now the numbers are "right" IMO.

 

Edited by MartyBartfast
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26 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

I seem to have to login to the app (Android) every time I start it, it doesn't "remember" me. I don't know whether that's a feature of the app, or something I have set on my phone but all my other apps remember I'm logged in and don't require me to do it every time.

 

It remembered me at first but after the last update I have to log every time.

 

28 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

I can see this feature being abused by the numbers cachers down the line by creating ALCs with many easy stages just so people can ramp up their find count quickly.

 

Don't worry. There will be only limited number of Lab caches because they are primarily used for special events like Mega events just to make them more desirable. This also explains why there is no map available because these are only temporal side activity of some main theme.

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10 minutes ago, arisoft said:

Don't worry. There will be only limited number of Lab caches because they are primarily used for special events like Mega events just to make them more desirable.

Do you have any reference to back that up or is it an assumption on your part? 

 

The old style Lab caches were primarily linked to events, but the ALCs which have been released are not; there are a lot ( probably a few hundred) showing up in my app at the moment, and no way to see where they are without opening up each one. In my view GS clearly see them as a replacement for Wherigos, in which case it's likely they have plans to make them more generally available than just for Mega events.

 

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3 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

In my view GS clearly see them as a replacement for Wherigos, in which case it's likely they have plans to make them more generally available than just for Mega events.

 

Wishful thinking :D

 

As long as the name contains the word "Lab" you may consider them Lab-caches. Not Wherigo caches or replacements of any real cache type. We already have Intercache which is real replacement for Wherigo caches. New ALCs have been sheduled for already published Mega events to lure more visitors.

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